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A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

February

Tuesday, 2006-02-28

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Sören Kierkegaard

Days with next to nothing to do are holy. So, I slept late, had lunch with S, wrote and read, took a nap, visited Kela, sat a while in Rytmi-bar, and later met with Maunu, my long time colleague.
Yesterday, oozing disappointment for not getting the job and getting lame excuses instead. Then, Olli, Tarmo, and Maritta came for a semi-surprise visit. After that, some disappointment still oozed, but then it ended. And I was like the fox in the Swedish proverb.
On Sunday, a walk, an attack on the machines at the gym, the Olympic ice-hockey final, a walk to the market square, idling.

Strange things in Finland, part 2

The extremely bitter filter coffee, bitter but not strong.
Legally mandated coffee breaks at work (2 times 10 minutes per day, I assume).
Popularity of bitching about the tax on cars.
Claiming that "Finland is a land of long distances", when most Finns live in cities, and in the triangle of Helsinki - Turku - Tampere. On average, distances in France, Germany, and Sweden are longer, for they are larger countries.
Efficiency and friendliness of the local bureaucracy, for example Kela.
Avoidance of voice-mail: Finns use SMS and email instead.
Serving grated carrots as salad.
Efficiency of local power-plants: 85 percent or more.
Under-ice fishing with nets and wire-hooks.
Cross-country skiing.
Smoking in cafes and bars - terrible!
Lack of foreigners and ethnic restaurants.
Prevalence of xenophobia.
Cheap and good wine available in the state owned alcohol stores.
Number of drunkards shouting to invisible people.
Lack of free, open WLANs in Helsinki.

Business idea?

Would there be market for a small consultancy specialising in (system/sw) architecture evaluations, re-architecting and related training? I think I have the necessary education and experience and some of the needed entrepreneurial spirit. In civil architecture, many architects have their own small companies. Civil architects design building architecture and then let other specialists to take care of electrical design etc. Similar division of concerns and labour should work well in systems architecting.
A thriving ecosystem of such consultancies, or small design workshops, would decrease the power of large corporations. It would also guarantee a number of jobs in Finland - to compete with cheaper labour of India, China, etc, we need to work smarter. Being small and thus threatened by extinction should increase smartness.
Any ideas? If certain things fail to materialise, I may start such a company. Just for fun, if nothing else.

Automatically screwed

A bank's automatic computer system screwed me. I had an empty, unused, and unnecessary account in the bank. The bank charges few euros per month for keeping the account in their system. My account ran empty and the system started to send threatening letters to me. I owed some 10 euros to the bank, and they seriously were sending the hounds after me and destroying my credit rating. Fortunately I was able to tame the beast and close the account.

My lunch restaurant in Kallio

Again, I have started to frequent the local Finnish lunch restaurant Heipan herkkulounas (Heippa's delicious lunch). They served simple Finnish dishes from fried herrings to minced meat steaks. They also serve fabulous Finnish coffee, so bitter that my hair stands straight if I drink it. A great place. Definitely worth visiting for every curious tourist.
If someone know any other authentic small Finnish lunch places, please let me know. I am so bored with fancy restaurants, in which I have to pay for extra space, decoration, and maybe even lavish lifestyle of the owners.
By the way, places like Heippa's are very common in Italy. I know many such places even in Venice, and visit them annually.

Sour, as the fox calls rowanberries

I have solved the job mystery by deciding to ignore it. It just does not make sense to worry over decisions of recruiting managers. Clearly, I would have been a near-perfect choice for the job, but if the recruiting managers cannot see it, it is their, and company's shareholders', problem. Clearly not mine. So, why to sweat such a small, almost insignificant thing.
So, I got over it, and decided never to get under it again. And I will take note of Sami's and Kilvar's wise advice. See yesterday's comments.

Monday, 2006-02-27

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. Albert Camus

Strange things in Finland

Some strange or peculiar things in Finland after returning from USA.

Shops are closed on Sundays.
No shop is open 24/7.
Soda is expensive and Dr. Pepper is not available in large bottles.
Taxis are in good shape.
Pedestrians do not greet each other.
Cars do not give way for pedestrians on cross-walks.
Not many foreigners, mostly chalk-skinned Finns.
Many men have cut all their hair off.
Nobody has grey hair and all too many have red hair.
Drunkards roam the streets.
Public transport is expensive.
Newspapers are skinny and have poor coverage of foreign issues.
Most talk-show hosts in the radio cannot speak.
Bookstore sells booze.
Variety of bread is large.
Variety of soy-products in not large.
Fire-trucks (engines) are rather short and have no external gauges.

More later.

Job mystery

Why is it that I am (according to the employers) not suitable and competent for nothing but developing telecom network equipment? I have now applied for many jobs, been interviewed and always I am told that I am very good, competent, educated, and professional, but since I have not been doing to the job I have applied for, I cannot do it in the future either. And that since I do not know the people inside the company, I cannot join the company.
It seems that employers would really like to re-employ their current employees. After all, they have been doing to the job and know the people.
Kind of impossible situation for me. So, I am stuck with series of continuously simpler, less demanding jobs in Nokia Networks. It seems that getting an MIT-degree simply does not pay off, that education is a liability, not an advantage. And that past things only prove that one can do only what one has done.
I think my career in the industry is over for good. I have to return to the academia and try to carve myself another career there. Clearly I am not seen as a competent person in the industry.
I would really appreciate any ideas about what I am doing wrong. Or ideas how to convince recruiting managers that they would do well by hiring me with my experience and education. And enthusiasm.

Food security in USA

A recent study by US department of agriculture tells us that

Eighty-eight percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2004, meaning that they had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that year. The prevalence of food insecurity rose from 11.2 percent of households in 2003 to 11.9 percent in 2004 and the prevalence of food insecurity with hunger rose from 3.5 percent to 3.9 percent.

Being rich as a nation does not mean not having hungry citizens. Not even though the nation and its citizen claim to be Christians. Remember how Jesus told the Christians to take care of the poor.

Winter

The church was hidden by a frosty mist when we woke up. Air was cold, -13 C, and crispy. Hints of smoke, of wood, coal, and natural gas, for there is a power plant nearby. And some old houses still have fireplaces. Fun to stay under thick covers with the window open, not hurrying to close it. Reminds me of childhood.

Sunday, 2006-02-26

No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and defend them in the name of morality. William Sloan Coffin

Ice-hockey

The whole Finland, or almost, is watching TV at the moment. The game, Finland against Sweden, is 2-2 after two periods. Rather exciting.
Well, Sweden won 3-2. Finnish players were crying.

Saturday, 2006-02-25

I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate. John Steinbeck

Talking to drunkards

Here in Kallio, Helsinki, we certainly do not have a shortage of drunkards. Anytime I venture out, I meet some of them, sometimes even a larger group of them. Today, I was on my way to the local store to buy some groceries and I saw a group of three older drunkards. They supported each other, walked in a row, with the one's at the side supporting themselves with walking sticks. I greeted them. They replied happily. I find greeting people valuable. I find greeting drunkards especially valuable — too often we look down on our unfortunate compatriots. We should not, they are humans and valuable as such, just like CEOs and ministers.

Big party tomorrow

Whether the Finnish team beats Sweden and wins gold or not, the Finnish team will arrive with a special charter-flight to Helsinki right after the game. And then the party will reach its peak in the Market Square. It will be fun, all shy Finns behave outrageously and bars and breweries will make huge profits. I can hardly wait.

Getting old

I think I am getting older. After just 6 pints of beer (although in a very smoky bars), I overslept until 1 pm. This is not good. I think I should not drink more than a few pints. More than that makes me too sleepy, or reluctant to wake up.
Now, for a walk, then some research in certain SW architectures.

Friday, 2006-02-24

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one. Paul Auster

The effect of being conscious

I was in a bar. It was full of people, most of them much younger than I. When I was conscious of my age, I felt old. When I just enjoyed the atmosphere, I felt just young. Being too aware of everything may decrease happiness.

New cartoons and panic and stupidity

A small Finnish magazine, Kaltio (with 1100 subscribers), published a cartoon in which Mohammed talks with a Finn. This was too scary for the owners of the magazine: they promptly fired the editor. Also, a Finnish bank, Sampo, and a Finnish insurance company, Tapiola, have announced that they will not any more advertise in Kaltio.
This is becoming tragicomic. I think I have to change bank: I cannot trust my money in a bank, whose management is panicking and does not respect Western value of free speech.
When Soviet Union still existed, Finland was blamed for finlandiezierung, i.e., of bowing to Soviets and being afraid of them. It now seems that there is a large group of Finns, even in leading positions, who are just too afraid of next to anything. So sad.
See the article in Helsingin sanomat for more information of this sad debacle. I am so ashamed of being Finnish. What a country of sissies!

Punk rocks

Still I enjoy listening to punk rock. It seems that something permanent happens to one's taste of music when one is teenager. My music taste is almost the only thing that has retained essential qualities over the decades. Well, I have long hair as I had back then.

The great robbery

A great analysis of the great robbery in UK.. Really daring criminals must now be wondering what to do with the 70 million euros they got. And most likely they cannot do anything with them. And the police has already arrested three suspects. It is interesting to see when they will get caught. Big robberies are always fascinating, they have almost romantic glamor around them.

Good questions

Why Aren't We Marching? asks James Gustave Speth. I have no answer, but I am ashamed of myself. I should be doing more for the safety of the planet. And I am not.
Mark Engler asks How Costly Is Too Costly? and refers to the Cost of war-site. At least, if US had invested the $240 billion in developing energy systems and preventing global warming, there might not be a reason to march, and the US economy would be in much better shape. Investing in wars and guns is just like investing in firecrackers: one gets a big bang, but no real benefit for the economy. A bang is not producing anything lasting.

Match Point

We went to see Woody Allen's Match Point yesterday. It is a good movie and seeing it was quite an experience. I always take movies very seriously and emotionally. There was so much wrong-doing in the movie, that it was a bit excruciating for me. But certainly worth the time and attention. And reminded me that I should read some more Dostojevski.

Thursday, 2006-02-23

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people. Norman Mailer

Department of homeland stupidity

Department of homeland stupidity documents all the things the real DHS is doing to keep US safe and secure from real and imaginary enemies. Essential reading - one feels much safer after reading the site.

New books

I received two out of the 11 books I have ordered for preparing for my possible PhD-studies.

Rescuing Prometheus — four monumental project that changed the modern world by Thomas P. Hughes
The prize — the epic quest for oil, money & power by Daniel Yergin

End of oil

Energy at crossroads

Coal &mdash the history

Mystery

For some unknown reason, my suits shrank when I was storing them in my closet in Boston. Now I have to visit the gym to shrink myself. I need a shrink!
At the gym, the mirror tried to convince me that it is me that has un-shrunk, not the suit that has shrunk. It may well be, that the cheap and delicious Asian food is to blame, in addition to my mediocre will-power when it comes to food.

On speaking Finnish again

An anonymous asked, in his comment, whether I find it hard or peculiar to be in a Finnish-speaking community again. Well, it does in a way. People are quieter, there is no small talk, strangers do not greet each other in the street. I find myself reacting in English in shops, saying "thank you" instead of "kiitos".
So, speaking is not too hard, but writing is. I find my written Finnish very clumsy, full of anglicisms. I need to start to write a blog, or some articles, or anything, in Finnish.

Public transport in Helsinki

Helsinki, and its suburbs Espoo and Vantaa, have a decent public transportation system. In the city, the transportation is based on metro and trams, whereas the suburbanites must make do with busses. The system works well, but the pricing sucks big time. A trip in Helsinki costs two euros. A trip from Helsinki to Espoo in the West, or Vantaa in the north, costs 3.6 euros. The pricing is based on administrative boundaries, not on distance, i.e. cost incurred. It is all due to the lacklustre politicians we have chosen to the city councils. Next time, we must choose better.

Fish

One of the nicest things in living in Kallio is the proximity of the market hall. The hall has some 30 small shops, five of them selling fish, another five selling bread, and still another five selling spices, coffee, and chocolate. The fish shops, or stalls, carry a wide variety of smoked fish, which is essential for us, for our kitchen does not have any mechanised ventilation. We cannot really fry fish in our kitchen. Getting ready prepared fish is a blessing.

Kallio in the morning

Kallio, the former working-class paradise of Helsinki, is today full of students, singles, pensioners, and drunkards. During my walk, I saw many old people getting their daily walk, drunkards stuttering to one of many happy-hours, and garbage collectors at work. Students were missing. Either they were still sleeping or at the university. Further away from the centre of Helsinki, in Alppila, I saw young mothers with their children playing in the snowy parks.
I bought the local newspaper, Helsingin sanomat (HS). It cost two euros and is really slim, almost slimmer than some advertisement sections of NY times. HS has its share of advertisements as well, which makes me wonder the low productivity of their news operations.

No jet-lag anymore

Taking some medication and drinking port seems to be effective in killing jet-lag. Port also enhances memory: this morning I knew where I was when I awoke.
The weather is nice, -10C and sunny. It is time to go for a 30-minute walk, then cook some lunch and then head to Espoo for some things, which may become public or not.
Today's tragicomic event: US refused a visa to a prominent Indian scientist, who then took insult and do not want to return to the embassy "to get insulted again". Paranoids do not have many friends.

Wednesday, 2006-02-22

Renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not — safety, for example, or money or power. James Baldwin

Some impressions & observations

Some local fat people were wobbling and blocking my way in the local mall. I said "anteeksi" (translates as "sorry" &mdash there is no "excuse me" in Finnish) and they gave way. Apparently saying "anteeksi" is quite uncommon, as they started to chat about me saying "anteeksi".
Streets are quiet, very much like in Cambridge. Fewer and smaller cars though. No salt on the sidewalks, but lot of sand.
The best Finnish bookstore, Akateeminen kirjakauppa, now has a liquor store in its basement. Quite a combination. I bought a bottle of port wine and no books.

What is political?

Oona Juutinen writes about her life in Amsterdam in the newest issue of Voima-magazine, a local free leftist voice of weltschmerz. She has been squatting houses and claims that squatting houses is political action. It sure is. The most common justification for squatting is that empty houses are wasting resources. In other words, resource efficiency justifies squatting. It is funny how leftist squatters use the same arguments as their opponents. The leftists are for efficiency when squatting, but against it when arranging business or government. They really try to have it both ways.

Enjoy your meal!

According to some research, if one enjoys (relishes) one's meal, one gets up to 50 percent more nutrients from it. See Harriet Brown's op-ed Go with your gut in NY Times yesterday. I agree, one should take time to eat one's meal in no hurry. And one definitely should not talk about work/business over meal. Instead, I would like to follow these guidelines for dining etiquette.

The idea for lunch is to get to know your [business] partner as a person. Unless it is unavoidable, you should only talk business at the end of the meal when the coffee arrives. If you need to pack in more business conversation, suggest meeting at the office for half an hour or so before going on to lunch [rather than afterwards]. Conversation during the meal can be very wide ranging and personal.

It is a great pity and cultural loss, that the current business culture value being in a hurry. Most professionals do not have a decent (half an hour) for having lunch in peace. No wonder they get stress and ulcers. In USA, this self-induced hurry has been taken to extremes: they do not have time to even have a coffee without running here and there at the same time. Poor souls.
Well, it is now time time to go the the market hall to buy some fish for the risotto I am going to prepare at 1pm.

Scary

I woke up in the dark of the night. For the first minute, I had no idea where I was. I always happens when I fly over many time zones. It is really scary. Usually it happens only once, as I learn fast.

Tuesday, 2006-02-21

What is the hardest task in the world? To think. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some beers on Friday?

Lavonardo has it right. It is about time to have a few beers on next Friday. Somewhere in Helsinki, in a not too expensive place (not more than 4 euros per pint). If you are interested, send me email or leave a comment.

Extra energy

I had an acute attack of extra energy today. Flying is not good, it saves too much energy, which then has to find any channel to get wasted. Today, I channelled my energy in bourgeois home decoration. I ordered (with the help of S) our living room anew and somewhat put some new books in prominent places in the bookshelf. See the pictures for results.

A business idea

The jobs of a fashion models is quite simple: don a new dress, walk the catwalk, stop, turn 180 degrees and walk back. The walking style has to be very mechanical and threatening. In addition, the model has to stay slim, a kind of starving ghost, so that each model can don clothes of same size.
Home, living room

This is clearly a job, which robots can do much better. It is not hard to design a robot, which can walk 20 meters, turn, and return. Especially, if walking does not have to resemble fluent human walking. Robots are also more flexible, do not get proud, do not ask for high salaries, can have legs of any length.
What do you think? Should we write a business plan and get some funding for developing fashion robots?

Strange haircuts

Alarmingly many man have shaved their heads. They looks like fugitives from a penitentiary. Some of them even have nice suits, so they are clever enough to disguise themselves as businessmen. It is a bit scary here in Finland.

Monday, 2006-02-20

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. Thucydides

On Israel, anti-semitism, and Palestine

Paul Oestreicher, a German-Jew, a Christian Priest, writes in the Guardian with the title Israel's policies are feeding the cancer of anti-semitism.

But the main objective of my writing today, is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler's racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail. It is highly effective. It condemns many to silence who fear to be thought anti-semitic. They are often the very opposite. They are often people whose heart bleeds at Israel's betrayal of its true heritage.

I find his words very wise. If only there were more wise Jews courageous enough to speak out. Then we would have more hope for solving the terrible and unnecessary conflict between Israel and Palestine.

On getting older

Many people strive for eternal youth. They spend their time in the gym, dying their hair, whitening their teeth, dressing to the latest youth fashion, adopting the newest teen lingo. Not me. I really like to grow old. Every day is an adventure. My body changes, I may even get some wrinkles, my hair migrates from my head to my back. It is interesting to follow these changes. I get wiser, learn new things, have more knowledge and experience to reflect new things. My political opinions change, become more moderate. I develop regular habits. Friendships grew deeper, we have more anecdotes to remember. All this is fine and great.
Life is too interesting for getting obsessed about a particular age.

Carter on Hamas and Palestine

Since Hamas won the parliamentary elections in Palestine, there has been an escalating pressure and conflict-seeking from at least Israel (which decides to steal $50 from the Palestinians per month) and some hard-talking from the US administration. Former US president Jimmy Carter has written a moderate op-ed to the Washington Post with the title Don't Punish the Palestinians. (You may have to register.) His moderate proposal is

It would not violate any political principles to at least give the Palestinians their own money; let humanitarian assistance continue through U.N. and private agencies; encourage Russia, Egypt and other nations to exert maximum influence on Hamas to moderate its negative policies; and support President Abbas in his efforts to ease tension, avoid violence and explore steps toward a lasting peace.

I hope Mr. Bush and his bosses are humble and wise enough to take note.

Leaving

According to Richard Ford

It's interesting to leave a place, interesting even to think about it. Leaving reminds us of what we can part with and what we can't, then offers us something new to look forward to, to dream about.

Thus, in these feelings, I am leaving Boston today, returning to Helsinki, where my real home is. It will e very interesting to observe the Finnish society, politics, and culture first hand. And I will meet all my friends, even those I have not met for a year or two. I am really excited.

Sunday, 2006-02-19

In books lies the soul of the whole past time. Library of congress

Bin Laden's game

A very interesting interview with Michael Scheuer, CIA's expert on him. Scheur's main message is that Bin Laden and his ilk are very talented, determined, and able to carry out new attacks. They also, due to Islam's code of conduct, warn before their attacks. So far, every time they have warned, they have attacked. A quotation on Bin Laden's motives and purposes:

The real root of their opposition is what we do in the Islamic world. If they were hating us because we had elections, or gender equality, or liberty, they would be a lethal nuisance, but they wouldn't be a threat to our security. If you remember, the Ayatollah tried waging a jihad against Americans because we were degenerate, we had X-rated movies, we drank liquor, women were in workplaces. Very, very few people were willing to die for that kind of thing. Bin Laden, I think, took a lesson from that and instead focused on the impact of our policies in the Islamic world, our support for the Arab tyrannies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our presence in the holy lands on the Arabian Peninsula, our invasion of Iraq, our support for countries like Russia that are deemed to repress Islamic people. He's focused on things that are visible to the Islamic world every day, and quite frankly there's a direct correlation between what he says and what all the Western polling firms are finding, that there is a huge majority in Islamic countries that hate our foreign policy. And yet generally, every one of the same countries has a majority, sometimes a large one, that admires the way Americans live, the basic equity of our society.
We should be so lucky as to have him hate us only for our freedoms. He's never even discussed that kind of thing.

Very important reading for anyone wanting to make sense of today's international politics.

Sorrow, Tears, and Blood

Sorrow, Tears, and Blood is a great song by Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician. I like the song very much, but I especially enjoy the lyrics:

...
The army has disappeared then
They leave Sorrow,Tears, and Blood
Their regular trade mark
...

The song is also on the Smashed Hits-issue of Index on Cencorship.

On books and reading a'la Clinton

LA Times has an interesting interview with Bill Clinton. The topic of the interview is the selection of books Clinton was reading while president and is now reading. He seems to be reading much. When asked how to rank presidents, Clinton answered:

I really think the circumstances determine where you are ranked -- whether you have big wars, like the Civil War or World War II. But there are three or four tests you can apply to any president, which are much fairer than ranking them where the deal is rigged based on the time in which they served.

First, did they understand their times and articulate a vision of a more perfect union? Did they refrain from abusing their power? Then you have to say, Did they execute (their agenda), and were people better off when they stopped than when they started?
Those tests are fair to apply to every president.

Emphasis mine.

On Mohammed-cartoon

The editor of Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, has written a very thoughtful op-ed for the Washington Post. The article Why I Published Those Cartoons explains the background of increasing self-censorship, against which the cartoons were published. I find the argumentation rather solid. Especially, I am also against of limiting the freedom of expression because of intolerance of satire by a certain religious or political fraction. Well, read the essay, and decide for yourself.

Saturday, 2006-02-18

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere. Henry A. Kissinger

Greek pizza

There is a small restaurant selling pizzas, sandwiches, fish and chips and other fast food in Cambridge. I was fed up with always eating the the mall, I needed a new experience. So, I went to the small restaurant. It was empty. Actually, it was closed, but I somehow got in and they promised to make a pizza for me. Then they gave me another for free.
The young Greek man, who was dealing out the pizzas, told me, that "here people talk too much about money, investing, house. In Greek, we have less money, but we always have fun, good time, time to relax, time to live."
He also said: "This country is going down the drain. Bush has fucked things up big time. I am ready for war any time." I did not quite understand, which war he is ready for. I assume Bush is not planning to occupy Greece.

Books sent, bags packed, ready to go

Thanks to Kumar's help and car, I took my books to the post office and sent them to Finland. 40 pounds of books cost $40. Anything else would have cost more - the US postal office is a friend of bibliophiles. Later, after lunch, nap, reading newspapers etc, I finished my packing and just relaxed. Tomorrow is going to be fun: first lunch at the Masala Boston and later meeting with Milton, who is storing some of my things while I am in Europe and who is a very talented cook and great friend to discuss with.

Prophet pictures etc

Some people in Iraq have taken the infamous cartoons and drawn their own version of them. I like this approach: why argue, when one can use ridicule (as Feyerabend taught us). See also other cartoons at Mahjoob.com.
I also found two new interesting blogs from Iraq:

Majed Jarrar
A family in Baghdad - family of Raed in the middle from whose blog I got this information

Also, visiting the Iraq body count is always a chilling reminder of the cost of this illegal and unnecessary war. Iraqi war casualties is alarming as well and contains pictures of the victims of terrorism (state and non-state supported).

Friday, 2006-02-17

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. George Washington

Daily crono

My time in Boston is running out. I am getting ready to leave. Today, in the early morning I met with professor Moniz to discuss my PhD-application. He was very busy, but nice still. I hope I will be accepted and can return to MIT again later - when depends on the job I get. If the jobs is interesting, hard, and rewarding, I may stay away from academia for a bit longer. Otherwise, not. The worst thing in life is to get bored, not to learn new things at work.
New England weather tried to play tricks on me, but I took a look at the local weather radar and returned home. I finish my packing for the most part, read, wrote something, then had lunch with Kumar. After lunch I realized that the banks will be closed on Monday. I got in the bank just before it closed and got my money out. It took again 25 minutes to withdraw money. Free museum of technology and business practices.

On bags

I bought a new shoulder bag. I wrote about it earlier. Since then I have had some unexpected discussions on bags in general. Many men seem to share my soft spot for bags. A cultural cliché has it that women collect bags, but my observations tell that it is men who do so.

Thursday, 2006-02-17

One Bush, they say, can never hide two thieves. Aristophanes

A bold plan by the Chinese

The Chinese want to take over the car market. They have already introduced a decent sedan and plan to sell it for less than $10000. But the Chinese have one problem: they cannot yet produce modern, efficient engines. So, being clever and bold, they came up with a daring plan: buy a engine factory, disassemble it, ship to China, reassemble and take over the market. There is one modern plant for sale in Brasilia. Let's see if the Western companies are stupid enough to sell the factory to the Chinese.
The Chinese boast:

"Americans work 5 days a week, we in China work 7 days," he said. "Americans work 8 hours a day, and we work 16 hours."

So, I assume we in the West also have to start working longer, give up holidays, etc. As we know, economy is not a servant of man, but man is a servant of economy. So sad.

Daily energy blogging (9): A good proposal

Robert Frank has a good and simple proposal for curing Americas addiction of oil, save a lot of money, reduce congestion, clean up air, and slow down the global warming. Simply, introduce a $2-a-gallon tax on gasoline and lower income taxes accordingly. I am sure the next president must introduce a tax like this one.

What is the optimal distance to work/school?

I have intuitively thought that living 3 kilometres away from work or school is optimal. In 2005 I lived in Beacon Street, which is about 2.5 kilometres away from MIT. It was a nice walk to and from MIT daily. Now that I moved to Dave's for three weeks and have only a 5-minute walk to MIT, I have started deteriorating. I am gaining weight, my mind is slowing down, my back is sore, and my mood is not sad, but a bit not as happy as it was earlier. Having to walk 40 to 50 minutes per day is essential for me.
In China, I sometimes used to take taxi to work and back. It was terrible, I was on bad mood, full of bad thoughts. But when I cycled to work (10 km, 30-40 minutes each way), I was usually in a very good mood the whole day. Or so I remember, but I do not remember much, as everyone knows.
Today, after dinner at the Mall, I walked to the Central Square. It took 30 minutes. My mood got much better and my back is not sore anymore.

Time to go

I am not as tough, not as independent, and not as bohemian as I tell myself. Now, as I have no real home — a nice place to live though —, no bookshelf, no classes to attend, and no team to work with, I am getting restless, almost bored. And homesick for sure.
It is time to go, time to leave this stage of my life, step in the next one, and make it as nice as this one was. I hope for nice adventures, surprises, joy, happiness, and hard work. Enough money to get by, to rent a one-bedroom home, to buy a few books every month, to buy thai-food from DuDii, maybe even to travel somewhere. And especially, enough time to be with my friends and loved ones.

Being stupid is expensive

I wonder why it never before occurred to me that I can send books to Finland by mail. It is cheaper and easier than failing to smuggle them to the airliner. Mailing costs only (about) one dollar per pound (two dollar per kilogram). Lufthansa chages 100 dollars per 30 kilos. Well, not that much cheaper, but a little, and really much easier. And I definitely do not need all the books during the first 3 weeks in Finland. I have already some 30 new, unread books waiting, and 11 books should arrive from Amazon soon enough.

The new HD works

I was not blind or stupid. I bought the Seagate 160GB hard drive. I connected it to mains and to my laptop and it works as it should. Excellent. The price was $95. Not too expensive.

Quarter economy

Why is it that we nowadays follow economy quarterly? What is so special in a duration of three months? Why not follow the economy with far greater resolution? I assume it would be much better to know, how the last 3.75 weeks compared to the corresponding 3.75 weeks last year. Who would not be interested in how many iPod were sold in the last 234 hours? I think it would be great. We would be so much more informed, the newspapers would have news to print, the accounting industry would create millions new jobs. Everyone would be better off! What are we waiting for?

Wednessday, 2006-02-15

Has not every major empire pursued quixotic dreams of global domination — of shaping the world in its image and for its interest — that resulted in internal decay and doom? Cornel West

Last tram adventure

I suddenly realised that I had never taken the green line to Lechmere terminal. There is a reason: the line to Lechmere reopened only a few months ago and I have not been adventuring here lately. Luckily, I happened to be near a tram stop. So, to Lechmere it was. It turned out the the terminal is very close to the Cambridgeside Mall, where I quite often have my dinners (spicy thai noodles and tofu, every time). Now I have seen the whole subway system in Boston. If I only could do the same in New York, Paris, and London. Well, one has to have goals and dreams.

Seagate external HD with Mac OS X?

The local Best Buy sells 160 GB external HDs for $90. On the package, the text does not mention Mac OS X. I do not see any reason why it would not work with my iBook. Am I blind and stupid?

Lotus Lounge

In the corner of Clinton and Stanton Street, in Lower East Side of New York, is the cafeteria Lotus Lounge. Large windows on both streets let one to see who is in and what they are doing. Usually there are artists, authors, translators, musicians, many with laptop computers. One could mistake the place for a start-up company, if one would not step in.
Inside, one first sees a wooden bar dividing the room in two parts. Closer to the door, there are long benches and small round tables on the left. Larger tables for 4 patrons are on the right. Behind the bar, where they serve alcohol, old and soft sofas and reclining chairs are by a large bookshelf. On the shelf, arts and humanities books lean on each other, in total disorder, just like well-thumbed books should.
Prices are low, a cup of coffee for just $1, bagel with cream cheese for $2. The owners cannot afford fixing anything broken. Thus one wall has wooden panels, the other red bricks, and the wooden floor has seen much since it was last polished. The tables, chairs, and benches, comfortable though they are, can make one trip one's coffee. The ceiling fans dance, while they slowly move the air, and the music: Nico, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop.
Such is Lotus Lounge, my favourite place in New York. I am lucky that S found it last summer.

A record

Being relaxed helps. I broke my earlier record in the Sopranos-pinball. My new record is 83 million points. Not that much — I know one pinball fanatic whose record is 360 million — but a start. Too bad that I do not know whether there is a Sopranos-pinball in Helsinki. Pinball is not in fashion, not the game youngsters play today. When I was young, well, the world was different.

New feature: permalinks

This blog has a new feature: permalinks. A link to permalinks is on the top of the page. The index has also link to permalink of older blogs. Some of them, not all.
Also, pages of all my pictures are now available. They take quite a while to open.

A discussion

A bus driver, a middle-aged, clean-shaved, don Corleone-type of man is driving through snowy Brooklyn. A man in thick green overalls with an ample belly waves his hands next to a drift of snow, tries to flag down the bus. The driver stops, lets the man in.
Driver: This does not look anything like a bus stop, does it?
Man: No, it does not, but I was on my way to the bus stop. If I miss this bus, who know when the next comes?
After 30 minutes, in Midtown, Manhattan, the man wants to get out of the bus, presses the button, comes forward to the door, by the driver.
Man: Bye and thanks for letting me in.
Driver: You will get me in trouble, if you wave like that. Do not do it again.
Man: No I won't, it was just because of the snow.
Driver: I can get in trouble by extending a hand. Let me put it this way. If you have to choose between not stopping and extending a hand and getting fired, which one would you choose?
Man: Well, I see, I will not do it again
The man disappears in the blizzard, the bus continues towards the Central Park.

Tuesday, 2006-02-14

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

New York and the blizzard

New York is at its best during and after a blizzard. It is quiet, white, and beautiful.
Sunday's record breaking blizzard covered the city with 26 inches (66 cm) of snow. Street parked cars were buried, garage parked unusable with their summer tyres. The city was the realm of walking, playing, smiling, even cycling. Some busses were running with snow-chains on, garbage trucks were ploughing the snow, dare-devil taxi-drivers were sliding their taxis here and there - one smashed into the bus I was riding, broke its bumber and lights, but escaped unharmed.

I woke up late, decided to go for lunch to the authentic Muslim-restaurant in the corner of Broadway and East 29th street. Food is very good there and not too expensive. Spicy chickpeas, vegetable stew, rice, two naan breads, and salad cost $6. Just walking from the East 28th/5th avenue subway was too hard in my slippery shoes and broken coat. It was fun, though: walking in the middle of avenues and streets in New York is not commonplace. I had to, sidewalks were still full of snow.
Blizzard NYC

Snow does not stop the subway. It was running with surprisingly many passengers in Manhattan. Surprising since most stairs down to the stations were slippery, full of snow and ice. I got down, and decided not to come up for a while: I was on my way to the Coney Island, to see whether Nathan's was open, to see more snow, to see how the Russians cope with the snow. Well, it turned out.
The car got emptier and emptier as we passed through snowy, quiet Brooklyn. For the last 20 minutes, I was travelling with a young man with pink rubber boots, an elder Russian lady (Haloo, da, harasoo) and an old Russian man, who had a box full of strange things and who was smoking mahorka (Russian tobacco).
Many streets in Brooklyn had not seen anyone on Sunday, some had been walked by one person, maybe going to the one or two open shops. It was quite and beautiful, just the way a perfect Christmas ("white Christmas") would be.
Blizzard NYC

Nathan's was open and full of customers. I almost bought a fish sandwich, but the queue was too long and it was not long since I had lunch. And I did not want a beer, I was planning a long trip by a bus.
I jumped on the first bus. It was heading west, with 10 passengers. My idea was to ride the bus to the terminal and back, but the driver threw me out at the terminal. I was left with a Russian grandmother, to wait for the next bus. She was singing some folk songs, the wind was howling, blasting snow on my face. I was miserable.
Another bus came, displaying its route back to Midtown Manhattan. Perfect. Bus stopped, I climbed in, wiped my metro card. Invalid! Me panicking, not wanting to stay outside with the grandmother any more, driver : "The card is not valid in this bus, you need to pay cash. But where are you going?". Me: "To any subway station, but I do not have $5 dollars in coins". Driver: "It would not help anyway, I am not driving by any subway station". I was about the go out, when the drive told me, smiling: "Do not worry, come in, let's go".
Blizzard NYC

We started towards Midtown, drove around the block and got stuck in the snow. "This is the end", said the driver, but began to drive back and forth. After ten minutes the bus broke free. I complimented the driver: "That was skillful". He disagreed: "Nah, it was pure luck". The rest of the trip was quite uneventful, we got to Manhattan without any accidents. The driver told me: "Everyone should be at home today. I should not be driving this bus. It is too dangerous. Can you feel it sliding all the time. I brake early, I try to drive safely, but I tell you, there are so many nut-cases around, and if any of them does something stupid, jumps in the way, I cannot stop this bus. This is too dangerous." He dropped me at the corner of the 6th avenue and the 16th Street. It was close enough to Union Square, where I had a cup of coffee at Wholefoods.
I heard on the radio, that the La Guardia airport was closed because of the blizzard. And I got curious, I had to see a closed airport. I took subway to the Grand Central and intended to take a subway from there to the airport. There was a train waiting in the station, quiet and with closed doors. Clearly now going anywhere. As I stood there wondering the train, a tall black man in a long white fur coat came to ask whether the train was about to go. I did not know, could not tell, and he went on his way, just to come back in 3 minutes. He had found that the train was about to leave on Monday. Clearly, neither me or him were about the see the closed airport.
Kenka, New York

A bit disappointed, I decided to take the Staten Island Ferry instead, just to see the sea, the skylines of New York and New Jersey, just to feel the slight and soothing rolling of the ferry, just to kill some time. It was a beautiful ride, uneventful and calming, not dangerous as the bus ride was.
After the ferry-trip, I went to see the snow in the Central Park. It looked , well, just like snow does anywhere. Children were playing, making snowmen. Couples were strolling, enjoying the romantic silence.
Before dinner, I bought the books (see below) from the St. Mark's Bookstore. I had a nice dinner in the Japanese on the East 8th Street (fish, rice, beer. A pint of Kirin for $1.5)
Such was my day in New York. I think everyone should be lucky enough to visit New York during a blizzard.

Daily energy blogging (8): On vans

In Europe, Ford sells Transit-vans. They have 100 horsepower turbodiesel engines. In USA, Ford sells E-series vans. They have 230 horsepower 4.7 liter V-8 engines. The European ones are hugely more efficient and economical.
A week ago, New York Times run an article on the new Toyota pick-up trucks. The trucks have huge V-8 engines, which consume a lot of gas. According to the article, high fuel consumption does not matter, because most of the trucks are bought by companies. A strange argument, I would say. If wasting fuel does not matter, why are companies so eager not to pay higher salaries or provide better health care? Why is it OK to waste money on unnecessary fuel and not on necessary health care?

On Mohammed pictures

The Koran tells the Muslims not to draw pictures of Mohammed. Since photography was not invented in the 7th century, when Mohammed lived, and no Muslim at the time dared to draw his picture, we cannot know, what Mohammed looked like. Thus the infamous pictures most likely do not represent the real Mohammed. The Muslim could just have said: "Well drawn, but these pictures are not of Mohammed, but of someone else. We know better and ignore pictures by any Christian artist". Crisis avoided, Christian artists ridiculed.

A picture of Mohammed and Jesus

On the right, a very strange picture. It depicts both Mohammed and Jesus. Is that not quite close to being a miracle?

Monday, 2006-02-13

If we fail to bear witness, in a not too distant future we could see the deeds of Nazi bestiality relegated by their very enormity to the status of legend. It is, therefore, vital to speak out. Primo Levi, 1959.

A guy with an attitude

A 3pm Chinatown-bus never leaves at 3pm. Usually the Chinese operators want to sell still a few more tickets. Today, the Chinese were about to leave when they noticed that a young guy did not have a ticket. He had sneaked in the bus by saying that his girlfriend would have his ticket. She was in the bus and she did not have his ticket. They kept quiet until the Chinese threw the guy out. He was furious, shouting: "It is not my fault, I did not know" and pacing furiously. It took 10 minutes of shouting, pacing, cursing before the guy suddenly found $15 from his pocket and paid his ticket. It was 3.20pm and we were on our way to Boston.

A strange feeling

Whenever I return to Boston from New York by bus and see the Boston skyline, I feel a melancholy similar to what I felt when I returned from Shanghai to Hangzhou. It is a mixed feeling of homecoming, of leaving a big city behind, end of an adventure, of losing something important. I cannot really express the feeling in English, as I cannot describe it even in Finnish. It is a strange feeling and I have only felt it in these two situations.

Terrible user interface

Motorola's Push-to-Talk over cellular, or POC, a way of imitating walkie-talkie with mobile phones is picking up in USA. Good for Motorola, good for Nokia (POC by Nokia — note how POC is for tough guys with square jaws, no time shave daily, and squinting eyes), and maybe good for the users, who can return from the full-duplex, 20th century technology, back to the roots of telecommunications, to the 19th century, and feel tough and square jawed.
Blizzard NYC

But POC is very bad for everyone else. Using POC causes the phone to beep at least 4 times for each speech act. If someone is having a POC-discussion, nobody can concentrate on anything within a 7-meter radius. Especially since POC requires the users to shout, not to talk, to their phones. Absolutely terrible user interface. Just give POC-phones to CIA agents and any terrorist will confess being the origin of evil in 10 minutes. UN, please ban POC!
Why am I so irritated? Well, the bus driver had a POC-discussion for 3 out the 4.5 hours it took him to drive us from NYC to Boston. Which by the way meant that his left hand had next to nothing to do with driving of the bus. But when he got a normal phone call, he used a hands-free system. Maybe there is a rule that one must not have normal mobile calls without a hands-free system, but the rule does not apply to POC-calls. Who knows?

Put your trust in me

I was reading on the next war in the Lotus Lounge, when the tall, slender black woman next to me asked: "I need to visit my home, it is only 2 minutes away, can you keep an eye on my laptop, please?". Of course I could, having no hurry, no need to leave the lounge. I hope she returns before I need to go the restroom....

How not to prepare for a blizzard

I knew a blizzard was coming when I left Boston for New York. Still I chose to wear my Dr. Martins-shoes, which are suicidally slippery on ice and hard snow. I also broke the zipper of my winter coat. I forgot my gloves at home and my woollen MIT-cap is way too small. But I managed. Just like a whale escapes rough seas by diving to the depths of the sea, so a hippie escapes blizzards by walking the stairs down to the subway.
In the subway, a bird-like woman was walking in a mini-skirt and high-heels. Maybe she was returning from a party. It certainly would be a long and arduous way back home for her.

Daily energy blogging (7): Star Ferry, Hong Kong, & busses, trucks

Some of the Star Ferries in Hong Kong have 450 horsepower. They can take maybe 750 passengers on board. The waters between Kowloon and the Hong Kong Island are not exactly calm.
By the way, a large Volvo-truck has 625 horsepower and can tow maybe 30 tonnes of cargo. A Volvo-bus has 380 hp and can take up to 50 passengers.
What is the reason for having 300 or more horsepower engines in passenger cars? Vanity or stupidity?

My top-5 most often eaten foods

Mapo tofu (Sezhuan style bean curd)
Broccoli and garlic (Chinese)
Spicy noodles and spicy tofu (Thai)
Seafood fried rice (Vietnamese)
Fish and chips (US/British)

Top-5 foods of the world

Linguine con nero di seppia, Veneto, Italy
Risotto nero, Veneto, Italy or Catalonia, Spain
Fried herrings and mashed potatoes, Finland
Vegetarian biryani, South India
Fritto Misto di Pesce, Italy

Top-5 breads of the world

Indian naan
French baguette
Finnish setsuuri (sweet and sour bread)
Icelandic flat bread
German vollkorn brot

Nice words

English has many nice words and expressions. One of my favourites is any construction of the type "Xhand". Boats have deckhands, farmers have fieldhands, the jazz bar of the Peace hotel in Shanghai is full of old chinahands.

I love people

I love people. I love watching them in cafes and restaurants, in subways and in busses, and in the streets. I like to listen to their stories, trying to understand what kind of life they are leading, what passions they have, which sorrows are hurting them. In large cities, I can spend hours and hours just doing this, maybe while reading, or pretending to read, a book. If only I could describe them in writing, to let you all enjoy the same joy I do.

Life preserves

The instructions for donning a life-jacket on the Staten Island ferry call life-jackets "life preservers". I like the term. It reminds me of not trying to preserve my life. I do not want my life to be preserved, never changing, aseptic. Too many of us affluent Western citizens try to preserve our lives. But a life preserved is a life wasted, no matter how long it is and how much money one dies with.

Smile!

When a 20-year old smiles, he or she looks older. When a 40-year old smiles, he or she looks younger. And anyone smiling looks cuter, handsomer, and more beautiful, even more intelligent. Unless the smile is fake, a grimace, just baring one's teeth, US-style. So, smile, openly, happily and the world will be a better place.

Daily energy blogging (6): Horsepower

The Staten Island ferry can take 6012 passengers and crew abroad. Its engine has 7000 horsepower. This makes 1.16 horsepower per passenger. Quite remarkable when compared to a standard SUV, which can seat 6 and has a 200 horsepower engine, or 33.3 hp per passenger, or 28 times more than the ferry.

New books

I could not find Ulrich Beck's new book. Anyway, one cannot visit NYC without buying some books. The newest additions to my library are:

The black hole of Auschwitz by Primo Levi - a collection of Primo's articles and essays. Very interesting and important reading, for we must not forget. I will also buy Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees. I read it for an hour in the Union Square B&N on Saturday. Well written, full of new information, and interviews of survivors.
Democracy matters by Cornel West - a pamphlet telling us that democracy really matters and that the unconditional admiration of free-market capitalism is eroding our democracies. I have not yet read much of this book, but it certainly seems to raise important questions.

Saturday, 2006-02-11

A strange kind of discourse has developed in the US .The idea appears to be that it is necessary to turn everyone into Americans, so that Americans are able to live in safety in a world without borders. Ulrich Beck

In Lotus Lounge

Right now, at 3pm, I am sitting and sipping coffee in the Lotus Lounge. It is definitely one of the nicest cafes in the world. Highly recommended: in the corner of Clinton and Stanton, Lower East Side, NYC. They are playing Tom Waits, artists are having their breakfasts, someone his early beer.

Daily energy blogging (5): Carbon dioxide sequestration

BP and Edison Internation are planning to build a "zero-emission" fossil fuel power plant. Their plan is very ambitious: the final design should be ready in 2 years and the plant should be operating in 5 years. It should also be really reliable with uptime of more than 90 percent.
Such plants are most likely necessary in the near future while we are moving over to fusion energy. I am just wondering what kind of guarantees we have that the CO2 will actually stay underground forever, or at least thousands of years.

World is out of control

According to Ulrich Beck, We are living in a world that is beyond controllability. He says that the triumph capitalism and the beginning of the second modernity has made the world more risky. The national states are not suitable for tackling the problems of global world. Instead, we should build new instituions — a new World Bank, Kyoto, international court — for governing the global world. He suggests that cosmopolitanism may be the answer: the cosmopolitan model is about acknowledging difference and the dignity of difference.
Beck's Power in the Global Age has been published. I will buy and read it today in NYC. If I want to solve the energy problems, I have to be up to date with modern political and sociological thinking. Great!

Friday, 2006-02-10

It is better to renounce knowledge than to be blind to a problem because we have contented ourselves with a pseudo solution. Ernst Cassirer

Daily crono

Holiday continues. I woke up, had a walk, read, wrote, met Kumar and had excellent lunch with him the Masala Boston, visited a mall, bought a new shoulderbag, came back home, read, wrote, listened to David Byrne-radio. Quiet, nice day. Holiday. Too had I have less than one month holiday left, but then again, I have been on holiday since the end of August.

Daily energy blogging (4): Sun servers

Sun advertises its new Sun Fire T2000-server as a "cool server". According to Sun, the server does more useful work (computation) with less energy than the competing IBM and Dell servers. Let's see whether this is really important.
The total energy use of IT is less than 3 percent of the total electricity use in USA. However, the detailed report does not consider cooling systems at all. Most likely including cooling would double the IT-related electricity usage.
Even though energy is rather cheap and usage is not very large, Sun's servers should be a great advantage. A significant part of capital costs of a web-server farm goes to building electricity supply and cooling systems. Sometimes enough electricity is simply not available: some web-farms have (or at least) had their own gas-turbine-generators. And cooling systems cost something as well.
I need to research this topic in more detail later.

Driving styles

People of different age and ethnic groups have rather distinct sitting postures while driving. Old white ladies lean forward, almost forehead touching the windshield. Middle-age white men sit rather upright. Young latino and black men tilt their seats almost horizontal, barely being able to reach the steering wheel — it seems relaxed and cool, but may not be that safe — and never use seat belts. I find them funny, living their own movie.

Cheated

I had my morning walk around Cambridge. I called my brother, chatted with him for 30 minutes, got happy and lost in my thoughts I wandered in a small grocery store to buy a newspaper, today's. They sold me one, I walked back to Dave's, read half of the paper before I realised it was yesterday's. How embarrassing is such a blunder?

Am I an eunuch?

Stupid web-tests are always entertaining. How Boyish or Girlish Are You? is as stupid as they get.

You Are 40% Boyish and 60% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them.
You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

Safe from terrorism

The 6-year old foreign terrorists were about to invade a NASA-center. Fortunately, the DHS had just changed the rules and the terrorists were not let in. What a relief for us all: those terrorist kids cannot invade and explode the Space Shuttle.

Safe from sexual harassment

Not even 6-year old girls could be safe from sexual harassment in school, if the authorities would not be vigilant. Luckily they are and the harassing male was suspended. Too bad that he was also 6-years old and has cannot really know what it going on.

Safe from controversy

I just love capitalism. Nothing works as well as capitalism in watering down meaning of controversy. Been there, done that or at least proud enough to sport a T-shirt. Who, me?

Thursday, 2006-02-09

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes

Another reality TV-series

All reality TV-series are for non-intelluctual pursuits. Let's change this! Let's have a new series, in which a group of people are locked in a house — Big Brother-style — with TVs, computers, mobile-phones, XBoxes, books and magazines. Anyone, who either watches TV, surfs the net, talks on the phone, or plays with the XBox, is expelled from the house. No mercy, no second chance. Furthermore, anyone who fails to read a book and pass a quiz on the book one a week is expelled as well. The winner will then get all the books. How about?

The truth and nothing but the truth?

Mr. Bush let us know, that the US government used its wartime powers well and foiled an terrorist attack against Las Vegas in 2002. The question is: why should we believe what Mr. Bush is telling us? He has been caught telling lies before. Surprisingly, he kept the victory secret for almost 4 years, only to tell us about it exactly when the Congress is having hearings about the illegal domestic spying program. What a coincidence!

Daily energy blogging (3): "Return to the Moon"

Fusion energy will be the energy solution of the — distant — future. There are two possibilities: using energy from the ongoing fusion reaction in the Sun or from fusion reactors on Earth. In his book Return to the Moon Apollo-17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt advocates the latter possibility. He has developed a plan for a 15-year project for developing helium-3-fusion reactors, new generation of rocket boosters, lunar mining equipment for helium-3, and transportation systems from the Moon to the Earth.
Both deuterium-helium-3-fusion and helium-3-helium-3-fusion have some significant advantages deuterium-tritium-fusion. First, less radioactive waste, since the reactor inner lining does not become highly radioactive. Second, no need to transfer energy from high energy neutrons to steam and running turbines. Instead, fusion of/with helium-3 produces charged particles, which can be converted to electricity directly. The only problem — if one forgets that the engineering for a helium-3-fusion reactor is incomplete — is absence of helium-3 on the Earth.
The Lunar soil — regolith — contains a lot of helium-3. This is the reason why Schmitt wants to start a program for mining the Moon. The mining operation would be large. A single 1000 MW fusion reactor would need 100 kg of helium-3 per year. Mining 2.8 square kilometers lunar surface 3 meters deep would produce 100 kg of helium-3. The value of 100 kg of helium-3 is, according to Schmitt, $140 million.
The value of $140 million of 100 kg of helium-3 sets limits to the Moon-mining business. For the business to be profitable, the cost of transport to the Moon should be less than $3000. This is about 5% of the cost of Apollo. Schmitt proposed all kinds of tricks (using commercial competition, resurrecting Saturn 5 and turning it to Saturn 6, etc) for making the cost reductions feasible. Being a professor of geology, Schmitt is also able to plan the mining operations painstakingly, so that overall cost of helium-3 would be below $1400 per 100 kg on Earth.
Return to the Moon is an entertaining book. However, it reads more as a work of science fiction than a real plan for developing helium-3 energy economy. Schmitt clearly knows a lot of space systems and geology and his enthusiasm is infectious, but his calculation are very rough, and his habit of looking down on other energy systems is infuriating. Is establishing Schmitt's helium-3 enterprise really easier and cheaper that developing better solar cells and other ways of using sun's fusion? Schmitt wants us to believe in his project, but the reader is left in wondering.
Return to the Moon suffers also from a lack of editing. Schmitt reprints his emails to Karl Rove and other member of the administration. The purpose of reprinting seems to be merely boasting. Anyway, the book is worth reading and would make a great script for a scifi-movie.

A puffin video

S sent me the link to the cutest puffin video. It is part of Bruce McMillan's puffin-pages. What a nice way to start a day by looking at puffins. They are my favorite animals, in addition to polar bears and penguins

Orwell on style

George Orwell's essay on Politics and the English Language is rare example of clarity. His advice for writing better is simple:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never us a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Other styleguides: Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch, Common Errors in English by Paul Brians. Please, help me by giving me links to other style guides.

Wednesday, 2006-02-08

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. Stanley Kubrick

At Mike's

Kumar got the first version of his thesis turned in. A reason for celebration, that is. We (Kumar, Ashok, and I) took off for the Davis Square and the Mike's diner. I was there also yesterday (Monday), but it was only today that I realized that sell 1 liter of house wine for $10. What a bargain. Their pizzas are very good!

Daily energy blogging (2): On CAFE

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy-standard regulates the fuel economy of cars manufactured or sold in USA. Basically it says, that the average (of the whole fleet of a manufacturer) fuel consumption must not exceed a certain value. At the moment, the value is 27.5 mpg (8.5 l/100 km) for cars and 20.7 mpg (11.4 l/100km) for pick-up trucks, SUVs etc with gross weight less than 8500 lbs (3 856 kg). CAFE does not apply to large vehicles. If the fleet of a manufacturer exceeds the CAFE-standard, the manufactures has to be a fine of $5 for each 0.1 mpg for each vehicle it has manufactured. For more information on CAFE:

CAFE at Office of Aerospace and Automotive Industries' Automotive Team.

CAFE

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

2005 car fleet statistics

Fuel economy website has information on fuel economy.

David Leonhardt argues in today's NYT, that a customer buying a hybrid car allows the manufacturer sell more large cars without violating the CAFE-standard. Not good. Much better would be to establish an increasing carbon tax on fuels, as I wrote earlier.
In Boston Globe, a senator and a congressman (Barack Obama and Jay Inslee) argue for the government's financial help for GM and Ford in return of increased R&D in fuel efficient cars. I think they are wrong: what the government should do is to change the rules of the game so that innovation in fuel economy (or even using existing) technology would make sense even in the stubborn brains of GM's executives.
As I wrote yesterday, the purpose of this series of blog entries is to clarify my thinking and to force me to check out facts and figures. Nothing more, nothing less.

Moving to the Davis Square

If I ever come back to complete my PhD in MIT, I would like to move to the (vicinity) of the Davis Square. It is a nice place and has everything a civilized man needs: a good bookstore, some nice cafes, an Italian diner, a movie theater, and a T-stop. Rents should be lower there than in Back Bay. Now I am wondering whether any of you, my dear readers, know a rental agency or any other way of finding a nice and reasonably priced one- or two-bedroon home there?

Tuesday, 2006-02-07

Der glücklich ist, wer vergisst, was nicht zu ändern ist. German proverb

Surprising result

A 8-year study has found that a low-fat diet does not reduce risk of hearth disease, colon cancer, or stroke. This result is simply remarkable. The conclusion is

"What we are saying is that a modest reduction of fat and a substitution with fruits and vegetables did not do anything for heart disease and stroke or breast cancer or colorectal cancer," said Dr. Nanette K. Wenger, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. "It doesn't say that this diet is not beneficial."

Favorite hotels

Some of my favorite hotels:

Bloomindale Inn, Washington DC, USA
Hotel Athens, Cortona, Italia
Ruijin Hotel, Shanghai
Old Bellevue, Darjeeling, Intia
Yatri House, Delhi, Intia
Astor House / Pujian, Shanghai
Manaca Hotel, Belem, Brasilia
San Remo, San Francisco, USA
Patiala Maharajan talo, Chail (Simla), India
Langholmen hostel, Tuhkolma
Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Imperial Hotel, Praha.

Gone fishing

I did not know that fishing can be this easy and fun. I am sure whether the film is real, though. Thanks to S for the link.

GM once again

Excellent business management and leadership continues at GM. Now they have cut executive salaries and dividends. They cannot, however, say when they intend to make GM profitable again. I think cutting executive salaries is good, although it does not help anything. If the company loses $8.6 billion a year, cutting 50% of CEO's $2.2 million salary does not help at all. It may have some symbolic value, but cutting the salary to less than $0.1 million would have more.
Cutting dividends in half does not make any sense. If the management is as clueless as GM's is, the share owners should get their money back - one way is dealing out as much as possible in dividends. If things go as they are going, GM will go bankrupt soon enough. Unless they can convince Mr. Bush, that GM is part of the military-industrial complex and should get some $30 billion for doing nothing at national security. Just as Halliburton gets. GM should give it a try. Like getting $30 billion for developing small cars and transit systems. Actually, it would be much better than using $30 billion in firecrackers.

On beginning a new project

Life has hardly anything better to offer than the euphoric feeling of beginning a new project. The feeling of not knowing where the adventure is taking, having fragile thought structures, drafting, planning, walking around smiling, talking to oneself. The feeling of developing solutions oneself before looking how others have solved the problems. I enjoy this part so much, that I sometimes just want to enjoy it for a few days, not committing anything on paper, just nurturing ideas in my head. Right now, I am doing so. Someone could claim that I am procrastinating but would be wrong. Important things are happening, solutions are taking shape, or at least questions are taking shape. Absolutely fabulous!

On the Massachusetts Avenue

I was walking from the Central Square to MIT, in my thoughts, when I saw the bubble-gum machine by the jazz-record store. It is always there, stalking me, and hardly ever can I pass it without buying one ball with a quarter. Once again, I put in my money, turned the lever, and enjoyed watching how the ball circled its way down. How happy I became. I continued, smiling, to walk towards MIT, chewing my bubble-gum.
After twenty meters, I run across an African-American lady, in her 30s, pushing her child in a trolley. She exclaims: I saw you and said to myself: "He cannot walk by the machine, he will buy a ball". And you did. I knew it. Funny how my vices are known in the streets of Cambridge.

Daily energy blogging (1): why fighting over oil is pointless

This is a new daily series of energy related notes, tidbits of information, opinions, preliminary arguments, observations, and the like. I just want to have a informal, but public media for my energy related thinking. Later, if I am lucky, these short notes will help me in my PhD-studies.
Today's NYT runs an op-ed article, which correctly points out, that trying to get rid off the oil-addition is simple. Just mandate a tax on all carbon emissions. The market will take care of the rest: smaller cars will emerge from manufacturing plants, urban sprawl will slow down, transit will pick up. Even better, I would claim, would be to mandate an increasing tax one that would increase, say, 5 percent per year, starting from $1 per some unit of coal dioxide.

I assume such tax would be a very effective way of changing the customer behavior, which according to professor Marks is one of the keys in solving the energy problems. Are there other ways? Some kind of brain washing (propaganda, advertising, fashion) could go some way, but maybe not that far.
The op-ed also correctly points out, that any government in any oil-producing country will eventually have to sell oil to the world market. The price of occupying Iraq, or Iran, is totally unnecessary, at least from energy security point of view. By the way, the only reason for the invasion and occupation (for the 20-year war Pentagon is planning, at the request of Mr Rumsfelt), is to divert tax payer's money from social welfare to military-industrial complex. The only problem is that when the complex gets too big, the whole state collapses into a way smaller and weaker one, or even non-existent one. Look what happened to Athens, Persia, Rome, the Spanish empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union. Enough ranting.

Monday, 2006-02-06

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time. Victor Hugo

Energy research

I started, once again, to do some preliminary research for my (possible) energy systems related PhD. Since I did not where to start, I thought I could do worse than copying Feynman's way of studying: I started to combine a list of things I do not know. Having such a list helps me in many ways: keeps me humble, organizes my work, and (since I use a mind mapping tool) gives me something to work on visually. Once the map, which should look like a plan for my PhD research, is ready (a draft), I will publish it here.

On cars

Yesterday I was discussing with an MBA-student on energy issues. I claimed that instead of hybrid cars, just having smaller cars would go a long way in solving the oil addiction. He said that Americans would never drive smaller cars. I tried to argue, referring back to 70's etc, but his belief in stubbornness was formidable. I hope he is wrong and even Americans realize, when gas costs $5 per gallon, that a smaller car might be a reasonable idea.

Sunday, 2006-02-05

The common curse of mankind, - folly and ignorance William Shakespeare

White teeth

It so happened, that I somehow ended up home alone. Without anyone explaining me the rules of Super Bowl, the game was kind of uncomprehensible, or boring at least. Enjoying football requires an acquired taste. Fortunately the USA-channel showed non-stop Monk-shows.
Every set of ads during the Monk-show contained at least one ad for teeth whitening products. It is important to have white teeth in USA (almost as important as not having any body hair). Interesting, eh? Even more interesting is that in the picture book of our SDM05-class, all Americans (and those who have lived here a long time) bare their teeth while smiling. Almost none of the aliens smiles that way.
One ad promises so white teeth, that one's looks 20 years than before using the product. Maybe it contains some Botox as well? Or how does it remove wrinkles? Around the eyes, I mean. That's where age shows, in a cute way.

Super Bowl

Super Bowl takes place today. It is a very important event in USA. We just visited Trader Joe's for some beer and we definitely were not the only late shoppers. The whole shop was packed, wine shelves were getting empty. Every customer I saw was stocking up on alcohol. Now, 30 minutes to go before the game. Exciting, is it not.

Statistics

The GDP per person of Uusimaan (the are around Helsinki) is about $30000, higher than that of Florida, Michigan, Stockholm, etc. The GDP of Massachusetts is about $39000, which nicely explains the higher housing prices here in MA. Check the statistics yourself. They are rather interesting. And we do very well in Uusimaa (Helsinki) - our GDP is tenth highest in Europe. The rest of Finland does much worse: central Finland has a GDP per person of only $17000.

Saturday, 2006-02-04

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right. Arthur Schopenhauer

A new book

To learn, teach. To learn to write, read. I bought Other voices, other rooms by Truman Capote. Few weeks ago, S gave me The plot against America by Philip Roth. Maybe reading them and lots of practice (e.g. blogging) will improve my writing.

Cambridge Street, Cambridge

I took a stroll on the Cambridge Street in the early morning. The street is startling. It is lined with all kinds of small shops. Besides the usual launderettes, pizza joints, and corner groceries, it boasts a fish shop, a poultry shop, a bakery, a liquor shop, several manicure joints, a church. In all aspects, it is very far from Newbury Street in Back Bay, Boston. If there would just be a decent cafeteria, I would move to in this side of the Charles River. (I know there are cafeterias further inside Cambridge, not here at the outskirts).

On door handles

In Finland, one opens a door by pressing the door handle down and then pushing or pulling the door. This works fine, when one has to push the door. For pulling the door and for tall persons, this works poorly, because one cannot use one's body weight for pulling to door. Instead, one has to pull with one's hand. In USA (especially in MIT) I have found a better solution: the door handle opens the door also when one lifts it. One smooth movement of lifting and leaning back a bit opens the door, even if the door is heavy. Great design!

The house Jack did not build

The house I am staying in is interesting. It was built in late 19th century for housing a pump-factory. The factory was successful. It manufactured all onboard pumps used by the US-navy in the WWI. After WWI, pump business was not doing that well and the house was sold to another company. Another war came, the business of producing parts for the Air Force was doing well. But the war ended and the house was converted into a fastener-factory, which later gave way for a factory producing automobile parts. Then all manufacturing left Cambridge and the house was rebuilt as 200 housing units, in 1998.

Movies & sit-coms vs life

In Finland, as elsewhere, we tend to watch American movies and sit-coms. Before visiting USA first time in 1998, I always thought, that movies and sit-coms are fiction, that the way of living, the habits of people in USA are somehow different from the movies. To my surprise, arriving to New York, I felt like stepping in a movie. The movies and sit-coms came to reality. I was stunned. Later, I have found that there are life-forms outside the movie and sit-com realm. It took some searching. It still does.
Still I am wondering, almost daily, the influence of movies, sit-coms, advertisements, and other visual landscape on the way ordinary people behave. It seems, that the ways most people have fun are directly taken from movies: driving a limo, sipping martini, soaking in a pool with a margarita, etc. Nothing wrong with this; I just wish for more movies teaching people that reading and intellectualism are hip! Then I would have more fun when discussing with people.

Friday, 2006-02-03

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury. Charlie Chaplin

At Pho Pasteur

I am enjoying my dinner with Kumar in the Pho Pasteur, watching waiters taking orders, serving the food, a young guy stalking empty plates and bussing them back to kitchen, customers happily eating, joyfully laughing, a group waiting in line for any of us to leave, for a table, a bowl. A weathered man walks in: whitening hair greased back, uneven skin, bad balance, lost in his own world. A well-trained drunkard. He teeters for a while by the door, spots me, eyes blinking, comes: "You are the boss. I was in the bar, around the corner, nobody there, here you are, you are the boss". I thank him. He teeters out, stays outside gesturing me something I do not hear, disappears back towards the bar in which there was nobody.
They always spot me and come to me.

2 times 7 secrets about programming

Both Lars Wirzenius and Cessu have written their seven secrets about programming. Lazu writes more about programming itself, Cessu more about life as a programmer. Both list are very much worth reading if one wants to make a living by programming computers. I gave up a while ago.

In the Charm School, 3

The most popular session of the Charm School was, to nobody's surprise, "How to ask someone for a date?". Even though MIT-undergraduates (and some graduate students as well) have widely known concentration powers, I have not ever seen so totally concentrated group of them. The lecturer had their total attention, they were savoring each and every word. I hope the session works for them and they get to date many nice people. Dating is fun and a good way to make friends, if nothing else.

In the Charm School, 2

There are three ways of saying "yes". The first one is just to say "yes", acknowledge that one has heard what the other said and not contribute anything. This is the "yes" so called yes-men in the corporate middle-management keep on repeating up the ladder. The second one is to say "yes, but", which is just a polite way of saying "no" and is used down the ladder. The third way is to say "yes, and" and develop the idea further. This is the way impro-theater works: the group agrees beforehand that whatever the speaking actor says, that's the reality, and the others will develop from there onwards.
We did a few interesting exercises.

The "yes, let's"-excercise: someone says something , for example, "let's jump on one foot", the others say "yes, let's" and do so until someone says "let's do X", etc. Quite fun, actually.
The ball-excercise: in a circle someone says a word and throws a ball to someone else, who says whichever word came to his mid because of the first word (or repeats the first word) and throws the ball forward. Quite entertaining and gets one's imagination moving.
The "big bogus brainstorming": take a word, and brainstorm a product, name for it, ad-campaing celebrity, and the ad-song - all of these using the "yes, and"-rule.
The 7-line story excercise: in a group, build a story with the template: "once upon time ... every day ... until one day ... because of that ... because of that ... until ... and ever since ...", so that each three dots is filled by a different group member.

Very interesting and useful 45 minutes.

In the Charm School, 1

I have taken sessions on interviewing, traveling, and networking. Interesting nuance in networking was the emphasis on developing deeper relationship with those one is trying to build one's network of. Quite the opposite to the earlier lectures I have heard emphasizing casual networking with the barber, plumber, or the man on the street.
An interesting session on how to use the golden rule of impro-theater in becoming more creative and confident. The rule, as we know, is always agreeing what the other players say and developing from there. For a short explanation on the rule, see Gladwell's book Blink.

MBA vs leadership

To follow leaders is human. To strive for being a leader is human. To charge the hopeful for leadership education is a good business. To do so in the guise of MBA-education is a scam.
MBA stands for Masters of Business Administration. It is not even about management. The hopeful spend two years in learning how to preserve the status quo, how to administer, how to manage, how to dress properly, how to parrot the current jargon and how to fill in case-study templates. These skills are apt to prevent development of leaders. Thus the schools let the hopeful attend a few leadership, lest they complain wasting their time and money. What a disappointment life has in store for them!

Thursday, 2006-02-02

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues. Theodore Roosevelt

What can the NSA do? Plus other news updates

Well, it turns out that the NSA can do quite much, including tapping to all internet and phone traffic, filtering and data-mining it, etc. Nobody really knows what it can do, as it all is so secret. But from the article we can conclude, that Orwell's 1984 has not turned out to be an unrealized dystopia. If I were an US voter, I might ask my congressman to create some oversight on such a sweeping spying program.
At the same time, many developments are hinting to a birth of a new multi-polar order. It seems that USA cannot really govern the world as it pleases, as China, India, Japan, EU, and Brazil are all getting stronger and the neo-conservative (another oxymoron: there is nothing conservative in neo-conservative politics) project is failing. I am happy to be alive at this time of history - very interesting times are these.
According to Mr. Bush, Iran is one of the serious threats to the peace and stability, and certainly a part of the "axis of evil". In short, a country which USA should not support by its tax-payers money. However, according to a Russian paper Georgia is using financial aid from USA to buy gas from Iran. The great game is on - and there are no rules, just opportunism and sometimes also long term strategic thinking.
Mr. Rumsfeld spoke about the terrorists: They will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs". Many would claim that the terrorists had already changed the way of life in the USA, but they are just hoodoos.
A list of international hotspots by the CIA include India, China, Egypt, Cambodia, Darfur, Iran, Iraq, and others. Die Tageszeitung claims that NATO intervention in Darfur is "inevitable" and that US is taking Darfur up in the security council this month. That would be good.

Emotional state

Yesterday, I made an unexpected observation. If I was sitting on the reclining chair and reading, writing, I was happy and calm. When I moved on the couch and started to watch the TV, I was suddenly lonely and miserable. I tried moving back and forth several times and my emotional state changed every time. Moral: if one is lonely, it is not wise to watch the TV.

Searching for my extraordinary life

The course continued and was not as fun as yesterday. The basic idea seemed to be that we are all just a punch of jerks, full of all kinds of fear every moment of our lifes and that fear guides our lives (army? medieval Christianity?) . We also have all kinds of excuses for not doing what we want to do (agreed). The way to get redemption, to live an extraordinary life, is to establish a strict set of rules for everything: for not being late, for not eating cheesecake, for telling the spouse everything, for loving the spouse, etc. One also needs a set of punishments for breaking the rules. We also got to know at least too many times that "life is life" and "time is time", which I do admit, but do not consider overly surprising, or informative.
I find this emphasis on rules most strange. The lecturer is from an orthodox Jewish family. I do not know whether it explains the need for rules and punishments. Or is it coming from the Calvinistic tradition? The emphasis seems to hide huge insecurity of oneself. Since I do not have any insecurity, I find the whole thing BS. I will continue to live by my only rule: doing everything un-reasonably much, which cause my life to be happy and nice. Even eating a cheesecake is OK.
It was curious to notice, that the rules the lecturer so proudly told us, were all very well aligned with the latest fads around. For example, the huge emphasis on going to the gym is just a fad. In the past, adults were not that preoccupied with their bodies. Can you imagine Einstein rushing to the gym every morning?
For the last 30 minutes, the topic was an idea that we have our real self and an double agent, which keeps having monologues in our minds. The idea makes some sense. However, I think we really cannot master our minds, our brains are doing things without conscious orders or permissions. Trying to stop that completely is futile and may be dangerous. I agree, that repeating over and over all kinds of excuses for not doing something one has committed to do, is stupid and counterproductive. Maybe the concept of having two agents in our minds rings true in some of us, but not me. I found the idea naive to the extreme.
In the end, the lecturer emphasized that the most important thing is to live by our beliefs and values. Doing so equals to living a great, if not extraordinary, life. I agree on this and have been trying to do so for a long time. It just does not happen easily.
I got utterly bored during the class today. Repeating same ideas over and over and using very bad English (you know like etc and cursing as a seafarer) is not my cup of tea. I am not too tempted to sit in the last 3 hours tomorrow.

Priorities clear

So, Bush promised to rid America of its addiction to oil, to make renewable fuels a reality. He also promised some money, up to at most a few billion. Today, the speech is over, the news crew has gone, so it is time to go back to real priorities. So, the news is that Bush is to request $70B more for war funding. Well, how do we reconcile these two goals? Bush wants to get rid of oil addiction, but puts his money elsewhere. He must be truly addicted. The withdrawal symptoms are going to severe. Unfortunately he is not the one to suffer the symptoms, it will be ordinary Americans and citizens of other countries.
Oops, $70 billion were not enough: Bush to seek $120 billion for wars, sources say. Just spending this $120 billion on energy systems would be a good start to make US citizens reallly safe and secure.
Maybe Mr. Bush could walk his talk for just $28 million and pay the federal researchers of renewable energies, who are about to get fired. That would still leave $119972000000 in the extra military budget. Should be quite enough for creating a bigger mess than the current one.

A happy group

I enjoy looking down on the street from the Buddha's Delight-restaurant. One sees pimps going to the strip-joints, drunkards tottering with their walking sticks in search of cheap booze, food lovers on the way to Pho Pasteur, and Chinese minding their own businesses. Today, in midst of them all, I spotted a group of 3 blind men with one seeing guy. The seeing guy had not changed his style since Saturday Night Fever was moving the hips of the hip: large glasses, shoulder-lenght curly hair, colorful jacket. The blind guys were laughing at something. One of them looked like the tall, iron-teethed man from old Bond-movies. Except that he was smiling and gesturing lively with his free hand.
I was delighted when they came to Buddha's delight and sat in the table next to mine. The tall guy was laughing and smiling all the time, the other two blind guys were telling jokes. Mainly they were teasing the 70s-man, who was about to undergo a surgery. He got really scared when the blind men told him that the surgeons will pump him full of gas during the surgery. He did not relish the prospect.
The blind men really made my day. Their joy and happiness were infectious. Seeing how well they managed gave me hope; not even blindness is a reason for not smiling and laughing and living a happy life.

Confessing or bragging

After reading S's comment on confessions, I came to think whether the CEO's confession was really a confession in the sense as defined in the course: something one is embarrassed of, reluctant to tell, and source of worry etc. Let me tell another excerpt from her confession. She confessed that whenever she would see a cute man walking by the office, she would tell her secretary to find out his name and then have sex with the cute man later that day. Now, what can she be embarrassed of? Using the hierarchical power or sex? I would assume sex, since I am sure she is not embarrassed of using her power in general. I would say she was actually not embarrassed but bragging - and also enjoying reminiscing about the sexual acts. I think it would be much more embarrassing for the cute man to tell anyone about the act. And, for that matter, I would assume that the CEO would not have confessed if she had had sex with the chairman of the board on her way to the CEO's chair. That would be embarrassing, indeed, for a powerful non-sicko CEO, wife, and mother.
Somehow confession and claiming embarrassment for sexual acts in which one is the active party and initiating party is kind of fake. I am not sure though. This is an interesting thing to think about.

Mongering and paranoia

Some commentators expect US and Israel to attack Iran in a month or so. Maybe they are a bit paranoid, for I cannot see how Bush could survive long term oil prices of well over $100, even at $200. But Bush has promised to defend Israel if someone attack it. Let's hope not. I just wonder why Israel is so special, why not defend innocent civilians in Darfur, Kongo, or elsewhere where internal and external conflicts are claiming millions of lives? Maybe they do not have the right religion.

Bush's bosses are spewing excuses

It certainly did not take long before the real CEOs of the US government came forward and told that their mouthpiece, Mr. Bush, had not really meant what he said two days back. US does not want to reduce oil imports from the Middle-East, saying so was just an example. They do not even want to reduce the growth of oil consumption. They just want to fiddle a little with corn-petrol and stuff. Well, the farmers need their subsidies. At the same time, the budget Bush has just agreed on causes The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget., for a budget cut of $28 million. Wow!
As someone pointed out, just raising the CAFE standard to 40 miles per gallon would free US from importing from the Middle East. It might also force the Detroit carmakers to rethink their designs. They might even survive.
If I were a president and my "aides" would tell that I did not mean what I said, I would get embarrassed.

Wednesday, 2006-02-01

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner. Italo Calvino

"Living an extraordinary life"-class

I am taking a class called "Living an extraordinary life". It took 3 hours today. The main message, which I fully agree on, is: just do what you want to do, do not repeat any excuses to yourself. Quite much common sense, but of course hard to live by. And sometimes there are some things in the reality, which prevent even the most strong-willed of us to do what they want to do. Basicly, the main idea is a vulgar version of Sartre's existentialism. The funny/scary thing is that the lectures claim to "get paid so much that it is insane" - they kept on repeating how well off they are. As if that would give some credibility. Not in my book.
We got an homework to write a confession about things that we are embarrassed, that we are hiding. The premise is that if we write about them, we will get free, and our lives will hurt less. I assume this is a naive interpretation of Freudian psychotherapy, and may thus work to some extent. Or not.
The lecturers gave us some example confessions. One was written by "a woman, CEO, mother, and wife" - which information told us that "she is no sicko". Really? Success in life, CEOness especially, somehow by definition makes one not-sicko, I assume. Or motherhood, right. The confession went like this: I had sex with my husbands brother. I used marihuana. I used cocaine in bathroom and liked it. I masturbated in a taxi. I let my neighbor's dog to lick me off. I like big boobs, buy Penthouse and masturbate to big boobs. I had sex with 2 women. I stole from my grandma. etc. The whole confession was about sex, masturbation, and drugs. For a Finn, this list sounds really weird: is the US culture so fucked-up (to use expression of the older gentleman mentioned below, when I discussed the issue with him after the class), that people has such a big traumas about sex? Is it due Mr. Calvin? Oh, there were other examples: person X had masturbated with a tofu sausage. How terrible is that? She had not eaten the sausage though (I had to ask, I found this confession business so fun and wanted to whether see would tell, or I was just curious, it was about sex after all, you know.)
So, we should write confessions or we are out of the class. And send them by email. There was an older gentleman in the class who pointed out that sending such information by email may not be the most clever an idea. The email may end up in NSA's files and be used against the confessor in the future (remember how just receiving a blow-job was almost enough to get Clinton impeached - what are the changes of getting government jobs after confessing sex with animals in this country). I am not sure whether the level of paranoia is justified. Anyway, I wrote my confession. It had 2 lines and absolutely nothing to do with sex or drugs, as I cannot see them embarrassing.
The class is very much fun. I will keep blogging about it. Stay tuned for more indecency.

On clothes

H&M's trousers can take daily punishment only for 5 months or so. Then they break down, in an embarrassing manner. Just after I had sent all other trousers to Finland. So, I went to buy another pair, but a bit sturdier one. While in the shop, I suddenly wanted to start wearing a jacket/blazer/shirt on top of my ubiquitous T-shirts. They had some very nice ones, but all were way too narrow at shoulders. And even at biceps, even though I am far from being muscular. What kind of midgets they are selling the shirts/jackets to?

On Bush's speech

The net is full of commentary, most of it not that positive or admiring, on the state of the union speech by Mr. Bush yesterday. I do not want to add any more, but I just point out a good question raised by Juan Cole: if Bush really wants to get rid of the oil addiction, why does he not mandate saving oil (e.g. by using smaller cars, or whatever) in the US government. He would have to power to do so. As long not even the government bothers to follow the word of the leader, I think leader's talk is empty.
Frankly, if Mr. Bush would be really serious about energy and really understand the dangers of climate change, he would redirect at least half of the defense budget (some $300 billion) to energy research and infrastructure building. That would really increase the national security of the USA. If $300 billion on energy research sounds like an overkill, how much more an overkill it is to spend at least $600 billion on military?

More on the size of one's home

I was exaggerating a bit yesterday for two reasons: First, I tend to eat all my meals out here in Boston. Thus I have no real need for a kitchen. In Finland, later this month, I intend to start cooking again - mainly because there are no decent Asian restaurants with reasonable prices in Kallio. So, I need a kitchen. Second, living together with someone (S in my case) more than doubles the living area needed. When living with someone, it is actually rather essential to have two room, so that one can study in peace when the other wants to do something noisy (or sleep).

January

Tuesday, 2006-01-31

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. Otto Von Bismarck

With friends

Great evening today. First, I was writing and doing some research at home, then I took the T to the Harvard Square and to the John Harvard's Brew Pub. I have read many good things about the pub and it turned out to be more than a decent place: food was quite OK and beers about the same quality as in other local brewery pubs. But most important was to enjoy the company of Wilfried, who had just completed his quals (an exam every aero-astro PhD-candidate has to pass), and other aero-astro friends of mine: Bill, Paul, and Alex. Such a nice company one seldom has - very intelligent but also bitingly sarcastic and fun. Nice time. Bill drove us all home, and having 5 students of Crawley's (a criteria being more than 6 feet tall) in a small Acura certainly made us close friends...

Top-10 things Bush is not going to tell

Or is he? Check Juan Cole's list and compare it with your notes after the speech. And remember what Bismarck said about telling lies (see above).

Does the size matter?

I mean does the size of one's home matter. My cave was very small. Now I live at Dave's place, which is huge, maybe 80 sq meters or so. Dave left for Charlotte, NC, and I have the place all by myself. Since I do not visit his room, I have just 60 sq meters to dwell in. But I do not need all of them. I have found that I either sleep on my futon, nap on the couch, or sit in one reclining chair reading and writing (in addition to visiting the bathroom and getting beer from the fridge regularly). So, I am using about as much space as I was in my small cave. The only real advantage of larger space comes when listening to music. Sonic Youth sounds much better from decent hifi-system here. I like this place, but being modest, I cannot really know how to enjoy it any other way than I enjoyed a much smaller place.
In similar vein, I think that the right size for a bedroom is the size of a futon plus less than one meter at the foot of the futon. Anything more is too much. We stayed once in the Andon Ryokan in Tokyo. It has traditional Japanese rooms, which are only seven squre meters in size . I found that to be the ideal size for a bedroom.

Coin problem

I have two kilograms of US coins. I would like to either deposit them to my bank account or change the coin in bills. My bank says, that they will take coins only if they are wrapped and that they would give me wrappers if I would like to wrap the coins myself. Somehow I have better things to do than wrapping coins. Maybe I will take a handful of coins every day and give them to some local street musicians.
The bank teller did not know where I could find a coin wrapping machine. Do you? Or are the musicians going to be lucky?

Happiness

Having coffee at "Au bon Pain", reading on sustainability, thinking what to discuss with professor Marks later this morning, having no hurry but not a second to waste, overhearing some academic discussions on engineering. Knowing that today I have time to read, write, and think, and whatever I think or write is evaluated by its own merits, not by some organizational politics, or sheer bad will, or misunderstood due to lack of intellectual depth/ability. I would be happy to continue this, to come back to MIT to pursue my PhD, even if that would mean not having a lot of money, living in smaller apartments, or not being able to fly here and there and have martini by the pool-side. Happiness seems to equal to intellectual freedom and modest financial safety. Corporate environments never can be as free as academia. Enough rambling.

Monday, 2006-01-30

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved! Sigmund Freud

Moving over

S has left for Helsinki, I am at Dave's. It took surprisingly long to empty my small cave, maybe because we had to really think about what to S would take to Finland today, what I will take later, and what to throw away. It was simply amazing how well I had made the cave my home. I think I will miss it more than the 4-bedroom, 2-story home we had in China.

Things I admire in USA, part 2

Continuing from yesterday:

7. Contemporary architecture as a form of art
8. Great bridges and other civil architecture projects
9. NYC subway system
10. Philanthropy by the mega-rich and volunteerism by not so rich
11. Music: jazz, blues, rock, etc.
12. Some museums: Moma, Metropolitan, Smithsonian, etc.

More tomorrow, or some other day.

A dream

I had a dream. Far in the future, a kind of time-machine cum space-ship was built. I was an explorer on the ship and was sent to a far away world. To my great surprise, the other world was almost like ours. Except that there were more cars and they were moving faster. Somehow I got involved in some resistance movement. After a while, the local police found me. I started to run away, over the cars. To my surprise, if I shouted a name of a deconstructionist philosopher while running on top of a car, the policemen lost some energy and I was able to get away from them. But after a while, I did not remember any more such philosphers, and the policemen became immune to already mentioned ones. But Derrida seemed to work for a long time. The powers of Barthes and Lacan were very short living.

Sunday, 2006-01-29

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. Werner von Braun

Halonen won

The incumbent, Tarja Halonen, won the presidental election in Finland. Fine with me. What is surprising is that 80 minutes after voting ended, 99.7% of the votes had been counted. All counting is manual in Finland. Maybe USA should get some help from Finland in arranging elections and counting votes.

Things I admire in USA, part 1

Again, a list of things, this time suggested by Dave:

1. The constitution and system of government with checks-and-balance, rule of law etc.
2. Freedom of speech and press.
3. Multiculturalism.
4. Lack of envy as a guiding principle (as opposed to Finland).
5. The quality of the top universities (yeah, MIT, but also Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, etc)
6. Friendliness of people and small talk.

More tomorrow, or later today.

On working hours

Many companies in USA advertise themselves to prospective candidates by posting "employee testimonials" on their website. At least in IT and financial industry, the testimonials almost invariable tell about 10-hour or longer workdays, how the employee comes to work at 8am, has a heap of emails to sort out, is too busy to have a lunch break, multitasks between email, phone, cell phone, meetings, boss. The day ends after 7pm, if the employee was lucky, but "often the days are longer". Also, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky writes that 50-hours workweeks are the norm in Microsoft, and that many work even longer hours. (See some example testimonials at a financial firm as well.)
In Sweden, the work week is 40 hours or less. One doctor has been working more since 1983 and has not got his overtime compensation, for a total of 10733 hours. Now his employer owns him $1.2 million or 6 years of paid leave. If you do the math, his average weekly overtime is less than 10 hours, so he has been working less than the Microsoft-amount. Strange how different societies can be.
I do not know which political system is best, but I do wonder, why there is this need to work 50 or more hours per week. If one just could be happy with a bit smaller house, a bit older cars, a bit smaller and older TV, maybe shorter hours would be enough and one would have time to spend real (as opposed to quality) time with one's family, friends, and self. But then, maybe being bossed around and obeying the cultural norms while drinking coffee in an SUV is easier than thinking and living the life one really wants.
As Russell wrote: Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so...

Saturday, 2006-01-28

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. Paul Erdös

Packing

Here I am, emptying what I struggled hard to fill, packing what's worth carrying with in to the future. Not owning much makes it easy, nothing much to do, not many memories attached to things, only to people. Away, away, I throw papers, old clothes, course notes, and all unopened bills and envelopes. It is nice to move, nice not to know what is a going to happen, to have more plans than a life can realize. Oh, life is just getting better and more enjoyable.

Friday, 2006-01-27

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. Kurt Vonnegut

On San Francisco and public transport

Matti L asked me whether I really consider SF as a public transport paradise. He pointed out that the service level of transit in NYC is much higher, which would suggest NYC as a paradise rather than SF. I cannot refute this valid objection. So, I have to clarify why I called SF a transit paradise. First, I was impressed by the accessibility provided by transit in the SF proper. It seems that one can take a bus from any place to any other place with reasonable ease. Second, I was impressed by the variety of transit vehicles. The historic trams as almost too cute to be true, the cable cars are live museum exhibits, and the BART is the cleanest subway I have seen - it even has wall-to-wall carpets and very comfortable cushioned seats. And it is really fast. I was also impressed by the use of trolley-buses and their reliability.

On heroism

In Return to the Moon Harrison Schmitt writes about a man who "was the hero of the first bombing of Tokyo in WWII". If bombing Tokyo, mostly a civilian city, was an act of heroism, how much more heroic an act it was to bomb Pearl Harbor. Whether an act is heroic depends on the act itself, not on later developments of history.

SDM 10-years

Our SDM-program in MIT is now 10-years old. We had a party yesterday, with some faculty, some alumni, one third of SDM05s and most of SDM06s, and some spouses. The party took place in the Sloan Faculty club, which has a good kitchen. Now they even had an open bar, which is always welcome to poor (?) students. But even open bars close, and we had to find another - we ended up in the Hill-bar at the foot of the Beacon Hill. Quite a loud and dark place, but I enjoyed to company of fellow students and had great time.

Notes

Today, due to some pints of beer yesterday, nothing much. Lunch with S at the local Chinese, then to MIT to listen to a lecture on "What leadership is not", hanging around, and finally just taking the tram to the Boston College.

Thursday, 2006-01-26

Only Americans can hurt America. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hamas won

Hamas won the elections in Palestine and has now the responsibility and privilege to try to from a government. The situation is strange: some of the goals of Hamas (to destroy Israel) are absolutely outrageous and keeping them while in the power is a recipe for escalating the war, which is in nobody's interests (at least not in the interests of civilians in either Palestine or Israel). This goal, together with some long term enmity among I, P, and US, caused both I and US to promise not to recognize any government in which Hamas is a member. But doing so would show disregard for democracy, which US certainly cannot afford to show. Let's see.

On teaching & learning

Looking back at the courses I took in MIT I have to say that I am really pleased to realize the value of different teaching styles. Every professor has his/her own teaching style, own way of constructing the assignments (some call them homework, some opportunity sets, some projects). Sometimes, in the beginning of the course, something in the teaching or assignments does not feel really right, but after the course I always realized that I had learned a lot. The moral is: give the professor some benefit of doubt and miracles will happen. And, by the way, variability has its own, great value.

Some links

Professor Hunter, who taught me technology strategy, has a very interesting blog. I did not know that his interests are so wide ranging.
And, via BoingBoing, instructions on how to make your paper Saturn 5. Maybe I will try it when I am back in Finland and have next to nothing to do. If such time ever comes.

Wednesday, 2006-01-25

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. Joseph Brodsky

A design challenge

Here is another toilet related design problem: how to make a device, which prevents stealing rolls of toilet paper but permits the use of paper for wiping. Add another requirement: the device should contain two rolls of paper, thus lengthening the replenishment cycle. And still other: the replenishment should be easy, but still require some simple key or tool, so that unarmed thieves cannot steal the rolls.
Pretty simple, a problem which should have been solve long ago. It turns out that this problem is still very much open and preliminary design solutions are numerous. Some have two rolls adjacent to each other, with a sliding cover exposing one of them. In others, the rolls are on top of each other, which sometimes prevents them from rolling. In some, there is just one large roll. Sometimes, there are two large rolls, either side-by-side or on top of each other. The solutions for exposing the a new roll after the other has been used up are also numerous - and most of them do not work.
I have been planning a short book or a photo exhibition about this significant, yet simple, design challenge. It is a pity I realized it after I took the "Product design and development"-course here in MIT. It would have been a perfect topic for the course. Maybe someone of the SDM06ers will take up the challenge. The market is there, the stakeholders are easy to contact, there may well be some lead users among the cleaning personnel, etc. Go for it!
The challenge has a been solved in Japan by eliminating the need of toilet paper completely. But as long as we use toilet paper, the challenge remains open and urgent.

Final version of the thesis

I made the mistake of loitering around my advisor's office the other day. He spotted me and told me to do some changes to my thesis. Now I have done so and will steer clear of his office for the next week or so. That's the plan, at least.

Next research starting

Now I can concentrate my full attention on energy issues. I have nothing but time to read the existing literature and articles. I can also meet professor, graduate students, researchers, who are working in the energy field. It is going to be quite fun until I leave to Finland. And it will be fun in Finland as well - maybe I can meet some bosses of some Finnish energy companies and maybe they are willing to support my efforts.

On blaming Wall-Mart

I am not the biggest fan of Wall-Mart and have been complaining on its practices in the past. Still, one cannot blame W-M for everything . For example, blaming W-M for owning and operating 5000 trucks and "polluting round the day", as someone does in the Le Monde Diplomatique, is plain stupid. We all know, that W-M has extremely efficient logistics, and I would guess that 5000 W-M trucks pollute less per per pound of merchandise than trucks of other retailers. If one wants to blame W-M on pollution, the right way is to attack large malls in general. It is the malls, which cause unnecessary driving, but it is the customers who do the unnecessary driving, not the retailer.
By the way, W-M is mandating more fuel-efficient trucks. It may well be the only company, which can tell Detroit, what kind of R&D Detroit should do. And Detroit agrees.

On design

Sometimes good intention can be spoiled with bad implementation. A simple example. After doign one's thing in the toilet, one wants to washes his hands. For this, one needs soap, water, and something with which to dry one's hands. One would not like to touch anything but the soap, water, and the paper. In particular, one would not like to touch the soap dispenser, faucet, and (perhaps) the paper dispenser. That's why some public toilets have motion sensor activated systems for all three things. In the local Marriot in Kendal Square, however, the soap dispenser and the paper dispenser were automatic, not the faucet. Thus, however one washes his hands, the possibility of contamination remains. Actually, automatizing the paper dispenser makes no sense. Strange how hard design and implementation are.

Tuesday, 2006-01-24

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. Henry David Thoreau

A job for Java-gurus

If you know Java and want to work at the leading edge of the telecom industry, check out this open position. I applied for it, got an oral offer, but was later, after 40 days, told that I do not know enough Java or the existing Preminet-solution and that learning them would take at least a year. Imagine how hard these things are: it takes as long to learn Java and Preminet as it takes to complete two master's degrees in MIT. Certainly it takes an extraordinary genius to do the former. What a challenge it would have been!
Since the job is now open in the internet, I conclude that nobody in the corporation has the other required skills and experience and is a Java-guru and knows Preminet well enough. Finding such a person will be hard, since not many people outside the corporation have experience on Preminet, and that is why I want to advertise the position. Go for it, you gurus! It will be an exciting and well rewarded job for you.

A warning

A warning though, before you get too excited, my dear guru-reader. As a systems architect, I regard any system, which takes an experienced and competent systems architect a year to learn, excessively complicated. Any such system must be re-architected and re-designed. Otherwise, such a level of complicatedness will certainly yield huge quality problems in the implementation as there is no possibility for the implementors to get it right. And once such a system has been debugged together, the result is too fragile to allow for any new functionality or performance/reliability improvements, and the project has run over budget, and the project is late. I have not seen the actual design of Preminet, but if the level of difficulty due to complicatedness is as high as I was told, I would be very worried, no matter which stakeholder of Preminet I would be. You have been warned about the challenges ahead!

An answer

Juan Cole's Top Ten Mistakes of the Bush Administration in Reacting to Al-Qaeda has a partial answer to my earlier question. It clarifies the reasons, but does not provide any justification. And he has a very dire prediction as well:

The CIA is reduced to firing predators at villages because our counterterrorism efforts have been starved for funds by the Iraq quagmire. If al-Qaeda does pull off another American operation, it may well give Bush and Cheney an opportunity to destroy the US constitution altogether, finally giving Bin Laden his long-sought revenge on Americans for the way he believes they have forced Palestinians and other Muslims to live under lawless foreign domination or local tyranny.

Are the Pakistani inferior as humans to the Americans?

A letter to the editor in the Boston Globe today raised a good question regarding the unfortunate (criminal, terroristic) bombing of civilians in the sovereign country of Pakistan by the USA. The writer asked, whether the US would bomb any house, know/suspected to be inhabited by bin-Laden, in Europe/USA/Australia/Japan, or even in China or India? If not, why is it OK to bomb houses in Pakistan? I think the problem would exist even if the house would not have civilians in it, but having civilians in the house make the question much harder.
And, by the way, why is bombing a civilian house in Pakistan a lesser act of terrorism than bombing one in New York or Tel Aviv or a bus in London? It cannot be because the bombers/terrorists are employed by the US government. This is because the US government, by its own declaration, is trying to get rid of all governments supposedly supporting terrorists or committing terrorist deeds. Or, actually, when I think of the actions of the current US government, it is seemingly committing a suicide slowly. Maybe it is taking itself by its own words and self-destructing.

Monday, 2006-01-23

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them! Richard P. Feynman

A goal

I was reading a chapter of the Engineering Systems Monograph on sustainability for my PhD-preparations and came across this paragraph:

As we face an increasingly global economy, fundamental organizational and political changes, and the advent of ever more advanced technologies, the development of methodologies that allow us to understand and manage complex engineering systems becomes increasingly critical. One of our core objectives will be to perform research at the interface of technology and institutions, with the ultimate objective of developing a new cadre of professionals capable of addressing the most pressing socio-technical challenges society has to face.

It summarizes very nicely the reasons, why I want to pursue a PhD here in ESD in MIT. I thought someone might like to know.

A great day

What a great day I had. Got up at 9am, rushed to MIT with S for the "Charismatic speaker"-lecture, read a bit Philip Roth's new book "The plot against America", had lunch with S watching the Feynman-movie, canceled my fixed phone&furniture&electricity&NY times and bought flight ticket to Finland (leaving Boston on the 20th of Fenruary), met with professor Crawley (who asked me to add some explanations to my thesis, agreed to be on my PhD-committee, and gave me good advice on whom to talk to about my PhD-research), updated my PhD-application, had dinner with S, worked on the pre-assignment of the "Living an extraordinary life, submitted it, and then read the novel for a while. I am so exalted that not even slushy snowing could bring my mood down a smallest bit. One lucky and happy nerd I am!

Ford is beating GM

It seems that Ford is beating GM in the race to non-existense. Today, Ford announced cutting up to 30000 jobs and closing down 14 plants in the next 6 years. I think that the US government should protect the automotive jobs as strongly as it protects the farmers. It would be just fair for the US taxpayer to cover the losses of Ford and GM. Anyway, automotive workers are as valuable citizens as farmers.
Well, seriously, the situation of both Ford and GM does look very grim. It is very hard to save a company by such dramatic down-sizing. The only way it would succeed would be to fire the extra workers as soon as possible, close the factories, and then tell that nobody else will be fired. And then concentrate all efforts in innovative products, which the customers are likely to want in 5 years or so. Otherwise downsizing is just delayed way of committing corporate suicide.

Modesty vs accomplishments

It may well be almost a truism, that only really accomplished persons can be modest. I was reminded of this, when I read Tom Speller's CV. My already great respect for Tom got even deeper. What a honor it was to have a person of Tom's stature helping us with our systems architecting class.

Charismatic speakers

Vikas Jhingran gave a lecture on charismatic speakers. Such speakers give memorable speeches and have influence on their audience. Vikas gave three simple pieces of advice on how to become more charismatic. First, do not serve your meat without sauce; always tell a story, deliver the facts/message/ideas as parts of the story. Second, give an unexpected punch line. Surprise the audience, do not let them guess what you are up to before hitting them with the bunch line. Third, remember that the words (the actual wording) delivers only 10% of the message. Practice enough to know the topic well enough, then concentrate on vocal variety and gestures. In short, people love stories, love humor, love being surprised, and the livelier, the better.

Feynman-movie

Every year, MIT presents a series of Feynman-movies. So far, I have missed them all, even though he definitely is one of my idols (the others being at least Feyerabend, Russell, Gandhi). This movie was called Take the World from Another Point of View and in it Feyman told how he works. In short: being curious and working hard are the keys. Thinking things through oneself, not worrying about names of things.

Sunday, 2006-01-22

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions. Susan Sontag

End of an era

Long time ago, when I was young and vulnerable, I was a fan of the police series "Hill Street Blues". In one episode, one of the cops is trying to get a degree from some college or similar. He fails to turn in a paper and tries to talk his way out and get a grade. The teacher says "It is not enough to be promising, one has to prove oneself by delivering" (or something to that effect). The reply got imprinted in my mind, and looking back, I think I have been trying to prove myself ever since, to avoid others from calling my bluff. It has been tiring at times, fun at others. But now, I assume I can now relax, as I have proved myself and can take it a bit easier from now on.
Thus, my forthcoming (if accepted) PhD-studies are not about proving myself, they are about saving the world. I claim that is a nobler cause.

Taking a train is not easy

I walked to the South Station and naively expected, that it would be easy to take a train to some nearby town. Not so in Boston. First of all, there are no maps of nearby towns, or Massachusetts in general, in the station. The WiFi-network costs about $7 per hour, which is about the price of a good map in a bookstore. So, I could not figure where the towns mentioned in the timetable are in reality. Not that it would have made a big difference, as no trains were leaving in the next 45 minutes. No train adventure today.
Disappointed, I decide to take the red line T to Ashmont. From there, I took a small tram to Mattapan, being the only not grossly overweight in the tram. It felt good! Back to Boston by taking a bus to the Ruggless-station. I also visited Oak Grove, which was the last T-terminal I had not visited earlier. Now I have covered the whole system.

Great new CD

The simplest way to celebrate any academic achievement is to first have "Latte Mocha" in the Trident Bookstore and Cafe (reading some great book), and then buy a new CD from Newbury comics. So I did on Friday, I bought For the Season by Gris Gris. Gris Gris is simply ingenious mixture of free jazz, 60's pop, tivoli sounds, and Sonic Youth guitarwalls. Absolutely psycho, my current favorite band for sure.

Daily crono

For the record, for me. On Friday, my celebration in the Muddy Charles was a bit an anti-climax as none of my class-mates turned up. Fortunately I had a good book with me - how could I feel lonely when reading? Later, the above, then listening to it at home. On Saturday, casting our votes in the Finnish presidential election. Lunch with S at Pho Pasteur, coffee with Kumar at Trident's, then smoking some smuggled Cuban cigars in the Esplanade Park, and having some beer at Crossroads. Way to go, or party at least. But that was not all: sushi-dinner with S at Sinosushi, and as they do not serve any sake, visiting the local liquor shop for a bottle of sake. Celebration my way: drugs, food, friends, books, music.
Today I am about to have a late lunch in the Chinatown Eatery, then to take some train from here to somewhere and back, while reading books, NY Times, and just enjoying my time. Tomorrow, I will start writing one or two books and a few articles. Being somewhat hypo-manic, there is no way I could just idle for days. I need to get on something.

Friday, 2006-01-20

We must make demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive Andrei Sakharov

MIT nuclear reactor

We visited the MIT nuclear reactor in the morning. Since we got in, I know that nothing suspicious turns out, when they search for me in the internet, FBI's databases, etc. So, in we went, first for a short lecture by Mr. Lau, the boss of the place. Then, for a short visit the the reactor building itself, where we were shown several experiments they are conducting using the reactor. The reactor has been designed to leak neutrons, and those neutrons are then used for all kinds of experiments. The most interesting research has to do with treatment of cancer. For example, already now they can make tiny grains of gold radioactive and insert the grains next to a melanoma-tumor, which then destroys the tumor. Also, they run very experimental research on some fatal brain tumors: put some boron in the tumor cell (by adding boron to some amimo acid, which binds only to tumor cells), then shoot the brain with a certain type of neutron-beam, and the boron will split into lithium and an alpha-particle. Tumor cell dies. Clever, but not yet working perfectly.
In all, the reactor is very much worth visiting. Do not miss it, if you study in MIT, or can otherwise get in. And stay out of FBI's list of wanted assholes.

Officially an engineer

I think I am officially an engineer and manager now that I have submitted my thesis. So, I will get my certificate in June, but already now you may start to address me as "Your Highness, Master of Science in Engineering and Management". Or, shortly "nerd".
Being all set and an engineer-manager/nerd is as good reason as any to have some beer. First, we (I and S) went to some diner in the Davis Square to celebrate, later I will meet (hopefully) some class-mates in the Muddy Charles.

Thursday, 2006-01-19

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things Bertrand Russell

Avett Brothers again

We went to see the Avett Brothers in the Paradise-club next to Boston University. The brothers were opening for some other band. The other band frankly sucked, but the Brothers were just as ingenious and fun as they always are. Actually, being able to see time live is quite enough a reason to move to USA again later. (Dave, Matt, and Ilana were present as well).

Funny thing happened

I cannot tell the difference between am and pm. Today, I was convinced that a lecture about Toki Pona would start at 7.30 am. So, we woke up at 6.30, rushed to MIT just in time just to realize that we were 12 hours early. It was so stupid that I could not do anything but laugh at my lack of timing. Good thing: we had a nice (and very early) breakfast in MIT.
On Toki Pona:

Toki Pona is a "maximally minimal" language. It was constructed with only 120 words and with only the simplest to pronounce sounds. Toki Pona tries to follow the Taoist philosophy that "simple is good." In order to lead a simple life, one needs a simple language; or perhaps a simple language will lead to a simpler life. Whether you accept the philosophy or not, Toki Pona is fun to speak.

Wednesday, 2006-01-18

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. Nelson Mandela

Back in Boston

We are back in Boston. It is raining, torrentially. Nice way to feel home again. The flight from SF was not nice, as I assume is the case with all red-eye flights. Flight is too short for really trying to sleep and the seats are just too small for me. So, a long nap was appropriate back in home. Then, to MIT in rain, soaked. Later, I gave me thesis the professor Crawley. I hope he finds it good enough and signs the paper. Then I would be done with MIT for a short while.

Plans

My plans for the future are becoming clear. Two things: it seems that no company is willing to hire a real system architect, one that would design systems according to the state-of-the-art way of working. All companies are hiring just technical subsystem architects, mainly for hacking with Java etc. I am not interested, since the real problems with systems development are not purely technical, or programming language/environment related. Second, in academia one can deal with real systems in their entire scope: technical, management, and social science. No company allows that. So, it is back to academia for me after a short stint in corporate world to fill in the time between this degree and starting my PhD.

Transit paradise

San Francisco is definitely the transit paradise of the world. They have so many different, and efficient, transit systems. Using the transit systems is very cheap, easy, and fun. I just wonder why someone would want to own a car in such a paradise.

Saturday, 2006-01-14

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. Jack Kerouac

Are Americans lonely?

Americans must be rather lonely people. How could they be otherwise? Look how they spend their time alone in metal boxes, they even eat, drink, shave and put make-up in those boxes. It must make them very lonely unless they are antisocial hermits. Corporations have taken advantage of the lonely, hermit-prone character of Americans: in offices, the inhabitants of moving metal boxes are put in cubicles of about the same size as the metal boxes. Anyone, who commutes by foot, by bicycle, or even by train, suffers dearly in a cubicle. Thus, the office use of cubicles can only have been invented in USA and then exported to unsuspected countries. Free souls cannot be confined to cubicles, for even convicts have more living space!

All quiet in the Western coast

SF is a quiet place. Not many people are walking the streets at any time. Even the Chinatown was next to empty at 8pm on Friday evening. Where have all the people gone? Are all of them really hiding in their gated communities perched on the mountain sides scared as hell? Why do not they party, why do not they come out, embrace the night, get dazed and forget their 401(k) plans for a single hour. NYC is livelier than SF. In NYC one can feel the rhythm and pulse of the city, here one needs a stethoscope and I do not have one.

Friday, 2006-01-13

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. Allen Ginsberg

Transit adventure in the Bay area

It so happened that I forgot my driving license in Boston. Thus, as we wanted to see how life would be in Palo Alto (Stanford), Mountain View, or San Jose, it became a day of transit adventure in California. It is surprisingly easy to travel without a car here. First, we took the historical F-tran from the Fisherman's Wharf to the Ferry Terminal, then the modern N-tram to the Caltrain-terminal, then Caltrain to Palo Alto, then the free Stanford-shuttle bus to Stanford's Main Quad, back to Palo Alto train station, continuing by the Caltrain to San Jose (what a lame place), then Amtrak to Berkeley. But by then it was already dark, we did not get to the campus at all. Instead, we concluded the adventure by taking the BART back to SF. Quite a trip. All tickets together were $60. Not too bad for two persons, about the same as renting a car, buying gas, and paying tolls would have added up to.
Stanford campus, and its surroundings (Palo Alto town/village/suburb), is an utterly unsuitable environment for civilized human beings. The campus is way too large, walking from here to there is not viable. The buildings are directly from Italo Westerns. It gives me the creeps. Palo Alto itself is just another collection of detached houses touching each other, malls there, but not here, and cars, parking lots. How can anyone stay alive, mentally, in such an environment? I could not, not for more than a month.
Even though we did not get to the Berkeley campus, the area next to it was much more civilized: restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, buses. No taxis though: apparently Berkeley is still partly countryside - everyone owns a car. Have to return there on Tuesday to check to campus itself.
Later, we had some beers in the North Beach area of SF, on Columbus avenue, next to City Lights Bookstore. Somewhat unruly area, all kinds of insane bums roaming around. But there is one really nice pub: Vesuvius, and one nice microbrewery. The main attraction, of course, is the bookstore, which is too well-stocked with great literature and politically on the left side non-fiction. I just wish I could buy more books from there. Sigh!

Wednesday, 2006-01-11

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei

Weather

Weather is very strange here. Last year, it was much colder, up to -17C. Now, for the whole January, it has been above zero C. Today, it was +4C when I walked to MIT at 8am. The forecast promises +12C later today. Actually, flying to San Francisco tomorrow does not guarantee warmer weather, which I find surprising.

Rudeness

Since I again have to search for my next job, I have done some networking, sent applications through web-interfaces, sent applications directly to recruiting managers, and contacted professional recruiters by email (as they encourage applicants to do). All but one (out to maybe 20) letter seem to have been deleted on arrival. No replies. The only reply was from a manager at Xerox PARC, who told that they do not have MS-level openings. Fair enough.
What is this rudeness? Are the employers so powerful, that they have lost all sense of politeness, all manners, and just plainly ignore applicants, even of my calibre. I do not understand. It seems that the best thing is to start to look for grants and fellowships and come back to MIT in the autumn for PhD-studies. After all, science is more fun than R&D, and the average competence and intelligence in MIT is way above that of in any company. Then again, being a systems architect in some large project is nice as well, but apparently I am not anymore suitable/competent for such a job - it is funny how education decreases competence.

Tuesday, 2006-01-10

To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Norbert Wiener

CLIOS

I attended a lecture about transportation by professor Sussman in the afternoon. He told about the work the Civil Engineering-department is doing. Of particular interest for me was the CLIOS-concept: Complex, Large-Scale, Interconnected, Open, Socio-Technological systems. For example, the transportation system, or the energy system. Just the kind of systems I really want to work on. Actually, telephone networks are also such systems. It is a pity, that most engineers/managers do not realize it and work only on very limited technical parts of the system. What's more, the usual way of organizing the work, or dividing the responsibilities, encourages such thinking. No wonder the development projects are usually so painful and prone to fail.
Sussman also divided complexity in four classes: structural, behavioral, evaluative, and nested. My thesis was about the first one, about structural. I need to think about the other classes more.

Panic - simulations

I got to know about these simulations of the way we behave in panic, stampede, etc in a complexity workshop today. Check them at the panic site. It is remarkable how much panic decreases the flow of people from a room. The site also contains some real pictures (disturbing) and videos (very disturbing, I assume, since they require a password).

On drug testing

If the reason for drug testing is safety, why is overtime allowed? I think the companies should test (daily) their employees and send tired ones back home. We know that staying awake for 24 hours lowers performance in tasks requiring alertness as much as drinking some 4 pints of beer. Or, why are employees allowed to work while sick? I assume (high) fever is not good for performance and safety either. Since companies do not care about tiredness or sickness, the only real reason for drug testing is the need and desire to humiliate the employees. So sad!

Daily crono

Sleeping very late, not coughing too much as I got the new medicine yesterday. Then workshops, lectures at MIT. Back at home at 8pm. Great day. Some very irritated job search related developments, but who cares.

Monday, 2006-01-09

Java is the SUV of programming tools. Philip Greenspun

Urine samples

Look at these: Substance Abuse Screening Test Consent Form and Background Consent Form from EMC. I think I will not apply. Not that I am taking any "illegal or controlled" substances, except codeine for my persistent cough, o that there is something suspicious in my past, but I take these form (and their prominent place on EMC's website) as sign of not trusting their employees. And by the way: if I visit country X and use a legal drug (there, but not in USA), why should it make me unsuitable as a EMC-employee in USA? And since we know, that the illegal drugs are not the most dangerous (or disabling) ones, I do not see any reason for this kinds of drug testing. Really suspicious company. I just wonder how often they test their employee: if the testing is really meant to imporve safety (sic!), they should test everyone, upto the CEO, every morning. By the way, they are firing 1000 employees this year, even though their profits are very high: they just want to get rid of 1000 bad employees...

PhD-application

I have now submitted my PhD-application. It looks quite nice. I am sure I will be accepted to ESD's PhD-program. At some point I thought that getting a PhD from ESD would not be that glamorous/impressive. But I think it is. It is part of MTI and what really matters is the quality of the thesis itself. One just has to write a thesis, which is worth reading for many people. Or at least try to do so.

On Iraq

According to news today, the war in Iraq will cost USA at least $2 trillion. It is amazing that such a waste of money and resources is acceptable to the general public, that there is not any bigger opposition. Investing the same amount in education, health care, infrastructure etc would make a real difference and really enhance the national security. Or, investing the money in changing the energy system and in mitigating the negative effects of global warming would both be a good headway towards a solution and would also benefit the US economy. It is a pity that non-patriotic people have the power right now.
At the same time, Juan Cole reports that there is a real danger of all-out civil war in Iraq. So, $2 trillion and no progress.

Sunday, 2006-01-08

If you want to win anything - a race, your self, your life - you have to go a little berserk. Chinese proverb

PhD-application

It is not enough to have a plan. Rather, one has to have several plans. If one fails, or even two, it is no problem, no need to stop, worry, and weep. Just pick the next plan and push forward full speed. Thus, I wrote my PhD-application for the ESD (Engineering Systems Division) in MIT. I do not propose anything small: I propose doing research which would solve the problems the world has with energy (systems). That's worth my time and effort and also somewhat large enough a topic for a MIT PhD-thesis.

Daily crono

Nothing much else happened. I felt healthy enough for a walk, thus I went to check how to local homeless people survive the winter. They have fancy make-shift tents and sleeping bags. Apparently they are still alive. Back at home, then Chinese food, a creative nap and then writing and checking which events/lectures to participate during theIAP. We have, by the way, decided to change our surfing habits.

Saturday, 2006-01-07

The opposite on love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. Elie Wiesel

Idle day

Nothing much happened. Or then again, somewhat much. Check the blog of S for a short explanation of the things we did. You may even find out whom I casted my vote to in the presidential elections. By the way, I think Finland would be better off with a purely ceremonial president institution.

Business ideas

How about start a restaurant in which one could order some canine companion for the duration of dinner? There are many lonely and allergic people, who would like to have such a company. After all, petting a dog is a good way of relieving stress and lowering blood pressure. And, I think the idea is much more civilized/decent than lap-dancing or top-less servants.
Or, for really allergic people: the reverse dog-walking business. Not so that one would pay for someone to walk to dog, but that people could rent dogs by the hours for walking, playing and petting. I bet that a dog would be better than a personal trainer. So, shall we start a kennel and laugh all the way to the bank?

Albert Hofmann, 100-years today

The father of LSD, Albert Hofmann, celebrates his 100th birthdate soon. Quite an achievement. Now, it is a pity that the fundamentalists prevent us from experimenting with LSD (and many other drugs). Shame on them! Hoffman's view on death is interesting:

"I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all,

The whole interview is well worth the 10-minutes it takes to read.

Friday, 2006-01-06

If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times. Saint Augustine

Being sick

In 2005, I was not sick for once, at least if mild migraines do not count. Thus, I assume that it is just right for me to start this new year, 2006, by coughing my lungs out of my chest. Right, but not too much fun. So, nothing much has happened since we returned from Washington, DC, on Monday. S has got much better and has spent her time outside our cave, I have been resting, writing job applications, and reading.

Another rip-off

I was extended an offer by a large multinational company, orally, not in writing. Being naive, I took the offer seriously and was quite sure that I would have a nice job in February. Being naive is not wise! They withdrew the offer, for I do not know their systems well enough - kind of funny since the whole organization has 40 people. So, not much change for me to know their systems. I am sure I would have learned their systems in less than 2 months, but I could not convince them. Most likely they have never seen anyone with my intellectual capabilities. And they will never do so. I wish them good luck in selecting their systems architect from their existing personnel.
So, I have resumed my job search. It has taken all my time and energy during the last three days. This time I will wait until I have signed a contract before I start celebrating.

On SUVs

SUVs are not selling well these days. I would blame their sissy names. The SUVs should have proper names, not something like "explorer. What about selling "Chrysler Crusader" to the born-again "Christian". For balance/equality, selling "Jaguar Jihad" would also be a good thing to do. Futhermore, "Dodge Destroyer", "Buick Bomber", and "Acura Al-qaeda" would also sell well. Maybe also "Honda Harmagedon" would entice gas-guzzling?

On un-American

Thomas L. Friedman put is better than even I could today in this column in the NY Times:

Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation, energy efficiency and environmentalism are some hobby we can't afford. I can't think of anything more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots, real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green.

Good places to eat in Washington DC

Washington DC has surprisingly good foreign/ethnic restaurants.

Burma-restaurant (740 Sixth Street, N.W ) of which I wrote earlier. Interesting food.
Ghana-cafe (2465 18th St. NW) for enjoying authentic food from Ghana/West-Africa. S had "Red Red", which was said to be popular among office workers in Ghana. No wonder, it was very good. I took a vegetable sampler, which was good as well.
Meskerem - an Ethiopian restaurant. I had never had Ethiopian food before, but I will surely want to have again. I took a vegetarian sampler, which consisted of vegetarian sauces and stews served on a sour-dough pancake/bread. Excellent.

A superb budget hotel in Washington DC

We stayed in the Anna Cooper-room of the Bloomingdale Inn in Washington, DC. I am somewhat picky about hotels, but Bloomindale Inn is certainly the most comfortable, home-like, quietest, and has the best value for money I have experience ever. And they even have two beautiful and friendly cats there. I just do not understand anyone, who does not (try to) stay at Bloomindale's while in DC.

All opinions are mine and do not reflect opinions etc of my current or future employers as far as I am aware. Similarly, all opinions on SDM at MIT are mine only. The official at SDM-homepage gives the other view.

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Blogs January to February 2006

A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.