The American Umlaut

On big numbers

2010-11-04T15:32:00.003+01:00

I have a real issue with the way numbers associated with macroeconomics are reported in the news. Ezra Klein writes that the American Federal Reserve is planning to perform quantitative easing to the tune of $600 billion.

The reason this sort of thing bugs me is that the number is essentially meaningless, because it is beyond comprehension. Your average person (or even your average above average person) is going to look at that number, and their brain is going to gloss it as "a metric Jesusload of money."

What I would much rather see is values like this in per-capita terms, and broken down over time: $600 billion is roughly $1,900 per American citizen. Spread out over seven months (the Fed plans to inject the money into the economy by purchasing treasuries between now and June), that's $271 a month per person in additional money entering the economy.

Isn't it a bit easier to comprehend the Fed's action and its possible impact when it's put like that?

By the way: I am hopefully going to be posting around here occasionally again. The birth of the Loaf massively reduced the time I could invest in the Umlaut, and my massive fondness for Starcraft 2 has basically eaten what free time I have left, but when the muse strikes I shall scurry over here to share my thoughts with whatever readers I may still have.

The year in books #22, #23 & #24

2010-09-26T08:37:00.004+02:00

It's a three-fer special today at the American Umlaut! Woot! Despite the absence of my words here at the ol' Umlaut, I have not stopped reading books, but I've found myself with less and time to write about them here. The birth of the Loaf, the release of Starcraft 2, and a renewed passion for playing the piano have all left me... well, I wanted to say "with less free time," but of course, I have plenty of free time and am simply choosing to spend it with my daughter, my game and my instrument. I find, though, that it remains very important to me to get my thoughts about the books I read down somewhere. I especially like writing about books I've loved - telling a friend about a book that has fascinated or moved me feels a bit like introducing two friends and watching to see how they hit it off. I love letting you all know what I've enjoyed, and I really love all the times I've heard from my readers that they've looked at something I recommended here and enjoyed it.

So let's get to it. The first book to be discussed today is Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent, a Discworld novel describing the adventures of Rincewind and his fellow Unseen University wizards as they explore EcksEcksEcksEcks, the titular last continent, which bears a striking resemblance to Earth's Australia. I have shared my thoughts on the Discworld books generally in my previous post about The Hogfather, so this review can be short and sweet: This is the only Discworld novel I've ever found less than fabulous. The humor felt quite forced in places, and the fact that I'm not terribly familiar Australian culture or the stereotypes the English associate with Australians left me never sure if a particular characteristic of the continent in the novel was a Discworld-specific funny thing or was supposed to be, in some way, making fun of Australia. If you're a big Discworld fan, then I suppose you're going to read this one in any case, but if you're not, I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction to the world or to Terry Pratchett's writing, which has otherwise never failed to impress me.

Books two and three in today's Review Spectacular are Dan Simmons's Hyperion and it's sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. Hyperion came out in 1989 and won the 1990 Hugo award for best novel, and when The Fall of Hyperion came out the next year it got a Hugo nomination and won the Locus. The reason that I am writing about the two books together rather than as separate pieces is that they are essentially a single novel in two volumes. Based loosely on The Canterbury Tales, Hyperion follows five pilgrims (a private detective, the former governor of a colony planet, a priest of a religion worshiping life, a catholic priest, and a great warrior) as they make a pilgrimage to the site of the legendary and deadly Shrike creature, taking turns telling the tale that has led them to make the pilgrimage. As their stories are more or less completely independent of each other, the book is less a novel than a collection of novellas, which together serve to paint a coherent picture of the far-future universe in which they are set, tied together with interstitial bits detailing the pilgrimage itself. The Fall of Hyperion is much more traditionally novel-like in its structure, continuing the story from the point of the pilgrims' arrival at the Shrike temple.

If you like science fiction, you must read these books. Even if sci-fi isn't your cup of tea, I suspect there is a great deal to appeal to the mere appreciator of fine literature. They reach heights of artistry and depths of philosophical thought that you rarely find in literature of any kind, and they do it while telling a captivating, epic story. Revealing any more of the story would ruin the fun of letting the books reveal it themselves, so just take my word for it: these are good books!

The year in books #21: The Silent War

2010-09-07T12:00:00.000+02:00

I hadn't planned to read this novel, but discovered it at my in-laws' place and thought it looked interesting. Ben Bova's name is legendary in the sci-fi world, and so far The Kinsman Saga is the only work of his I've read. At least, I thought so - as I got a few chapters into the book, I realized that I had, in fact, read it once before, but had almost entirely forgotten the story.

The Silent War tells a tale of corporate war over the question of who will rule the almost limitless resources of the asteroid belt. It contains all of the elements of an excellent sci-fi thriller: it's action-packed; persons are beaten, exploded, perforated and otherwise caused to become partly or entirely nonfunctional. It is thrilling; there are alliances, betrayals, secret schemes. It is wonderfully paced and an entertaining read. (Related question, am I the only one who finds the term "page turner" silly? All books are page-turners. That's how books work. Saying a book kept you turning pages until the end is like saying a movie kept your eyes open until it was over.) The only part of the book I found uninteresting was the short story that, split in two, serves as opening and closing act for the novel proper. I suspect I'm missing the backstory necessary to get what was going on there; this is the third book in a trilogy, and I haven't read the other two, though that didn't make the rest of the novel any harder to understand.

Throughout my reading of this book, the one thing that bothered me was the same thing that bugged me about The Kinsman Saga: Reading the book is fun, but there's nothing particularly memorable about it. It's absolutely clear that Bova has mastered the craft of writing entertaining novels, but I feel like a novel - especially a science fiction novel - should aspire to more than being simply entertaining. The power and beauty of sci-fi is the practically limitless ideas its conceits allow an author to explore, but there's nothing surprising or particularly thought provoking in The Silent War. The concept of a future in which corporate actors are more powerful and important than state actors - one of the main themes of the book - is about as speculative in a 21st century novel as the concept of a future in which people carry Internet-connected devices in their pockets.

My very strong suspicion is that I'm reading the wrong Ben Bova books. A lot of authors who produce dozens of books over decades of work seem to produce much less truly original thought in their later books, even as their craft improves (see Piers Anthony: Macroscope is packed with brilliant ideas and dissolves into almost unreadable psychobabble about two-thirds through. The Xanth books, in contrast, are totally readable but hadn't produced an original idea in ten volumes or so when I finally gave up on them). I suspect that Bova wouldn't be so well known if all his novels were the sort of popcorn space thriller represented by The Silent War and the Kinsman Saga books.

My final verdict is that this is an excellent book for a sci-fi fan's day at the beach or intercontinental flight. If you're looking for something with psychological or speculative depth, however, you'll find this one lacking. If any of you happen to be familiar with Ben Bova and have a book suggestion for me, please drop by the comments section!

The year in books #20: Windup Girl

2010-08-10T05:45:00.003+02:00

Slowly, ever so slowly, I am catching up with my backlog of books to review here. I think that actually getting through fifty books this year is entirely impossible, as I've only read twenty-five so far, and most of them were prior to the arrival of the world's cutest poop factory in my life. Today, though, I awoke at five o'clock, so I'll take the chance to jot down my thoughts on the fourth Hugo-nominated novel I read this year.

The Windup Girl is, alone among this year's Hugo nominees (with the possible exception of Wake, which I've been assured I'll be receiving in celebration of my birthday today), actually a science fiction novel. The Hugos are officially awarded for science fiction and fantasy, and there are sub-genres such as the sort of social fiction represented by The City & The City that fall under the broader category of speculative fiction which I am happy to see embraced by the awards. But I grew up reading Heinlein and Niven and Asimov, and nothing warms my heart like excellent, well constructed sci-fi. With The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (possibly the least-pronounceable author in the genre) has produced exactly that.

It behooves my to provide my definition of sci-fi - even within its own fandom, the genre's boundaries are subject to intense debate. I consider science fiction, as I believe I mentioned in another recent post, to be fiction that concerns itself with the human meaning of technological change or scientific discovery, or uses the conceit of a future or alien culture to explore the human experience from a novel perspective. Ringworld, which explores not only the Ringworld itself, but the impact of technologies as diverse as instant teleportation and direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers, is an excellent example of the former. Star Trek's technology is essentially magical and arbitrary, but the series are among the best science fiction of the second category, using the unique setting of a future populated by hundreds of alien races to produce allegories of modernity.

The Windup Girl is excellent science fiction of both types. It portrays a world in which the oil has run out and the energy economy has become focused instead on the efficient production, storage and transmission of kinetic energy for industry and transportation (largely in the form of genetically-engineered mastodons used to crank up nanotechnological springs with capacities in the gigajoules, which I find absolutely brilliant). In parallel to the collapse of the oil-driven industrial world, diseases engineered by warring food cartels (whose products are, of course, immune) have wiped out much of the world's food supply and left even the companies themselves scrambling to find new genes to keep their harvests a step ahead of the next mutation.

Enter Anderson Lake, a "Calorie Man" working for AgriGen, sent to Thailand in search of both genetic diversity and inroads into a nation that has kept itself independent of the food mega-corporations. And enter Emiko, member of the first generation of New Japanese, genetically engineered "windup girls" created by childless Japan to replenish their aging labor force, left behind to be exploited or destroyed in Bangkok by an owner who planned to buy the newest model upon his return. The two meet as Thailand is plunging into rebellion, and their fates, and those of the many other brilliantly realized characters that populate this novel, hang in the balance.

As you can see, The Windup Girl packs a lot of novel ideas into a few hundred pages, and it explores them in a way that is compelling and interesting, and reduces the thundering pace of the story not a single iota. This is the first book I've read in months that I found myself completely lost in, in love with the world it takes place in and the characters that populate it, and excited by the ideas within it. As if it weren't enough to pack a novel with interesting characters, a driving plot and a fascinating premise, Bacigalupi also paints the entire thing onto the backdrop of Thai history and culture with a remarkable realism.

The Windup Girl has the goods. It has four or five novels worth of the goods. And yet it's being sold for the same price as books of normal conceptual density; a bargain of which you should avail yourself at your next opportunity.

I had forgotten, until I started writing this, just how much of an impact this book had on me. I retract my previous vote for The City & The City (which is nonetheless excellent) - The Windup Girl is the speculative fiction novel of the year.

The year in books #19: The City & The City

2010-08-08T15:53:00.005+02:00

It is not at all unusual for a novel to be as much about its own setting as about the characters within it, and because of the genre's focus on exploring novel concepts, the science fiction genre is particularly rife with books in which the planet, nation or city in which they take place is not the background but the entire point. Some classic examples include Herbert's Dune, Niven's Ringworld and Varley's Titan, which are also some of my all-time favorite novels. It amused me to realize that, of the six novels nominated for this year's Hugo award, three of them are of this type, each of them taking place in a city that is itself one of the most important characters in the book. In Palimpsest, the city that lends the book its title is both the motivating force behind, and the setting of, the great majority of the action. Steampunk Seattle is the setting of Boneshaker, as well as the only thing in the novel with an interesting personality. And my nineteenth book of the year, China Miéville's The City & The City, takes place in the sister cities of Besžel and Ul Qoma, brilliantly rendered and utterly believable invented cultures which provide a fascinating backdrop to a murder mystery that is, if not as brilliantly constructed as the setting it is solved in, certainly interesting enough to keep the pages eagerly turning.

Like Palimpsest, the discovery of Besžel's and Ul Qoma's nature is one of the great delights of the novel, and I'll not ruin it by delving too deeply into the book's premise. What I will say is that that premise seems, on the face of it, laughably ridiculous. What Miéville does with remarkable mastery is to present that premise in such a natural, fluid and consistent way that the reader is able to utterly suspend disbelief, and to craft a very entertaining story on the basis of that premise.

Most important to me, The City & The City goes a step beyond crafting a clever world and an entertaining story. Miéville has things to say, and he says them well. Things about the nature of the Other, of the malleability of human perception, about the nature of culture, about divisions between rich and poor, even about peace in the Middle East (I cannot be the first reader to see the novel's setting as an allegory of Palestine, can I?). The reason I am drawn to science fiction is its exploration of the human meaning of new ideas. The City & The City is not properly science fiction, but it does the same work using different tools. If science fiction is a study of the social impact of technology, then The City & The City might be best described as social fiction, exploring the social impact of societies themselves.

I can definitely recommend this one to you - barring a remarkable performance by Wake, the only Hugo-nominated novel I haven't read yet, The City & The City is my favorite to win the prize. It's only about a micron ahead of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, though, which I'll likely review next so that I can explain why I want the prize to go to Miéville.

The year in books #18: Boneshaker

2010-08-07T11:35:00.003+02:00

The second Hugo nominee I read this year was Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. I was hugely excited to read this book, a steampunk alternate history of mid-19th century Seattle containing zombies and airships - a Hugo-nominated novel built entirely of awesome. How could you go wrong?

As it turns out, Boneshaker manages the remarkable feat of turning a premise that had me gripped by the story before I'd even opened the book into one of the least interesting stories I've read in years. The world itself is wonderfully constructed, with a backstory that riffs delightfully on Seattle's fascinating history and explains in a tolerably plausible way why the city is now a walled-in, zombie-infested hellhole ruled by a mad scientist. Unfortunately, by the time the book actually begins, all of the interesting things seem to have long since taken place.

The tale at the center of Boneshaker is of a mother attempting to rescue her teenage son from the above-mentioned hellhole, assisted by a series of bland characters whose behavior seems driven much more by the needs of the narrative than by their own motivations. The zombies spend the vast majority of the tale lurking threateningly in the background, then prove themselves utterly uninteresting when they do get the chance to chew on the occasional character or provide one of the better-armed side characters with a chance to get splashily violent.

The story itself is also horribly unreasonable. I am willing for the sake of a story to accept any premise, no matter how unrealistic or unreasonable, but the events that flow from that premise must do so naturally. In Boneshaker, the zombies are relatively limited in number (I think the number quoted somewhere was 6,000), can be killed by bullets, and are unable to climb. The humans are armed not only with guns but with an EMP-like device that knocks the zombies senseless for a brief time. And in all the years that Seattle has been infested by these horribly dangerous creatures, no one ever thought to either (a) sit a few guys on the rooftops with rifles to take potshots at them or (b) lure a few hundred zombies at a time into a swarm, stun them, then kill them in great numbers while they lay twitching? Also, as I mentioned above, none of the characters' behavior seems consistent with what we are told about their circumstances. The Seattlites' anger toward the mad scientist who 'rules' is rooted in the fact that... he does things for them so that they are always indebted to him? And they're so horribly angry about this that they're ready to stage an almost instantly successful rebellion, but for some reason restrain themselves until the rebellion becomes useful for the purposes of the novel that they find themselves in. And... and... and...

I was horribly disappointed by Boneshaker and am frankly confused as to how it made it to the Hugo short list. I feel like it was nominated on the strength of its premise rather than on the actual story it contains, which utterly fails to compel.

The year in books #17: The Little Prince

2010-07-22T19:58:00.003+02:00

I somehow managed to make it through more than twenty-seven years of life without ever reading Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic novella The Little Prince. I finally sat down with Rose's copy a few weeks ago and was astounded that I'd been missing out on such a gem for so long. The tale follows the titular diminutive royalty as he sets forth from the tiny asteroid where he makes his home, finally ending up on Earth, where he encounters the narrator, an aviator stranded in the desert following a crash landing. En route, the prince experiences a series of morally-edifying encounters in the style of Gulliver's Travels with the inhabitants of other asteroids: the king who is careful to give only commands that were going to be followed anyhow; the businessman who wants to establish ownership of the stars so that he can use them to buy more stars; the drunk who drinks to forget the shame of his drunkenness. On Earth, his conversations with the narrator are both thought-provoking and wonderfully sweet.

Ostensibly, The Little Prince is a children's book, and I can absolutely imagine a small child loving it, but a great deal of the story deals with philosophical concepts like the nature of property, the meaning of life, the definition of love, that make the story worth a read for adults, as well.

Something that amused me terribly when I started reading The Little Prince (in fact, seeing the cover was what did it) was that I immediately recognized it as the basis for a cartoon I watched as a small child. All I could remember of the series was that it featured a boy who lived on an asteroid and traveled about with his bird-like companion by catching shooting stars in a butterfly net. And that I had an episode on cassette tape at one point; my father, wanting to nap for half an hour and then go to work, told me to wake him up when the episode was done. I, being a thoughtful boy who wanted to let his daddy sleep, pressed rewind at the end of every scene and watched it a second time. Daddy was not pleased. In any case, now that I knew where the cartoon came from, I was very quickly able to track it down on YouTube for a quick blast of nostalgia. Unfortunately, like most cartoons from my childhood, it doesn't hold up well.

Top Secret America

2010-07-20T12:04:00.002+02:00

The Washington Post is running an amazing series on the explosion in clandestine information gathering that has taken place since 9/11 in the United States. I've only had a chance to scan a few of the articles and graphics they've put together (I'm at work), but this is a massive undertaking that's so far occupied a team of reporters for two years, and what I've seen of the reporting is very impressive work.

The year in books #16: Palimpsest

2010-07-18T15:38:00.007+02:00

As a sub-quest for this year's 50 Book Challenge, I have undertaken to read all of the novels nominated for this year's Hugo Award. The Hugo is the most prestigious award for science fiction, created in 1955 to fill a glaring hole created by what was most likely a copy-editing error in Alfred Nobel's will (he clearly meant to write "for advances in science fiction"). During the ten (dear lord) years that I spent attending university, I had so little money and time to spend reading books of my choosing that I've felt detached from the world of sci-fi, and picking up the six best-received novels of the last year felt like a good way to get back into the genre I love so much.

The first of this year's nominees to hit my bedside table was Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest, which immediately and then repeatedly blew my mind. Holy crap can the woman write! Palimpsest's hauntingly evokative prose is so gorgeous that I repeatedly found myself reading passages three and four times just to savor the language. Writing so powerful could easily lift a mediocre story into the realm of readability, but the fairytale that Valente weaves is itself an incredible piece of work.

I find myself at this point, as so often when reviewing good stories, deeply reluctant to spoil the fun of discovering the world in which this book takes place, because so much of the fun of such a novel is in the "ah hah!" moments that punctuate it. Let me reveal as little as possible: Palimpsest is about four people from all around the world (one, to my delight, from Kyoto) who stumble into the secret of the cryptic, magical city from which the book derives its name. The four are a locksmith, a train enthusiast, a book printer and a beekeeper, and the exploration of their personalities and the manner in which they experience and influence the city of Palimpsest is as fascinating as the city itself.

Palimpsest shares with a great many novels I've read the hook of the unknown; as you read such books, it is your curiosity about the world that provides suspense, and the revelation of aspects of the world that provide the pleasure of the reading experience. A great many such books are disappointing for various reasons: often, the reveal is unbelievable or not compelling, or the story is driven so much by its world and so little by its characters that it simply ceases to be interesting once the mysteries have been exposed. In Palimpsest, though, the reader is drawn in as through an onion, with each layer exposing another, the mysteries explained in rapid, believable and satisfying succession, but always leaving the reader primed for more.

I have only one complaint about this book, and it's so minor and nitpicky that I'm slightly ashamed for even calling your attention to it. One of the characters, as I mentioned above, comes from Kyoto, and visits Ginkakuji, commenting on the appearance of the silver coating the pavilion's walls. Unfortunately, Ginkakuji rather famously has no silver on its walls; its name ("Silver Pavilion") comes from the fact that its builder intended to have it coated in silver when he planned it, but that plan was never carried out. The occasional such error is unavoidable and completely forgivable, and I mention it only because I can't think of a single other thing to decry in the book's pages, but having visited Ginkakuji any number of times, I found myself jerked quite entirely out of the story for a few moments by the error.

Anyway, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. Go read it. Seriously. It's good.

The year in books #15: Der Richter und sein Henker

2010-06-30T12:09:00.004+02:00

The first book I read during my absence was Der Richter und sein Henker (available in English as The Judge and His Hangman or together with Suspicion in the recently-published Inspector Bärlach Mysteries), by the highly regarded Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I read it at the recommendation of my wife, who read it in Gymnasium (high school for the college-bound) and remembered it fondly.

The story is of the final case of Commissioner Bärlach, who is investigating the murder of his best officer, found shot in his car. The case is to be Bärlach's last because he is suffering from an ailment of the stomach which is never explicitly named but is clearly meant to be a terminal cancer.

This book is a bit difficult for me to render a verdict on. I am not terribly familiar with murder mysteries, and the book is written in a very literary German that, combined with my new fatherhood, caused me to need more than two weeks to get through its mere 118 pages. I honestly didn't enjoy reading the book terribly, but upon finishing it, I had to admit that it was a very compact and cleverly-written story. I suspect that, had I brought it along on a vacation, or at least not begun reading it the day of my first child's birth, and simply read through it in a single sitting, I would have rather liked it. It takes sixty pages to figure out what the real point of the story is; when those sixty pages take a week to get through, that feels like a tortuously slow pace, but if I'd chugged through them in an hour, the same opening might have felt like a simple introduction to the characters.

Six weeks after having read this book, I can at least say that the plot and characters have stuck quite firmly in my mind, which to me is a valuable trait in any story. Beyond that, I'm afraid the circumstances of my reading have left me unable to render a clear verdict for or against reading Der Richter und sein Henker.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming

2010-06-30T11:57:00.003+02:00

The Umlaut is back!

I've spent the last two months gradually growing into the realization that I am now the father of the beautiful little creature pictured above. Being a father has left me with very little time for anything else, but I'm making an effort now to reintroduce the component parts of my life. The American Umlaut will thus resume its irregular broadcast schedule beginning immediately. Like everything else in my life, the Umlaut will be losing timeshare to poopy diapers and Giggly Snuggle Time, but if you point your browser in this direction from time to time, there will be entertaining morsels to be found here.

Things to look forward to in the next few weeks: Four new book reviews, thrilling tales of fatherhood, cute baby pictures, and an account of my installation of a LinuxMCE-based media center. Don't touch that dial!

I am Papa

2010-05-03T20:59:00.003+02:00

It was a very long, very happy day. Welcome to the world, my little loaf.

A matter of perspective - part II

2010-04-25T11:47:00.003+02:00

This is part II of a series of posts I am writing about perspective. As I mentioned in my previous post, the subject captured my imagination for several weeks, and I've decided to share my learning process here. I hope you enjoy it!

Step 3: Doodling

Whenever I get the itch to grok something new, I end up covering endless napkins and filling my little pocket-sized notebooks with doodles. I'm a visual thinker, and so to understand anything complicated, I have to either see a picture of it or, even better, draw one myself. When I finally came up with a picture that seemed like a reasonable model of perspective, it looked something like this:

In the picture, d is the distance between the observer and the object, s is the size of the object, and θ is our measurement of perceived size: the arc that the object fills in our field of vision. Of course, this simplifies the problem quite a lot; it ignores the fact that parts of the circle are closer to the eye than the line we've chosen for s (I'll write about the consequences of this later), and it pretends that all of this is taking place in two-dimensional space. As a starting point, though, I think it's a good doodle.

Our question now is, what happens if we start changing the values of our variables? If our hypothesis is right, then multiplying d and s by the same number should leave θ unchanged (in our Moon/Sun example, the number would be about 400). The problem is, all of the tricks I know with triangles only work with right triangles. Fortunately, you can turn any triangle into two right triangles by cutting it in half. And this is an isosceles triangle, which means both of the resulting right triangles will be identical; they will be mirror images of each other. That means that (a) anything we deduce about one half of the triangle will be the same in the other half and (b) toilets flushed in the two halves will spin in opposite directions. Scientific fact.

Now the triangle's gotten a bit too small, though; let's doodle it again, only a bit bigger.

Technically, θ and s should be θ/2 and s/2, since they're halves of our original triangle, but let's just call them θ and s for now, and we'll remember that they'll need to be doubled later to get the values for the original triangle.

Getting back to our question, we're curious to figure out what happens to θ if we change d and s by multiplying or dividing them both by some number. Let's change d first; we'll divide it by two:

If our hypothesis is right, then to get the object represented by our new triangle to have the same apparent size of our original one, we should have to make it exactly half as large. s with d/2 should be exactly half what it is with d. We could use trigonometry to work this out (that was actually my first approach), but there is a more intuitive way that becomes obvious if you draw the triangles on top of each other:

As you can see the original (blue) triangle is exactly half as wide as the new (orange) triangle when it reaches the new triangle's base. And if you think about it, this is obviously the case; the two triangles have identically wide bases, which means the hypotenuse (the diagonal line) has to travel the same distance from the tip of the triangle to the base in both triangles. Since the old triangle is twice as tall as the new one, the old triangle's hypotenuse will move from right to left at exactly half the speed of the new triangle's hypotenuse.

And so, as represented by the second object I've drawn in the picture above, we can see that an object that is exactly twice as far away from an observer and is exactly twice as large must have the same perceived size. And through logical reasoning, we've proven that that will be true for any set of objects with an equal size/distance ratio.

Technically, we've proven our hypothesis. Yay for us! But I still had lots of questions at this point. What actually happens to θ when we double the size of an object? You'd think it would double, but if you consider the case of a flat object that takes up 100 degrees of your field of view, that would result in the new object needing 200 degrees - it would have to curve around you!

And so, in part III we'll begin exploring some of the interesting wrinkles that turned up when I was working out the math up to this point. I have to warn you, though, that it might take a while to get out, as I could literally become a father at any moment. I hope you're enjoying the series so far, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments if anything I've explained is unclear or if you have any questions.

A matter of perspective - part I

2010-04-18T11:57:00.004+02:00

Image by Luc Viatour.

A very long time ago, I read an argument that the peculiar nature of solar eclipses might be seen as a proof of God's existence. The argument went as follows: the dramatic effect of a full solar eclipse is the result of the Moon appearing to be almost precisely as large as the Sun from the surface of the Earth. This is incredibly improbable, and wouldn't work if the sizes of the bodies involved, or their distances from each other, were even just a smidge different. The argument continues that, because this phenomenon is very improbable and also very beautiful, it must have been designed by an all-powerful being who created and rules the whole universe and has also found the time to be very picky about who I have sex with and the shape of my food's feet.

The alert reader will have noticed that I find the eclipse->God logic somewhat less than compelling (though rather superior to the "no, really, I read it in a really old book" line of reasoning), but the math associated with the perceived sizes of the two bodies really fascinated me. The fact that particularly stuck, and that has been floating around in my head for years, was that the Moon and Sun seem to be the same size from here because the ratio of the distances was nearly identical to the ratio of their sizes. A few weeks ago, though, it occurred to me that, though I'd memorized the fact, I really didn't understand why it should be the case.

As is so often the case, once my brain had noticed this hole in its understanding of the world, it wouldn't leave me alone until I had filled it. It started harassing me at the most inopportune times: waking me up at midnight, compelling me to doodle on paper stolen from waitresses at restaurants, boring my poor wife with musings on trigonometry at the dinner table. Over the course of a few weeks, though, I was able to summon up enough of my high school geometry to grok the basics of why perspective works the way it does, and I thought it might be fun to share my learning process with all of you here.

Thus, over the next few days, I will be uploading posts that explain my learning process. Putting this together has been a really silly amount of work for what will probably end up being three or four posts at most, but forcing myself to describe and illustrate my logic has given me a much better understanding of it, too, so it was definitely worth it. I hope some of you enjoy reading this series as much as I've enjoyed preparing it for you!

Step 1: Checking my numbers

The brain is a marvelous thing, capable of storing vast quantities of data. Unfortunately it tends to use pretty lossy compression algorithms, so before I went off on a wild goose chase, attempting to prove a "fact" that I'd misremembered from years before, I thought it wise to do a bit of research to confirm that the ratios of the Moon's and Sun's sizes and distances really are about equal. A bit of google-fu gives us the following numbers:

Distance to the Moon: ~384,000 km
Distance to the Sun: ~150,000,000 km
Diameter of the Moon: ~3470 km
Diameter of the Sun: ~1,390,000 km

So the ratio of the Sun's size to the Moon's size is ~401:1, and the ratio of the distances to the two bodies is ~390:1. That's close enough that it's plausible to assume that my memory is right, especially since the Moon actually wobbles a bit in its orbit (which means that some eclipses don't completely obscure the Sun, when the Moon is a bit further away than usual). Let's accept the rule as a working hypothesis and then try to prove it; hopefully proving it true will help us understand why it's true.

Step 2: Formulating our hypothesis

Before we can start testing whether our hypothesis is right, it would be helpful to define it more formally. That makes it easier to check whether we've proven or disproven it later. I came up with this: Consider objects a and b. We'll call their sizes S_a and S_b, and their distances from an observer D_a and D_b. Our hypothesis is that the observed sizes of the two objects will be the same if S_a / S_b = D_a / D_b. If S_a / S_b > D_a / D_b, then a will seem larger than b, and if S_a / S_{b <}D_a / D_b, then a will seem smaller than b.

I hope that's fairly understandable. In Part II, we'll use awesome doodles and the power of trigonometry to test our hypothesis. See you then!

The year in books #14: Building Scalable Web Sites

2010-04-17T18:10:00.002+02:00

For my last book, I took a brief break from the world of fiction, and delved into Building Scalable Web Sites. Written by Cal Henderson, the book delivers precisely what is promised by the title: an introduction to the principles involved in planning and constructing web applications that are capable of scaling to serve massive numbers of users. Henderson is Director of Engineering for Flickr, and the book sports a logo promising that it will deliver things "The Flickr Way", but actual concrete examples of how Flickr is run are rather sparse. Not that that's a bad thing; I came to this book hoping for a generic introduction to scalable web-design, not as a collection of charming war anecdotes, and the "well that's certainly amusing, but why are you telling me this?" factor that's common to many texts is not at all present here.

Obviously, whether I can recommend this book to you depends a lot on whether you intend at some point to design, implement or maintain a scalable web application. As a web-app programmer looking to expand his knowledge of design and architecture paradigms, this was a perfect entry point for me. My only complaint is that the text badly needs the loving attention of a copy editor; it contains enough typos and grammatical errors to be seriously distracting at times, and there were a few places where it was not clear what Henderson was trying to say due to mutually exclusive possible interpretations of a mangled sentence. I read the first edition of the book, though - hopefully future versions will be a bit more reader friendly.

The year in books #13: Fahrenheit 451

2010-04-17T17:25:00.003+02:00

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is assigned to legions of high school English classes, which has tainted it in my mind with the same presumption of musty, classical impenetrability as other such perennial book-report novels like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a shame that so many people first encounter so many incredible books by means of being forced to read them; how can we be charmed by Mr. Darcy or luxuriate in the poetry of Hamlet's words when we're only focused on getting through thirty pages by Wednesday?

Well, like Huck, Scout, Darcy and Hamlet, Guy Montag's tale is a fine yarn far too powerful and enjoyable to deserve the scorn-inducing title of "classic," although it is certainly a classic both in American literature and in speculative fiction. Montag is a fireman in a dystopian world in which the firemen are not responsible for putting out fires, but for creating them; anyone found to be harboring books has the books and their home pumped full of kerosene and destroyed.

As Montag slowly awakens to the meaninglessness of existence in his world - an anti-intellectual America utterly consumed by a hedonism that takes the form of constant consumption of empty-headed but exciting media in the form of wall-sized televisions and "seashells", in-ear sound systems that perfectly predict the iPod - the metaphor of fire accompanies him on his way. It is destruction, and salvation, life and death and rebirth. The title, too, hearkens to the metaphor of fire; 451 degrees Fahrenheit is supposedly the temperature at which paper combusts.

I loved this book for the clockwork efficiency of its plot, the beauty of its language, and the depth of the thinking that went into it. Bradbury obviously wrote the book based on his own deep love of books, and that love will resonate with any reader who feels the same way; but I was struck by his observation that books in and of themselves do not possess any particular nobility. It is, he argues, the ideas within books that make them so precious to us. Any other medium - television, movies, even the spoken word - is capable of performing the same tasks that we rely on books for.

I'm not sure I can agree with the idea that anything could take the place of books in my life. Certainly it would be a shame if the world ever had do without this one. A quick read, and beautifully written, I can absolutely recommend Fahrenheit 451 to anyone who loves to read books.

The year in books #12: The Hogfather

2010-04-07T18:47:00.002+02:00

I have the rare pleasure of knowing two people who, in addition to being two of my very favorite human beings, also happen to be engaged to each other and to share an apartment. As you can imagine, this makes my social life so much more efficient than if these two wonderful persons were to live in separate domiciles that, were that the case, I would almost certainly introduce them in the hopes of sparking a monogamous - or at least shared domestic - arrangement. My last visit to their home was to eat lunch before hopping on a train to reunite with the other half of my own monogamous, domestic and, at the moment, actively reproductive romantic partnership in her ancestral hometown, and as I arrived, I realized that I had left the house completely bereft of literature.

These two friends of mine fortunately have quite the library, so I was not to be faced with the utterly unthinkable concept of a two-hour train ride unaccompanied by words. In fact, when I mentioned that I suddenly found myself in need of a book, I found myself being literally bombarded with literary works and rather felt the lack of an umbrella or at least a hardhat. As you will have gathered from the title of this post, the book I settled on was Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather.

I don't know how to tell you about Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. I have a hard time imagining that there are human beings left in the world who would enjoy Pratchett's blend of twisted fantasy, brilliant storytelling, sarcastic social commentary and enchanting language but have somehow managed not to read a single volume of the series, which I believe constitutes approximately 12% of the world's English-language fantasy novels. If you are both familiar with the Discworld and fond of it, The Hogfather is excellent. Death (I mean the character, though the phenomenon is also represented) is in it, and that's enough to sell me. If you are neither familiar with nor fond of Pratchett, I'd have a hard time recommending The Hogfather over any other Discworld novel - I haven't encountered one yet that didn't offer a splendid romp through a world that is difficult to compare to anything but a fantasy Douglas Adams and itself.

If you're familiar with Discworld and don't like it... well, I'm not really sure there's much to be done for you. I understand Dan Brown's books are quite nice.

The year in books #11: Was ich noch zu sagen hätte

2010-04-04T23:08:00.004+02:00

Rote memorization is simultaneously one of the most important tools in the kit of the language learner and one of the most boring activities known to mankind. My Japanese professor's first exposure to the language was as a missionary, where he was required to memorize the story of Joseph Smith in Japanese before he even spoke the language. Developing a catalog of memorized sequences of words that you can draw upon is an invaluable tool in gaining fluency in a foreign tongue, but imagine the boredom. I have a lot of respect for the man, but faced with the same task, I would be searching the room for sharp objects and toxic liquids within the hour. My solution, one that was and continues to be a very useful trick for memorizing vocabulary and syntax, is memorizing song lyrics.

The problem with song lyrics is this:

Police think they can see me lean
I'm tint so it ain't easy to be seen
When you see me ride by they can see the glean
And my shine on the deck and the TV screen
Ride with a new chick, she like hold up
Next to the playstation controller is a full clip and my pistola
Turn a jacker into a coma
(From "Ridin'", by Chamillionaire)

You could memorize that if you want - good luck on your TOEFL. Even without venturing into the specialized linguistic world of hip-hop, song lyrics tend to take a lot of liberties with the rules of language. When you're learning a new language, though, you need more than just a lyricist who writes language that sticks in your head - you need someone with the talent to write compelling lyrics using standard language. If you're learning German, there is no better lyricist for this purpose than the legendary singer/songwriter Reinhard Mey.

Mey released his first album, Ich wollte wie Orpheus singen (I wanted to sing like Orpheus), in 1967. Since then, he has released 24 studio albums in German, seven in French and four in Dutch, and according to a quote in Was ich noch zu sagen hätte, his back catalog sells more CDs every year in Germany than the Beatles'. He's written about 500 songs over that time, and every single one of them has something to teach a student of the language. Mey's German was the first indication I had, before I discovered Goethe and Heinz Erhardt, that the language was capable of incredible beauty, and it compelled and compels me in a way that few other artists can. I completely memorized several of his songs and could sing them perfectly from beginning to end before I could understand even a small fraction of what I was singing, and the first gift my future wife ever gave to me was to translate one of his most lovely songs, Ich bring' dich durch die Nacht (I'll bring you through the night) for me to read on Christmas morning.

I hope the above has made clear just how much respect I have for Reinhard Mey, and just how sad I am to have to say that Was ich noch zu sagen hätte (What remains for me to say - also the title of one of his best-known songs), a sort of autobiography written in the form of a long interview with credited co-author Bernd Schröder, is just crap. It seems to fly over everything of interest to a fan - Mey's creative process, his relationship to music - and focuses inordinate attention on his politics and his personal life. Schröder seems never to tire of trying to catch Mey in a philosophical contradiction of some sort, or of probing the lives of his three children, even interviewing them for a chapter that I found squirmingly uncomfortable for its intrusive nature and the fact that the questions and answers shed absolutely no light on Mey as an artist.

I've got to recommend that you skip this one. But listen to Mey. You won't find a better singer/songwriter in any language on the planet.

Randall Munroe is my hero

2010-04-02T10:35:00.003+02:00

Via xkcd.

They as know how to shake it

2010-03-30T21:56:00.005+02:00

This video demonstrates two things. One: screw "no new thing under the sun." Give mankind all the time until the heat death of the universe, and we will never stop coming up with new, amazing ways of expressing ourselves. Two: you can't get music until you understand how its fans interact with it. I don't think you can really get metal if you've never screamed the lyrics in cathartic fury from the depths of a mosh pit. I know I didn't really get folk music until the first time I sat in a circle of guitarists and singers. And I don't listen to Crunk or Bounce, but when I watch these boys dance, I grok their music.

Edit: Weston comments with the following quote by Donald Miller:

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

Yes.

A literal Turing machine

2010-03-28T21:51:00.002+02:00

Via Boing Boing: A man named Mike Davey has produced a literal Turing machine using a dry-erase marker, a camera, a logical controller and a massive role of film backing tape. Alan Turing famously created the concept of the Turing Machine, which was a conceptual model consisting of a read/write/erase head and a tape that could be scanned forward or backward according to the values read and the rules of its programming. That very simple model is capable of performing any computer algorithm and is one of the concepts at the heart of computer science, but it was always just a thought experiment. Until now I don't believe a literal Turing Machine had ever been built.

The year in books #10: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel

2010-03-28T17:29:00.003+02:00

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is Susanna Clark's first novel, a fact that makes the incredible accomplishment embodied in its pages all the greater. It was published in 2004 to great fanfare, immediately landed on the New York Times bestseller list, won a Hugo, a Locus and a World Fantasy Award, and did all of this without attracting the slightest attention from me, who received a copy a few months ago as a gift from my wife. That I managed to remain completely oblivious of the publication of such an amazing and acclaimed book says a lot about my ability to remain oblivious even in the face of conditions that would arouse the attention of a man dead a week, but I'm glad that I did, because this is a book that is so good that I almost regret having read it and made it impossible for myself to read it for the first time ever again.

In Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell it, Clark constructs an alternate history of Europe which diverges from the much more boring one recorded in history books in that magic is an accepted, if somewhat poorly understood, phenomenon which experienced its golden age during the three-century reign of the Raven King in Northern England, declined following this and, by the time of the novel's opening in 1806, is no longer used at all but is only studied as a theoretical subject by hobbyist nobles. Of course, this state would make for a rather boring epic fantasy novel (day 1,402 - still no magic), and the discovery of the quite talented "practical magician" Mr. Norrell is the catalyst of all the excitement that follows.

The tale of Mr. Norrell, his pupil and sometime rival Jonathan Strange and the various delightful and horrifying characters that surround them is, as a story, compelling and engrossing and more than enough to justify the thousand pages of prose that make up the book. What elevates the book beyond the ranks of the merely wonderful and into those of the spectacular, what takes it past just being a good fantasy novel and makes it a great novel, period, is the language. Ye gods, the English Clark produces! I could swoon. Seriously. I started reading this book aloud to my wife when I first got it, and even after the sheer size of the book forced me to give up the task I continued reading entire sections aloud for the sheer joy of the words. Clark writes in a style reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, with a sense of poetry in every phrase so beautiful that even the bits of landscaping that do not directly move the story forward are a delight to read.

Another aspect of the book that I delighted in were the extensive footnotes, which imply a vast universe beyond the narrow confines of the main novel. There are references to academic magical literature, quotes from traditional folklore regarding the Raven King, song lyrics, even footnotes that stretch on for pages and could certainly have been submitted for publication as short stories in their own right.

I have read a lot of very long novels that either sag terribly in the middle or run out of steam as they enter the home stretch, leaving the reader with the impression that the books' length is more a function of poor editing than the quantity of story contained within their pages. I found the beginning of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel to be the least compelling portion of the book, and it had me laughing out loud and marveling at the originality of its ideas. It could have stayed at that level to the end and I would have had nothing negative to say about it, but as the story continues, Clark reveals more and more depth in her world and in her characters, the story becomes more fascinating, and the momentum begins to build toward a phenomenal denouement.

I always try to find at least some criticism of any book I write about. The only two negative aspects of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel in my mind are these: It ends. It has no sequel.

The year in books #9: Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod

2010-03-20T08:27:00.006+01:00

Language acquisition functions quite differently depending on whether it happens during early childhood or later in life. A language you learn during your larval phase is simply absorbed and becomes a native language, one that you use by instinct. At some point in the development of the brain, however, this ceases to function. From that point on, to become fluent in a new language you have to consciously memorize and internalize the vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation that make it up.

In my experience, the second process proceeds in three phases, which overlap quite a lot. In the first phase, you know nothing, and everything is a learning experience. Textbooks for foreign language learners are a phenomenal source of information at this point, but so are road signs, restaurant menus, and television advertisements.

In the second phase, you've absorbed the basic grammatical rules and the most common words of your new language. At this point, textbooks become useless. Newspaper articles, television, movies and books are your friends, providing you with enough new information to continue making progress. Since you've advanced at this point beyond the reach of most textbooks, specialized academic sources are a good source of information (for German, I have a Hammers German Grammar and Usage, which is phenomenal. For Japanese, I recommend Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar). In this phase, though, I find that the most valuable resource is a native speaker, whom you can ask specifically what a sentence means and why it's shaped like it is.

At some point you enter the third phase, where you will spend the rest of your life. This is where the big difference between a native speaker and an advanced non-native speaker of a language becomes clear: your spoken command of the language is not nearly as good as a native (and never will be), but your structural understanding of the language has surpassed theirs, rendering your questions incomprehensible to them. Imagine walking around a town in America asking people to explain the precise difference between 'consists of' and 'comprises.' At this point, you need to find a native speaker who has formal training in the grammar of their native language. And if you're learning German, when you start noticing that your questions put question marks in the eyes of your friends, you should start reading Bastian Sick's series Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod.

The title of the book means "the dative is the death of the genitive." That refers to the gradual disappearance of the genitive case in German grammar, which is being replaced by the dative case, and the title's grammatical structure itself is a joke, as it's an example of precisely the kind of non-standard construct that is replacing the use of the genitive. This sort of humor runs throughout Sick's books, which are collections of the columns he writes for the Spiegel magazine on the subject of German grammar. They discuss sentence structure, the fine differences between words with similar meanings, regional dialects, the conventions of spoken versus written German, the meanings of sayings and idioms, the gender of rarely used nouns, and every other topic that could interest a lover of the German language. In short, die Dativ/Genitiv Bücher, as everyone seems to call them, comprise a slowly growing encyclopedia of answers to the questions that native speakers themselves have trouble with. In short, the questions that non-native speakers struggle to find answers to.

Bastian Sick's series is of course targeted at native speakers -- who buy his books in astounding numbers, showing that many Germans are as intrigued by their language as I am -- but in writing them, he's produced a wonderful resource for foreigners that I cannot recommend strongly enough.

And if you're a native speaker friend of mine... well, my apologies for the coming months. One of the chapters in Volume II, which I just read, concerned common sayings (like dort liegt der Hase im Pfeffer and dann wurde der Hund in der Pfanne verrückt), and I'm determined to start using all of them in my daily speech. Dann wird die Kacke am dampfen sein!

Why you should catch server errors

2010-03-19T21:38:00.002+01:00

This morning, I was asked by LinkedIn, where I have an account, to fill out a survey concerning the development tools I use in writing software. What the heck, I thought, sounds interesting, and I clicked on the link. The response I received was an example of such shockingly bad programming that I simply had to share it:

It seems the sever, in the moment I clicked, had a full hard drive (or so I interpret the SQL error: "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation). That's kind of dumb, but shit happens, right? Every programmer and every sys admin makes a mistake eventually, and the result is often a server error. It's a perfectly excusable thing.

What is not at all excusable is allowing a server error to be displayed to a user. Bayasoft builds "smart surveys for smart people", but when their SQL causes an error, they also publish the user_id and password used to connect to their database. Where I work, that screenshot would result in a reprimand if it was generated in any build not running in debug mode. If it was generated by a server connected to the public Internet, I expect someone would be out of a job.

I don't mean to be too hard on whatever programmer out there decided not to put their SQL requests in a try...catch block - as I say, we all make mistakes - but bloody hell, people. You're running a survey database. The entire purpose of your organization is to gather vast amounts of information from people - I think it's not overblown to consider it a major breach of your responsibility to fail to keep that information safe.

The year in books #8: Forever Peace

2010-03-18T19:41:00.011+01:00

I've intentionally waited awhile to post my thoughts on Forever Peace, because I wasn't sure at first what to make of it. Usually when I don't enjoy a book, I just assume it's not a great book - when that book has won a Hugo Award, I have to ask myself if there's something wrong with me. Often, I find that a book I didn't necessarily enjoy nonetheless ends up in my mental list of great books, because it contained ideas that stuck with me and continued to provoke thought years after I read it.

Certainly the book has its share of ideas, and the ideas are ones that I am thrilled to see addressed in the form of science fiction. It describes a world in which the first world has developed nearly indestructible robotic soldiers that can be piloted from afar by pilots whose nervous systems are directly jacked into the robots' control and sensory systems. The conceit allows for the exploration of concepts that are very pertinent to warfare today: How much more willing are we to use war as a political tool in if we can kill our enemies at very little risk to ourselves? What would happen if we didn't have to send our soldiers away, but kept them part of the civilian population while they carried out their duties remotely (this is already happening with the Predator drones, which I have read can be piloted from bases on American soil)? At what point does such asymmetric warfare cross the line to simple butchery?

And the book addresses and explores all of these concepts. Which would make an excellent essay. A novel needs characters and a story that draw you in, and I found Forever Peace to be very lacking in that department. Having read it two weeks ago, I can barely remember anything about the protagonist's personality, and the other characters left no impression on me whatsoever. The twist that leads to the happy ending promised by the title felt contrived and pat, rather than flowing naturally from the premise proposed by the story.

In short, I feel like Forever Peace took a perfectly excellent premise and a collection of very interesting ideas, and turned them into an utterly forgettable novel. Despite the Hugo award, I'm afraid I can't recommend this one.

The year in books #7: Transmetropolitan

2010-03-18T19:41:00.009+01:00

The most concise way I can think of to say how much I love Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan is this: I read the entire series for the fourth time just so that I could review it here and share my love of the series with you. And I already can't wait until the experience has faded from my mind enough that I can read it again. The series was a conversion experience for me that opened my eyes to the incredible potential that the comics have as an artistic and expressive medium.

The comic tells the tale of Spider Robinson, a drug-fueled, violently misanthropic newspaper columnist in the image of Hunter S. Thompson, who is forced to leave his idyllic life in exile and return to The City and employment. His rediscovery of City life is our introduction to the world of the story: a brilliantly conceived future America in which technology and progress have brought American culture's every shining facet and every festering zit into near caricature proportions. Tens of thousands of television channels broadcast, all competing to show the most pornographic and violent content; the ubiquitous Internet puts every conceivable piece of information within reach of investigative journalism, as news broadcasters do little more than relay press releases; racial discrimination has seemingly been overcome, replaced by hatred of those who have chosen to change their species, or even abandon their physical bodies altogether.

Transmetropolitan is classic science fiction in the sense that it uses the device of following trends to their most extreme logical conclusion as a tool for examining the world of today, and it does so in a way that is riveting, hilariously funny and often deeply moving. Spider Robinson is an incredible character who Ellis succeeds in giving great depth with very lean dialog; like a cartoonist who can imply a complex image with a few deft strokes, Warren Ellis has mastered the craft of making such powerful choices in his dialog that the lack of exposition in the medium serves more to highlight his strength as a writer than to detract in any way from the complexity of his stories and his characters' personalities.

My favorite image in Transmetropolitan, the one that I remember convinced me that there were things that could be said better in comics than in any other form, shows Spider Robinson in a pool of fire, having commanded his computer to project holographic flames around him and to cover every wall of his apartment with news broadcasts. He leans back in his chair amidst this chaos and gives words to the urge that fills each of us denizens of the Internet as we click from page to page in search of fascination and knowledge: "Give me information."

The year in books #6: Ich bin dann mal weg

2010-03-11T19:07:00.003+01:00

Have you missed me? After a month of forcing a post out of my weary gray matter every day, I decided that my experiment of daily updates wasn't really worth the hassle. I shall return to speaking when I have something to say.

My life in recent weeks has been completely dominated by my work. This isn't really a bad thing, because I really like my job. I remember I used to ask my stepfather nearly every day how his day at work was, and at some point he advised me that work was work, and not something one does for enjoyment. That never really sat well with me, but fortunately I have a couple of hobbies that can double as jobs in a pinch, so since I graduated from high school, I've rarely had the experience of having to go to a job I don't enjoy to get the bills paid. My current job is among the best I've ever had; lots of freedom to do my own planning and design, interesting problems to solve, and fun co-workers.

My work is excellent, as I say, but the heavy schedule that proceeded the first public unveiling of our software last weekend left me without much time for other things. The bits of the day that I could salvage were largely spent reading. I have not forgotten the 50 Book Challenge, oh no!

And so I present my next book. Ich bin dann mal weg, by Hape (pronounced hah-peh - short for Hans Peter) Kerkeling. Fortunately, this excellent book is available to my English-only readers, translated under the title I'm Off Then: My Journey Along the Camino De Santiago, which basically gives away the entire plot.

The book follows Hape Kerkeling, a hugely successful comedian, as he walks the Camino de Santago, a traditional pilgrimage route across Spain. The route itself is far less important to the story than Kerkeling's insights into his own character and into the people he meets along the way. I expected the book to be funny, and I did laugh out loud in places, but the narrative was surprising to me as a fan of Kerkeling's comedy for its earnestness.

My reading of I'm Off, Then was inevitably affected a great deal by my familiarity with Kerkeling, who I've followed since shortly after I arrived in Germany. His voice creates such a sense of intimacy with the reader, though, that I doubt his lack of celebrity in the eyes of a reader unfamiliar with his comedy work would detract in any way from the story.

If any of you read this book in English, please do let me know one thing: how does he tell the language-based jokes? To understand every joke in the book, you need to have at least passing familiarity (as many Germans do) with English, French and Spanish, and I'm really curious how that humor comes across - especially the places where he quotes English-speakers in English to humorous effect.

Words I like

2010-02-22T12:00:00.003+01:00

German:
Papperlapapp
Kladderadatsch
Quatsch
Geschwindigkeit
dunkel
Frömmigkeit
Kauderwelsch
Kommata

Other:
cacahuates
exegesis
utsukushii

[Edit: fixed the spelling of Kladderadatsch.]

The year in books #5: The Eyre Affair

2010-02-21T12:00:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of Team of Rivals, I devoured The Eyre Affair, the first published novel of Jasper Fforde, whose Shades of Grey I read in January.

While I have to say that I found Shades of Grey a more interesting tale, that's no disparagement of The Eyre Affair; the later novel sets a high bar. For a first novel, The Eyre Affair is startlingly original and often laugh-out-loud funny. It follows English Special Operations officer Thursday Next, citizen of an alternate-universe 1985 England in which cloning has made dodos popular pets and the Crimean War has lasted over a hundred years.

Like Shades of Grey, the experience of this novel would be greatly damaged by relating too many details of its plot, but it is a delightful mix of noir mystery, Orwellian dystopianism, surrealist nonsense reminiscent of Douglas Adams or Lewis Carroll, and a chick-lit romantic sensibility that surprisingly fits perfectly into the story.

I don't think anyone would accuse Jasper Fforde of attempting to write highbrow literature, but if you're up for a fun, fast-paced romp in an original and intriguing world, The Eyre Affair is definitely worth a look.

As a side note, I realize I've given positive reviews to all five books I've read so far. This might give the impression that I just like everything. If you're looking for proof that this is not the case, ask me my opinion of Dan Brown some time. However, everyone I know knows that I love books, and my friends (and especially my mom) have good taste in literature, so I get piles of very good recommendations. That, combined with the fact that I rarely read more than the first twenty pages of a book I'm not enjoying, means I really do manage to avoid reading many books that I don't like. Also, the whole point of doing the 50 Book Challenge is to recommend good books to my friends, so the one book I've read so far this year that I didn't think was great I simply didn't include in the list.

The year in books #4: Team of Rivals

2010-02-20T15:20:00.004+01:00

I went through my archives to check which number I'm on and was astounded to realize it took me an entire month following Shades of Grey to read another book. In my defense, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is 757 pages long. We aren't talking about sissy pages, either; these are vast sheets of dessicated vegetable pulp containing dense lines of prose.

In all honesty, I couldn't be more pleased with the length of the book. It is a brilliantly written biography of Abraham Lincoln that moves slowly enough and deeply enough that it felt like re-emerging from the 19th century when I put the book down. At the same time, it was paced quickly enough to never lose the sense of narrative drive and suspense that is so rare in academic writing. And have no doubt; this is an academic work, with 121 pages of footnotes (my only complaint is that those footnotes are not cited in the main text; it is evidently left as an exercise for the reader to count the quotes in a chapter in order to arrive at the correct citation).

The opening section of the book tells the stories of Lincoln and the men who would compete against him for the Republican presidential nomination and later became members of his cabinet; Edward Bates, Salmon Chase and William Seward. Once Lincoln's nomination has been secured, a relatively short section describes the actual campaign (which I was surprised to discover had four nominees; two from the south and two from the north), with the remainder of the story following the course of the Lincoln presidency, whose beginning and end coincided almost exactly with those of the Civil War.

My favorite aspect of this book, as I wrote above, was that it left me feeling as though I were actually experiencing the America of the 1860s as I read it. It left me feeling a very strong sense of Abraham Lincoln, as well; who he was, what motivated him, and how he saw himself and was seen by others.

If you have any interest in 19th century American history, Abraham Lincoln, the history of slavery in America or the institution of the presidency, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. I've never read a better biography, and I can think of only one or two history books that I've enjoyed as much as this one.

Sexism and language

2010-02-19T19:22:00.002+01:00

Related to my recent post on the subject of the sexism that is embedded in language, I've noticed an increasing trend in English for writers to use female pronouns as the default. When I first saw this, it smacked to me of a kind of over-zealous political correctness, but I've noticed that every time I see it, it startles me a bit because the picture of 'person' in my mind (what philosophers call a 'prototype') is of a man. I think that as long as that's the case, the language is well served by the convention of using 'she' as the default, and so I'll be adopting it as well.

Morgig: the word that wasn't

2010-02-08T18:58:00.001+01:00

This is interesting. I know several phrases, such as die morgigen Zeitungen (tomorrow's newspapers), that imply the existence of the adjective morgig, which would mean 'relating to tomorrow'. But I cannot find a German dictionary that admits to such a word's existence.

I'm going to start using morgig at every opportunity, until the Duden adds it.

Small, interesting, unconnected things

2010-02-02T21:14:00.005+01:00

It still feels like magic to me that I speak foreign languages. Until I started learning Japanese when I was 19, it never even occurred to me that it was possible to learn another language well enough to communicate in it. Eight years later, I still have Keanu/kung fu moments where I go "I know German."

When my feet get cold, my middle toe is always the first one to go numb. I cannot conceive of why this might be the case.

While we're on the subject of toes, I realized yesterday that I conceive of my toes incorrectly. I'll explain what I mean. When I said "middle toe" above, I did mean the one in the middle, but I usually conceive of the toe next to my big toe as being the central one, although a quick count of the toes on either side of it demonstrates that this is not the case. Oddly, I still think of the fourth toe over as being my "ring toe", leaving the actual center toe somewhat lost. Maybe it goes numb first because it is lonely.

Rose and I have a perennial debate on the subject of what our children will eat for breakfast. My mom mostly kept us to unsweetened cereals. Well, unsweetened in the box - once Mom's back was turned I frequently mixed my Cheerios at a 1:1 ratio with cane sugar. I agree with this principle; if children are going to eat candy for breakfast, they should at least have to be sneaky about it. Rose, however, doesn't see the harm in sweet cereal, mostly because she's had a morning routine of eating Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes every morning since forever.

I see myself sneaking into the kitchen at night, dumping out the Froot Loops and replacing them with dyed Cheerios. Then I see my kids waiting until my back is turned and dumping out the entire contents of the sugar bowl on them.

The character for "woman" in Japanse (女) is also found in characters meaning ease/relaxation/inexpensiveness （安) and slave (奴). This character (姦), made up of three women together, means noisy.

In German, herrlich means outstanding, wonderful, fine. Dämlich means idiotic, silly, foolish. These are derived from the words Herr and Dame, "lord" and "lady."

English, on the other hand, is the least sexist language known to man, though I'm sure anyone could find some traces of gender bias in the language's conventions if he tried.

I know German. That is awesome.

Benny & teh N1nj4z #4

2010-02-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

The final episode of Benny & teh N1nj4z. So far

The poster in the America panel is my favorite part. It says "Please eat quickly and then leave, to make room for more satisfied Omniburger customers."

Benny & teh N1nj4z #3

2010-01-31T12:00:00.004+01:00

Ninjas talk in black speech bubbles. Obviously.

I created an entire history for Omniburger, an international chain of religiously-themed fast food restaurants.

Benny & teh N1nj4z #2

2010-01-30T12:00:00.001+01:00

Number two of four.

Why Benny, what strangely long forearms you have...

Benny & teh N1nj4z #1

2010-01-29T21:16:00.005+01:00

Back in 2007, I got bit in a big way by the creativity bug and spent a month or two drawing a comic I called Benny & teh N1nJ4z. I've been thinking about trying this again, since I had such a ridiculous amount of fun making these.

(click to embiggen)

Believe it or not, drawing this took me about eight hours. I sketched it with paper and pencil, scanned it in, and inked it in Paint. My comic skills are, as I point out above, quite limited.

I should point out that Rose is far nicer than I've portrayed her in this strip. I do, however, regularly sing The Scotsman at top volume in the shower.

America and the world

2010-01-29T08:15:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the late update - Blogger is bouncing requests from Firefox with a 400 error, meaning it thinks Firefox is sending malformed http requests - and I didn't think to try Internet Explorer until this morning. Here's what I wrote for y'all last night:

Something that fascinates me without cease is the impact of American politics around the planet, and the extent to which it is followed abroad. An Italian man once told me he'd happily trade his Italian suffrage rights for the ability to vote in American national elections, because he thought their results had more of an impact on his life than the ones he could influence.

As a result, the State of the Union address President Obama delivered yesterday was in all the papers and on all the news programs. Isn't that amazing? When was the last time a speech by the German chancellor was covered on the 10 o'clock news?

Just to be clear, I'm not as critical of Americans as some our for our tendency to be ignorant of other countries' affairs. America simply plays such a massive role in the world that everyone has an interest in our politics. I used to feel incredibly ignorant because of my relative ignorance of European geography and politics, until I realized that Germans also have no idea who's in charge of Japan, the Japanese have no idea who's running things in France, the French do not know the name of Australia's head of state, and so on. Americans, I think, only give the impression of relative international ignorance because we happen to come from the country that everyone else everywhere else knows about.

A moment of silence

2010-01-27T21:17:00.002+01:00

One of my closest friends lost someone today. Regular broadcasts resume tomorrow.

Fear the Boom and Bust

2010-01-26T19:44:00.002+01:00

I know I'm posting a lot of links lately. I've been practicing the piano a lot this week, and work's been busy, so no time for a lot of writing. This one goes out to my father, who taught me to love macroeconomic theory. The competing theories of Keynes and Hayek are presented below as an amazingly well-written rap. You seriously don't want to miss this.

Get Out

2010-01-25T21:51:00.002+01:00

Do yourself a favor; find eight minutes and watch Get Out, an incredible short film about Gary, who lives in a world of fantasy and is terrified of doors.

Get Out
by Esma-Movie

2010-01-24T22:09:00.003+01:00

I simply cannot resist sharing this.

Note: Blogger is giving me trouble with the embedded object. If you can't see the video here, here is a link.

Put on your helmet boys - were going for a ride.

On a Mission from planet Earth together we will fight

To spread out the word all over

From Mars and the Moon to Dover

Just like us you soon will see the light

Don't be afraid now boys - this mission cannot fall

More brothers will join us soon and gay guys will prevail

So put on your rubber suits now

And shine up your silver boots now

Uranus is the goal

We are the gays in space

on a sexual crusade

we're gonna let you know

Homogenity's the way

its a wink if you think boys are pretty in pink

and want an umbrella and a straw in your drink

let it out, let us in

let the party begin

Soon everywhere on mars you'll hear this disco beat

and jupiter will become the new homonarchy

we travel around in light speed

and preaching about what we all need

let's get on our knees and make it greek

We are the gays in space

on a sexual crusade

we're gonna let you know

Homogenity's the way

Its a clue if shoe makes you glad when your blue,

and if fixing your hair is the best you can do

let it out, let us in

let the party begin

We are the gays in space

on a sexual crusade

we're gonna let you know

Homogenity's the way

its sign if you shine when you wiggle your hind

and you think Oscar Wild he was one of a kind

let it out, let us in

let the party begin

Our friend Sierpenski

2010-01-22T18:09:00.003+01:00

One of my favorite computer programming tricks is what's called 'binary logic.' It was my intention to explain the concept today, but my Dungeons and Dragons players are about to arrive, and I need to go make dinner for them!

So I will simply show you this awesome image, which is the fractal produced when you draw a spot on every x/y coordinate where (x binary-and y) is not equal to 0.

The happiest days of our lives

2010-01-21T21:04:00.003+01:00

I'm trying something new today, and I'm nervous about pushing the 'publish' button. But here goes. Let me know what you think.

I wake in the morning to find Rose returned from her business trip, laying beside me. Her head pokes cutely out from the mountain formed by her blanket. I kiss her good morning. It's good to have her back, to know that we can return to our domestic traditions.

After I shower we share breakfast. I eat oatmeal. She eats Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes. We both drink black tea; it's important to have common ground. We always talk for half an hour or more, about whatever is on our minds. She remembers things, and reminds me of our next few days' plans. I'm forgetful, so tomorrow she'll remind me again. We discuss politics. Etymology. Philosophy. History. When we met, I used to try to impress her with stuff like that, but she usually understands what I'm talking about better than I do. She looks me in the eyes through the steam that rises from her cup, and she smiles. I love that she understands me.

I go to work. My work is fascinating; I make computers do what I want. Well, most of the time. Sometimes it's easier to fix the specs. I am caught up in the joyous flow of practicing a difficult skill. Observed from the outside, it's not very impressive; I sit in front of a computer for nine hours. When I'm done, the boxes are a different shade of gray. It's harder than it looks.

On good days, it feels like I'm done before I start. Today is a good day. I pick up a package at the post office on the way home; clothes for the baby. I walk home in the chill, dry winter air, and I think about being a father. Me. A father. What do people always say about teen pregnancy? Children having children? I am twenty-seven now, but there is no wisdom within these bone walls. I imagine that every new parent is a child having a child.

I cooked Rose's favorites for dinner tonight: Mashed potatoes, creamed spinach and scrambled eggs. I made spaghetti sauce, too, for a party tomorrow night. Half a cup of olive oil. Ten ripe tomatoes. Half a clove of garlic. A whole fresh basil. There is nothing you can do wrong with this combination of ingredients. When the other vegetables are plump and soft, we blend the sauce on a whim, and the resulting sauce is amazing. Her idea.

The day will end like it began, with her next to me beneath her blanket-covered mountain. We'll share the funny parts of our books and laugh together until we feel sleepy. Then we'll kiss good night.

The days of our lives are like this; perfect, priceless pearls strung side on side from now until the end of everything. There are riches beyond counting to be had here in the mundanity of our daily routine.

It hurts in my brain

2010-01-20T14:35:00.005+01:00

Depression is a form of illness that carries a certain stigma. One of the reasons for that is the Western (especially American) ideals of character, willpower and personal responsibility, which are in conflict with the concept that our moods, motivations and behavior can arise from uncontrollable chemical phenomena. I don't know how to solve that problem; I think an ethos of personal responsibility is necessary to society, but at the same time I think we need to recognize that there are many factors influencing human behavior that are not in our control. It's a paradox that I've not yet found anything even resembling a solution to - if you have ideas, I'm always thrilled to see my comment box put to good use.

Separate from the conflict above, though, is simple ignorance. I have the strong impression that there is a vicious cycle by which sufferers of depression don't reveal that fact to others, even their close friends, creating the impression that it's relatively rare. And because it seems so unusual and is somewhat stigmatized, they don't talk about it with others. And so it goes.

I can't see a reason that it should be any more unusual to talk about depression than about the flu. And as someone who suffers from depression, I feel like it's important to help create a world in which that kind of discussion is normal.

So yeah. This week has been stinky. Do you know that sinking, achy feeling you get as a child when you get in really serious trouble? When I get depressed, I feel like that nearly all the time, for no reason at all. Also, I can't sleep at night and find it very, very difficult to get up in the morning. Fortunately, I'm a pretty low-grade case; I seem to only have this once or twice a year, and it rarely lasts more than a few days. Also fortunately, I've somehow managed to surround myself with awesome people who love me and hang out with me when I'm having a bad time.

This isn't going to be a blog about my depression, or even a blog that frequently talks about the subject, but it's been my intent to address it at least once. And now I have. Tomorrow, with any luck, I can be funny or at least mildly amusing again.

(Photo by Pedro Oliveira)

The "I have a dream" speech

2010-01-19T12:00:00.000+01:00

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, NPR's Talk of the Nation has broadcast and put online King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech in its entirety. Everyone knows the famous final section that gives the speech its name, but if you have the time, it's worth listening to in its entirety. This is spoken English at its very best.

Legos for Rose

2010-01-19T09:42:00.003+01:00

This one is for my Lego-loving wife; realistic-looking flames made from everyone's favorite plastic blocks. Click the picture to see the whole album.

Via Neatorama

Blog dump: Time traveller's cheat sheet

2010-01-18T12:49:00.004+01:00

Check out this awesome cheat sheet, designed to be hung up in your time machine in case of an accident.

Blogdump: Healthcare

2010-01-18T12:00:00.004+01:00

Happy Monday! Today, instead of a single post, I'll share several things that I've had kicking around my blog feed for the last week. First on the docket is the below graphic, which illustrates just how out of control health care costs have become in the United States (click to see the full-sized version, via Ezra Klein).

I don't talk about politics much here, but American national politics are one of my passions, and I've followed the health care debate with particular interest, because the way it ends will likely have a serious impact on when, and for how long, I return to live in the United States. I'm constantly startled at what seems to be universal acceptance of the idea that, though America's health care system could use some work, at least it's not a European-style socialist system. Well, I live in a socialist European state, and it's wonderful. My premiums are around €275 a month (my employer pays the same), and for that price I am simply insured. If I lose my job, I keep my insurance, and my premiums are reduced. If my left eye goes blind for the same reason my right eye did in my childhood, my treatment will be covered - people here are shocked when I explain the concept of a "pre-existing condition." If I decide I want to switch insurance companies, I can pick any plan offered by any company; it is illegal to deny me coverage, and I'll pay the same as anyone else, regardless of my risk status. My deductible is €10 per calendar quarter, regardless of what treatment I receive. I've never had to wait for treatment, nor have I ever heard a story of someone else having to wait.

And for all of that, Germany pays around half what America does per insured person. Americans throw the word "socialism" around like it's the bane of all that is good in the world, but for some things, a socialist solution works. Fortunately, the legislation in the works will create a system in America that is similar in many ways to the system we have here in Germany. The two most important concepts, which look like they're likely to be in the final bill, are the individual mandate and what's called "guaranteed issue." The first means that you have to get some kind of health insurance (actually, the version I believe is in the bill now just says you have to pay a fee if you don't have insurance, which is actually likely to be a better deal if you're young and healthy). The second means that insurance companies have to insure you. These are both good things; it shouldn't be legal for insurance companies to actively seek to deny coverage to people who are sick or likely to become sick. And if there's no individual mandate, only the people are are sick will be likely to get insurance, which makes the average risk in the pool of the insured very high, driving premiums up, driving people out of insurance, raising premiums still higher, and so on, in what health insurance wonks call the "death spiral."

Health care reform has been tried again and again pretty much throughout the 20th century, and I'm thrilled that someone is finally going to pull it off.

Blogdump: Bohemian Rhapsody as Bluegrass

2010-01-18T12:00:00.003+01:00

Listen to this brilliant bluegrass cover of Bohemian Rhapsody by Hayseed Dixie.

Via Neatorama.

The year in books #3: Shades of Grey

2010-01-17T10:18:00.004+01:00

I have a philosophy about book reviews; I try to expose myself to the bare minimum of information about the book required to decide that I want to read it. If I'm completely uninterested in a book's premise, I may read an entire in-depth review on the off chance that learning more might spark my interest. On the other hand, if I see that a book was written by Neil Gaiman, won the Hugo Award, or is Now A Major Motion Picture Starring Nicolas Cage*, I won't even read the back cover. Once I've decided I'm going to read the thing, I want to go in with as virgin a brain as possible.

This preamble is to explain the structure I'm going to try to follow in reviews of fiction from now on. I'll tell you right up top how much I liked the book, and get a bit more detailed about why as the review goes on. I am deathly allergic to spoilers, so I promise never to give away plot points, but there are books (the subject of this post among them) that are much more fun to read if you have exactly zero idea of what's going on when you open them.

So. On to the review. This here is the top part, where I tell you how much I liked the book. Remember back when I promised to do that? Yeah. Good times. Anyway.

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde, is an amazing tale that I can wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend to anyone who likes a good yarn. Its style made me think of The Wizard of Oz or Winnie the Poo as they might have been written in collaboration between Lewis Carrol and George Orwell. It's brilliant, it's laugh-out-loud funny, and it has lovable characters in an intriguing and kooky world. You need to read this book.

It is very difficult to tell much more about Shades of Grey than I have above without spoiling the experience of reading it. In fact, I would like to specifically warn you away from reading the back flap of the book - it gives away things that you really shouldn't know when you start reading. The fun of the book is as much about discovering how its strange world functions as about finding out what happens next in the story. I'll take a shot at explaining it a bit, though, for those of you who might not have decided to go read the book yet.

Shades of Grey takes place far in the future of some world that may very well be our own, or may very well not be. Society and life are entirely centered around two things: colors and Rules. Nearly everyone is limited to seeing only a single color, and the higher on the spectrum your color is, and the more of it you can see, the higher your social status; social ambition largely takes the form of hoping to assemble enough Merits and Positive Feedback to negotiate a marriage into a higher-hued family. Life in this Colourocracy is governed by an encyclopedic collection of wonderfully nonsensical Rules, laid down centuries ago and both infallible and immutable. One of the great delights of the book is that each chapter begins with a Rule, and they are wonderfully silly. My favorites: "All children are to attend school until the age of sixteen or until they have learned everything, whichever be sooner." and: "The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable."

I really can't bring myself to relate any more of this world, and the story is too interwoven with the world to even introduce it without giving away delights you should discover in the pages of the book and not in my blog. Go read this book, you really won't regret it.

*Okay, that last one not so much, though it's at least a good way to recognize a Phillip K. Dick book from a distance. But seriously, why do I keep seeing books that advertise who stars in their own movie adaptations? This is not useful information.

A big pile of 'a'a

2010-01-16T12:30:00.005+01:00

On my all too infrequent visits home, one of my very favorite things to do is play Scrabble with my mom. I always end up with what seems like a reasonable score, but lose horribly, because Mom has mastered the trick of playing a long word such that it lays across another, creating a ridiculous number of two-letter "words." I put "words" in quotes here, because serious Scrabble players do not limit themselves to living lexemes; anything that can be mined from the Scrabble dictionary is fair game, and if you want to get good, you really have to memorize all of the legal two-letter plays.

There are a lot of Scrabble words I've picked up over the years of getting my ass handed to me by my dear mother. One of the things I love about them is that they exist only in the Scrabble universe; I've never had the opportunity to use the word "ope," "oe" or "crwths." My favorite such term is "aa," which means (according to the dictionary entry I memorized after having challenged Mom's use of the word several times) "a rough, cindery ash." In German, incidentally, it means "poop." Of all the crazy Scrabble words I learned, "aa" has always been the one I've wished I could meet in the wild, but I've never encountered it and was never entirely sure how I might use it.

Until today.

The caption to the above picture, which I found via Neatorama is as follows:

12 (E-5). Accretionary lava ball comes to rest on the grass after rolling off the top of an ‘a‘a flow in Royal Gardens subdivision.

There it is! Aa in the wild! I thought this day would never come.

Related bonus material:

(Photograph taken by J.D. Griggs for the US Geographical Survey (link). Comic by the incomparable Randall Munroe.)

Haiti

2010-01-15T22:21:00.003+01:00

Rose and I have made the decision to donate what we feel we can afford to Medicins Sans Frontiers to support their efforts helping Haiti recover from the devastation of the recent earthquake. I've been debating with myself ever since we decided to do so whether I should share that we're donating with others. I feel like it cheapens the act of giving if you advertise it, but I've decided to write about it here in the hope that I might inspire someone else to give, as well.

I was a bit surprised at how difficult it felt to part with was came to only about a day's income to help someone else. How selfishly must I be wired - I'll go without a nice dinner out one or two nights this year, and someone I never met may get life-saving medical treatment or be able to feed his hungry children or get help rebuilding a home that was there last week and is now simply gone. And it took me a day and a half of contemplation and my wife's suggestion to convince me to actually go through with it.

One of the reasons I was reluctant, in addition to my own inherent crapulence, was the feeling that there wasn't much that I could do to help. Having done a bit of reading on the subject, though, I'm persuaded that there are a large number of organizations that do pretty remarkable disaster relief work. I chose Medicins Sans Frontiers in part in wonderment at the technology they have available for rapid disaster response; within a day of the earthquake they had built an entire inflatable hospital and were delivering babies and performing trauma surgery.

Please don't feel like I'm trying to pressure you into giving money. I'm not Sally Struthers - this is just something that feels important to me. If donating money to charity isn't your bag, or you can't afford it, you're still cool in my book. If you are interested, though, here are a couple of resources you can check out: Charity Navigator rates charity organizations based on criteria like financial transparency and the efficiency with which donated money is used. And for Germans, the Tagesschau website has a list of Spendenkonten for reputable charities that you can donate to via Überweisung.

And now, a fun fact, because what's the point of reading the American Umlaut if you don't learn something you don't need to know? In Germany, if you donate money to Medicins Sans Frontiers but don't tell them where to send your tax receipt, they will contact you by means of transferring one cent back into your bank account, with a telephone number in the comment field that you can call to give them your address. Their website explains that this is by far the cheapest way to make contact; even a two-minute local phone call is about €0.06 here. Clever, no?

Going Dutch

2010-01-14T14:20:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine posted a quote in Dutch on Facebook a few days ago. It began as follows:

De 10 tips voor een inspirerend 2010 *Gebruik je tijd zorgvuldig *Doe vaker de dingen die je energie geven...

I love Dutch. It looks just exactly like a badly spelled mixture of English and German. I don't actually speak more than a few words of the language, but it is so closely related to the two languages I speak best that I found I could translate almost the entire quote (twelve sentences) just by abusing cognates. I thought it might be fun to take a bit of the quote and compare each word to it's English and German equivalent. I find it fascinating to look at things like this; some of the words are similar in all three languages, whereas some are similar in only two of the three languages, and some have different roots in all three (those are the ones that throw me when I try to read Dutch).

Keep in mind while reading this that I don't actually speak any Dutch - some of these might be false cognates, though my friend indicated my overall translation was correct.

De = the = der/die/das
10
tips = this is a loan-word from English in German, too
voor = for = für
een = a/an = ein
inspirerend = inspiring = inspirierend
2010

Gebruik = use = gebrauchen
je = your = dein/Ihr
tijd = time = Zeit
zorgvuldig = carefully = sorgfältig

Doe = do = tu
vaker = more often = öfter (this one I had to look up)
de = the = der/die/das
dingen = things = Dinge
die = that = der/die/das
je = you = dir/Ihnen
energie = energy = Energie
geven = give = geben

Isn't that cool?

Fun facts: New Year's

2010-01-13T14:11:00.003+01:00

I'm afraid I didn't have time to prepare a post for today in advance, and it's a very busy day at work, so I'll not be able to share very much with you today. It occurred to me, though, that a few tidbits about how the New Year is celebrated here might interest you.

For some reason, Germans call New Year's Eve "Silvester," which never fails to make me laugh.

Silvester is the only day of the year on which it is legal to set off fireworks. At midnight, no matter where you are, the air fills with rockets and Roman candles. This is quickly followed by the sound of sirens - there's a reason we don't allow amatures to set off flying fireworks any more in most states of the US.

The citizens of the German-speaking world (Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein and much of Switzerland) traditionally watch a short film called Dinner For One (you can watch it here) every Silvester. The movie is entirely in English, though it opens with a German master of ceremonies explaining the meaning of the most important phrases. Because of this movie, the English phrase "the same procedure as every year" is a universally recognized catchphrase and often played for jokes. Outside of the German-speaking world, this film and the one-act play that it is based on are completely unknown.

In America, we wish each other "happy New Year" on New Year's Eve and for a day or two therafter. In Germany, you greet a person with "frohes neues Jahr" the first time you see them after the year begins, seemingly without a time limit. I am often perplexed to be wished a "frohes neues Jahr" weeks or even months after the year has begun by people I haven't run into in the intervening time.

Edit: With my apologies to the Swiss, I have added their great nation to the "German-speaking world."

The year in books #2: Manufacturing Consent

2010-01-12T12:03:00.003+01:00

My second book I finished this year was Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, which explores what the authors see as the failure of the mass media to provide American citizens with accurate, objective information. Basically, their argument is that the state and other powerful actors have the ability to shape coverage and the terms of debate. One way that they do this is through providing or denying access to "expert" sources that lend credibility to a report and comprise a quick, inexpensive way to collect information. Another method that Herman and Chomsky describe is the production of "flak" - retaliatory treatment that seeks to marginalize the voices of those who challenge the official story. The result is what the authors call a "propaganda model" of media, in which the mass news media report events with a great deal of pro-America bias, even to the point of reporting clearly inaccurate information.

I found this book to be utterly fascinating on a number of fronts. The case studies that were used as examples of the "propaganda model" came from America's interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam and Cambodia, which are episodes of American history about which I knew relatively little and was very interested to learn about. The evidence for a "propaganda model" that Herman and Chomsky present from these periods in time was also fascinating, as were the generalizations extrapolated from them. I was quite surprised, for example, to learn just how much money the Pentagon has available for public relations expenditures - I think it's fairly ironic that American taxpayers spend millions of dollars a year to produce propaganda for their own consumption.

The weakness of the book, in my mind, is its own lack of objectivity. The authors' principled objection to wars of aggression is entirely in line with my own ideals, but I think that it detracts from the important point that they are making about the media when they repeatedly present as simple fact that specific episodes were American war crimes. Another shortcoming, though an inevitable one, is that the book feels somewhat dated. Twenty years after its publication, examples from the Vietnam War no longer feel as immediate as they likely did in the late eighties, and the idea that television news is biased is so prosaic that America now has two more or less openly partisan cable news networks.

Final verdict: Definitely worth a read if you're interested in an academic look at systemic media bias and American post-war foreign policy through the mid-eighties. If you have conservative political leanings, make sure you've taken your blood pressure medication.

On making very small people in Germany

2010-01-11T12:00:00.006+01:00

Apropos of nothing: who came up with a system in which 11:00 PM comes after 12:00 PM?

As reported earlier, my first offspring, dubbed the Gummybear, will be arriving, we are told, early this May.* In preparation for this joyous and, by all accounts, messy event, Rose and I visited a hospital and a midwife clinic (Geburtshaus) for tours of their facilities and explanations of their procedures.

Rose suggested that it might be interesting to write about the differences between the American and German traditions of baby manufacture, which is what led me to start this post. I've realized, however, that I can't be entirely certain of what the differences are. I can tell you how German supermarkets are different than American supermarkets because I've experienced both, but I moved to Germany in my early twenties, before I'd ever held permanent employment or reproduced. My entire life experience of labor law, marriage, and gummy bear extraction has been made here, so things that seems strange to me may very well be identical to how they are done back home, and things that seem perfectly normal to me may fly in the face of American convention.

The first thing that surprised me here was learning about German labor laws concerning new parents. Mothers get sick leave from six weeks before they are due until eight weeks after they give birth (so if your child is overdue, you get more leave). After this, they are free to return to work if they choose, but for up to a year, either parent can stay home and receive two-thirds pay for up to a year. Fathers are encouraged to take some of this time off by a relatively new law that grants a couple an extra two months if the paid leave is shared between both parents. For another two years after that, parents have the right to unpaid leave or partial leave (i.e. reduced hours), after which their employer must return them to the position they had previously left.

The birthing process itself has also presented a fair number of surprises to me. For example, I seem to remember my mom coming home with my little brother within hours of his birth, but it's common here for a new mother and child to spend two or three days in the hospital. Our hospital will even rent us an extra bed for me to sleep in if I request it. And post-partum care doesn't stop when you leave the hospital - a midwife will visit daily for several days and then at increasing intervals for some weeks to check on the mother and baby, answer any questions, and help new parents learn skills like changing diapers and nursing.

And you can probably tell from the fact that Rose and I visited a midwife clinic that natural birth and home birth are making big inroads into the mainstream here. Having read their literature and listened to their presentation, I'm really not convinced. When you deliver with a midwife, you're an ambulance or taxi away from pain medication and emergency medical care. I grok the argument that childbirth is a perfectly natural process, but that doesn't make it safe. Giving birth is dangerous for everyone involved (I'll be wearing pads and a helmet), and having seen newborn babies as well as the opening ours is supposed to emerge from, I think it's fair to assume that Rose is at least going to want an aspirin or something at some point during the process. The midwife giving the presentation also read off some statistics on the incredibly low rate of complications the clinic experienced, which seemed very impressive until she read us the list of all the pregnancies they wouldn't deliver. If a hospital refused to handle premature deliveries, late deliveries, mothers with diabetes, breach babies, babies with congenital defects, etc., they would probably have a pretty low rate of complications, too.

We will be taking advantage of the clinic's other offerings, however. We'll likely choose a midwife from there to do post-partum visits, and since they are right around the corner from us, we'll probably attend some of their activities. I, for one, am very excited about the class entitled "Baby Massage for Daddies." The class that amuses me the most, which we'll also probably join, is the "play group" for newborns. Now, I've spent some time with newborns, and their main activities, pooping and crying, are pretty solitary endeavors. I imagine a more accurate title would be "chat group for new parents."

*I realized I was writing a run-on sentence there, but then I noticed I was writing it entirely out of three-word clauses and decided to just run with it. I admit that it got a little out of control, but my life revolves around such small joys.

Create!

2010-01-10T12:00:00.001+01:00

At the beginning of the 20th century, a Japanese poet named Miyazawa Kenji　(1869-1933) argued against leaving the creation of art to specialists. He saw every human being as inherently creative, and thought that even the poorest peasants could and should find satisfaction and joy in surrounding themselves with the fruit of their own artistic endeavors. A geologist and agriculture expert by training, he offered agronomy classes and even formulated custom fertilizer for the peasants of his native Iwate Prefecture, but at the same time he organized musical performances, plays, and taught a form of peasant art that he had himself developed. Surrounded by poverty, he still exhorted those around him not just to live, but to create. Ever since a great teacher comforted me in a hard time by introducing me to his incredible poem Ame ni mo Makezu, I've felt inspired by his life. I think that he would be thrilled by the Internet and the ability it grants us to share our creativity without limits and without borders. I can hear him calling to us over the hundred years that separate our lives. Nombiri suru wake nee zo! Nanka tsukure! What are you doing just sitting there? Make something!

The year in books #1: Das große Heinz Erhardt Buch

2010-01-09T14:37:00.005+01:00

Hark, readers, as I throw down my gauntlet and take up the Fifty Book Challenge. I know not where the concept was born, for da Google has failed me, but the premise is simple: Complete fifty books over the course of one year, and blog about them. The benefits of the exercise are many: it spreads the word about good books, it encourages a blogger to read, and it also lends a blogger a seeming of erudition while simultaneously making it look like he knows stuff.*

Vom Alten Fritz, dem Preußenkönig
Weiß man zwar viel, doch viel zu wenig.

So ist es zum Beispiel nicht bekannt,
daß er die Bratkartoffeln erfand!

Drum heißen sie auch - das ist kein Witz -
Pommes Fritz!

The first book I completed this year, with my apologies to my English-reading audience, was Das große Heinz Erhardt Buch. If a translation were available, I'd offer a link, but this is a collection of pun-filled poetry. Even if a translation were available, you'd not likely care to read it:

One knows much about old King Fritz of Prussia,
But not enough.

For example, many do not know
That he invented fried potatoes!

This is why they're called - no joke -
French fries.

Many of you, though, are either German speakers or are interested in learning the language, and to you I cannot recommend this book enough. I read the first half on the train ride back from visiting my in-laws for Christmas, and I spent the entire trip helpless with laughter at Erhardt's wordplay and the dream-like logic of his storytelling. His whimsical approach, often masking very serious intent, reminds me of Shel Silverstein, as does the feeling of welcome and camaraderie that seems to flow from his work:

Nicht immer war ich schon so alt -
das machten erst die Jahre.
Die Stirne wuchs mit dem Verstand
im Laufe meiner Haare.
Nun wünsch ich mir, daß, was ich schrieb,
auch frohe Leser findet,
dann möge dieser Band das Band
sein, welches uns verbindet.

I think that learners of German especially will find a lot to enjoy in this book, which seems to employ every grammatical construct the language offers. I find catchy, short form poetry like this especially convenient for learning new words and grammatical forms, because it lends itself to rote memorization. Be prepared not to understand all of the jokes, though - ideally, I recommend reading this book with a German native speaker in the room and pestering her to explain everything that goes over your head.

My verdict: A+. Buy it. Read it. Memorize it. Recite it to your friends. Recite it to strangers on the street. Make constant Erhardt-inspired puns until your friends threaten to throw you out the window. Das große Heinz Erhardt Buch will have a place of honor on my bedside table for a very long time to come.

*See what I did there?

Watch this: Alma

2010-01-08T12:57:00.003+01:00

I hightly recommend the following: Alma, a video about a creepy toy store. For those of you reading from work (naughty, naughty!), it's watchable without sound.

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Homelessness in Japan

2010-01-07T12:00:00.004+01:00

Today's update will be short. I'll simply recommend that you read this article about homeless Japanese living in capsule hotels.

One concept that Japanologists and Japanese themselves are constantly confronted with is the idea that Japan is largely a classless society in which nearly everyone belongs to the middle class. In fact, this was never as true as it was often portrayed to be, and since the 1980s it is an idealized view that is increasingly detached from reality.

Anecdotally, I know from my own experience that, contrary to common views of poverty being very rare in Japan, Osaka had at least one quite large permanent homeless community. I remember walking through a tunnel and an adjoining park that were filled with miniature homes made of cardboard and tarp. I say "permanent" because these homes had obviously stood for some time; they were remarkably well furnished (with chairs, small sofas, cooking equipment, radios) and were often heated by gas and lit by car battery.

If you're interested in this topic and don't mind reading something a bit academic, take a look at this study. I'm putting this here as a reminder to myself as much as a recommendation, as I've only read the first couple of pages, but it looks like a decent overview of structural economic inequality in Japanese society.

Oversharing in Social media?

2010-01-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

I recently came across this article by Rebecca Reddicliffe. She offers high school seniors the advice that they should avoid posting their college acceptances or rejections to their Facebook profiles. Her reasoning is that Facebook posts are broadcast to such a large audience that they should be filtered of information that is not of general interest:

This is how I look at it: An average student these days seems to have at least 300 Facebook ”friends,” at least judging by an informal headcount I did recently on about a dozen accounts. Realistically, the average person is only friendly with maybe 50 of them (that’s a stretch), and good friends with probably 15 of those 300 friends.

By announcing what college you got into, you are obnoxiously broadcasting personal information that probably only 20 of your Facebook friends actually care about.

I think that Ms. Reddicliffe is looking at this problem from entirely the wrong angle. The issue is not that you shouldn't be posting information to social media that only people you have a genuine relationship with would be interested in. The issue is the tendency to add everyone you've ever met to your social media network, to see your friends and followers list as a kind of social scoreboard even as it becomes more and more removed from any actual social significance.

I think that, when you get to the point that you're filtering your Facebook posts to avoid boring the 250 people who read your updates but don't actually care about you, it's time to do another kind of filtering. Post something that is of great significance in your life, like your acceptance to the university of your dreams, and then remove everyone from your "friends" list who would consider your achievement to be "obnoxious personal information."

Bonus materials!

2010-01-05T13:01:00.002+01:00

Just because I'm feeling extra generous today, check out these two very cool videos, which I found via Neatorama.

Video one features a little kid who can seriously rock. The Gummybear is so getting a pacifier with a skull on it.

Video two is a remarkable bit of visual design: a flip-book style depiction of Parkour.

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

Transformers, then and now

2010-01-05T12:00:00.005+01:00

Last week, I watched the Michael Bay Transformers movie for the first time with some friends who are huge fans. Much to their (and my) disappointment, I thought the movie was awful. I don't think this is because I had inappropriate expectations - we're talking about a movie which portrays a war between giant sentient alien robots who turn into helicopters and semi trucks. I didn't expect much from the bits of the movie whose sole purpose is to provide, for example, a semi-plausible segue from a battle with a forty-foot subterranean scorpion robot to a scene in which a giant rollerblading humanoid robot shoulder-tackles its way through a surprisingly flammable cargo truck. Those bits, though, which could literally have been replaced by thirty seconds of a banana singing "let's go out to the snack bar" without impacting the action scenes, were so awful that they managed to ruin the movie for me.

As I wrote above, I came to the movie with a very, very low bar with regard to story and characterization. Michael Bay saw my bar, lying there on the ground, and he got out a shovel and tunneled right under the thing. Almost every writing choice took the easy shortcut of substituting (often racial) stereotype for characterization. Especially the black characters, though not as bad as I understand I can expect from the sequel, seemed universally there to provide the kind of comic relief that can only come from essentializing brown people. Even one of the Transformers (Jazz) is 'black', and his only contribution to the movie is to breakdance for a few seconds, utter "what's crackin', li'l bitches?" and then do nothing of importance until the final scene, in which he is the only Transformer killed.

The movie treated women with about as much subtlety. Only two important characters are female. One is played by Megan Fox, whose entire purpose seems to be to strike suggestive poses in scanty clothing while the camera panned slowly over her sweat-beaded body, then to fall in love with the main character for no evident reason. The other woman actually gave me a bit of hope - she's a computer hacker, intelligent and played with the closest thing to a personality the movie granted a female. Unfortunately, at some point the writers didn't need the B-story she was involved in to advance the main plot any more, and so she simply vanishes from the remainder of the film without explanation.

So yeah. Could have been better. Let me say this about Transformers, though; if you like action movies, it's probably worth watching just for the battle scenes. There's a shot, for example, where a robot is taking out a pack of fighter jets by chasing them down in jet form, repeatedly transforming back into humanoid form to punch them out of the air. The misogyny and racism that pervades the rest of the movie is too much for me to recommend that you rent or buy it, though.

The final verdict: pirate it, and skip all the scenes without robots.

Bonus material: Long ago, I watched the first episode of the original Tranformers ~~half-hour toy commercial~~ television series. I loved that show so much, and it's still a lot of fun to watch, especially for the writing. It's so hilariously bad in places that I can't imagine the writers weren't doing it to amuse themselves. At the time, I collected the following choice quotes:

"There's not enough energy in these conductors to last a cortex!"

"Hang on to your crankshaft, I'm shifting to overdrive!"

After the Decepticon ship has been like ten feet behind the Autobot ship for the last five minutes. "Detectors report: we are being followed!"

"G-forces... they're dragging us... down!"

The Decepticons have been walking for hours past a repeating background containing piles of rocks, finally stopping near one such pile. Says Megatron: "Stop here. These rocks will serve as our base of operations."

Having stolen about six gallons of crude oil. "We've done it, we've done it, we've got the energy! We can go back to Cybertron!"

Ancient Japanese justice

2010-01-04T12:00:00.000+01:00

This is a bit of information about the Tokugawa justice system that I came across back when I was researching my Master's thesis.

In 1837, a samurai named Oshio Heihachiro incited a peasant riot that left 20% of Osaka burned to the ground. He died in the aftermath of the riot, but the penal custom of the Tokugawa government required that his corpse be preserved in salt while he stood trial, so that the sentenced corporal punishment (in this case crucifixion) be carried out afterward.

Evidently, any corporal punishment would be carried out on your corpse if you didn't survive to your own sentencing. Including, according to my sources, flogging.

I love the little tidbits that come across your way when you research a topic really deeply. This was also a perfect example of how inefficient research would be if the goal was really just the production of single documents - in the end, the half day of research I did on the Tokugawa justice system led to a single clause in a single sentence in my paper.

A response to my very smart wife

2010-01-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

When I told my wife my plan of putting at least a little bit of content up in this space every day of 2010, she immediately asked if that wasn't in conflict with the argument I made just a few posts ago, that it is folly to produce content for the sake of content, to seek recognition and faux celebrity by turning one's self into a sort of media event. My lady spoke hard truth, and I squirmed a bit.

Then I thought about this remarkable column that I had just read, by Stanley Fish in the Times. It presents a hard look at the paradox of authenticity, which is a problem that gets a lot of timeshare in my head, and it comes to the same conclusion that I do: there is no perfect solution.

Whatever creative outlet I find, if I know that the result will or might one day be seen by any other person, my ego and my interest in self-promotion become inescapably involved in the creative process and the result is a loss of authenticity. The only pure and authentic act of creation would be one performed in secret, then immediately destroyed. And maybe there would be value in that excersize, but it simply wouldn't be as much fun.

Having given this a lot of thought, my conclusion, like Mr. Fish's, is that there is simply no perfect solution. I cannot separate my ego from the act of blogging, so this space will always in some way be a glorified version of me standing in a square shouting "please please please pay attention to me!" On the other hand, I do think that I can find at least one thing to write or share each day that I would find interesting (philosophical metabloggy musing, for example, fascinates me), and so I can at least hope to escape the trap of just making noise for the sake of making noise.

A year of posts

2010-01-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. The process of self improvement is a battle of such epic scale that it can only be won through a war of attrition, by winning a dozen tiny victories each day to make up for the eleven inevitable defeats. If we openly declare our commitment to a massive change for the better starting at a predefined hour, we set ourselves up for defeat. And if we resolve to accomplish some small and simple goal, we sell ourselves short by the implication that this isn't something we can strive for the other three hundred some-odd days of the year.

On the other hand, what would life be without a little hypocracy? I have resolved that something of my creation will appear in this space every day of 2010. I may write reviews of media I've enjoyed, I may share a thought that has perplexed me, I may simply share what has happened recently in my life. My only criterium will be that each post contain original thought by me, your host, Benjamin Stürmer, and that every post would be something I would be interested in reading myself.

My hope is that, by doing this, I force myself to engage in a little bit of creative thought every day. My fear is that, by doing this, I will force myself to produce unoriginal and uninspired dreck. Either way, you can expect something right here, every day.

I wish all of you an awesome 2010. Let the next adventure begin!

The man can ride

2009-12-29T16:59:00.002+01:00

The below is the nearest thing I've ever seen to Parkour performed on a bicycle.

Poetry

2009-12-26T23:37:00.003+01:00

With my apologies to my English-only readers, I'm afraid this one is quite untranslatable.

Ein Nashorn und ein Trockenhorn
Spazierten durch die Wüste,
Da stolperte das Trockenhorn
Und´s Nashorn sagte: "Siehste!"
-Heinz Erhardt

Oh, holy night

2009-12-24T11:01:00.003+01:00

We arrived late last night in Nordhorn. This town is, to me, the center of German culture and civilization. I speak and read German all day at home in Düsseldorf, but other than linguistically, a big city is often just a big city, and if you painted over the signs and added a few more people in shades of brown, Düsseldorf could be America. Nordhorn is different. Nordhorn could never be anywhere but Germany. The homes are built like those of the very smartest pigs, of stone and brick, with a thin strip of grass and flowers running around the edge. The local radio station regularly broadcasts in the local dialect, Plattdeutsch, which sounds like a mix of Dutch and Hochdeutsch spoken by someone very drunk. People still practice fascinating regional traditions here: Unmarried men, on their 25th birthday, receive a long string to which socks have been tied; People go kegeln, which is like bowling except that there are 9 pins, the lane is (by design) not flat, and you play it while seated in a private room connected to your private lane and decorated like the interior of a 1950s station wagon; In the winter, large groups gather for klootschieten, which, as near as I can recall, involves taking turns throwing a lead-cored hockey puck down a road until you are falling-over drunk. Nordhorn was my first experience of Germany, and to me no other place could ever feel as wonderfully and authentically German.

I've surely mentioned this before, but German Christmas lasts significantly longer than American Christmas. I think that German-style Christmas may well be where the tradition in some American families comes from of opening presents the night of Christmas Eve. The celebrations will begin tonight (Heiligabend, 'Holy Evening') with dinner, church, and gift opening. Christmas then continues for two full days, during which we'll sing and go to church and meet friends and relatives and eat.

I was not familiar with German Christmas in its nutritional aspect when I first visited Roswitha for Christmas in 2004. I knew there would be a huge dinner, and I assumed that the practice would be similar to that in my own family when we have a feast; we often eat a big breakfast, then simply skip lunch so as to have room for a big late-afternoon dinner. So when I awoke on Christmas morning, I did what seemed natural to me, and ate until I was stuffed. Pretty much as soon as Rose's mom had cleared away my table, though, it was time for tea. 'Tea', in American English, is a bitter brown liquid. In German, the same word refers to a five-course meal consisting entirely of cake and cookies, all of which must be eaten if one wishes to make a good impression on one's hosts and future parents in law. Tea was followed by lunch, which is the main meal here and thus consisted of the roasted whole mammals and other delicacies associated with Christmas dinner. After lunch was 'coffee', which, like 'tea', means something different and more filling than in America. In my recollection, it was between coffee and dinner that we were allowed a short break consisting of an hour's walk. After dinner, presumably, was dessert, but I don't recall this portion of the evening. It's entirely possible that I passed out.

This Christmas is very special because it is the first time the Stürmers are spending Heiligabend at one of the children's homes. We'll all be visiting Rose's sister, husband, and darling new baby daughter. This is also a special Christmas for Rose and me because it's out last Christmas as a family of two. The Gummybear will be joining us in just a few more months; it's already very recognizably its own little person - with Daddy's nose - in its ultrasound pictures. This morning, when I woke up, I put my hand on Rose's belly and felt it dancing around. It's excited for what's coming in the next year, and so am I!

On incentives

2009-12-17T11:44:00.002+01:00

I've been away from this space for nearly a month now. Partly this was for the reasons I discussed in my previous post, and partly it was because it's been crunch time at work. We're in the process of releasing the software I've been working on since I started there, and time pressure has had all of us burning the candle at both ends to get our baby feature-complete and reasonably bug free.

I'm laid up sick with a nasty cold today, and when I read this amusing note from the excellent (Nobel Prize winner) Paul Krugman, I thought I'd share the chuckle with you all.

Back in 2001, the Bush Administration orchestrated a set of tax cuts. Because these cuts weren't matched by spending reductions, they would have (and have in fact) exploded the deficit, which would have allowed them to be blocked under the Byrd Rule. Since the Byrd Rule only applies to bills that significantly raise the deficit ten years out though, and since our president was a very clever man, the administration simply wrote the tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010. Poof, ten years out the deficit is completely untouched!

The very best of these cuts, in terms of its unintentional comedy, was the repeal of the estate tax. In 2001, half of the money you inherited above $675,000 was taxed. This was increased by steps: a million dollars in 2002, a million and a half in 2004, two million in 2006, 3.5 million in 2009 and unlimited in 2010. Thus was struck a powerful blow in defense of the right of rich people's grandchildren to never have to work a day in their lives. At least as long as Grandpa kicks it in 2010, because the law will repeal itself at the end of the year and the estate tax cap will return to a mere half a million dollars.

What a bizarrely perverse economic incentive Congress and the Bush Administration, in their wisdom, chose to bequeath us. If your obscenely wealthy mom dies on December 31, 2010, you get everything, but if she survives past midnight, you can kiss half the estate goodbye. If I were Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, I'd be celebrating Christmas next year in an undisclosed location.

My thoughts

2009-11-19T12:28:00.003+01:00

I've spent a lot of brain juice in the last few months thinking about the phenomenon of celebrity, and about the effect the shrinking of the world has had on our perception of it. The Internet and reality television have put celebrity, or at least widespread recognition, celebrity's uncouth cousin, within seemingly easy reach of anyone with a computer or a telegenic personality, and at the same time the modern 24-hour media has torn more traditional celebrities from their pedestals and exposed them as human beings like us.

I'm not entirely done wrapping my mind around the relationship between these things, but the general shape of my feeling is that my generation has developed a social ethos that simultaneously venerates celebrity and sees it as easily achievable. We have hundreds of Facebook friends, and we use technologies like blogs and Twitter to turn our lives into media for the consumption of others.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing, but I find myself often asking whether the constant invitation of others into one's private sphere doesn't have an inevitable impact on one's authenticity. I've caught myself in the midst of an experience enjoying not the experience itself but the anticipation of the blog post that I could create from it. The publication of our lives on webpages and in social media separates us from ourselves; we are no longer living, but rather crafting personas and managing brands. How can we be authentic when we're living for the consumption of others?

With these thoughts moving through my mind so much recently, I've been forced to keep questioning my motives for posting something here. Do I really have something interesting to say? Or am I just turning my life into media for the sake of my ego? If I'm not adding value to the Internet by publishing actual content rather than 'what I ate today' fluff, I think it's better to just let the American Umlaut sit empty.

This is a complicated line of thought that I obviously haven't quite gotten my brain all the way around. It's hard to know how one should shape one's relationship with the Internet and social media. It's especially complicated for me because of the international nature of so many of my most important relationships, which provide a pretty good argument in favor of turning more of my life into media for the sake of keeping in contact.

As always, I'd be thrilled to learn your thoughts on my thoughts. Assuming I have interesting things to add to the conversation that is the Internet, I'll hopefully be posting a bit more often here - otherwise I generally say hi at least once or twice a day on Facebook, where you're more than welcome to drop by.

An American Pedant in Düsseldorf

2009-10-30T18:37:00.002+01:00

I just read a fascinating article about the most distant object ever detected, in which the NY Times tells us that, when the light we are now seeing from the object was emitted, the universe was nine times smaller than it is today.

This formulation drives me nuts. What does it mean for a thing to be nine times smaller than it is now? Measure me. What is my smallness? How big would I be if I had nine times as much of it?

I see this nonsense all over the place, where people don't seem to understand how units of measurement work or how they can be compared. My height is about 178cm: if I say that Joe is half my height, you can easily conclude he must be around 89cm. Would you be able to reach that conclusion if I told you he was twice as short as I am? Similarly, I would be greatly pleased if sports writers would stop informing me of events that happened "twice as slowly" as other events. Slowness is not a measurable quantity.

Temperature is the one iffy area where I'm forced to be a bit less crotchety, because it's more complicated. Technically, you can't say something is "twice as cold" as something else for the same reason you can't say you had fifty potatoes yesterday but three times fewer today. On the other hand, if you are having unseasonably warm weather (say 60 F) for December, and say it was twice as cold (meaning 30 F) last year, you will drive me a little nuts, but go ahead; you'll really be no wronger than if you say it was half as warm. I'm pedantic, but not enough to try to get people to give their ratios in Kelvins.

Now on stage: Gummybear Stürmer and the Transparent Uterus

2009-10-29T17:54:00.004+01:00

As promised, a picture of the Gummybear. I promise not to become one of those freakish people whose blogs overflow with pictures of ultrasounds and bellies, but do allow me the pleasure of sharing one image.

This was Gummybear Stürmer on the day we confirmed its existence. At this point it was about two centimeters long - it's nearly four times that, now - and it's clear to see where the nickname came from.

Amazingly, just two months later, it's already shaped entirely like a person. Head, fingers, toes, backbone, heart, even its stomach is already functioning. What fascinating machines we are, that we contain equipment capable of constructing copies of ourselves.

The next generation begins

2009-10-29T10:38:00.002+01:00

The Stürmer family is proud and thrilled to finally be able to announce the expected arrival of its newest member. The Gummybear, as it has been dubbed, is expected to arrive and receive a more traditional name on or around May 3rd, 2010.

Radio silence at the American Umlaut has been largely the result of this news. The knowledge of my coming fatherhood has made it hard for me to think of anything else I wanted to write about, and writing about the pregnancy had to wait until the first trimester passed without any problems and Rose had informed her employer. Now that the lid is off, you can expect much joyous activity here.

Another reason for my relative quiet has been the arrival of my annual winter depression. Every year, as the days get shorter and the weather colder, the lack of light and exercise lead my brain to betray me. I've begun sitting under a high-output full-spectrum lamp while reading the news or practicing the piano for half an hour the last three mornings, which seems to be helping a great deal. I don't have enough data points to know for sure, but it looks like I may have found a trick to at least reduce the extent of my depression.

Before I go, here's are quick answers to the most common questions I've been getting:

- Rose is doing wonderfully. She's experienced no morning sickness to speak of, just a little fatigue and an insatiable appetite. No requests for pickle-and-ice-cream sandwiches yet.

- We do know what the Gummybear is going to be, and what it will be called when it gets here, but we've decided not to share that information. We're going to slap a name on it in secret, and announce it when it's too late and no one can argue. Kapow. We're like baby-naming ninjas.

- Pictures of the Gummybear exist, and will be available here at some point. I'm sure you'll agree that, although it looks much like any other 14-week foetus, our 14-week foetus is without questions the cutest unborn creature in the history of placenta-based reproduction.

- The nickname "Gummybear" came about because of how it looked on ultrasound at two weeks - you could see a big head, a body, and tiny little stubs of arms and legs. It looked just exactly like a giant cinnamon-flavored gummybear.

- We have plenty of space for a baby in our apartment, so there are no plans as yet to move.

- We will possibly be coming to America in the summer despite the presence of our larval-state spawn. Rose will be off work in any case, so she'll have no need to travel quickly, and so we're looking at the possibility of her crossing the pond in a large boat of some kind.

- Everyone keeps commenting that the Gummybear is going to come out gorgeous and incredibly intelligent. I agree that this is a possibility, but please keep in mind that the other half of its genes will come from me.

I am very, very excited to be a father. Thanks so much to everyone who has already wished Rose, the Gummybear and me well. I'll keep you all posted as events develop.

Get over here!

2009-10-17T13:28:00.000+02:00

Short and sweet. And awesome.

A city on a hill

2009-10-08T11:55:00.001+02:00

"At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without universal health insurance." - Progressive Magazine, January 1917

Quicky

2009-09-30T08:53:00.002+02:00

Still busy as mentioned, but I wanted to share this article. I love Olivia Judson's columns, and this one is particularly fascinating - a look at the emergent effects of predators on an ecosystem.

Oooof

2009-09-29T15:52:00.002+02:00

Super, super busy lately. I've started taking singing lessons and piano lessons in addition to dancing once a week and singing in the church choir with Rose. And then, since I didn't have enough to do, I agreed to translate a journal article for a really awesome professor I used to study under at Bochum in my olde tyme days as an exchange student.

So I'm swamped and won't have time to craft fine paragraphs to grace this blog for the next little while. Sorry about that. Hopefully in two or three weeks things will settle down and I'll have a few stories to share.

In the meantime, this: I've just gotten my first paycheck at my new job. I lean left politically, but seeing nearly half my income get eaten by taxes and social security makes me want to curl up in front of some Glen Beck with a can of Bud.

Another perspective

2009-09-13T20:20:00.002+02:00

I just watched news coverage of massive protests against planned change in the national health care system. Only I live in Germany, so the protesters are fighting to keep their health insurance out of the hands of for-profit private entities. The best sign of the night, "Stop the Americanization of health care."

When you Americans in my audience consider the possibility of nationalizing health insurance, keep in mind that for the rest of the industrialized world, America's current sytem is the universally recognized example of what not to do.

How it was in Brussels

2009-09-13T13:34:00.005+02:00

This is the fourth time I've accompanied Mr. M, a Japanese design artist, on his visits to European trade shows. Three of those have been in Brussels, and I've always slept at the Jacques Brel youth hostel, which is very well kept and has the advantage of being just around the corner from the Hotel Bloom, where Mr. M always stays. This year, though, I found that I just don't have what it takes to brave a night in a hostel any longer.

Those of you who've been following my adventures for a while will remember that my laptop was stolen from my room last year. And so this year, I simply couldn't relax enough to sleep. Every slightest sound was enough to haul me from the brink of slumber and send my eyes darting around the room in search of a sneaking thief. After two nights of this, I was operating in a sort of haze all through the day. I felt like I was coordinating the activities of my brain and body by remote control, and I started having trouble remembering which language I was supposed to be speaking to whom. Mr. M was surely impressed at my ability to translate English into German, but it didn't help him understand much.

The third night, I vowed to ignore anything going bump in the night and simply accept the loss of anything that walked off. After all, I'd brought nothing of value with me precisely because of my experience last year. My forced change in frame of mind and sheer exhaustion combined to let me actually relax, and by ten o'clock I was drifting off into a land of poetry and...

SNNNKSKSKKKKKNNNKSKKKKSKKKNSNKSKK!!!

Holy shit! Earthquake! Car wreck! Chainsaw massacre attack! My head shot from my pillow as from a launch pad and with adrenaline surging through my veins I sought the source of this ungodly vibration. It was, I soon established, neither a natural disaster nor a man-made catastrophe. It was a gangly teenager with a snore that could blast corn from the shuck. He had the worst case of sleep apnea I've ever observed - after nearly every exhalation, he'd begin SNNNKSKKKKSNSNKSNNKKKKing air into his lungs, then stop breathing altogether for several seconds before audibly waking with a gasp.

The way I was feeling, I didn't care whether the kid stayed awake all night or just stopped breathing for the same time span, but the apnea thing was not doing it for me. I tried to get a single room for the night, but the hostel was booked full, as were all the hostels in the area. I finally decided to pay for a hotel room, and headed out at about 12:30 to find my new residence. I finally got to sleep around 2:00, but slept so deeply that I actually felt a lot better the next day.

As I mentioned in yesterday's mini-update, I've finally returned from my moderately hellish trip to Brussels and am finally feeling rested enough to give a coherent account of my experiences there.

I couldn't afford to stay in a hotel the whole trip, but fortunately a friend a fellow interpreter offered a place on her floor for my last two nights. That really saved my trip (thanks again, Y-chan, if you're reading!), and resulted in a fairly excellent photograph when I found a very... interesting hat in a corner of Y's apartment. (Photograph removed after I realized it was the first thing showing up when you google image search me. Me with a rubber boob on my head isn't the first impression I want to give people.)

As if sleep deprivation weren't hellish enough, business was awful for the second year in a row, and Mr. M seemed to be bent on taking his frustrations out on me in the form of indirect criticism. Without getting into the whole "he said, I said" exchange here, let me just say that if you do not believe in the value of academic knowledge, you shouldn't hire an academic, pay him for using knowledge he gathered in study, and then criticize as useless the way he's invested his time.

Grr.

Finally, though, Friday came, and the fair ended. It turns out that one advantage of being a stupid, foreign academic instead of an entrepreneur who understands the true soul of Japan is that even when no one wants to buy the entrepreneur's art, the academic still gets paid. I now have about half the money I'll need to buy a new digital piano, and hopefully I'll be able to spare enough from my first paycheck to cover the rest. And so long after I've forgotten the frustrations of the last week, I'll be able to make beautiful music with the fruits of my labor.

Tadaima!

2009-09-11T22:05:00.001+02:00

I'm home from Brussels, and I promise to tell at least one story about the fascinating conversations I had with my employer (conversations with heavy subtext to the effect of how stupid I am). First, though, I'm drinking a beer and enjoying my first evening at home with my wife in a week.

Brussels, day 2

2009-09-09T14:08:00.003+02:00

There are certain inevitable facts of life. One of them is that, for every three or four nights you spend sleeping in a hostel, one of them will be completely dominated by the eardrum-rupturing oral explosions of some jackass with intense sleep apnea and the lack of social consciousness that would have led him to get a single room.

There's not much you can do in this situation. You can wake the guy up every time his snores become too intense to sleep through, but it never takes more than two or three minutes for them to begin again. You can move to another room, or - as I did in Kyoto last year - carry your mattress to the lobby. Or you can seal all offending air passages with hot glue.

Around midnight last night, that last option was starting to look really good to me. Eternal damnation is a high price to pay for a good night's sleep, though, so what I ultimately did was check out of the hostel and move to a hotel down the street. I only got six hours of sleep that way, but at least they were mostly uninterrupted.

I'm completely wiped out after three nights of inadequate sleep. A fellow interpreter has offered me a spare mattress at her place for the last two nights of the fair, and I really hope I can sleep well on it. If not, I guess I can get a hot glue gun at the office supply shop and head back to the hostel.

Day one at the Indigo trade fair

2009-09-08T22:59:00.000+02:00

I spent the day mostly reading Orson Scott Card's fantastic Worthing Saga. The fact that I got through the first 360+ pages of a novel is indicative of how busy the fair was today. Still, we're doing better business than last year - in fact, we've already sold more designs than we did at last year's entire fair.

My darling wife comes to the same fair on business every year, and tonight when the fair shut down I headed out with her and a very excellent co-worker of hers for a dinner of shellfish and beer, which was super delish.

I would write more, but it's after eleven o'clock already and I want to take an honest shot at getting a halfway decent night's sleep tonight. Living in a hostel is definitely not a good way to get eight hours a night.

My arrival in Brussels and my new job

2009-09-07T17:13:00.002+02:00

I arrived last night in Brussels to do my annual interpreting gig (I love that word) for Atelier Mineeda. This is my fourth visit to the city, but I love it here every time. Brussels has an atmosphere like Amsterdams, where there are relatively few famous buildings, but there is lots of pretty architecture. Brussels has more of a big city feel, though, which I don't like so much. You have to expect that, though. This is the capital of the European Union, after all. Needs lots of office space. Banana angles don't regulate themselves, you know.

My week here is the continuation of a pretty crazy period in the Life o' Benny. I handed in my resignation about a month ago. Then I spent a week literally just playing web games because my boss would neither give me work to do nor allow me to sit on my ass via home office. Then I had two weeks of vacation before beginning my new job as a computer programmer at H.Com, which job I had a whole week and a half before leaving for Brussels.

A lot of you, my loyal fans, have been asking me about my new job. In short, it is awesome. I have real responsibility on a real project, and I spend my days writing computer code, and I don't have to sell anything to anyone. I'm surprised and a bit dismayed when I look up and see that it's time to head home, and my anticipation of getting another bit of the puzzle I'm working on solved spices my evenings. It is a fine thing to not hate one's work.

The most bizzare thing on the Internet

2009-08-25T20:47:00.001+02:00

This is, without any question, exactly what the title of this post declares it to be. I demand that you watch it.

German pop music - an analysis

2009-08-23T12:24:00.003+02:00

There is a disturbingly popular German dance song called "Das rote Pferd" (The Red Horse), based, I have just learned from the almighty Internet, on an old children's song. The lyrics of the song are as follows:

Da hat das rote Pferd
sich einfach umgekehrt
und mit seinem Schwanz
die Fliege abgewehrt

Die Fliege war nicht dumm
Sie machte sum, sum, sum
und flog mit viel Gebrumm
ums rote Pferd herum.

In English:
And then the red horse
simply turned around
and drove the fly away
with its tail

The fly wasn't dumb
It went "zoom zoom zoom"
and flew with much humming
around the red horse

The lyrics are then repeated about three hundred thousand times, backed by the electronic noise and steadily accelerating bass thumps that are the trademarks of German Schlager music.

This song has always bothered me. Mostly because it's so annoying that its author should be brought up on charges at Den Haag, but also because the story just isn't logical.

First off, it starts with "and then." What's that all about? The song consists of two verses, surely you could have found the space for a short introduction.

And then the fly is supposed to be "not dumb" because it figures out that it should fly around the horse? But over the course of the song, this happens about a bazillion times, and every time the fly reacts in precisely the same way. Maybe the first time the fly dodges the tail and buzzes around to the other side of the horse this seems somewhat clever, but after twenty or thirty repetitions I'd expect a fly that "wasn't dumb" to try something dufferent. Maybe the horse can hear the gorgeous buzzing that is described in beautiful poetry taking up no less than 25% of the song's lyrics. Maybe the fly should try it once without the "zoom zoom zoom"?

Es waren einmal ein Pferd und eine Fliege
Die Fliege wollte das Pferd beissen

Da hat das rote Pferd
sich einfach umgekehrt
und mit seinem Schwanz
die Fliege abgewehrt

Die Fliege war nicht dumm
Sie machte sum, sum, sum
und flog mit viel Gebrumm
ums rote Pferd herum.

Da hat das rote Pferd
sich einfach umgekehrt
und mit seinem Schwanz
die Fliege abgewehrt

Die Fliege war nicht dumm
Sie erprobte eine alternative Strategie
und flog ganz leise
ums rote Pferd herum.

I am as old as my mother

2009-08-13T23:29:00.003+02:00

When I was a young child, I once asked my mother her age. She told me that she was twenty-seven years old. As I was a young child, I accepted as simple fact any information provided me by my parents, and so my mom was twenty-seven years old. And she stayed that way for a good five years before it occured to me to ask again.

A child's image of a parent is a thing of permanence that does not fade or erode with time, and so the human beings that are my mother and father today live alongside their infinitely wealthy, omniscient and inconceivably tall past selves. It's always a bit of a shock to return home and look down into my mother's eyes, to know a thing that she doesn't know, to realize that she's continued to age. How can that be? In my mind, she is and shall always remain precisely twenty-seven years old.

As of Monday, I, too, am twenty-seven. A surreal experience; I'm the first age I ever knew a grownup to be. Doesn't that mean I must be a grownup now? I certainly don't feel it. Where are my grownup superpowers? I remember Great Grandma knew a trick where she could take her teeth all the way out of her mouth, and someone told me that was something only grownups could do. Well, I'm twenty-seven years old now, and the damned things still don't budge a bit. I'm much less wealthy than an adult is supposed to be, too; when she was twenty-seven my mom could afford anything I wanted, if I could just convince her that I needed it desperately enough. And now I'm the same age and I have to worry every month about where the money goes. And what happened to the well of infinite knowledge that my parents posessed at this age? About ten years ago I went through a period where I knew everything, but I seem to have forgotten most of it again.

So I seem to be a bit of a late bloomer. One of these days I want to be a father myself, so I'm going to have to do some heavy-duty catching up. Develop a superpower, get rich, learn everything there is to know. I'll be terribly disappointed in myself if I haven't managed all that by next August. By the time a boy is a whole year older than his own mom, he should have figured out how to be a grownup.

On this auspicious occasion

2009-08-09T23:59:00.002+02:00

I would like to be the first to congratulate me on completing my 27th spin around the sun. It's been a rockin' trip so far!

My new job

2009-08-02T12:34:00.006+02:00

I can finally explain why the Umlaut has mostly gone quiet over the last few months. The job I took procuring robots for Germany's finest automation boutiques was an awful fit for me. I was coming home every night with a horrible numbness behind my eyes, and my creative urge was simply gone. My talents at wordsmithery are amateurish in the best of times, and the forlorn scraps of bloggery I generated during that time are really best left unpublished.

Fortunately, that's all behind me now. Over the last two weeks, I was invited twice to interview for a position as a programmer at a small software development firm. The first interview was with the company's owner and seemed mostly to make sure that I would get along with the team. We talked about my goals and how I like to work, but also about my hobbies and his jazz band. We joked around an awful lot for a job interview, which made me nervous, but if he seemed displeased I was prepared at any moment to point at him and whine "but you started it!" Unfortunately, I never had the chance to employ this social masterstroke, because before I knew it the interview was over, I'd been invited back for a more technical conversation, and the whole company had taken up top-hats and canes to accompany me to the front door with a rousing, up-tempo rendition of "Getting to Know You."

I felt right at home.

When I came to the second interview, I greeted my interviewers (the owner again, and his more technically inclined partner) cheerfully, to which they responded by nodding and "mmmhmmm"-ing, while making marks on their notepads. This time, I could see, shit was real. I spent an hour or two answering questions about database structures, my experience simulating object-oriented behavior in an imperative language*, and the relative merits of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Evidently my technical knowledge, and willingness to grudgingly admit that Adama had to deal with a harder situation than Reynolds was ever put in, made a good impression. The next day, I got a phone call offering me the position.

The experience of resigning felt really anticlimactic. I'm not angry at anyone at my sales job, so I didn't have any reason to jump up on my desk or throw my chair or anything fun like that. I just wrote up a short letter, printed and signed it, and handed it to my boss. Well, first I had to look up the Japanese word for "letter of resignation"(辞表-jihyou) so that I could say "excuse me, sir, this is my letter of resignation." He looked a bit surprised, but was very friendly and businesslike in planning my exit with me. I'll be working until next Thursday, then taking my six days of remaining vacation. Starting on the 20th, I'll be a programmer again!

* Geeky footnote: I once had to refactor a C++ program I had written into C for my class in parallel computing, because the school's only parallel compiler was for C. That was the first time I understood just how awesome object oriented programming is.

I run and I run

2009-08-01T18:28:00.002+02:00

I try to get out for a run at least three times every week. For about two years now my routine has been to run exactly an hour. The reason for this is simple: I used to run 45 minutes, but one day I tried running an hour, discovered I could handle it, and felt like a wimp from that point on if I ran even a minute less than an hour. Since then I've lived in fear of proving to myself that I can run more than an hour for fear that I'd have to do it every time. Today I ran an hour fifteen, and it turned out to be pretty easy, so it's pretty certain I've now doomed myself to an extra quarter hour of pounding the pavement every time I head out.

I love the neighborhood I live in for the jogging. There is a really quiet neighborhood north of us that I can use for doing intervals - run fast down one block, then slow down the next, back and forth like switchbacks. North of that is the Zoopark, so named because it was the site of the Düsseldorf Zoo until WWII. And if I run northeast from the park a way, I can get into a forest that's crisscrossed with trails. I haven't been in there yet, but for a while now I've had the suspicion that I could run ten miles in two hours if I really tried, and I'm thinking of heading to the woods to get out of the sun when I try it.

If I manage it, I just hope my brain will forgive me if I don't run two hours every time after that.

Girls rock

2009-07-31T12:16:00.002+02:00

Greenday evidently has a thing they do at their concerts where they invite someone from the audience up on the stage to play a song with them. The audience member often sucks as much as you'd expect of a random person unexpectedly put on stage to play to an audience of tens of thousands. This young lady, however, evidently named Stephanie, is incredible, and absolutely nails the song. I've watched it twice now, and I can't stop grinning.

Dungeons and Dragons and Umlauts

2009-07-18T21:21:00.003+02:00

A couple of months ago I started a game of Dungeons and Dragons with a group of my friends. For those of you who aren't familiar with D&D, it is a game in which the players take up the roles of the heroes in an adventure story set in a magical fantasy world. One person is not a player, but rather the so-called Dungeon Master, and that person is responsible for creating the world and playing all of the villains and other non-player characters that the adventurers encounter.

Lately I've been at a total loss for something interesting to write about here at the Umlaut. You're supposed to write about what you know and what you're interested in. I'm always concerned, though, that if I'm interested in D&D one week and adding a fifth ball to my juggling routine the next week and cha-cha the week after that I'll end up with a blog that's interesting to no one. But screw it - a halfway decent writer should be able to make anything interesting.

So the American Umlaut is now officially a part-time gaming blog. I'll post the events of the quest from time to time and my thoughts on this particular form of creativity. To my players (who are about half this blog's readership, I think), no worries; I'll keep my account here at least a few sessions behind what's happened in the game, so there won't be any spoilers in here.

I'm just going to keep trying new things in here. At some point I'll figure out what of interest I have to say.

Autotuning the news

2009-07-14T12:28:00.003+02:00

I died laughing watching this. Autotune is a program used to adjust the pitch of a singer's voice - these guys are writing songs using newsclips that have been run through the software. Hilarity ensues.

Webcam coreography

2009-07-09T09:28:00.002+02:00

This music video for "Hibi no neiro" by the Japanese band SOUR is simply amazing. This must have taken weeks of work.

Company name of the day

2009-07-01T14:50:00.002+02:00

I've spent the last weeks visiting about 400 companies' web pages. I just encountered the one with by far the best name:

The Dr. O. K. Wack Chemical Company.

This would also be an excellent band name.

Fall to your knees before WISCHTUCH!

2009-07-01T14:38:00.003+02:00

German is a beautiful language, dripping with flavor and full of big fat vowels and rumbling, deep-throated rs and phlegm-clearing glottal consonants. Sometimes I learn a new word, and I can hear just the sound of the word, and it conjures a beautiful image in my mind completely disconnected from the word's actual meaning.

Just a few minutes ago I encountered the word Wischtuch, pronounced vish-took, but with the k coming from just south of your diaphragm. It immediately conjured the image in my mind of a mighty Norse god, standing at the head of his centaurian army with a battle axe the size of a villa slung over one mail-clad shoulder.

And then I looked up the word in the dictionary. Wischtuch - moist towelette.

Well, it was better my way.

Typing my name

2009-06-30T11:20:00.002+02:00

Typing in Japanese isn't as hard as people usually think it would be. You actually just type the sounds of a word phonetically, then select the correct characters for the word you mean from a list of homophones. Since there are no spaces in Japanese, the space bar is conveniently repurposed to cycle through this list.

So if I want to type "kyoudai", which means "brother", I just switch into Japanese mode and type the word phonetically:

kyo-u-da-i -> きょうだい

Then I hit the space bar to cycle through all the words pronounced "kyoudai"...

強大 - powerful
京大 - Kyoto University
鏡台 - dressing table
兄弟 - brother

... and hit "enter" when I've got the right one.

Once you get used to this, you can type in Japanese about as fast as in a phonetically spelled language.

Ironically, it's when I want to spell my name phonetically that Japanese typing becomes a pain. This wasn't a problem before I got married - the romanized phonetic spelling of Benjamin Rooney in Japanese is ben-ja-min ru-u-ni-i (ベンジャミン・ルーニー). Stürmer, though, is a whole new story. It needs a special phonetic character to show the "tü" sound, which doesn't exist in Japanese. So I have to type shu-te-li-ru-ma (シュティルマ), which tangles my fingers up every time.

And despite this effort, Japanese people still can't pronounce my last name, so they all just call me Benjamin.

-嵐紅