Scratches on the subway window

 

Big Pimpin'

This is the car I rented on the East Coast. It was hilarious. And fun. 

Special K in the window

 

Lloyd Bentsen: "You're no Jack Kennedy"

LB to Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate:

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

RIP, Lloyd Bentsen.

Coney Island

One of my favorite places anywhere. Ever. 

the nocebo effect

According to this article, the nocebo effect is pain in response to the expectation of injury, the converse of the placebo effect. Apparently (according to wikipedia and other web sources) "nocebo" isn't just a clever re-working of a familiar word, but means "I shall harm" in latin. And "placebo" means "I shall please." Dude, I'm getting my knowledge on!

HC thinks I have a very active nocebo response. I'm sure she's right.

Did I use "converse" correctly in that first paragraph? Probably not. I think the converse of the placebo effect (aleviation of pain in response to an inactive treatment) would be a treatment in response of aleviation of pain. The converse is the inversion in relation. The obverse is taking the opposite of two conditions. Maybe the obverse of the placebo effect (aleviation of pain in response to an inactive treatment) would be iatrogenic (doctor-caused) pain, an increase in pain in response to an active treatment. The contrapositive, is a combination of the two, an an active treatment in response to an increase in pain, or business as usual. Wikipedia describes nocebo as the reverse of the placebo. Seems altogether too simple.

Arroyo Seco

Pretty. Urban. 

Urban escape

Mac and I dropped into a quiet arroyo today. It was a hot day, but this little piece of shade was nice. 

Blue Parrot Man

Remember him? He's been spotted again.

farmer's market

Yesterday AR took me to the Pasadena Victory Park Farmer's Market. It reminded me of when my route from work to the bus after work in Seattle took me through Pike Place Market. There were rows and rows of produce stalls, and I would pick up what I needed for the night. I wasn't feeling the produce purchasing yesterday, but AR pressed a quart of strawberries on me, and they were amazing. So ripe you didn't think they could get riper. You could almost taste the dirt on them. Next week, hopefully I'll be more in the mood to stock my produce larder. 

the delight of a child? nauseating.

if i want indiscriminate sentimentalism with my food, i'll get my own side of hallmark, thank you very much?

Eaton Canyon

A denuded yucca, high above the burbs of the San Gabriel Valley. The air here has been miserable. I've been running outside, which has its own rewards, but I can feel my lungs fighting the junk in the air.

symphony: tremendous

i'm not a huge symphony person, but i really enjoyed this performance by the LA philharmonic at the walt disney concert hall. it was my first visit to the hall, and it was all that a person could expect. it also indicates how seriously angelenos take their cars: the beautiful and expensive design started the minute you stepped from the parking garage floor into what, in another city, would have been a stairwell. instead it was a large open set of escalators and stairs. i'm a total fool for beethoven, and the 7th and 8th symphonies were fantastic. there was also a new piece by anders hillborg which i wasn't crazy about. my fellow concert goers (from my lab) liked it a lot; they also said that the wonderfulness of the concert was in no small part due to the conducting of esa-pekka salonen, but i didn't have anything to compare it to.

Map My Run

Map My Run is a very cool tool. It uses Google maps to plot your run; you click on the turns and it calculates distance. If you add time and personal info, it calculates pace and calories burned. Sweet!

Screech

Last night I invited AS over for the wonderful pork cutlets. I was frazzled from work and functioning erratically, but finally I pulled it together and we ate. AS suggested we walk the dog and then she would let me get back to the lab. We were walking toward the tennis courts where I thought Mac might be able to run around a little when we heard a screech. No crash ended it, and we sighed. "That's a terrible intersection," I said. About ten seconds later, we heard another crash, this one followed by a crash. We dithered about going to the accident scene, but AS had her phone with her and wanted to see if anyone had called the police. One car was still in the intersection, smashed, and another was by the side of the road, also banged up. A golden retriever was running around amongst the guys who had been playing basketball on the nearby court. The guys, who I've see playing at night before, are just edgy enough that I was surprised to see them with a golden retriever. Moments later I realized that it was AR's dog, and it was AR and ML who had been in the smashed up car. AR and ML were in shock and a bit roughed up but had no major injuries. Both airbags had deployed, and the passenger one had broken the front window. We hung out with them as things got sorted out (the other car had a stop and will probably be found at fault; a police report was made; paramedics cleared our heroes and, adorably, AR's dog). I went home to get my car so we could transfer everything from AR's car to mine when hers was towed away. Eventually I dropped everyone off and headed to the lab. Now I'm finally home. I have AR's dog so AR can easily stay at ML's for the night. This was not the evening I expected; I'm sure that's only a fraction as true for me as it is for AR and ML.

The Frozen Chosen

Another wonderful New Yorker article covered the effects on the Episcopalian Church of ordaining a gay priest against the background of the movement of the Episcopalian population center toward the global south. It includes this:

Bill Clinton recently kidded his Episcopal predecessor George H. W. Bush for being one of the "frozen chosen;"

and ends with a PR person's mournful assessment of the current state of the church:

"Join us in a diplomatically intricate, ethically ambiguous, and sometimes publicly humiliating tightrope walk toward Jesus."

Reason #40359 that I love the New Yorker:

I don't know how long this article will remain available online, but here's a link to it as of this posting. It's about "The science of driving directions," and it's better than crack. An exerpt:

Navteq has about six hundred field researchers and offices in twenty-three countries. There are nine field researchers in the New York metropolitan area. One morning this fall, I went out with a pair of them, Chris Arcari and Shovie Singh. They picked me up on Forty-second Street, in a white S.U.V., after making that unextraordinary left off Broadway. “We’re going to be working over by LaGuardia Airport,” Arcari said. “One of the items we need to check out is some street names. They’ve put up new signs. Then we’ll proceed to an area that we have targeted.” Arcari, who is thirty-seven and was brought up on Long Island, was the senior member of the team, and he tended to speak in the formal, euphemistic manner of a police officer testifying in court. He’d been with Navteq for ten years. Singh, a native of Trinidad who grew up in Queens, was a new hire. He’d got hooked on geography after taking some classes in the subject in college.

GETTING THERE, by NICK PAUMGARTEN, Issue of 2006-04-24

worst pickup line ever

"I noticed you at the burial."

i was so flattered.

Pork cutlets

For the first time in many years, I made one of my favorite Cooks' Illustrated recipes: Breaded Pork Cutlets. It's simple: cut a 1-lb pork tenderloin in 6 pieces, pound till 1/2" thick, dredge in flour, then egg, then soft fresh bread crumbs. Fry. It was fantastic. I'm scared of meat cuts; the non meat parts (like the 'silver') ick me out. But I conquered my fear. Fear me, I am queen of pork cutlets.

CO2 vent

Three ski patrollers died at Mammoth this past Thursday: two fell into a geothermal vent filled with CO2 and the third was trying to rescue them. I was looking at stories and photos. It's sad, and it makes you wonder if the sport is worth it. Probably if you asked these guys before they died, they'd say yes.

One of the pictures was strange to me, because it suggests that this was a heavily skied area. Yikes. It's possible that all those tracks were made after the accident, but given the number and the variety of approach and departure directions, I don't think so.