The Month That Was - March 2011

The Month That Was - March 2011: I was hoping to have Misspent Youth available on Kindle by now, and I am this close but not there yet. Current target is Monday the 11th. Planned price is $4.84, just like Business as Usual and Apple Pie.

Note: You know you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books, right? There is free software for everything from PCs to iPhones that lets you buy and read kindle books.

It's been a rough month with the house, but at last there is progress. The mud room is finally complete, more furniture is ordered (this will get me about half way to furnished), and a horrendous rattle in water pipe was solved without having to tear up the floorboards in the living room (fingers crossed). I still have a torturous pinging when the furnace kicks off and my lawn tractor is in the shop, but I am in a much better frame of mind about it than I was mid-month.

Also, I note that my home of Dexter, MI is the fastest growing municipality in Michigan. That's kind of like being the best ski resort in Tahiti, but still.

And I got to travel this month (although I really had no business doing so). You can read all about it below.

[Good Links] Shrinking Heads
[Tech] R.I.P. Zune
{Travel] Keys to My Heart
[Books] Book Look: Quantum Reality

[Good Links] Shrinking Heads

Shrinking Heads: Loved this article on therapy from someone who had three therapists fall asleep on him. Needless to say, they all manufactured a plausible psychological excuse.

Speaking of psychology, this on procrastination from a Hollywood psychologist to entertainment industry big wigs:

By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels's practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung's Father archetype. "They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write," he says. "Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he's answerable to, but it's not human. It's Time itself that's passing inexorably. That's why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you're defying this authority figure." Procrastination, he says, is a "spurious form of immortality," the ego's way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death. He gives procrastinators a tool he calls the Arbitrary Use of Time Moment, which asks them to sit in front of their computers for a fixed amount of time each day. "You say, 'I'm surrendering myself to the archetypal Father, Chronos,' " he says. 'I'm surrendering to him because he has hegemony over me.' That submission activates something inside someone. In the simplest terms, it gets people to get their ass in the chair."

A writer might simply call that yielding to mortal fear.

[Tech] R.I.P. Zune

R.I.P. Zune: Very sad to see that Microsoft has given up on Zune. The service and music store will continue, but the player is dead. The knee-jerk analysis is that there was no way they could stand up to the iPod, which is perhaps true, but I think the bigger issue is that all dedicated music/media players are evolving into smartphones and tablets. With that in mind Microsoft is aiming to be an operating system provider, not a device maker. So they will be hammering on Windows Phone 7 and some tablet variation to battle Android and Apple in the ongoing struggle over pods and pads.

I have two Zunes -- a first gen 30 gig model that is my main music player and a second gen 8 gig that I keep loaded with workout music for runs and the gym. They excel at what I need them for, which is to play music -- not movies, not facebook, not Twitter, not re-orienting myself to the enlightened Tao of Apple. Basically, I want a super convenient Sony Walkman. But once again, it looks like the world is passing me by. And just when I think I've finally caught up to it.

I am also quite possibly the last person on Earth still using a Motorola RAZR for a phone. The lagging edge has served me well. And I'm in no hurry to change. I have a pay-as-you-go plan for voice and text and it literally costs me about $200 a year for what I need. And I feel confident that Microsoft will continue to support existing Zunes as legacy products (they are actually pretty god about that), so I may be OK for some time to come.

Still the inevitable change is, well, inevitable. At some point I will probably have a smartphone and a tablet. Probably about the time they are beginning to go obsolete.

[Travel] Keys to My Heart

Keys to My Heart: [[Photos to come.]] I do still love Florida. First, Palm Beach. I flew in on Friday, arriving in the early afternoon (a fine enough flight, no rant needed), snagged my rental, and headed for Worth Ave.

It's tempting to resort to clich‚d descriptions of gauche, wealthy WASPs; white-haired men sporting colorful khakis and reconstructed cougars dropping half a grand on a hairstyle. The clich‚s would be accurate. The street is peppered with Bentleys and Rolls and high-end Mercedes. Anything below a Lexus sticks out. Gucci and Neiman Marcus and Jimmy Choo and Cartier and Brooks Bros and Polo. The street-side real estate glossy magazine is filled with eight-digit homes with private boat docks and servant's quarters. Women are decked out in desperate housewife level finery, towing pugs and papillions. Men with fishing and golf logo'd sportswear and millionaire-banker jawlines are killing time over single barrel bourbons while their wives/mistresses are overspending. And tourists, of course. In fact anyone who didn't fit in the above category could be presumed to be a tourist.

Now many of you are cringing at the thought of such a gaudy display of wealth and status. Leaving aside the questionable merit and motives for such anti-snobbery, let me just say that from an aesthetic standpoint, you would have to acknowledge the place is remarkably beautiful. The architecture is old Floridian, with the quasi-moorish influences in the roofs and turrets. There is a nice clock tower at the end of the street where the ocean begins. The beach is a perfect Florida Atlantic Ocean beach. And the streets are absolutely spotless. Decadent or not, it's a good place to hang out.

I confined myself to taking some photos and having an al fresco dinner of Neapolitan pizza and white wine. Then back to my hotel room. Big day tomorrow.

The plan: Pick up Miss Kate and the airport, swing by Barry University to get Miss Anna and barrel-ass it to Key West. And that we did. A brief stop in Key Largo at the renowned Key Largo Conch House where they have an "As Seen on the Food Network" banner up and are happy to mention all their awards and the fact that an actress named Jorja Fox from CSI-Las Vegas once enjoyed their fish tacos. The food was tasty and the atmosphere was pure Key Largo -- ultra casual, open air amidst the palms, fishing-hole kitschy d‚cor, and somewhat lackadaisical service. Late in the day we pulled into the Reach Resort in Key West proper.

In recent years, Hilton has taken over two resorts on the southwest side of the island under the auspices of the Waldorf Group, which is to say their luxury recreational group (as opposed to Conrad, which is their luxury business group). The two resorts are Casa Marina and the Reach Resort. They are separated by about four residential blocks and services can be used seamlessly across resorts.

If I had to characterize them differently, I would say Casa Marina is larger and more traditionally resorty. Reach is smaller and going for a more hip, boutiquey feel. Both are exquisitely beautiful.

Reach was something of a mixed bag for us. It was 5:30 before our room was ready, which was really not that big a problem since we were able to familiarize ourselves with the bar and the pool side amenities. The room itself was more than a little, um, challenging. A handle to the closet came off at the touch and the mini-fridge could have woken the dead, but strangest was the layout. While there was a bit of a hallway between the bedroom and bathroom, the bathroom itself, including commode, was not separated from the bedroom by a door. That was truly creepy. I mean, it is sufficiently isolated, I'm sure, but I really need to close and lock the door when I am going potty. It may be psychological, but I just feel more civilized when the sounds and smells of my bodily functions are fully private.

But apart from that, Reach is a top notch place. I would have been happy to stay a few more days and spend some time on the private beach and maybe sample the steakhouse, called Strip which is accentuated with large pictures of naked women. Like I said, they are look for a hip, edgy vibe at Reach.

I should point out that, despite my snarkiness, the staff was unfailingly friendly and helpful. That is hugely important and trumps all the little peccadilloes.

Reach is one block east of the south end of Duval Street. And Duval Street is where the action is. Stretching the length of the island north to south, Duval is lined with innumerable crap shops, bars, and miscellaneous nonsense (including at least one "adult club"). Since this is my fourth visit to Key West, I'm sure I've written about Duval Street before. I suppose you could consider it similar the Bourbon Street in New Orleans, but somewhat less lurid, although no less profane. By their nature, Conch Republic types have more of a chilled-out hash-house streak than the bayou hustlers in the Big Easy.

We walked down Duval towards Mallory Square, stopping here and there, hoping to snag a waterside dinner table to catch the sunset. Of course the waterfront was packed on a Saturday night so we moved inland a block and had a fine open-air rooftop dinner at the appropriately named Rooftop Caf‚.

Up early the following morning for the big adventure to The Dry Tortugas. Little more than a collection of coral reefs and sandbars, the Dry Tortugas lay about 70 miles west of Key West. (They're called "dry" because there is no fresh water, not because you can't drink there...although you can't drink there.) You get there via the Yankee Freedom ferry as part of an arranged tour, and a very, very nicely done tour at that. If you've done boating/snorkeling day tours before, you know they can be very regimented and controlled. Not so with the Yankee Freedom. It's not cheap, but when you add up everything that's included it is really a great deal. The ferry ride, park entry fee, breakfast, lunch, snorkeling gear, and a tour of Fort Jefferson -- all included. Bring sunscreen and towels. You only have to pay for drinks and afternoon snacks, and I suppose you could pre-pack those too.

The key thing that differentiates this from other tours is that once you are at the destination, you are pretty much on your own timetable. They do guided tours of the Fort at two or three times and you can sign up for any, or just tour it by yourself -- there are placards for a self guided tour. The Fort is a very cool place; labyrinthine old brick work that virtually shouts of its violent and sordid history. It's a moat-outlined three-level hexagon with an expansive, green, cactus and mangrove filled courtyard and astounding 360 degree views from the top. Reserve an hour for touring and explorations. Then head to the beach for some outstanding snorkeling in the reef-protected waters. Huge schools of silvery fish try to stay clear of the diving pelicans, just yards from your mask. Honestly the best snorkeling experience of my life (although that's not saying much). Top it all off with a couple of drinks on the trip home and it makes for one awesome day. When visiting Key West you really must take the Yankee Freedom to the Dry Tortugas. I can't recommend this highly enough.

Thanks to the room availability SNAFU at check-in, we were able to snag a late check-out the following day so I took the opportunity for a 5-mile run in the morning before the heat was upon us. It was an interesting experience in the contrasts of the island. Jogging along the south shore it's pretty clear to see that is the "bad side of town," if there really is such a thing in Key West, but this is clearly where the homeless guys and vagrants hang out on the benches and sleep off whatever is ailing them. The beach here is long, but not particularly attractive and the winds whip up hard, as evidenced by the near constant figures of kiteboarders. The core of the island is residential and the houses -- generally very cozy and well cared for behind their old growth shade trees -- are fairly tightly packed. The north shore is where the docks are -- fishing charters, old schooners doing sunset sails, various ferries. As you move west you reach the heart of Duval Street and Mallory Square, then continuing southwest you encounter the coiffured realm of Truman Annex, home to Harry Turman's Southern White House. Along the far western shore is a naval station and the docking area for the big cruise ships. Keep heading back south and you eventually reach Ft. Zachary State Park, the site of the only good beach in Key West and some truly funky beach architecture. Turning back east toward the heart of town takes you through the smallish old town with Cuban and Haitian shops and divey diners. Key West is a remarkably varied place for such a small island.

I love Key West. Certainly one of my most favorite places in Florida (but that tends to change with each new trip). I've been four times and I still have much to explore. I was sad to leave.

The last couple of nights we settled in the Coral Gables. In the weirdness that is Miami you often find nice upscale neighborhoods next to downtrodden quasi-ghettos. Just a stone's throw from Little Havana (which is not the worst place in Miami, but not remotely upscale), Coral Gables could be lifted from any high-end urban metropolis. A fine set of restaurants and shops, good area for walking about. If you need to stay in the city, as opposed to at the beaches, you probably should shoot for Coral Gables.

Just a quick swing towards downtown then across a bridge and you find yourself on Key Biscayne -- a lovely island with a predominantly country club feel about it. The exception to this is the Bill Baggs State Park which features a terrific beach, nature trails, etc. Sadly, we only had about an hour there, but it was enough time to slap on the bathing suit and go out and bob around in the warm Atlantic Ocean while some sort of photo shoot (featuring children) was proceeding on the beach. Not surprising since the beach here often shows up on the various "most beautiful" lists. I first set foot in the Florida Atlantic nearly 40 years ago and it still feels like home.

Our final evening was Anna's birthday dinner, an adventure that included my getting lost in the car, my getting lost on foot, and finally driving a trio of college coeds to the world's sketchiest liquor store on the edge of Little Haiti to buy a bottle of Grey Goose through an armored window. It was not my finest hour.

I couldn't count the number of times I've visited Florida, but I still love it. Facing the fact that I will likely end up here one day when I take my place in God's waiting room just isn't all that depressing to me. I think I could adapt to being a Worth Street trolling, white haired millionaire, clad in Tommy Bahama. Hell, I wouldn't mind being known as that cranky old man on Duval Street.

[Books] Book Look: Quantum Reality, by Nick Herbert

Book Look: Quantum Reality, by Nick Herbert: I guess you can consider this part 2 of my continuing forays into the wackness that is reality. The last month was an exploration of the nature of time, reaching back to the beginning of the universe. This time it's all about the meaning of Quantum Theory.

Quantum Theory is the most audacious and intellectually challenging concept ever devised. It addresses a known situation wherein a particle doesn't exist in until it is observed or measured. Now, let's be clear on that. It's not that we don't know it's if it's there or not until we look at it, it is that is literally doesn't exist. OK, that's not exactly true, but in the common sense of existing, it doesn't. It exists in a bizarre state called a probability wave in which it is in all possible places we could see it at once. Only when we look does it settle into a particle in one spot.

Bizarre and surreal. Yet it is true. It is going on around us all the time, these particles popping into reality. The best discussion I know of on this idea is a lecture from Richard Feynman (made available courtesy Microsoft, you may need to view it in IE). It's worth watching if you're curious about this.

So you see what I mean about wackness. This makes the theory of relativity seem positively tame.

Early in the twentieth century a number of scientists (Werner Heisenberg is the big name here, but he was one of many who had a hand) came up with Quantum Theory to deal with this. It is an enormously complicated set of laws based on something called waveform physics, which generates exact answers to all experimentation done in the quantum realm. In other words, we know exactly what rules govern this stuff -- verified by experiments over and over again in the ensuing years. We can make very accurate predictions about what will happen when and where, but we don't really know what it means as far as the nature of reality. I mean, really, what is this nonsense about being in all possible places at once?

This is what Nick Herbert tries to sort out. In the end he can't, of course, because it's not something that is known. (In fact, some make the argument that it can't be known.) So he has to settle for reviewing the possibilities. Unfortunately, many of possibilities devolve into very unsatisfying conclusions. Herbert does a thorough job, but let me shortcut to a few interesting ones.

Observer Created Reality -- this is the new age notion that, in a very real sense, reality as we know it is created when we observe it. Now, that leaves wide open the question of what counts as observation. Einstein belittled this by saying (paraphrased) that he could not imagine a mouse having some creative control over the universe. At least one physicist has proposed quite scientifically that reality only occurs when it comes into purview of intelligent consciousness. This leads to the view of the universe as a lattice of interconnected observations, outside of which there are only probability waves. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, did it really fall? The answer is, apparently, there is no tree only the probability of one.

Many Worlds -- this was conceived in the early sixties. It stems from the whole notion that unobserved particles exist in all possible states prior to observation. One thing that quantum physicists are really keen on is finding a way that there is nothing special about our existence. If ours is one existence that occurred out of an uncountable number of possible turns the universe could have taken over its life, that leaves these guys having to figure out why this one instead of the others. So if these bizzare quantum things exists in all possible places prior to being observed, why did they just happen to end up the way they did? (As a gambler, this problem doesn't bother me. Bad beats happen. Trust me on this.) The many worlds theory gets around this by saying they all happen, you just can't see the others because they exist in a parallel universe. Then science fiction writers figure out ways around that and we get Sliders and Spock with a beard.

Action at a Distance -- not really a conception of Quantum Reality but a fact that must be accounted for, and frankly, it gets my gold star for the single weirdest thing in the universe. Also called quantum entanglement, this tells us that unconnected things can have "knowledge" of each other. It is possible to get two particles in a state such that they mirror each other. Imagine two particles one charged negative and one charged positive (it's not really a charge, but think of it that way for the sake of argument). If you put these particles in an "entangled" state, when one particle changes charge the other also does at the same instant. The key thing is that there is no need for one particle to indicate the change to the other; it's as if they are physically connected. The kicker is it doesn't matter how far apart they are. They could be the full instance of the known universe apart and they would still change instantaneously. This, as Herbert points out, is essentially voodoo. Stick a pin in a doll in Haiti and some poor schlub in Peoria screams in pain. Except with entangled particles it actually happens. It looks like in some sense, everything in the universe is connected as if it were a single object. I hate that. It makes me feel like I'm in some kind of hippie-mystic acid trip.

Einstein never warmed to Quantum Theory. Of the unobserved universe being created of probability waves, he famously said (paraphrase), "God does not play dice with the universe." He was less adamant in time but always felt that it the notion of the quasi-existential, probabilistic state required of a particle prior to observation was untenable. Even as more and more experimental validation came he never gave in. In the end the best he could argue was that the universe is really made up a normal stuff and the Quantum Theory is incomplete. That there is something else to it that we have yet to discover that makes the numbers work out for the normal stuff of the universe without resorting to the wackness. Interestingly, a group of people called the neo-classists have tried to do just that, but to account for Action at a Distance they have had to resort to something going faster than the speed of light, which Einstein proved impossible.

As you can tell, the bottom line here is that nobody has a friggin' clue about the essential nature of the world we live in. We can predict what will happen in specific circumstances quite well. Perhaps even better that when Issac Newton sorted the world out back in the day. Because of this we can make use of the nature of things without actually knowing the story behind them. But on the objective nature of Reality, our ignorance is monumental.

Herbert does a clear, precise cataloging of the theories, their proponents, and their shortcomings. He does not talk down nor does he gloss over issues. He chooses an unconventional demonstration of observer created reality using polarization of light through a crystal which is more than a bit confusing. I highly recommend the Feynman lecture linked above for that demonstration. He also goes into some detail about the sorts of experiments that are done to validate Quantum Theory, but I could not follow them.

Should you read Quanum Reality? If you have a passing familiarity with this topic and while you've read or seen a bit about it, you still don't know what it all means, then yes. Herbert is at his best when trying to dig into what all this means rather than the experimental justification. At that he excels. If you have little or no knowledge of quantum theory, I don't recommend this as a starting point. More popular recent works by someone like Brian Greene or Paul Davies would be a better place to start. But do try to get here eventually; it's an eye-opener to our ignorance. And in the end, while Herbert has his favorite ideas, like every other physicist, one suspects that he realizes that at the moment, the metaphysical theories just reflect the pre-existing human bias of the scientists involved. The truth is, we just don't know, and we may not for may many years to come. My guess is that when we are resorting to the stuff of fantasy and sci-fi, we are probably as far from having any answers as we have ever been.

The Month That Was - February 2011

The Month That Was - February 2011: The first time I used the snow blower it was kind of fun. A novelty for me. The next couple of times I was grateful to be able to clear my sizeable driveway so quickly. By the fifth time I had to take it out in a month and a half, I was cursing the damn thing as a proxy for all the damn blizzards we've had. I'm beginning to fear having to mow the damn lawn come spring.

This month featured a too-short long weekend to a couple of Atlantic seaboard beach towns that were new to me. More below.

Taxes loom large in my existence these days. Larger, for the moment, than the Kindle edition of Misspent Youth, but that will change soon (or at least by April 15th).

And the check engine light came on in my car again, because I needed to spend a few hours sitting in a cramped waiting room reading a two year old issue of Good Housekeeping while CNN drones away in the corner. I just haven't done enough of that in my life.

[Movies] Why Movies Suck, and Hollywood Too
[Books] Book Look: Krakatoa
[Travel] Cold Beach Mix
[House and Home] House Schooling

[Movies] Why Movies Suck, and Hollywood Too

Why Movies Suck, and Hollywood Too: Um, yeah. To elaborate, I have been making the point for years the TV is vastly superior to film. Now it's looks like I am may be an unheralded prophet. (It looks like that to me anyway.) The trope of movie suckitude has been around for ages, but coupling it with TV's ascendency has been rare. Now a recent article in GQ suggests the zeitgeist may be coming around to my point of view.

"And for all those people who spent years trying to get movies made at all the companies that are now gone, there's now one place to work where you can get respectfully treated and fairly judged," says Rudin. "It's HBO."

So cable has become the custodian of the "good" niche; entities like HBO, Showtime, and AMC have found a business model with which they can satisfy a deep public appetite for long-form drama. Their original series don't need to attract huge audiences; and as a result, any number of ambitious writers, directors, and producers who might long ago have pitched their best stuff to studios now turn to the small screen, because one thing nobody in cable television will ever say to them is "We don't tell stories anymore."

This is all I'm saying. The article author half-seriously blames Top Gun. An acceptable thesis. Worth a read, but it's nothing you haven't heard from me before.

Semi-related, I know pretty close to zero about celebrity culture. Seriously, I was at a friend's for the Oscar telecast and it was populated almost entirely of people I could not name and knew nothing of. But every once in a while, a celebrity gains enough fame or infamy to hit my radar.

Let me just say Charlie Sheen is a god among men. Charlie Sheen shoots rays of fire and poetry out of his hardened fists. He has the blood of a tiger -- a tiger that is a genius and always wins. He is the new drug Huey Lewis was searching for. Anyone who is not Charlie Sheen is a pussy. And a wussy. Charlie Sheen is the man Mel Gibson wishes he could be, and the man Tom Cruise wishes he could love. Charlie Sheen is the chairman and CEO of Charlie Bros. Studios.

[Books] Book Look: Krakatoa

Book Look: Krakatoa by William Manchester: The loudest sound in recorded history occurred on August 27th 1883 when Krakatoa, a wee little island in Indonesia just west of Java, vaporized itself in the last and largest of four major explosions. Krakatoa was one of the most cataclysmic events ever witnessed by humans and there are no end of descriptive superlatives that can be employed, but that's the one that gets me: The Loudest Noise in Recorded History.

It was heard 3000 miles away at the far end of the Indian Ocean. It shattered the eardrums of sailors on ships nearby. It reverberated in shockwave form around the world seven times over the course of the next five days (though only measureable by sensitive instruments). I don't know why that one stands out to me over the final explosion being some multiple times more powerful than the largest nuclear weapon, or the pyroclastic flows that boiled alive folks on the nearby islands, or the tsunamis that killed the majority of the victims, or the rain of hot ash, or the ship hulks found far inland, and so forth. It's the noise that gets me.

The full story of Krakatoa naturally goes way before and beyond the final cataclysmic event itself. This is problematic for the book, because Manchester is not the most focused fellow. Krakatoa is part history, part personal memoir, part science, part commentary, which is fine if there is a firm structure. There isn't. Reading Krakatoa is like having an extended conversation over dinner and drinks with a charming, but scatter-minded, academic who drifts off on long tangents.

We start by going all the way back to pre-colonial history and the first sightings of Krakatoa by the Portuguese and how it came to be named and the evidence for the timing of previous known eruptions. All this is well and good, but could have been aptly summarized in a single chapter instead of several. We then step into the scientific side of things with a long discussion of the genesis of plate tectonics and how it explains the long ridges of volcanic activity that cross the globe, with a generous and fairly romantic aside of the author's personal experiences as a young student doing research in Greenland.

We should now be on about chapter two or three, but we are roughly half-way through the book and we still haven't got to the meat of things. Even in the microcosm of the description of the eruption proper we seem to hop back and forth from island to island and forward and back in time. It was very hard to get a sense for the actual events in a coherent timeline.

Manchester does better in placing things in social context. The advent of the telegraph and other bits and pieces of scientific technology and their role in events is nicely done. The explanation of the Muslim uprising in the days following Krakatoa as being highly dependent on the natives feeling the volcano was a punishment for accepting the wicked ways of the Dutch seems a bit strained. The follow up of the scientific research that came in the wake of the eruption is well filled with minutiae and extraneous detail.

The tale of his own visit to Krakatoa decades later fares better, but it is one of the few humanistic points in the book. And I suppose that is the ultimate problem I have. Despite the narrative form, nothing much about this story seems to be about people. We encounter a few personalities who were present and left documents, but none are fleshed out or sympathetic. There are tiny glimpses of struggle and conflict, but no heroes or cowards that are truly moving. That may not be Manchester's fault. It could be we just know very little about the individuals who were there and survived. It could be that the Dutch never produced charismatic Shackleton or Burton types. But whatever the case, mostly what we are left with is raw information and Manchester's personal enthusiasm. The natural spectacle is awesome, but Wikipedia can handle that.

You see what I'm driving at. The "Should you buy this book?" question gets answered with a qualified no. I can't see Krakatoa thoroughly satisfying anyone's curiosity. It might work for skimming -- if a section doesn't touch you, just skip ahead a bit. That's a plausible plus.

By the way, Krakatoa is growing again, quite rapidly, and is rather active. We may get to see, and hear, it again. This time we'll probably have videos on youtube before the sound reaches us.

[Travel] Cold Beach Mix

Cold Beach Mix I had no business doing any travelling. I really am trying to dedicate myself to the house for the plannable future. But I also really needed a break from house fretting -- it's a very bad sign when you haven't changed your TV off the DIY Network in four days. So last minute trip was planned.

The plan: Get to Washington DC, then make for the Delaware shore, Rehoboth Beach in particular. But "last-minute" means pricey flights. So I decided to drive. Did it make sense?

=Flying=
Plane ticket: $400
Airport Parking: $50
Rental Car: $150
Total: $600, about 4 hours

=Driving=
Gas: $100
Tolls: $50
Total: $150, about 9 hours

So at a cost of 5 hours I saved $450. That implies I value my time at about $90/hour. Of course all such calculations are muddled with risk. Lord knows you can't count on flight timing and you can't monetize the massive annoyances of plane travel. On the other hand, you can't predict traffic and you might come back from your car trip to find you check engine light on (I did).

The biggest risk, in either scenario is the weather. In this case it was a killer snowstorm, but a strangely localized one. I left Dexter at 6 AM and by the time I reached Toledo it was pretty much a white out. I was travelling at about 35 MPH and praying they would not close the turnpike. Honestly, it was as bad winter driving as I have ever encountered. Strangely, back home, not 50 miles north, they found the snowfall trivial. And after an extended slog across a snow-packed turnpike, once I was past Cleveland it was as if someone drew a line and the roads were clear the rest of the way. Still, it added an extra couple hours of driving to the day. So instead of nine hours to DC it was eleven and after a stop for dinner, it was another four to Rehoboth Beach.

I am a lifelong fan of the resort towns on the Atlantic seaboard. I've hit just about all of them in Florida, then on up through Tybee Island outside Savannah, to Hilton Head, up the Carolina to the Outer Banks, and now to Rehoboth Beach and Cape May. After that, there's a big gap until you hit Kennebunkport, ME. The crap-shop charm of the boardwalks, the sea air, and the big summer homes are quite appealing to me.

Still, any beach town loses something in cold, gray weather. The colors grow drab. The gentle ocean breeze becomes a frigid wind. The streets are deserted -- although perhaps not so much. Getting into a restaurant on Saturday and Sunday night was not trivial. There were crowds at many, and the bars tended to be quite full. I can't imagine it was just locals.

Rehoboth Beach is about 4 hours from Washington DC and presumably a good deal closer to Baltimore. It has an unusual dual reputation as being both gay friendly and family friendly. When you pull into town you'll see things like an advertisement for something called "mandance" but you'll also see toy stores and arcades and such. Rehoboth Beach is dominated by one broad main street that runs perpendicular to the shoreline. It is lined with the requisite shops and restaurants and bars and such. Cars are allowed but it's very walker friendly. It lacks any sort of central architectural theme that I could see, other than what might be called "beach town cute". Follow it less than a mile down to a nice long boardwalk with more of the same. I strongly suspect this is alive with activity in season.

It's tough to get a really good feel for a place when it is out of its usual character. I suspect summer nights in Rehoboth might be over to the lively of the spectrum, but the existence and proximity of some clearly pricey homes and rental properties suggests that things rarely get out of hand. Reputation also suggests that the 20-something-beach-weekend-hook-ups tend to occur in the next town south called Dewey Beach, although there are some high-end looking beach rentals down there too.

Even in the winter, though, the beach is quite lovely, but what it may not be is the best place for swimming. Reports (mostly from Trip Advisor) suggest that efforts to replenish the sand have resulted in sharp drop offs and waves that crest close enough to shore to make it awkward.

Not sure how I feel about Rehoboth Beach. I don't think it would be my first choice. It would work for a weekend with friends as a getaway from DC/Baltimore, and I suspect that is what it is mostly used for. But I don't think it's worth a jaunt across the country.

Perhaps a bit more interesting is Cape May, New Jersey. You can reach Cape May from Rehoboth via a car ferry. It's about ten minutes to the ferry in Lewes, De, an hour and a half ride over ($70), then another ten minute drive to Cape May proper.

Unlike Rehoboth Beach, Cape May has a layout closer to an organic beach town. Instead of one wide main street there is a grid of small residential streets peppered throughout with shops and restaurant, with the two major areas being the beachfront and a closed off segment of Washington St. three or four blocks inland. The natural layout of the place is enhanced by the numerous Victorian houses that populate the side streets. Most seem to be in excellent repair and many have been converted to bed and breakfasts or rentals. It makes Cape May seem like something for substantial than just another beach town. Like Rehoboth, it seems upscale enough not to give off the vibe of a place that gets overwhelmed by Jersey Shore guidos (but I suppose you never know). Nicely done.

But there are downsides too. Parking was no problem in the winter, but I suspect in season it is troublesome since most of it seems to be street side. Nor is the beach free in season; you need to buy a pass: $5 for a day, $10 for three days. Preservation, such as it is, requires a certain amount of control, it seems.

While I think I prefer Cape May to Rehoboth, again, I don't think it would merit a visit were I not already local. On the other hand, Atlantic City is not far away. I could see a trip including a mix of Atlantic City gambling and beach time in Cape May. Possibly. But I would more likely head to points north or south for an Atlantic Ocean fix.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Annapolis. Not a beach town but we stopped for lunch on the way back and I must admit I would take it over either of the two beach towns in anything but perfect swimming weather, but of course I knew this. I have done it to death over the years, which is why it wasn't the final destination. Great place, with history and sailing and excellent food. Don't miss the mussels at McGarvey's.

[House and Home] House Schooling

House Schooling: I may have mentioned (have I?) that I am actually living in the house now. As a result, everything I have to get done is in my face every minute. Like life, it's all about patience and priorities.

I have some big ideas: I have a vision of a hot tub and plunge pool out back, and I think maybe there is an opportunity for a small addition off the master bedroom to add a big walk-in closet and storage area. But I also know I am living with a 17-year-old roof and water heater. Both seem to be functioning well, but...priorities.

There are small things I'd like to do: Add vanity lighting in the master bath and get a reverse osmosis water filter system installed (it's very cool). There a couple places I have picked out for Roman blinds. But I'm still waiting on the handy-man to finish the shelving in the mud room and the master bath (projects now four weeks on...). Then there are the furnishings. I have no furniture in the living room, dining room or kitchen. I need to outfit the basement bar. And oh yeah, there are three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs that are also empty. I like to think of all this less as "empty" and more as "a blank canvas". Waiting is good, I tell myself. I need to be on guard against buying something I won't like just because of my impatience to have everything done NOW.

Of course, before any of that comes getting my old place sorted out and sold or rented. That's a time sink and wallet drainer right there. On the other hand, no hurry. It's beginning to look like there's no point is selling. After 15 years of ownership I would have to take a loss. Might as well rent it for what I can and hang on to it for a while.

It is OK for things to be unfinished -- Life is a marathon, not a sprint -- Be accepting of unresolved issues. All this is advice I would, and probably do, dole out regularly, yet I struggle tasting my own medicine. So whatever the frustrations with home ownership, I have no regrets. Facing all this was the whole point.

Well, at least it was one of the points. The other point was financial. Buy at the bottom of the market (I hope), live here for another 15 or 20 years, at which point I will be close to retirement and hopefully have a nice profit if/when I downsize.

But the big point was that I did not have to be the person I was at age 49 for the rest of my life. I should still be learning, changing, trying new things, taking reasonable risks, and generally improving myself and gaining wisdom through experience. In fact, I should be better at it now than I was 25 years ago having had all that practice. So far, in those terms, the house has been a huge success.

At some point, when all this becomes second nature, I will stop boring you with house stories. Either that or I will start to go off on rants like I used to about travel. If the later, I expect that may coincide with the need to mow the damn lawn.

The Month That Was - January 2011

The Month That Was - January 2011: At last. You can now buy Misspent Youth. Please do so at your earliest convenience. If you like it, please add a review to Amazon. Also tell your friends. Or better yet, buy copies for your friends. If you do these things I will be your BFF. Seriously, it turned out great -- some of my best writing. Kindle version coming soon.

The corollary to this is that I need a new writing project. Actually I have one in the works, but it's all taking a backseat to the house at the moment. I don't even have any travel plans. All that is the reason content has been so late and and so light around here. Meanwhile, I've been devoting an unacceptable amount of time to dealing with snow. (The snow blower I negotiated for in the house purchase has paid for itself already in my estimation.) And tax season is upon us, which is particularly tricky this year because there is my father's estate to deal with.

It's taking a lot of spiritual effort to concentrate on Spring, when the weather will start to warm up, the taxes will be over, and the house situation will be more settled. That is, if Spring isn't just a manufactured memory for my own comfort. It has been the coldest winter in a long time. Actually, that's probably not true. But for me it's been one of the most depressing ones and that makes it seem colder. I'm cold all the time.

[Books] Book Look: From Eternity to Here
[TV] Tube Notes
[Health and Fitness] Stanky Yoga
[House and Home] House Gripes

[Books] Book Look: From Eternity to Here

Book Look: From Eternity to Here, by Sean Carroll: I'm fond of pointing out, rather flippantly, that experience has made it plain to me that I was not put on this Earth to get it. Primarily this applies to women, taxes, and Jersey Shore, but the older I get the more I realize that it's really a much wider phenomenon. I don't think I was made to truly understand much of anything (except perhaps the extent to which I don't understand anything -- that's pretty clear).

Reading From Eternity to Here I was cheered by the fact that professional cosmologists and theoretical physicists, certainly one highest IQ demographics extant, don't really understand much of anything either.

I suppose most of us have been exposed to many of the surrealities of contemporary physics. The simplest and most common is the fact that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. In common experience, this makes no sense. We have no evolutionary experience with there being an upper limit to speed that we couldn't imagine overcoming with technology and/or imagination. Open the door to quantum mechanics and things go from surreal to outright bizarre. Statistical existence where a cat is both dead and alive in some sense. Particles pop in and out of reality. None of this makes any sense -- quite literally. The experience we have of the world as provided by our senses cannot accommodate any of this. There is no way for us to picture it, other than through some very strained analogies. Carroll does better than most at describing a lot of this stuff; he brings fresh analogies and lucid descriptions to the nonsense.

But the high concept of this book is time. What is time? Where did time come from? Why does it only go in one direction? Is there a defined starting point? Does anybody really know what...(sorry).

Our sense of time is mostly a byproduct of memory. We recall previous events but have no knowledge of future ones (only surmises). Therefore, we feel as though we are moving through time from the written past to the unwritten future. Let me try my hand at an analogy of my own.

Picture an enormous, infinitely high, multi-story building. Each floor is the entire universe in one instant of time. You are born into existence on the 387,293,817,678,624,456,879th floor, or something. Also on that floor is your mother, the obstetrician, everyone in the hospital, cars and pedestrians throughout the city, every animal , vegetable, and mineral on earth, every planet in the solar system, every star in the galaxy, every galaxy in the universe -- all frozen at that specific instant. On the next floor up -- 387,293,817,678,624,456,880 -- you are there also, but the tiniest fraction of an instant later. Your lungs are starting to draw their first air, your mother has every so slightly started to smile, all the cars on the street have moved a tiny fraction of an inch, the planets have moved infinitesimally along in their orbits, the universe has expanded an eensy bit. Each subsequent floor higher is another slice in time further along in your life, and it continues further after you're gone.

You -- your conscious being, if you will -- move up through every floor and record some subset of the state of the universe. As a newborn you record pretty much nothing. Later on you gather more but still only a subset of the things that affect your senses. Upon recording it you move up to the next floor. The only information you carry from floor to floor is what you recorded. This is memory. You have no idea you are on a different floor, or even that there is a building. All there is is what you recorded from the previous floor(s) and what is there now. Lather, rinse, repeat for your whole life.

The only reason we have our concept of time is that you can only go up to the next floor. There is no down button on the elevator. The question that greatly bothers theoretical physicists is Why? What stops you from going back down? Pretty much everything else in the universe is reversible -- up/down, faster/slower, more/less. Not time.

If my reading of this is correct, the reason you can't go back is something called Entropy. We seem to have a law of the universe that states entropy must always increase. The real world image that is usually tossed out at this point is that you can't unscramble an egg. Carroll uses the image of a box separated by a partition into two sections with a small passageway between. Fill one side with gas, and eventually the gas will flow through the partition such that there is rough and even amount on either side. You would never observe a situation where both sides were filled and suddenly all the gas just darted over to one side. One side full is low Entropy, both filled is high Entropy. The world only works in one way, lower to higher.

Fair enough, but then Carroll starts poking holes in this idea. For example, there is nothing in the realm of physical laws that prevents the random motions of molecules on the gas to all just happen to move into one side of the box. It is just so extraordinarily unlikely that we call it "never." And there are more serious problems, such as the fact that while there is near uniform agreement among cosmologists that Entropy only gets higher, the early universe started with high entropy and then somehow got itself in a very low state around the time of the big bang. So it would seem that at some point early on traffic was running backwards on our low-to-high Entropy one way street.

At this point we encounter major wackness. That is not only because it gets harder and harder for a hopelessly Newtonian mind to picture the models described, but also because, as I mentioned, these guys aren't terribly sure of what they are talking about. To his credit, Carroll is quite clear on that, and emphasizes when he is on a topic that most cosmologists are in sync versus when he is wandering off the reservation versus when nobody has any clue.

Why does this get so hard to understand? Well, part of the reason is that physicists have a great deal of difficulty accepting that the universe just may be something special, something astronomically unlikely. We end up with weirder and weirder ideas just to make it look like our universe was likely (or at least not unlikely) by some standard. We have to make it into something that was expected to happen. So we end up with things like Dark Energy and Dark Matter and String Theory and Inflation, none of which have much of a corollary to common experience and little hope of experimental verification. It almost seems like when they run into a hole in their expectations, they just invent some concept that will plug it up, then give it a catchy name. The whole endeavor is the equivalent of some bankrupt gambler looking for a reason the roulette wheel landed on double zero. On the other hand, that's what a model is, isn't it? Something that fits expectations so you live with it until something proves it wrong or a more accurate model comes along. That's how science works.

I've spent more time on content than I should have. From a reader's perspective Carroll is the bee's knees when it comes to lucid explanations. His descriptions work especially well if you are already versed in the usually analogies drawn to describe these phenomena that you might get from a Discovery Channel documentary. He approaches them from a different angle, helping to reinforce ideas that are generally non-intuitive. For instance he starts with what existence is like now and identifies how it breaks down under scrutiny and the subsequent work done to repair it, whereas most narratives would start with the Big Bang and simply work forward chronologically. More importantly, he injects just the right amount of history and biography. His prose a clear, precise, and good humored. He's not lecturing so much as chatting with you over coffee.

Should you read From Eternity to Here? If you are interested in these topics, then certainly. It is a terrific popularization of cosmology; the best I've read, although my readings aren't remotely exhaustive. But don't take it lightly. There is a good deal of substance here and it will require brain-in-vice level abstract thinking for a mere mortal to really get a grip on it. Even then, you probably won't truly get it. Just like women, taxes, and Jersey Shore.

[TV] Tube Notes

Tube Notes: Justified is awfully fun. It is entertaining as hell, to be expected not just because it is based on Elmore Leonard stories, but because they have managed to catch to slick, tongue-in-cheekiness that Leonard brings to his books. The new season start on Feb 9th and I have been catching up the first.

Each episode contains a reed thin plotted mystery just like every detective show since time immemorial. They aren't bad. The casting is sharp and the understated white-trash southern vibe (Eastern Kentucky) and poetic redneck wit is a nice contrast to the usual slick, citified settings. But these are throwaway stories. The season long arc is much better. We follow a group of characters from a small cracker town, most are crooked, most are stupid, one is a U.S. Marshall, and all damaged, with lifelong conflicts and connections to fight over. It's in this realm that Justified is a cut above.

If I had to prognosticate I might put this show in a category with House. It's attached to its genre by thoughtless glad-handing and barely noticeable case-of-the-week back stories. The personalities and character arcs are the meat of the show. That's cool. Justified has the benefit of having more powerful characters, not just the single lead that everything depends on.

There is serious acting horsepower here, even in the secondary characters and guests, but Walton Goggins is dead on scary perfect as Boyd Crowder. Someone should hand him an Emmy. I'm as much looking forward to this next season as I am not enjoying the current season of the now fully neutered House.

The other find is Showtime's new comedy Episodes. The creators of a hit British sitcom, a married couple with Nick and Nora Charles like wit, hop the pond and get involved with adapting their sitcom for the U.S. Their sitcom centered around a sophisticated, erudite headmaster at a hoity-toity boarding school, and featured a storied old stage actor as the lead. To their horror, in the hands of the U.S. executives, it ends up turning into a sitcom about a hockey coach called Pucks! and stars Matt LeBlanc (playing himself). Much of the humor stems from the culture clash and satirization of the superficial Hollywood types, but there is some good chemistry going as Matt LeBlanc becomes a bad influence on the husband and a maddening influence on the wife who is occasionally attracted to him, but mostly repulsed. Let me just say I had no idea that LeBlanc was could be so dry. He was clearly underutilized in Friends. Check it out.

One last note. Daniel Mendelsohn is not a great admirer of Mad Men, and as an admirer of contrarian points of view I applaud him. Interestingly, he finds many of the same flaws I have written about over the years, but for him it puts Mad men into the negative, for me it just keeps Mad Men out of the pantheon. I still greatly admire the portrait that has been painted of Don Draper, he thinks the shortcomings swamp the insights. Pay special attention to his ending comments about the show's angle on children -- that is a sharp and, for me, especially accurate insight.

[Health and Fitness] Stanky Yoga

Stanky Yoga: I should do yoga. I know this. My flexibility is bad. My attention span short. My karma is in the toilet. The problem I have with yoga, apart from being terrible at it, is that it is boring beyond belief. At the moment, I am now four hours into waiting for the cable guy to finish my installation in a house with no TV, no internet, no books, no music. That's comparable to how bored I get from yoga.

But I keep trying because I know it's good for me. For a while I was doing something called Russoyog, which is yoga done with ropes as a prop to increase the intensity of some of the movements. It was good for a while, but like every other form of yoga I have taken, after a four or five classes I find myself staring at the clock or thinking of my to-do list or singing songs in my head to pass the time (mostly classic rock). Do you suppose they'd mind if broke out a pack of cards to play solitaire while in downward dog? Anyway, in my search for something more simulating I decided to take a Bikram class. And I nearly died.

Bikram is the famous hot yoga. They crank up the temperature to something in the area of 105 and then put you though an hour and a half of contortions. I am, I believe, very physically fit. Two hour workouts are typical for me. A yoga class, whatever the flavor, is not something for me to be overly concerned about , I thought. But let me say there is nothing -- NOTHING -- that can prepare you for the heat and the smell.

You can imagine the smell -- no wait...maybe you can't. But just think a of room where hundreds of people perspire by the quart every day for months, then crank the heat and humidity up to rainforest levels. Or better yet, think of cheese wrapped in wet jock strap left in an public restroom in Nigeria during a week-long heat wave. I know people who cannot even abide getting near the room, never mind spending an hour and a half in there adding your personal body fluids to the mix.

Even if you can get past the stank (which in reality you cease to notice after a few minutes), you will find yourself standing in a 105 degree room. Now, as I said, I am no stranger to strenuous physical activities, and I have been in some exceptionally hot settings -- 95/95 summer days in South Florida, the Sonoran Desert in August -- but rarely have I combined the two. It is absolutely devastating.

Bikram Yoga is exactly the same from class to class and location to location. There are 27 poses, all done in each class, in the same order, often with similarly worded instructions. No surprises. Walk into a class anywhere in the world and you know what to expect. Kind of like McDonald's. The first half of the class is dominated by standing poses, the second half by floor work. To my unsophisticated eye, there appears to be strong emphasis on back bending and spine flexibility.

In a normal room, I would have worked up a mild sweat by the end of the standing work and probably pretty close to fully recovered by the end of the floor work. With the heat, I was drenched in sweat and breathing heavy by the third pose. I didn't catch my breath until the floor work, and never stopped sweating. I bet I lost at half a gallon of water weight over the course of the class. The beach towel I brought was completely soaked through. Yes, it's gross.

Now, I am not a spiritual person. The new age serenity and peace that are said to go hand in hand with yoga are quite beyond me. I have primarily treated yoga as a path to better flexibility and perhaps a certain amount of sinewy type of strength so I am not qualified to discuss Bikram as a path to enlightenment or bliss. But I cannot imagine coming out a of Bikram class anything less than exhausted. That makes it a useful option to have in your workout palette. The older I get the longer it takes for my muscles to recover, but using Bikram I can still hit myself with a hard workout without added muscle trauma. In a sense, it's like swimming -- it kicks up your metabolism and burns calories but minimizes muscle contraction (focusing on expansion) and requires zero impact.

If there is a Bikram studio near you I recommend you give it a shot. Even if you are an experienced yoga practitioner, it's not what you're used to. To prep you: bring two full sized towels, one to cover your mat which will get soaked and one dry off with afterwards; you'll want at least one and probably two bottles of water for hydration; wear the coolest possible clothes -- men typically go shirtless, women often wear bikini tops, everyone is in short pants -- and by the way, the lights are up and there is no music.

Like I said, it's not what you expect and I don't think anything can prepare you for it. Get ready to be overwhelmed on your first visit. I honestly felt close to passing out. I must say it's held my interest better than other classes. I might even get to double digits before boredom overtakes me.

[House and Home] House Gripes

House Gripes: This month's list of observations on home ownership.

• 65" plasma TVs are heavy. The good news is that a thief could not get far with a hernia (ha ha, robbers).
• I seem to be the only one that thinks "Wi-fi ready" and "adaptor not included" are contradictory.
• Recessed 15-foot-high swiveling flood lights are the product of a stunted, disturbed, or outright evil intellect. Maybe all three.
• A snow blower is a divine device; earthly evidence of God.
• There is no such thing as a usable furniture search engine. (I hereby copyright this idea. Email me for licensing terms.)
• Box elder bugs deserve extinction. You heard me. Extinction!
• Dining room sets are too expensive. (Yes, I have actually given considerable thought to dining room sets. Just shoot me.)
• Ladders are too expensive. (See above re: flood lights.)
• Property taxes are too expensive.
• Everything is too expensive.

The Month That Was - December 2010

The Month That Was - December 2010: We are now into the second decade of the 21st century, a fact which blows my mind. With each passing year we put the lie to more and more sci-fi. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 (overrated) and 2010 (lame) have been moved into the realm of fantasy. The third in the trilogy is 2061 (pretty much completely unknown) at which point I will be 100, twice my current age. I would wager real, folding money that even then we will still be without flying cars and it will take a TSA anal probe to get into the air. That's progress for you. The fourth in the trilogy is 3001 (which I didn't even know existed until I looked it up -- it has the Freddy Krueger-ish subtitle of "The Final Odyssey") at which point I expect to be a brain in a jar. That will make for a slimy grope for the turn of the millennium TSA agents.

But I digress.

Misspent Youth is, effectively, done. I have just received the galleys. As long as they check out, I can declare the publishing to be over and it will be up for sale at Amazon shortly. Then I get to work on the Kindle version. Whee.

The important thing is that the days are getting longer.

[Books] Book Look: A World Lit Only by Fire
[Detroit] Glimmer in Detroit
[House and Home] House Grouse
[TV] Tube Find

[Books] Book Look: A World Lit Only By Fire, by William Manchester

Book Look: A World Lit Only By Fire, by William Manchester: Check out this quote:

The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension. Famines and plague, culminating in the Black Death, and its recurring pandemics, repeatedly thinned the population. Rickets afflicted the survivors. Extraordinary climatic changes brought storms and floods which turned into major disasters because the empire's drainage system, like most imperial infrastructure, was no longer functioning. It says about the Middle Ages that in the year 1500, after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the continent. Most others were in such a state of disrepair that they were unusable; so were all European harbors until the eighth century, when commerce began to stir. Among the lost arts was bricklaying; in all Germany, England, Holland, and Scandinavia, virtually no stone buildings, except cathedrals, were raised for ten centuries. The serfs' basic agricultural tools were picks, forks, spades, rakes, scythes, and balanced sickles. Because there was very little iron, there were no wheeled plowshares with moldboards. The lack of plows was not a major problem in the south, where farmers could pulverize the light Mediterranean soil, but the heavier in northern Europe had to be sliced, moved, and turned by hand. Although horses and oxen were available, they were of limited use. The horse collar, harness, and stirrup did not exist until about A.D. 900. Therefore tandem hitching was impossible. Peasants labored harder, sweated more, and collapsed from exhaustion more often than their animals.

Surrounding them was the vast, menacing, and at places impassable, Hercynian Forest, infested by boars; by bears; by the hulking medieval wolves who lurk so fearsomely in fairy tales handed down from that time; by imaginary demons; and by very real outlaws, who flourished because they were seldom pursued. Although homicides were twice as frequent as deaths by accident, English coroners' records show that only one of every hundred murderers was brought to justice. Moreover, abduction for ransom was an acceptable means of livelihood for skilled but landless knights. One consequence of medieval peril was that people huddled closely together in communal homes. They married fellow villages and were so insular that local dialects were often incomprehensible to men living only a few miles away.

That jaw dropping description of the Dark Ages stopped me dead in my tracks. It is stunning to hear how far Western Civilization fell from the heights Greece and Rome; nearly completely back to subsistence level hunter/gatherers during lean seasons. What a dire existence it must have been. Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias has postulated that in the far, far future (tens or hundreds of millennia from now) humanity will have necessarily reverted back to subsistence level living. It won't be unhappy, he claims, but it will be all about survival again. What knowledge remains of our times will seem like a myth of a Dreamtime from long ago. I'm sure Robin doesn't suppose such a life would be similar to the Dark Ages, but if that sort of world is the ultimate result of reverting to subsistence level ways, I can't imagine it being anything but unhappy. [[Note: Interestingly, as I was writing this, Robin posted a suggestion that the upcoming movie, Lift Up, may be a good demonstration of happiness in the face of grinding poverty.]]

Think about the things that are absent from such lives. It was possible to go from cradle to grave with hearing a note of music or being exposed to any fiction short of a few stories passed down from elders, never mind any form of drama. Along with the near complete absence of arts, goes with the near complete absence of knowledge. Intellectual stimulation and abstract thinking were superfluous, mostly. Then there are all the little things lost -- taste, for instance: food was purely sustenance and taste only served to detect spoilage. Better savor that '95 Cabernet while you can. You knew no sights other than those of the immediate surroundings -- you may have carried no mental image of the ocean, or snow, or mountains. This was an age so devoid of anything to satisfy the more developed human desires that the only thing separating it from complete obscurity is that the fact of our emergence from it.

If such an existence is not necessarily unhappy, it speaks to the near perfect relativity of happiness. I am boundlessly grateful to be living here in Dreamtime, with my Zune and DVR overflowing, the knowledge of the world at my keyboard,31 flavors of ice cream and four microbreweries within 15 minutes, and new sights and sensations a plane ride and a TSA rubber glove away. Plus, deodorant.

But (returning to the book review) all that is just visceral reaction. Reflection and investigation suggests that that description of the Dark Ages is misleading. A World Lit Only By Fire cannot be considered a history book in the sense of being fully researched and based on primary sources. It is more of a dramatization -- sensationalist dramatization -- of generalized facts mixed with anecdotal stories from a handful of other books. I say this in complete confidence, having read 6 pages of 1-star reviews on Amazon. But seriously, anyone who is even mildly aware of the tone and timbre of biased writing will be able to identify rumor, prejudice, and selective presentation of facts just from the prose style alone. No matter how low civilization may have sunk between Rome and the Renaissance, humanity and human nature is just too complex to have descended all the way to the broadly simplistic demi-savages described above then pretty much instantly rebound thanks to Gutenberg, Leonardo, and Luther. It took millennia to climb out of savagery once, it seems unlikely it would happen overnight a second time.

Still, from the passage above, you can see Manchester is a compelling writer and can create an affecting and disturbing vision. He turns many of the stories of Middle Ages-to-Renaissance transition into ripping good yarns. (For those concerned, there is an extended discussion of the sex lives of the prelates of the Vatican just to get the old blood pumping.) But as history, it's too simple and too slapdash. We jump back and forth between decades and even centuries, often the same paragraph. Litanies of names and events are thrown out as anecdotes to back up the main thematic thrust of whatever topic is at hand -- none of which would mean anything to the casual reader (and the serious reader of history wouldn't touch this book with a ten foot pole).

No, Manchester missed the boat with this one. He should have gone full on into the realm of historical fiction. He could have left out the useless recitations of people and places and really indulged his talent for salacious commentary. Now that would have been fun. Should you read A World Lit Only By Fire? Probably not. Certainly not if you are looking for history. If you are looking for Medieval or Renaissance based entertainment it might be worth it, but just know what you are getting into. Don't take this stuff at face value.

[Detroit] Glimmer in Detroit

Glimmer in Detroit: If you have kept up on my commentaries about Detroit over the years (click the Detroit tag over to the right), you may have come away with the idea that I am a very pessimistic person. Not really. I am broadly optimistic, but specifically pessimistic. This jibes with my experience in life. There are many more failures than successes. This is a simple result of the fact that it takes numerous failures at anything before you succeed. Which is to say, statistically speaking, you will probably fail.

With respect to Detroit, they really have had made only one attempt to make the place livable and it has lasted 50 years. That attempt has consisted of essentially bribing whoever they can to stay or move into the city, and to label anyone who points out the problem with that nothing but a hatefully hating hater. Needless to say, as a continuing strategy, it hasn't turned out terribly well. So in my model of "many failures-one success" they have been on their first failure for half a century.

Now it appears that they have gone finally getting on to the next attempt. The impetus here is Mayor Dave Bing -- who I will happily go on record about: he is better than the city deserves -- and his plans to drastically downsize the city to make it remotely workable again.

Let me attempt to paraphrase Bing's thinking. The policies and stewardship of the city have been a disaster. Civilized life has become so tenuous that any drastic change is doomed to failure because it simply cannot be executed in a reliable manner. Whatever programs and policies the city administration could come up with wouldn't really matter because there is no conduit for implementing them. Key example: What good are anti-crime policies if police cannot cover the ground needed to enforce them? What needs to be done is to, quite literally, downsize and restructure the city. The plan for this and some of the challenges are especially well described in a Time magazine article, and more succinctly over at the Wall Street Journal.

It seems to me a reasonable plan of action. It's certainly worth a try, which is more that can be said for the bribe-and-jive tactics of mayors like Coleman Young and Kwame Kilpatrick. Of course it means doing things like displacing widely scattered people -- literally removing them from their homes and relocating them -- which has already caused self-styled "community activists" to cry "Oppression!" I guess the worst that comes out of it is we will have tangible proof of whether I am right or wrong about the people not deserving Dave Bing.

For a couple more recent takes on Detroit see:

• "What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?" From Mother Jones. Good story with some polemic commentary.
• "The Ruins of Detroit" Photography of Detroit landmarks in decay is all the rage these days. A bit like gawking if you ask me. (The photo book available at Amazon.)
• "detroitblog" The best place to read unsentimental but humane stories from a dying city.

As for me, I have a tiny glimmer of hope for the city of my birth, although it remains almost completely shrouded in the blackest pessimism. And I have an open mind about making 2011 the year I returned to Detroit, for the first time in at least a decade. Maybe for the Tour de Troit bike ride if they hold it again. (Notice that the Detroit Police require them to keep the route a secret. Like they say downtown, Welcome to the big D.)

[House and Home] House Grouse

House Grouse: I am getting a rapid education in home-ownership. It seems like everything you want to do requires you to do at least two other things first, each of which requires you to be available in a four hour window for delivery or else requires extensive trial and error shuttling to the hardware store.

I'm finding all the little things I didn't see on inspection. A scratch here. A hole there. A door knob that needs to be replaced. A loose shelf. I'm building a laundry list of annoyances.

Speaking of laundry, after waiting in vain for the guy to come and hook up my gas dryer, I did it myself. Took a little trial and error. I guess we'll know if it worked by whether or not I inadvertently take the gas pipe.

The business of having well water and a septic tank instead of city water and sewer is going to be, um, interesting.

A friend of mine pointed out that buying a home is the point in your life where you first get comfortable with thinking of costs in multiples of a thousand.

(Actually I've owned my condo for many years now, but the dollars involved have been on a much smaller scale.)

And how do you know what furniture to buy? Seriously I have absolutely no eye for that sort of thing. None whatsoever. So I try to get opinions of others who seem to know. I'll point out something that seems attractive and get subtle responses like "You like that, eh?" or "Well, that's interesting, isn't it?" or "Does it remind you of your dorm room?" and so forth.

So I guess the lessons of home ownership are "you're gonna have to be patient" and "you can't please everyone." That, and to memorize the phrase "It's only money." You'll need it.

[TV] Tube Find

Tube Find: I have fallen in love with The A.V. Club (especially the TV section). Imagine finding a place where folks wax on endlessly about film and television and books and music, writing in-depth reviews of just about anything pop culture that comes into their purview. What sets it apart from other sites is their willingness, even eagerness, the rehash media from the past, rather than pander to what's hot. This is less rare in the case of movies, but where else are you going to find episode by episode reviews of say , The Sopranos or Seinfeld, in order of release, written from a current perspective?

For a boost to your optimism, check out their look at the most anticipated entertainment events of 2011. I've already mentioned #37, the Return of The Milch (with Michael Mann and Dustin Hoffman in tow), but I have to add #34, a new book(s) from Haruki Murakami that further research suggests is highly awesome, and #44, the return of the BBC's contemporized Sherlock, which was a total delight in its too short first season.

Another great feature: "A Very Special Episode" section which has carried reviews of one of the few episodes of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson still surviving from the '60s, and the Thanksgiving episode of Northern Exposure , and much more.

This is hog heaven for me. I can't believe I just discovered it. If you can't find me, I'm off somewhere quiet, reading this site.

The Month That Was - November 2010

The Month That Was - November 2010: As I am writing this it is November 30th. I have never started my monthly entry so late. Even when I end up getting things posted a full week into the next month I have always started sooner and been making notes along the way. It's the last day of the month and I got nothing. I can only imagine how late this is going to be. (Answer: Dec. 8th)

Big long trip this month. Phoenix to Vegas to Sedona. Probably my last big trip for a while since the house purchase is well nigh locked in. After that, my posts will be all about domestic goings-on. On the bright side, it should give me a chance to get caught up on my photo galleries over at smugmug. I've uploaded the pics from my August trip Sanibel/Captiva. They are not tagged and titled yet; I have only the two hands. That only leaves me 4 months and 2 vacations behind.

It's cold: 25 degrees (in a couple of months that will be warm). I wake and drive to work in darkness and return home from my windowless office in darkness. Remind me to go on a rant about daylight savings time. Less than a month until the shortest day of the year. If I can survive that long, I'll be able to look forward to seeing another summer. I'll need to find a cheap way to get someplace warm this winter.

And here in front of me sits Misspent Youth, so close and yet so far...

[House and Home] Getting Real Estate
[Travel] Palazzo for the Win
[Health and Fitness]Climbing and Running
[TV] Short Seasons

[House and Home] Getting Real Estate

Getting Real Estate: You know the story: rates are down; prices are down. Will prices come back? Slowly -- will take years. But that's OK for me. Let's say it takes fifteen years to realize another significant gain in housing. In fifteen years I'll be 65 and seriously contemplating retirement, right? (Gawd, I hope not. Maybe from my day job, but not work in general -- but still...) All in all, it was the right time for me to make a major real estate investment. And yes, I am bravely putting this judgment in writing to live forever in the internet's time machine, so you everyone can point and laugh if my investment goes down the toilet.

The housing search took 2 or 3 months. I had a geographic area that I wanted to be in: specifically within about five miles from where I am now. I had a fairly set budget too at first, but when I figured in the inheritance from my father I was able to bump it up another level without impinging horribly on my savings and liquidity.

In the course of all this I encountered for the first time the concept of a short sale. A short sale is effectively a foreclosure that doesn't terribly damage on the credit of a seller. Like foreclosure, it happens when a house is "underwater" -- the value is lower than the amount owed on the mortgage. If you need to get out from under your mortgage at this point you either have to a) cough up the cash difference, or b) default on your loan let the bank foreclose and devastate your credit rating, or c) enter an agreement with the bank to sell for whatever they can get, the bank eats the loss (although it may be considered "income" to you for tax purposes), and you are less worse off credit wise than a foreclosure; generally you'll end up waiting a couple of years before you can get another mortgage, but as long as you don't screw up in the interim, you'll probably be OK. Theoretically, a short sale requires demonstration of hardship, but we all have hardship, don't we? Very strange, the official machinations we go through to save face.

Anyway, I had actually picked out two houses I was interested in, coincidentally right across the street from each other. My number one selection was on the high side as far as listing price. My number two selection was a short sale. So I low balled an offer for the short sale just to see what the bank was willing to sell it for. While that offer was in the price was dropped on my first choice. When I got the response from the bank, I proceeded to negotiate on the first choice knowing that I had short sale house to fall back on. There was some give and take, but we eventually agreed on a price. Then came inspections and approvals and a blizzard of paperwork, although all I really needed to do was copy some statements and sign my name like Colonel Henry Blake. We almost snagged when the inspection turned up some minor issues I wanted fixed or credited for, but we settled on them leaving me their fine John Deere lawn tractor and nearly brand new snow blower instead. Now, unless financing falls through, which it shouldn't, the deal will be closed mid-December.

Sorry for all the boring details.

It's a little scary. I still have to fix up and either sell or rent my condo. I will have a lawn and landscaping and large heating and water and insurance bills and all the evil stuff people are warning me about. But I will also have a big kitchen, and a deck, and a beautiful view of protected land outside my living room window, and an office, and a bar in the basement, and a ton of storage in the garage.

My skeptical friends sneer and say "you'll never make use of any of these things, you silly bachelor, but you will suffer the costs," but your friends are the biggest impediments to change. It's time for me to find a new way of living and cease the stagnant habits of old. There are experiences I still need to have rather than live my life out on the same template as the last ten or fifteen years. I am going to try to make a home of this place, a place I want to be in, rather than just have it be a place to sleep and watch HBO between work and travel. If I fail? Nothing good comes without failures.

First I need to buy a washer and dryer. And a flat panel for the basement.

And some furniture.

And I need to get the septic tank pumped.

In a while we'll all be nostalgic for a good travel rant.

[Travel] Palazzo for the Win

Palazzo for the Win: This was actually one of my favorite Vegas trips. I won't bore you with the details since you've read my ramblings about Vegas for years now, but the highlight was staying at The Palazzo -- the sister property to The Venetian. The huge suites are nearly as large as the ones in THEhotel. Palazzo and Venetian don't have the cache of the Wynn/Encore sisters next door, but they are just as good and probably a better choice for most people. The rooms are a bit larger and there is a broader array of stuff to do right on the property. The convenience of walking down to Piazza San Marco in the middle of the canal lined shopping mall, and having lunch at Mario Batali's Enoceta, and looking on as the faux renaissance performers fiddle about for the crowd is really a wonderful experience and something you wouldn't get at Wynn/Encore.

The Palazzo also has the best Sports Book in Vegas -- bar none. It's the only one that is more than a bunch of seats facing an odds board and a bank of TVs. There are beds, like you'd find in a high end ultra-lounge. Actual restaurants instead of a snack bar. Outdoor, strip-side seating. A great place to hang out. I'm amazed more Sports Books don't try to keep up.

Between Venetian/Palazzo and Wynn/Encore, you have about half of the best restaurants in Vegas, which is saying something because there are more great restaurants concentrated within a mile along the strip than anywhere else in the world. Recommended in Palazzo: B&B Ristorante (another Batali joint), Lavo (from the folks who brought you Tao).

Exceptional non-Palazzo meal experiences were Botero steakhouse at Encore -- sit outside by the pool, exceptional steaks done in trad, pepper, or Brazilian style; Bartolotta at Wynn -- probably the best and most genuine Italian on the strip; L'Altier -- a Roubochon gem at MGM, world's best (and most expensive) eat-at-the-bar experience; and lunch at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill in Caesars, one of my stand-bys.

Palazzo also has its own Canyon Ranch spa, much bigger and nicer than the one in Venetian. Rivals the best of the spas on the strip -- although I still think Qua over at Caesars has the edge due to the awesome roman bath space with cold plunge and warm/hot whirlpools.

Anyway, big thumbs up for Palazzo. It becomes my go-to Vegas property and will likely remain so since development has slowed to a crawl. I was so comfortable there that I never even worked up the desire to walk through City Center -- so it remains unseen. Also missed, due to Palazzo induced lethargy, was the new zip-line down Fremont Street. Guess I'll just have to go back yet again, but I need to go in summer when I can get in some pool time. Haven't done that for years.

[Health and Fitness] Climbing and Running

Climbing and Running: For some reason, I took running to heart this year. I don't know why. I'm not a particularly good runner. And I don't actually enjoy it all that much -- well, there are moments; when my stride is smooth and easy, when it's just me and my running shoes and shorts, with the sun and the summer breeze on my back, when even running in a straight line feels like a dance. That's rare. Usually it's work. Sometimes it's torture. Sometimes each step is struggle and my knees howl with each impact. Sometimes it's bitter cold and I am lugging around an extra 10 lbs. in layering while trying to figure out how to wipe my nose on my sleeve as hygienically as possible.

The Six Tunnels to Hoover Dam Turkey Trot just outside of Las Vegas wasn't supposed to be torture. Look at the photos on that site and you will see shiny happy people running in their shorts in the desert morning sun. Um, no. It was 35 at the start of the race, but the killer thing with cold weather running is rarely the temp, but the wind. I'll take a calm 28 degree run over a windy 40 degree run any day. And it was windy on Thanksgivng.

The run starts about a half mile walk from the Hacienda Casino (an establishment whose official motto is "A fun place!" which gets points for succinctness) and goes along a dirt path, a former light rail line, along the coast of Lake Mead to the Hoover Dam where you turn around and retrace your steps back.

As I said it was cold and I wasn't expecting it to be cold, so the day before race featured a visit to Niketown at the Forum Shops to buy some cold weather gear, which was great because I wasn't spending enough money in Vegas as it was.

The race was a bad one for me -- a real struggle. In addition to the freeze-factor, I was fighting a head cold and could barely breathe. Plus, there were a number of hills, including one at the turnaround that nearly made me puke. But I can't complain about the views along Lake Mead; plenty of runners were stopping to pull out their phones and take some shots.

At 12k, it was the second longest race I have ever done and my time was pretty abysmal. I think I came in at right around 10 minute miles. I was just happy to have it over. I honestly felt so bad that I thought of sacking it entirely the night before. But I had already picked up the t-shirt and so not doing the race would have been a scam. Not only that, had I skipped it I would have spent the next few days chastising myself for being such a wuss.

Despite all that, I'll probably do it again next year. The reason: I am an idiot.

The previous weekend was in Phoenix where I did a little race warm up that was much more enjoyable. Of course, it wasn't actually a run, but a climb. Phoenix is an interesting city. Whereas we in the East tend to think of our municipal parks as oases of greenery, in Phoenix the parks are centered around smallish rocky mountains, the most notable of these being Camelback Mountain. It's not a trivial climb, but quite doable if you are in good shape. If you're not in good shape, you'll want to leave yourself a lot of rest time. The total length is a little over a mile, but the elevation gain is nearly 1300 feet. I would guess the split is about 30% trail and 70% scrambling up rocks. Give yourself about an hour for a steady climb. The route will be crowded with everything from families with their Golden Retrievers to fitness lunatics speeding up and down against the clock.

As an urban park, it's not surprising that one of the most daunting aspects of the process is parking. There is a small parking lot that will be full with a line of folks sitting and waiting by 6AM. There is a secondary trail that can be accessed from street parking, but even that fills up by midday when it's busy.

I lucked out with someone clearing out of aspace the instant I arrived. It was a perfect day for a climb. I was in my light jacket and my day hikers. The sun was shining. Everyone was quite friendly. Some of the dogs seemed to have astounding balance considering they lack opposable thumbs. There was the oddity of one group of people taking a smoke break just of the trail, presumably they had had too much fresh air. At the summit, everyone had their phones out taking snaps and emailing them. Amazing 360-degree views of Phoenix/Scottsdale and the desert beyond.

It's probably just my impression, but it seems to me there are endless fitness opportunities out west, with much more variation that back here in Michigan. Working in runs and hikes and bikes and climbs out west is a truly joyous late life discovery for me. Can't get enough of it.

[TV] Short Seasons

Short Seasons: Two critically well-received new shows just closed their first seasons.

By the way, since when did six episodes constitute a season? These shows are really just sequential mini-series. That's cool with me. Take your time, keep the quality up. It's better than hammering out 26 hours of video a year at any cost. TV seasons are like music albums: packaging fodder with gold to benefit producers at the expense of consumers. That these precepts are collapsing is one way in which the world has gotten better in my life. But I digress...

Boardwalk Empire on HBO and The Walking Dead on AMC have both been widely praised. They're good TV shows, but not great. They break no new ground. In fact, I would argue they are both little more than finely crafted cliches.

The Walking Dead is about a band of survivors coming to terms with a full-on zombie apocalypse. That's a premise that was mercilessly pounded flat by the time Charleton Heston was the last man on Earth, yet suddenly zombies are all the rage. It's hard for me to understand zombies. Most horror creatures represent some sort of primal, archetypal fear. Vampires feeding on humans, especially comely young girls, is a metaphor for the vulnerability inherent in humanity and the risk of self-destruction that accompanies it. Got it. Werewolves represent the sin within us all, the dark animalistic side that we so desperately need to control. Got that too. But what exactly do zombies represent? Dead people come back and eat our flesh. Could it be the sins of the father coming back to devour us? Could it be "survivor's guilt" writ large? Could it be that there are just no moral issues with dispatching animated dead bodies so you can go hog wild with the flame thrower and the railgun and chainsaw without worrying about the censor?

Anyway, the zombie background would be fine provided the human stories were sharp and compelling. They aren't. There is a formulaic ethnic diversity to the survivors, along with the requisite manufactured conflict -- fretting for the children and the helpless; evil racists and wife-abusers; poor misunderstood street punks; people shouting "Do it now!" and "I can't live if you don't go on!" and that sort of dialog.

I think I'm going to bail on future seasons. Maybe if I hear some good reviews I might look in on it, but I don't think they have it in 'em.

Boardwalk Empire held good deal of promise, mostly unfulfilled. I would be curious to know the actual extent of Scorcese's involvement in the process. I think it's probably significant simply because the show suffers from the same shortcomings of all Scorcese's later work. It is oddly cast, the characters are uninvolving, and it brings nothing new to the table either in either substance or style.

Oh, it's not "bad." I honestly don't think Scorcese is capable of "bad" at this point in his life or career. Points of quality and competence are simply habit for him. What's lacking is real inspiration. There are criminal power struggles and whackings. There are compromised and compromising women. Sex and violence are intertwined. Family complicates things. There is loyalty and betrayal. Power is pursued at costs well beyond its benefit. Honestly, story-wise there is nothing here that you haven't seen in hundreds of organized crime films and most of Scorcese's oeuvre. The setting is Atlantic City instead of Lower Manhattan. Name brand crooks are highlighted -- Capone, Luciano, Rothstien, Lansky. At least the window dressing is fresh, if the content is stale.

The story centers around Enoch "Nucky" Thompson who controlled Atlantic City for decades from a behind the scenes position as Treasurer or some such unelected position. He is portrayed by character actor Steve Buscemi, who you probably know from his role as Tony B. on The Sopranos or as Carl Showalter from Fargo or as Shut the F-ck Up Donny from The Big Lebowski. He's a fine actor but it's not clear to me if he can carry a series like this. Although I am dubious about the long term strength of his portrayal of Thompson, I have to say, when he's not on the screen, the show slows to an absolute crawl. (Thanks to DVR technology this is not as excruciating as it could be). His protege, and potential betrayer, Jimmy, (cliche alert: he's tortured by memories of war service) seems like he'd fit in better modeling Gucci on the runway. His mistress is a one note samba of goodhearted dedication in the face of compromise (cliche alert: she's formerly a poor immigrant seamstress just trying to do right by her children). The FBI agent assigned to the case is a borderline psychotic Christian who indulges in the very vices he fights at times of weakness (I don't have to give you the cliche alert on that one, do I?). You get the idea.

Strangely, after all that criticism, I have to admit I'll probably give Boardwalk Empire another season to show what it can do. The reason is that watching TV is just something I do. TV fiction -- dramas, comedies -- not reality. I have done it my entire life and presuming to convince myself that I can or want to stop is delusion. For me, the trick is to find the best TV shows relative to all the others at any given time. For all of its flaws, Boardwalk Empire is objectively better than, say, Lie to Me or Grey's Anatomy or any flavor of Law and Order, or Walking Dead for that matter. I hope Scorcese can pull something out, or that the show gets turned over to someone who can. For now, the age of TV drama as high art continues to recede into the past. Boardwalk Empire will have to do.