Octopodial Chrome

Almost two years ago my brother Stephen & I travelled to Berlin and had a fine time; we’d hoped that our brother John could join us, but he was lame and obeyed the visa laws. Shortly thereafter he enlisted in the Marine Corps; quite awhile after that he was graduated from boot camp (he broke some bones therein, so it took awhile). This summer John, Stephen & I went on a trans-American vacation which was really quite wonderful.

This last week John, Stephen & I had one last trip together. Stephen had a long pre-deployment weekend and we three resolved to make the most of it—and did we!

I arrived on Friday and caught a bus to our brother Tom’s house on Coronado Island (he was himself deployed, but a friend was renting it and could let us in). One of Stephen’s platoon-mates had given him a ride down, so the three of us grabbed beers and food at the Coronado Brewery and then at Little Club (which is basically a time-capsule from the 1970s; I can imagine our dad drinking beer there back when the Soviets were the threat du jour).

Saturday we went on a run early and then headed into San Diego. We’d a bit of a mix-up with the bus and ended up all the way in Imperial Beach; never fear, we took a trolley into downtown and arrived in one piece. We’d lunch, then caught a flick, then had some coffee at a great new coffee/gelatto/hookah joint called Tabac, then back to Coronado where we baked a loaf of bread and had a superb dinner of steaks and saltzkartoffeln (all made with ingredients from Boney’s Bayside Markey, which is a very short walk from Tom’s house. Then I picked up John and we sat around watching Forrest Gump.

Sunday we got up early and took the bus to St. Spyridon’s for church. Afterwards Father said a brief prayer for Stephen and then we headed to the zoo. Our enjoyment was hampered by the fact that the Fascisti in charge have outlawed smoking on the premises since the beginning of this month. I’ve no doubt that the mothers of those who made the decision have no recollection of their fathers. Still, we’d an enjoyable time, particularly our pleasant meal at Albert’s in the treehouse. I understand that Stephen used to spend quite a lot of his liberties hanging at the zoo, people-watching and enjoying life.

That evening we had a few beers and then visited Fumari where we had an incredible guava hookah and took lots and lots of goofy photos. Then it was back to bed fairly early (we’re not always the night-owls our last name would indicate).

On Monday we slept in a bit, then headed up to Camp Pendleton to help Stephen’s corpsman & his wife pack up all their stuff for storage. That took pretty much the entire day, but we did have some excellent Thai restaurant which has been in business at least since Stephen was two years old. They had larb, an incredible Thai/Laotian dish which has been a family favourite since we were kids and ate at Thai Taste (I don’t know if that Thai restaurant is related to the one we frequented; they’re in the same rough area though). As an aside, back when he was a newborn the owner of Thai Taste took Stephen back to the kitchen to parade him, so well-known was our family there (or at least, that was an eight-year-old’s perception; no doubt our parents could correct it). We also got to see Stephen’s barracks at Camp Pendleton and experience the awe-inspiring stench therein. I’m serious about that: I have never in my life smelt something as foul as what I smelt in his room. The nose becomes acclimated to the very worst smells known to man in a few minutes, three or four or maybe a very little more; half an hour later and that room still stank. It was truly incredible, in the original sense of the word.

Tuesday morning Stephen & I went for a run again (John being a wimp and claiming he hadn’t the shoes). We ran all the way into the Pacific, then turned around, stopped off at the video store and then headed home. The three of us bickered, went to the store, bickered, bought some meat, bickered, bought some vegetables, bickered, bought some beer, bickered, bought some cheese—it was wonderful! We headed home and prepared steaks (garlic, black pepper, enough salt to hide the meat, rest one hour, wash with water, grill), green beans and twice-baked potatoes; Stephen baked a load of bread (his first ever!) for the meal. Afterwards we watched Hot Fuzz, which Stephen hadn’t seen yet.

We’d thought that he’d have to take the train or bus back to Camp Pendleton—thus having to leave early—but Tom’s renter (himself a Naval doctor) was kind enough to offer us his services, and was adamant that we could stay out late if we wished. And so we headed back to the Coronado Brewery and the Little Club and engaged in some late-night brother-bonding. Finally we headed back home, were driven back to Pendleton and said our good-byes.

It was an excellent long weekend; the only thing which would have improved it would have been if Tom and/or Emily could have been there. Had they been, I think it would been just about perfect; as it was, it was almost perfect. Which ain’t too bad when you think about it.

Well, yesterday my youngest brother—Lance Corporal Stephen Peter Uhl of the Third Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment—deployed for Iraq, there to do battle with our nation’s foes. By this time I imagine they will have deplaned and either are now or will soon be in their new quarters.

Our relationship is rather complex: due to the difference in our ages (almost eight years; he was born after the Challenger explosion!), in some ways I regard him more as a father or uncle than as a brother. I saw him born; I cut his umbilical cord; I changed his diapers (probably not that often if you asked Mom or Dad, but it seemed all the time to me). He visited me almost a decade ago, when he was only eleven and I was in college. He was still a cute little kid, so I dressed him in a coat & tie, gave him a snifter of orange soda and took him around all my friends trolling for girls. It was absolutely hilarious. As adults I’ve tried to be something of a wise uncle to him, moderating his vices and encouraging his virtues. I’ve not always been successful, but I like to imagine that I’ve helped moderate his excesses to some extent.

I very much hope he’s safe for the next seven months, but there’s nothing I can do now but pray. I bid you, my readers, to keep him in your daily prayers.

Colorado is the number one beer-producing state in the United States! I knew my long years of homebrewing would pay off; I like to think that I single-handedly pushed us over the mark.

It’d be cool to build a boat from a single sheet of plywood. Maybe my dad & I could do it sometime?

All my life we’ve mocked Canadian money (this candy bar costs 50 cents, or $485 Canadian); well, now it’s time for the Canadians to mock us: the Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar. This is why apparently-high investment returns are illusory: our dollar is cratering, and while an investment might appear to pay, say, 4% it’s really losing a few percent in constant dollars.

I wrote a long entry about this woman’s discovery that the US Naval Academy is martial, but really you just need to read it for yourself. I can speak to having siblings in the military; I even have a brother who went to the Naval Academy too (rather than shock and grief, my sentiments are more concernpride and respect). Let me just say that she and her mother are complete and utter fools. Gosh, the military owns you after you join—who knew? The comments after the article are priceless.

I feel sorry for her brother. It’s his plebe year, which is bad enough—but now every single midshipman and officer at the academy knows he comes from a family of congenital idiots. He’s going to have an utterly miserable fall. Of course, that’ll only make him stronger if he makes it through it. Still…

Incidentally, she doesn’t actually go to Columbia as she pretends; she goes to Barnard College, an affiliated women’s college.

USA Today reports that we Americans are too heavy for our cars: cars are rated for passengers weighing 150 pounds apiece while the average American man is 190 lbs. and the average woman is a mind-boggling 163 lbs. (aren’t women supposed to be in the 112-140 range?). Whoops.

A Swedish study has found that full-fat dairy products are less fattening than low-fat foods. Eating real food is better than eating processed foods. Who knew?

I spent the last two days ripping my entire music collection to Ogg Vorbis for my kid brother. You see, he recently bought a Toshiba Gigabeat F40 to take with him to Iraq and since he has no computer he was a bit stuck for tunes. Well, he now has 14½ gigabytes of music, which works out to 3,170 songs or 8 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes of solid music. I’m pretty sure he’ll end up deleting about half of it, but it should be a good start on his own collection.

I installed Rockbox on the Gigabeat. Rockbox is free cross-platform firmware which supports several iPods, Archos players, Cowon products, iriver players, SanDisk Sansa and the Toshiba Gigabeat X and F. It offers a lot more features than vendor firmwares do (e.g. Ogg Vorbis playback, crossfade, loads of games and so forth). In fact, I like the Gigabeat so much that I really, really, really want to buy one for myself. Of course, I already have an iAudio, which is very nice, cost three-fifths as much and has one twentieth the capacity.

Maybe I can break it…

David Pogue asks a cogent question: why do people buy ringtones? It’s an amazingly stupid thing to do. Almost any song one buys for use as a ringtone one already has as in Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC or some other format; why pay an extra $3 a year or $2.50 a month or whatever insanely expensive rate your phone company charges? You’re just paying for the privilege of playing something you already own!

Further proof that mobile phones cause brain damage, as though more were needed.

It’s legal to carry a gun openly in Arlington, Virginia. Why then would the police stop, detain, question and attempt to photograph someone legally carrying a gun? Would they do the same if he were to carry a 2x4? If he were to carry a briefcase? If he were to stand on a soapbox discussing politics? If he were to go to the church of his choosing?

Just finished watching the hilarious Hot Fuzz. It’s an excellent parody buddy-cop films. The first bit’s kinda slow, but really it’s a prolonged setup for the final half hour actionfest. The trailer promises that the guys who made it watched every action film ever; I don’t know about that, but they sure managed to fit in just about every action movie trope: the jump-from-a-great-height; the hero-henchman fight; the hero-villain fight; the sword-fight; the vengeance vendetta; the exploding building; the spring-loaded sleeve-pistols; the massive, monumental, absolutely incredible expenditure of ammunition (I’m pretty certain more shots were fired making Hot Fuzz than in the Second World War).

It rocked.

Well, Boy Scouting (now called Scouting to appease girls) celebrated its centennial in disgraceful style. The event is co-ed; there is no campfire; there are no meat dishes at all, only vegetarian fare such as veggie chili, salads and potatoes. Baden-Powell is spinning in his grave. Our modern Scouters should be ashamed of themselves.

Orson Scott Card has a comprehensive proposal for weaning America off of the automobile. He correctly points out that we currently subsidise cars and big-box retailers to a remarkable extent and that we penalise pleasant neighbourhoods. I don’t agree with all of his suggestions (I’d rather get rid of all regulations than replace anti-neighbourhood ones with pro-neighbourhood ones), but they are not a bad start at all.

If we simply start building nice, mixed-use (retail & residential), mixed-income neighbourhoods composed of a higher-speed commercial street, then some streets of houses and on the periphery a few apartment buildings; if we’d allow commercial streets to have garrets and other residences; if we’d quit mandating huge parking lots (thereby wasting space and forcing driving); if we’d instead build sidewalks oriented towards pedestrians: if we did those things, we’d have a safer, healthier, more pleasant America.

The evening of 25 December 2001 Cory Maye was asleep at home with his 18-month-old daughter when his door was smashed in, waking him. He ran, got his gun and shot one of the intruders dead. It turns out that the intruders were police serving a no-knock warrant on his next-door neighbour. Despite the fact that he stopped shooting the instant the police identified themselves; despite the fact that Mississippi allows the killing of another in self-defense; despite the fact that Mississippi does not consider it capital murder to kill a police officer when one does not know he is a police officer—despite all these things, Cory Maye was sentenced to death. His death sentence was overturned a year ago, but he still sits on death row, a victim and not a killer. And pretty much no-one cares.

This is the inevitable result of laws that favour the police (why should it be capital murder to kill a cop, but not a grandmother?); of laws that violate our centuries-old liberties (why are no-knock raids permitted?); of policies which encourage citizens to believe themselves under attack (why use a SWAT team to smash a door when a simple knock would do as well?); of laws which penalise victimless crimes (why is it legal to drink alcohol but not smoke dope?).

Cory Maye defended his daughter from what he thought were criminals, and yet he rots in prison, treated like one.

Back in 1964 Richard Feynman (you may have heard of him—he was a remarkably well-known scientist) served on the California Curriculum Commission. These are his thoughts on the corruption of the whole process.

We’re all familiar with anthropological expeditions, in which academics go and live amongst primitive groups to study their lifestyles. But what if it were done in reverse? What if a group of Pacific Islanders visited England? That’s actually a lot cooler.

An Austrian physician recommends nose-picking and eating mucus. According to him, a finger will get the nasal passages cleaner than a handkerchief, and the bugs trapped in the mucus will increase the body’s immune defenses.

I hope he’s already married, because he is never going to get another date in his life…

Back in 1999 William Dowling (of the Rutgers English department) wrote Why America Needs the SAT, an examination of what the SAT actually is, what it actually measures and whether or not it’s a good predictor of academic success. Turns out, it measures scholastic aptitude and predicts success in college—and that universities and colleges with low average SAT scores are not much more than glorified high schools.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have to mow the lawn ¼ as often? Wouldn’t it be cool to stop watering the lawn? Wouldn’t it be cool not to have to fertilise the lawn? Well, Eco-lawn does exactly that! It’s a breed of fescue which is slow-growing with very deep roots. The deep roots pull out all the water the grass needs; the slow growth means it doesn’t need to be cut often. As a bonus, it’s so fine that it bends over at four inches long, so one doesn’t really have to ever cut it unless one wishes.

Thanks to Ecototality for pointing it out.

Every guy’s thought of it at one point or another. Wouldn’t it be great to have a urinal in your home?

In Temecula, California, a gang of armed, brutal men burst into a home, cuffed the entire family and generally behaved like jerks (e.g. when the mother asked if her 15-month old was alright, she was told that if she moved he’d put a bullet in her head). It’s known who did it—so why aren’t the culprits in prison?

Because they’re police, that’s why. They got the wrong address, but that’s almost beyond the point. Even if they had gotten the correct address, would it be appropriate to issue a no-knock raid? Almost certainly not, although I’ll grant the rather slim possibility. Even if it were the correct house, and even were it one of the extremely rare situations in which a no-knock raid is appropriate, is there any reason to treat people unkindly? To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, when you have a gun to someone’s head it costs nothing to be polite.

That said, no-knock raids have led to quite a few deaths of innocents in recent years. Their use should be severely curtailed or eliminated altogether. I’m not particularly worried that someone could flush a bag of drugs down the toilet given 30 seconds’ notice. First of all, it’s not that likely. Second, our entire judicial system is based on giving the accused the benefit of the doubt. Third, I don’t really care if someone has a bag of drugs in the first place.

No matter what our system of keeping order, there will be innocent deaths; that’s just the nature of force. But surely we can act to minimise those deaths?

In 2003 Virginia farmer Joel Salatin wrote the essay Everything I Want to Do is Illegal about the stifling bureaucracy which afflicts agriculture. A farmer can’t operate his own slaughterhouse; instead, he has to ship the animals elsewhere. He can’t sell his own meat. He can’t charge for farm tours. If he wants to sell a single item a neighbour produces, he must become a full-fledged retail outlet: business license, business taxes, parking lot, public restrooms—the works. He can’t build his own house to his own specifications (interesting, in Virginia it’s illegal to build a home as small as my condo).

Whatever happened to the Land of the Free?

The world-renowned beer and whiskey writer Michæl Jackson has died. He was one of the moving forces behind the craft beer revolution on both sides of the Atlantic; his work was excellent. He will be missed.