Belgian Fries

"Frites" - located on Capital Hill in Seattle at 925 East Pike Street.

Insomnia Can Be Fun!

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I saw the new book Take a Nap! Change Your Life mentioned in an article in the Toronto Star called The modern world killed off the nap and it sounded right up my alley.

I've never been a good sleeper. Never liked to go to bed. Tossed and turned and wrapped myself up in the sheets like a mummy. Generally I don't worry about it because I like being up when it's quiet in the middle of the night and consider myself lucky that my mind runs at a fairly high rate of speed allowing me to think a lot.

The only problem is when I'm on a 9 to 5 type schedule and I go to bed at 10 or 11 pm and get up at 1 or 2 am, things start dragging a little later in the afternoon. It sometimes starts to catch up with me later in the work week and I find myself getting distracted and doing things like leaving my car unlocked with the keys on the dashboard or something like that.

I was getting a checkup from my Doc this week and mentioned my lack of sleep routine and he decided to give me a script for some sleeping pills (Ambien). I was hoping for Lunesta (the one that causes the glowing green moth to show up in your room) but what the heck I thought I'd try the Ambien.

I've tried them twice now and they aren't really working, although I suppose it's still a little early to give up, there still may be some interesting side effects that make them worth taking. At a minimum given Ambien's Strange Side Effects I'll have a potential excuse for why I munch out on anything tasty in the wee hours of the morning.

My doctor never prescribes anything interesting. Generally he gives me advice like - get more exercise or stop eating so much. I like him but he just isn't a pill guy. Probably for the best.

He isn't like a friend of mine's doctor who gave him a prescription for what sounded like Desoxyn, a legal variation of metamphetamines, for insomnia. He told me he took one on Saturday and was up all weekend.

Weeeeeeeee!

I'm pretty much up all weekend anyway so I'll probably just stay natural - try to eat a little less, get a little more exercise and take plenty of naps.

Difference Between Democrats and Republicans

Early tonight I was listening to KOMO, one of the local TV stations in Seattle. It was before the polls were closed and there wasn't much to talk about, but the news team needed something so they started talking about the weather. We've had lot's of rain lately. Bryan Johnson, a senior correspondent at KOMO, said that when it's raining - Republicans tend to get out and vote and Democrats tend to stay home. Wuh?

I think he was trying to make the point that he believes Republicans tend to have stronger beliefs, or want to push certain issues, or are worried that their candidates are losing this election - and would be willing to go out in the rain to get to the polling booth. I'm not real sure - maybe he was just saying Democrats are like cats and don't like to get wet...either way it's an absurd statement, but maybe not atypical of the kind of non-information you can get from TV news bites. No one had the time or the inclination to ask him how he came up with that "fact".

It's 2 am on the East coast now and I'm watching NBC's guys talking about the senate race. Tom Brokaw is saying the Jon Tester and Conrad Burns race in Montana may decide which party controls the senate. He then said what sounded like, "Tester is leading among male and female voters in Montana."

I'm not sure what other category of voter there may be in Montana.

Maybe the cows are voting for Conrad.

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Instant Karma

Election-day Homemade Video Montage: Freedom.

Boing Boing - "The Directory of Wonderful Things", has a link to a youtube Election-day homemade video montage: Freedom.

There are some disturbing images, but it makes you think...

Inward/outward - Divine Love

Nice thought yesterday at inward/outward by Julian of Norwich on the beauty of a faith that allows you to believe that there is a God that loves you just the way you are including all your defects and deficiencies.

There's only one you.

Be you - and God will be happy.

David Allen on interruptions | 43 Folders | Podcast

This 43 Folders podcast with David Allen has some good idea for "getting things done". I'm listening to it at Starbucks while I wait for B to finish up her root canal. It's not too long and quite interesting.

Here's the notes I took -

Senior executives consider surprise visits a good thing. They keep their plates clear so they can act according to the input and move on.

Take an input, put the placeholder/note in a place and then continue. Organization is key. Interrupted with input doesn’t mean you have to lose your place.

A good systematic approach to daily work makes all the difference.

Paper based folders – only work on one thing at a time. When you are interrupted put everything in that folder and react to the current item.

We can only work on one thing at a time.

People tend to work half-assed on 5 things at once…rather than concentrating on one thing at a time.

Need paper and paperless systems. We will never go completely paperless.

Changing gears quickly - If you are an environment where people can grab your time – you may need to block out time for yourself to be concentrating on some thing.

When someone interrupts you while you are working, ask - "Why don’t we schedule some time to talk about this later in the day – this is important." Train people not to interrupt each other. Don’t be a doormat. If you want to schmooze then that’s okay.

The red sash – Japan – put it on and no one is supposed to talk to you. If you live in prairie dog country you need some way to say don’t interrupt me right now.

Need to distinguish between interruptions (important stuff) and distractions (stuff that makes it harder for you to get to the important stuff).

Sony PlayStation 3 Gets Rave Reviews from gamers

According to this Technology Review article the new Sony PlayStation 3 is a big hit with people lucky enough to get to try it at the Sony Expo this week.

The PS3 is set for release on November 17th. The article says -

"The system starts at $500 (euro392) for a 20 GB version. The price tag on the 60 GB model is $600 (euro470).

People looking to cash in on the high demand and limited supply are already selling their pre-reserved PS3 consoles on eBay for well over $2,000 (euro1,567). Rights to one PS3 recently sold for $3,250 (euro2,547), plus $50 (euro39) for shipping. It received 48 bids.

Some stores began taking pre-orders on Oct. 10. At some GameStop and EB Game locations, the orders were snapped up within minutes."

and...

"The PS3 is driven by a high-powered cell processor, making game play super smooth and graphics amazingly detailed. A gigabit ethernet for online gaming and a Blu-ray disc player comes standard on the console, as does a wireless controller.

The PS3 can play games and movies at ''1080p,'' which is the highest definition resolution currently available."

Words Without Meaning

Liberal

Conservative

Republican

Democrat

The next time you hear someone say or write one of these four words try and get them to explain what they mean. If you can't do that try and figure it out on your own given the context in which the word is used.

I think you will find that these words are usually used in lieu of saying "them" as in "they are not us" or "us vs. them".

Take the word liberal as an example. I was reading Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - User Reviews - Yahoo! Movies and noticed several reviews that used the word liberal, generally in a phrase like "typical liberal propaganda" or "whiny liberal". It's of some interest to note that the overall rating of the movie is a B+. It has many A ratings and some F ratings (many of which seem to use the word without meaning - "liberal").

I think what's going on here is that people who throw around "liberal" are using it as a polarizing tool. It allows them to think that things are black and white - liberals are bad and whatever they are is good. Things are simpler that way, we are freed from the work of thinking and the uncomfortable notion that we don't know, that things might be ambiguous, that we may have to hold opposing or contradictory ideas in tension - for a greater good.

I wanted to dig a little deeper to see if, given the context the term "liberal" was being used in, it fit i.e. does it make sense to say "a liberal view of war." My first stop was the article Liberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Yikes! that article is long and the discussion page shows that thinking people are working hard to get it right, or at least close to right. It's a complicated topic...almost so complicated to be meaningless. Having read the pages I have to say I'm still not at a point where I could say this or that is liberal and here's why.

Saying Flags of our Fathers presents a "typical liberal anti-war propaganda message" is lazy at best and mean spirited and stupid at worst. There are many reasons why that is, but here's an obvious one - Franklin D Roosevelt.

He was a card carrying liberal, he was also the president for almost all of WW-II. Harry Truman was of course his successor and although not considered a liberal like FDR was at least a Democrat (which in some fuzzy minded folks way of thinking is synonymous to being a liberal).

So a liberal's anti-war stand ala FDR would be to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight and die in Europe and Asia? Or perhaps in Harry Truman's case, to drop atomic bombs on Hirsohima and Nagasaki?

I'm not trying to make a judgement call on whether those were the right or wrong things to do, although I have to believe they were the right decisions given the circumstances, as unfortunate as that was. My point is that a liberal Democrat and a Democrat brought us to war and provided us with the means to win (or at least end) those wars. If you wanted to you might contrast the American experience in WW-II under liberal Democrat leadership to what a conservative Republican has given us in Iraq (only if you want to of course).

You can fast forward to the Vietnam war and Lyndon Baines Johnson, another liberal Democrat who was the instigator of many social government programs...and the president who escalated the Vietnam War to a major battle.

Saying liberals and democrats have some sort of natural anti-war philosophy is just not right. You might be able to argue that social liberals prefer to settle disputes without going to war - but that sounds like something anyone would prefer unless they've been watching too many John Wayne movies or fixating on Fox News.

My next stop on the road to figuring out what someone might mean when they say "liberal" was good old Websters Dictionary. My guess is that some sloppy talkers and thinkers use the archaic obsolete definition of liberal which is, "lacking moral restraint". Bad liberals...immoral liberals.

You could step up a notch on the thinking tree and use the definition, "broad-minded; especially: not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms." That's not so bad but it still doesn't mean anything without some context. If the traditional form was slavery or some other type of discrimination then we would probably tend to be liberal - or not want to be bound by that form. If the traditional form kept together families and championed human values then we probably would be conservative (want to conserve or save those traditions) as Tevye tells us in the opening of Fiddler on the Roof -

"How do we keep our balance?" he asks. "That I can tell you in one word: Tradition!"

The last definition in Websters is the one that would be appropriate for people who want to use the word liberal in a political context. That definition of liberal is - "of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism: of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism;"

Here's the problem with that definition though...

It brings you back to that messy, long, well-researched, well-written, Wikipedia article on what "liberalism" might mean. This snip from the article shows that the thinking people who wrote it are well aware of the difficulty in defining the term -

"As in many debates, opposite sides use different words for the same beliefs, and sometimes use identical words for different beliefs. For the purposes of this article, we will use "political liberalism" for the support of (liberal) democracy (either in a republic or a constitutional monarchy), over absolute monarchy or dictatorship; "cultural liberalism" for the support of individual liberty over laws limiting liberty for patriotic or religious reasons; "economic liberalism" for the support of private property, over government regulation; and "social liberalism" for the support of equality, over inequalities of opportunity. By "modern liberalism" we mean the mixture of these forms of liberalism found in most First World countries today, rather than any one of the pure forms listed above."

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It's getting late and thinking about liberals, conservatives, Republicans and Democrats is a lot of work especially considering I need time to watch Deal or No Deal, Project Runway, Heroes, The Amazing Race or any other of a zillion tasty TV shows, not to mention setting aside time to watch NSFW videos on the web such as the classic South Park - 1008 - World of Warcraft - Google Video or the many Borat Videos on YouTube. Not to mention aimless web surfing, email reading, sleeping, napping...staring at stuff etc. etc. etc.

I'm just too darn busy to figure this stuff out. You'll have to do it on your own - assuming you want to bandy those 4 words around. For my money's worth I'll just continue to keep them out of my conversation and writing as much as possible. We actually would probably be better served watching something funny, having a sense of humor, playing a game, looking for what connects us - anything other than trying to divide the world up into us and them...

Peace to you and yours.

The ABC's of Life

"Accept Differences      Be Kind      Count Your Blessings      Dream      Express Thanks      Forgive      Give Freely      Harm No One      Imagine More      Jettison Anger      Keep Confidences      Love Truly      Master Something      Nuture Hope      Open Your Mind      Pack Lightly      Quell Rumors     Reciprocate      Seek Wisdom      Touch Hearts      Understand      Value Truth      Win Graciously      Xeriscape      Yearn For Peace      Zealously Support a Worthy Cause"

- From a plaque B got me last week

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Half the Perfect World

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

Curious George Tickle N Giggle

Wireless From Starbucks

I used a laptop at Starbucks for the first time yesterday. It wasn't bad. The general background noise and the cool jazz type music they were playing made it pretty easy to focus on what I was doing.

Note to anyone going to the Starbucks beside Seattle's Swedish Hospital on Madison - there's an open wireless router you can use for free.

Thanks to whoever provides that service.

I didn't bother to check the price for using Starbuck's wireless service but according to this dated Wired News article to use Starbuck's wireless service you either have to be a T-Mobile wireless subscriber which runs 50 dollars a month or you can pay $3 for the first 15 minutes of surfing the Web and 25 cents for each additional minute of use.

Just checked and the latest prices are 40 dollars a month, 10 dollars a day or 6 dollars an hour to use the T-Mobile wireless at that Starbucks.

Not happening...

It seems like they could throw in free wireless as a perk after you spend 3 or 4 bucks on a latte.





Map of
Starbucks
1301 Madison St
Seattle, WA 98104-3507

A Bad Idea for Halloween - From WikiHow

How to Give Healthy Treats for Halloween - WikiHow

I don't know about you but if someone gave me different flavors of popcorn in small cellophane bags tied with a ribbon, a little packet of organic raisins, a granola bar, or a low-sugar trans fat-free cookie from a health food store for a halloween treat - I'd be soaping their windows.

That's the candy talking...I wouldn't really soap anyone's windows. We talked big about that sort of thing when I as a kid but never actually followed through. If I soaped anyones windows now the neighborhood watch would be on me like perfume on Pepé Le Pew.

When I was a kid and someone gave me a healthy treat, or anything homemade for that matter, - I was bummed out. Of course nowadays anything that isn't store bought and pre-wrapped would end up in the trash anyway.

If you want to try something different, give kids jumbo sized Hershey bars or even a regular sized candy bar, and see their eyes light up.

Halloween is once a year - you can eat granola and sawdust the other 364 days.

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Postscript - It's the day after Halloween and I ended up not following my own advice. My apologies to the three teenagers that ended up with the small boxes of raisins. I was running out of candy by the time you came. Sorry about that boys, I figured as teens you'd be able to handle the disappointment better than some small trick or treaters.

We had one interesting request from two scruffy little trick or treaters last night who asked if they could have some pumpkins from the porch. We didn't get around to carving pumpkins this year but we had made a fall display with various items including some pumpkins. These little guys asked if they could have a pumpkin because they wanted to carve their own jack o' lanterns. B got them each a bag to carry them in and they left lugging some fairly good-sized pumpkins.

We missed out on the first part of trick or treating because we were down at Swedish where B had an emergency root canal yesterday afternoon and we didn't get home until about an hour after dark. Before we left we were trying to think how we could handle trick or treating since we knew we would be home late. Maybe we could ask a friend to come over? or leave treats on the porch? Neither one of those options seemed good so we ended up leaving our front door unlocked.

Actually we did leave our front door unlocked by accident; with various laptops, cameras etc laying around in the living room. We were joking when we realized our absent-mindedness that we should have left a note on the door "come on in - help yourself to some candy." Nothing was missing, although I'm sure the neighborhood watch would be sorely disapointed in my carelessness.

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Thomas Paine

I was listening to an interview on C-Span Book Notes this afternoon, with the author Craig Nelson who has written a book about the lesser known founding father and pamphleteer Thomas Paine. Craig Nelson and the hosts of Book Guys, made the life of Thomas Paine sound like something that would be fun and interesting to read about.

Yes - History can be fun and interesting to read and learn about, contrary to what some of you mis-learned in school. It's never ceased to amaze me how boring some people can make history considering how exciting and interesting it can be. I coachs/P.E. teachers who taught us American History in junior high and high school days. It was terrible, they were bored with the subject and it showed - I thought I hated history, until my first year of college.

I had a great professor - Dr. Martin Lutter who loved history and let us read novels, and various fiction and non-fiction works, to learn about history. He loved history. He was the total absent-minded professor type. He'd come to class with a big stack of books filled with little book marks and put them on his podium and then just start talking....he was fascinating, he loved what he was doing and had so much energy it rubbed off on his students.

This is the book by Craig Nelson -

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations

There's an interview with Craig Nelson on the Book Guy's Archives #640 which was on C-Span BOOK TV.ORG this afternoon. From the interview it sounded like his book on Thomas Paine was fun to write and will be fun to read.

This Wired 3.05: The Age of Paine article by Jon Katz says of Paine -

"If any father has been forsaken by his children, it is Thomas Paine. Statues of the man should greet incoming journalism students; his words should be chiseled above newsroom doors and taped to laptops, guiding the communications media through their many travails, controversies, and challenges. Yet Paine, a fuzzy historical figure of the 1700s, is remembered mostly for one or two sparkling patriotic quotes - "These are the times that try men's souls" - and little else."

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

The book A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines written by Janna Levin Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, and published on August 22, 2006 - sounds really good. You can watch a video interview with Janna Levin on the The Colbert Report and download an mp3 file, to listen to on your iPod or computer, of a Janna Levin interview with the The Book Guys Allan Stypeck, Mike Cutbert and Nick Basbanes.

The book is about the connection between brilliant minds and eccentric behavior and sometimes - complete insanity of two great thinkers - Alan Turing and Kurt Godel.

Alan Turing and Kurt Godel share some traits - particularly eccentric behaviour and brilliant minds, and diverge completely when it came to a philosophy of life. Alan Turing was an atheist who believed human beings were biological machines. Kurt Godel had little trust in the sensory world and believed in transmigration of the soul.

Alan Turing was a homosexual at a time when that was thought to be a mental illness and possibly a crime. He is thought by some to have had a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome. In 1952 he was arrested for his homosexual behavior and forced to take estrogen for a year to reduce his libido. He died in 1954 after eating half an apple which he had laced with cyanide.

Kurt Godel suffered a number of nervous breakdowns, was paranoid to the point that he would not eat any food that was not prepared by his wife (who spoon fed him) and died in 1978 weighing 65 pounds as a result of self-starvation, after his wife became to ill to feed him. Kurt Godel was a friend of Albert Einstein and provided input to Einstein as he developed his General Theory of Relativity.

An Amazon book reviewer going by the name "bookish" says of the book "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines" -

"I would have to say that it is the best book I have read in years. Let's put it this way, I have never felt impelled to write a review before. This book sent me reeling with so many ideas. I want other people to read it.

The writing is luminous. On the dust jacket the word "Incantatory" is used and I couldn't select a better descriptor myself. The language is incantatory. It is an extremely well crafted novel. There are passages so beautiful that I've found myself returning to read them long after I finished the book. As a former teacher of English, once involved in the publishing industry, I have to say she is an unusually skillful writer."

Continue reading the book review by Bookish

Other books byJanna Levin available on Amazon.com

A wealth of information on Alan Turing, known as the founder of computer science and also as one of the key people in deciphering the encryption used by the German Enigma machine during WW-II can be found on a site maintained by Andrew Hodges, author of the book Alan Turing: The Enigma and Turing (Great Philosophers).

Cowboy Cultural Society

Roy Rogers Boot Salt
& Pepper Shaker Set

COWBOY CULTURAL SOCIETY is another internet radio station I've been listening to since I started using iTunes. They seem to play what I think of as Roy Rogers happy trails type western music - old timey and generally pretty sweet stuff. They stream some nice cowboy poety too.

There's a YouTube video of a corny, and kind of cool, 40's western musical movie made for the USO, featuring Miss Constance Shaw in her Western Rope Dance, with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra - and a virtural campfire.

I like corny stuff sometimes...maybe a better word than corny would be honest, or simple, naive or something along that line.

The Official ROY ROGERS - DALE EVANS Website.

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Roy Rogers With Dale Evans

Additional Roy Rogers items available from .

bee

bee 2

Pomme Frites - Seattle Capital Hill

I want to try the Belgian Fries at "Frites" - located on Capital Hill in Seattle at 925 East Pike Street. They peel and fry the potatoes themselves - served in a paper cone with a huge selection of sauces.

Pomme frites as the Belgian's call them are fried twice to give them a special crunchy texture.

Yummm!

Open from 3:00 pm to midnight Sunday - Wednesday, and from 3:00 pm until 2:30 am Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

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SomaFM - Listener Supported - Commercial Free - Internet Radio

They play a really interesting mix of western, old timey, eclectic country and other music on SomaFM's Boot Liquor internet radio station. I haven't listened long enough to understand the genre but the tag line says it's -

Americana Roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers

This San Francisco Chronicle teaser said of SomaFM, "Move over, pirate radio — from a Bernal Heights garage, Internet station SomaFM plays tunes for the whole wide world, and it’s all perfectly legal."

Boot Liquor is only one of their 11 streams aka internet radio stations, which cover a wide range of musical tastes.

This is the play list from the Boot Liquor stream for around midnight tonight; it's a pretty amazing variety of music, you would never hear on commercial radio, with basically no talking -

00:17:49 Phil Ochs A Toast To Those Who Are Gone
00:14:21 Roger Clyne The Peacemakers Tell Yer Momma
00:11:56 Lyle Lovett They Don't Like Me
00:09:24 Rosie Flores Down To The River
00:06:51 Waco Brothers Johnson To Jones
00:04:05 Phil Lee 2 For The Price Of 1
00:02:00 Patsy Montana Cowboy's Sweetheart
23:57:07 Bob Dylan Absolutely Sweet Marie
23:54:26 Hank Snow I've Been Everywhere
23:51:29 Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys Six White Horses
23:49:31 Derailers Take It Back
23:49:26 Station Identification
23:47:08 Townes Van Zandt Lungs
23:44:08 Dwight Yoakam Smoke Along The Track
23:41:45 Al Barkle Jumpin' From 6 To 6
23:38:59 Gary U.s. Bonds New Orleans
23:37:25 Elvis Costello Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used To Do)
23:34:17 Violet Days Like This
23:30:44 Buddy And Julie Miller Rachel

SomaFM: Listener-Supported, Commercial-Free Internet Radio