Well, I Bought One

**

I did the math and I figured that by cutting out taxi fares (which add up fast) and a few other things, I will end up ahead.

The purchase experience was non-stressful. No heavy-handed sales techniques. Friendly and well trained staff. And the car is great.

The best part (after the reasonable price)? I drove to my neighborhood, passed by a few parking spots because I feared they were too small, then said, “Why not try?,” and found that I could easily fit into one that I thought was too small. And there were comfortable margins on both ends.

(It’s so small, it could be considered a large iPod accessory with wheels. But it is astonishingly roomy inside.)

**I bought this one: a convertible “Cabriolet” with a blue and silver exterior and a red interior.

Apple to the Core

I should have mentioned that the MacBook Air I checked out at the Apple Store in Manhattan had a very cool new track pad that adds the features of the iPhone and Touch iPod, which allow you to pinch, expand, and in other ways easily manipulate the screen. Now I see that Apple has put them into all of the new MacBook Pros. Very cool.

Apple Love

I had some appointments in New York this morning, but managed to take a little trip to the Apple Store at Fifth Avenue. Wow! Not only is the design of the store beautiful, but the products are even more so. The MacBook Air is impressive and lighter than I had expected, but the 80 GB hard drive is not big enough for me. I’ll wait. On the other hand, the iMacs are so advanced and so easy to use and have such gorgeous screens, on which the iMac’s ability to generate multiple desktops can be quite helpful for organizing complicated processes. I want one. Would that I were rich…..but fortunately, the prices have come down, so that even I could afford one. (Not at the moment, but someday. And I’m still very happy with my MacBook, which I carry everywhere and at all times.)

The Car I Want....

The Smart Cabriolet … easy to park and good gas mileage.

This is Cool: Click on It

Kindled

I’m quite happy with my Kindle electronic book from Amazon.com. On my long trip to China, I managed to cut down on the number of books I usually carry with myself by taking it. I had the full text of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, the writings of James Madison, The Federalist Papers, Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, and other works for reference (they were helpful for my lectures) and I got through a good bit of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, some poetry, and (I’m a little ashamed to admit) a couple of trashy novels (I had a lot of the plane and train travel within China, and long flights to and from).

I was not able to access my newspaper subscriptions while in China (I get the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), but I managed to access them as soon as I touched down in the US and read them in the long line at immigration.

I’d say that the device is great for books you want to read, but not necessarily to study. It’s possible to make notes, but not as easy as writing in the margin of a corporeal book. If you want to study a book, you definitely need a corporeal book, but an electronic copy won’t hurt.

P.S. It’s not backlit, which is why the battery lasts a long time (but should be regularly recharged), so you’ll definitely want to buy a reading light with it. This one is quite good, uses LEDs, and the batteries will last for a loooonnnng time.

I Gave In

Despite my pledge (largely fulfilled) to be more frugal, I bought an Amazon Kindle and have loaded it with (mainly inexpensive) books. I need to cut down on the numbers of books I take with me on trips, as they’re so damn heavy.

So far, I really (really) like it. I’ve subscribed to the Washington Post and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and it’s nice to be able to read them (albeit without photos) without having to go out and buy a big paper.

I’ve got some big trips coming up and it will be nice to take a lot of good books with me in a very small and very light package that’s a lot easier to read than a PDF on a computer screen.

Thanks, Amazon.com!

Interest Kindled

Ok, I’m a bit of a gadget nut. But I also carry a lot of books when I’m on the go. Amazon.com’s new Kindle seems perfect. I saw the middling level of the average reviews and was worried, but when I’d read a number of the negative reviews, I found them uniformly whiney (why doesn’t it have more features?, why is it so expensive?, why doesn’t it work everywhere?, why isn’t it free?, why isn’t it as cool as an iPhone?) or unreasonable. Almost all of the negative remarks were from people who hadn’t bought one. The positive reviews were based on experience and tended to go on about how wonderful it is. So, I think….I want one.

Two Views on Technological Change

Via Andrew Sullivan, I saw this delightful 1982 essay by James Fallows on the wonders of “The Electric Pen,” which reminded me of my own first gigantic “luggable” Compaq computer, which I think I got in 1984. It had no hard drive and two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives, one for the program disk and one for the storage disk. In the word processor, all formatting had to be done by entering various odd characters. (My screen, unlike James Fallows’, was gold, rather than green.)

And via Nathalie Vogel, I was directed to this very funny video on a medieval help desk:

Very Cool

I’m looking forward to flying on a lighter, cheaper-to-fuel, more luxurious Boeing 787! Imagine a firm in a highly state-subsidized industry thinking like this:

“Our journey began some six years ago when we knew we were on the cusp of delivering valuable new technologies that would make an economic difference to our airline customers,” Mike Bair, vice president and general manager of the 787 program, told the crowd.

But are the rooms bugged?

Hotel offers ‘East German chic’

A Very Cool -- And VERY Useful -- New Site

I was just introduced to Unclutterer.com, where I got lots of information about reducing paper clutter (which I desperately need to do). But it’s full of ideas, tips, and leads on devices and gadgets that can unclutter everything.

Enrollment Open at Cato University

It’s for businesspeople, engineers, writers, doctors, entrepreneurs, Indian chiefs, high school students, computer programmers, autoworkers, college students, bus drivers, and everyone else. It’s open to individuals, couples, and families. (We’ve had some families with three generations in attendance.) Enrollment is open now.

伟全球化就是好！

“Globalization is Grrrreat!” is now available in Chinese: 全球化就是好！

In Defense of Global Capitalism Now in Russian

Johan Norberg’s outstanding introductory work In Defense of Global Capitalism is now available online in Russian. The print edition will be out soon from Новое издательство (New Publishing House). We’re sponsoring an essay contest based on the book and winners will be invited to the first Cato.ru summer school in Alushta, Crimea.

Cato University 2007

Registration Has Begun!

Cool New Science Blog

John Tierney has a new science blog at the New York Times: TierneyLab.

Beatles and Apples

The Beatles may soon end up in your Apple, or at least your iPod, “Beatles: only on iPod?.”

My Latest Gizmo

I really like Research in Motion’s Blackberry system. I’ve used it for a few years and have generally been happy with it, especially since I use T-Mobile, which has extensive international service, meaning I can get emails and text messages all over the planet. My last Blackberry (an 8700G), sadly, stopped working last Sunday, right in the middle of a call. I took it in to a T-Mobile store and was told that it had moisture damage and…the warranty didn’t cover moisture damage. It was never wet, but it seems I was just out of luck. (And pretty mad.) They offered me a good deal — with an insurance package — on the new Blackberry Pearl. I was reluctant, since it seemed too small to be useful, the kind of cell phone my cats might use (if cats could use mobile phones). I was wrong. It’s a very cool smart phone and remarkably easy to use. I’m still finding out about its wide array of functions, including my first voice-dialed call this evening. I figured I would have to program it somehow to recognize my voice, or names, or whatever. Nope. I told it to call someone and it did.

I was reluctant to buy the Pearl because I liked the full keyboard on the 8700G. The smart typing on the smaller keyboard isn’t quite as convenient, but it’s not bad. And the fact that I have all that power (including a 1.3 Megapixel camera) in such a tiny package is great.

So far, the Blackberry Pearl is great. I recommend it highly.

Oh, and it goes with my black video iPod:

And Now For Something Different

With all the horrors in the world, the assassinations, the wars, the murders, the oppression, and the resulting poverty and suffering, it’s hard to focus on the merely personal. But I took notice when I saw that the New York Times had an important article about the bane of so many of us: agonizing back pain, “Study Questions Need to Operate on Disk Injuries.” If you suffer from back pain like I have, you’ll pay attention. And if you think that some day you might, you’ll also pay attention. (And believe me, you might…)

When it hit me I thought that I would rather be dead. I had suffered lots of unpleasant tingling from the waist down for some months, much like when an arm or a leg “goes to sleep.” Then when I was doing some pullups I felt a jab like someone had stabbed me in the spine with an ice pick….that was hooked up to the battery of a Mack Truck. The pain got worse and worse (and worse) until I could barely drag myself to the front door in less than 15 minutes. I had no idea anything could hurt that much without involving walls splattered with blood and bone chips. I lost control of my left leg, which atrophied due to the nerve damage, and the phantom pains were, unfortunately, describable: it felt alternately like my leg was being boiled, smashed with sledge hammers, and eaten by millions of ants. I knew that that wasn’t in fact happening, but it still wasn’t nice. After a quick trip to an MRI clinic (thank God for for-profit medicine, as I was able to arrange one in an hour, not months and months) I certainly considered surgery, but the head of spinal treatments at Georgetown University cautioned me against it. As he said, it has risks and his experience over two decades had shown that most people who follow a regimen of treatment recover without surgery. So, I visited a few pain clinics for specialized treatment and then rehabilitation therapy, followed by intensive (and still maintained) physical stretching and exercise. It worked and my pain is generally under control. (The experience led me to write a short essay on “For-Profit Medicine and the Compassion Motive.”)

If you want to avoid back pain, get and read Bob Anderson’s simple and straightforward book, Stretching. It’ll help you to avoid the agony I underwent. (That’s the first hint. The seond is that you shouldn’t walk around with forty or fifty pounds of books hanging from one shoulder, as it bends the spine in an unhealthy way and causes a disk to push out on the other side). If you do experience a back injury or back pain, it’ll help you to recover.

Oh, and if you have some extra scratch to invest in pain avoidance, try the Freedom Chair, on one of which I’m sitting right now:

Buy a Present of Georgian Wine

If you’re thinking about a great present for someone special, consider a gift of Georgian wine. Today’s New York Times has two great essays on the improvements in the Georgian wine industry: “In Georgia, a Pilgrimage to the Cradle of Wine” and “Where Visits End with Toasts.”

A purchase of Georgian wine would be one small response, considering recent events, to the gift given yesterday to President Vladimir Putin, on his birthday.

I Was Bad, but It Was Worth It....

After upgrading to iTunes 7 (based on watching an amazing online video featuring Steve Jobs — it was a sales job, and it worked), I had to get the new 80GB iPod. Wow. I watched a movie (The English Patient) on it. Amazing. Yes, the screen is pretty small, but the resolution is tremendous and you get to watch several movies on a long flight without repowering. I’m very pleased with my extravagant purchase.

Brilliant German Videos

My friend Alan Zuschlag, who shares my interest in offbeat German humor, has shared with me a rather good bit of internet video (with great English subtitles) on the “Bush Pilot.”

It goes well with the video on the German Coast Guard (which has no subtitles, but doesn’t really need any).

VOIP Over the Atlantic

I just made my first Voice Over Internet Protocol phone call over the Lufthansa WiFi system while flying over the Atlantic (the map shows us just south of the tip of Greenland). Modern science+technology+capitalism is sooooo cool.

Thank God for Campy Swedish Capitalism

A Model for Civil Society
I’ve finally gotten sick of stepping over piles of books and went today with two friends to IKEA (my German friends tell me that’s short for “Idioten Kaufen Einfach Alles” — “Idiots Buy Simply Everything,” but I disagree) to buy upward extenders for my rather large collection of “Billy” bookshelves. Not only has IKEA revolutionized furnishing houses and apartments throughout much of the world, but they’ve even provided a useful idiom for understanding the relations of citizens in civil society. As Ernest Gellner argued in his excellent book Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals,

“There are firms which produce, advertise, and market modular furniture. The point about such furniture is that it comes in bits which are agglutinative: you can buy one bit which will function on its own, but when your needs, income or space available augment, you can buy another bit. It will fit in with the one acquired previously, and the whole thing will still have a coherence, aesthetically and technically. You can combine and recombine the bits at will… .What genuine Civil Society really requires is not modular furniture, but modular man. ” (New York: Penguin Books, 1994, p. 97)

(That relationship was recognized clearly by Otto von Gierke in his classic study of the law of association: “Our present system of association, which resembles a great number of infinitely intersecting circles, rests on the possibility of belonging with one part, one aspect of oneââ?‰?¢s individuality, perhaps with only one closely defined part of oneââ?‰?¢s range of ability, to one organization, and with others to others.” [Otto von Gierke, Community in Historical Perspective, trans. by Mary Fischer, ed. By Antony Black (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 23; excerpted from von Gierke’s great work, Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht.)

UPDATE: I got an email from a friend asking whether other sociologists have written in similar terms about the formation of civil society from the “modularity” and “intersecting circles” that Gellner and von Gierke invoke. One who comes to mind is Georg Simmel, who wrote elegantly on the relationship between individuality and group formation:

The groups with which the individual is affiliated constitute a system of coordinates, as it were, such that each new group with which he becomes affiliated circumscribes him more exactly and more unambiguously. To belong to any one of these groups leaves the individual considerable leeway. But the larger number of groups to which an individual belongs, the more improbable it is that other persons will exhibit the same combination of group-affiliations, that these particular groups will “intersect” once again [in a second individual].” Georg Simmel, “The Web of Group Affiliations” (“Die Kreuzung sozialer Kreise”) in Georg Simmel, Conflict and The Web of Group Affiliations, trans. by Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix (respectively) (New York: The Free Press, 1955), p. 140

Simmel also had very interesting things to say on the topic in On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. by Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971)

From furnishing my library to furnishing analogies for political theory, I am grateful to IKEA.

The Completely Wired, Wireless Future Is Upon Us

I’ve checked emails, sent documents, and blogged wirelessly from cafes and from an airplane. The trend now seems toward super WiFi zones. The first time I heard about it was from the Minister of Education of Iceland a few years ago, who told me that Reykjavik would become a giant WiFi zone. Now it looks like Britain is on the way.

UPDATE: It turns out that the same move is underway in the U.S. The Washington Post (requires simple registration) reports, naturally, that the city will award a contract on the basis of free service to low income residents. (The rationales seem rather weak; access to WiFi is unlikely to be a big boost to getting out of poverty.)

The Green Fairy

I just got back from a trip during which I had very limited access to the internet (hence no blogging), but during some periods of travel I did manage to get a bit of reading done (manuscripts and other matters), including a very interesting book that mixes social history, pharmacology, and a dry British humor: The Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History, by Phil Baker. It’s clever in the way that only books by English authors can be. It’s full of amusing vignettes about artists and poets (I especially enjoyed the description of the outrageous life of Alfred Jarry), enlightening insights about the role of ritual in enjoyment of drugs, and the sort of information that tends to undermine the exaggerated fears of the freedom to ingest what one wants that motivated the ban on absinthe (still illegal to make or sell in the U.S.) and motivates the failed “War on Drugs” today. (At the same time it contains rather chilling descriptions of the awful deaths of alcoholics.)

I tried some absinthe during a recent trip to Poland (it was fun, but not as wicked as its reputation) and brought some back for a small absinthe party in the near future. As an ad for a contemporary European brand of absinthe put it, “Let’s Party Like It’s 1899!”

Cato Unbound and Unveiled

The Cato Institute has brought a new publication online: Cato Unbound. It’s edited by my colleague Brink Lindsey. The first issue features a lead essay by Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan and responses by Yale Law Prof Akhil Reed Amar, federal judge Alex Kozinski, and public choice economist (and Cato Institute chairman) William Niskanen. Enjoy!

(P.S. Watch for more such products in the near future….)

The Coolness of the Mac

Airport Express

In an attempt to increase both my efficiency and the commodiousness of my apartment, I’ve gone Apple. One of the coolest parts is the Airport Express wi-fi system, which includes something called “Airtunes.” I’ve hooked my speakers up to the wi-fi station and now I can play music from my laptop, as I work, check email, etc., etc. So far, it actually has increased my productivity, as well as gotten rid of lots of tangled wires. Thank you, Apple. Thank you, Capitalism.

Upgrade

It’s Back

I used to be a Mac fan, but had to abandon Apple when I found little inconsistencies with my computer system at work. (Little boxes and odd symbols would pop up in word processing documents, for example.) Well, it seems that Apple has ironed it all out, so…I’m going all Mac tomorrow morning, when my friend PJ comes over to help me to install my new 15” Powerbook with 1GB of RAM and the Airport Express wi-fi system, and to migrate all of my data and settings from my generally reliable (but slow and sometimes too complicated) Dell system. I’ll also be installing a Maxtor One-Touch backup system (which I did buy from Dell).

I guess that my iPod 60GB was the first taste of an old addiction. In addition to putting on and enjoying lots of music, I’ve listened to a number of books and am going through Russian vocabulary and grammar with several different CD-based Russian courses that I’ve converted to the iPod format. (I’ve also benefited from German programs that I’ve put on, to keep my German fresh, and have made some feeble attempts — but it’s a hard language to get, for me at least — to review Arabic conversational skills.)

Update: Well, what I thought would be a few hours of transferring documents, settings, and the like turned into an all day experience. The Move2Mac program I bought moved most stuff, but didn’t move my Outlook Calendar or email files in a format that we could get the Mac to recognize. One would think … well, it will take a bit more time. On the good side, I did manage to transfer and organize all my photos, music, lectures, and so on without any serious problems. Whew. PJ has a computer programmer’s determination and took the Mac (onto which we — ok, he — managed to transfer various formats of the calendar and email files, but not to import them successfully into the Mac’s programs) home to figure it out and seamlessly import the relevant files. Then I’ve got to get my Dell Axim to synchronize with the Mac. Whew. After PJ gets that set up, I’ll get the new wi-fi system running. Then the backup system, so when I take the Powerbook with me, I’ll still have the files backed up in case anything happens to it. Despite a rather disappointing day (the transfer from Outlook was the biggest problem), I’m still eager to get working on my Mac.

Engrish.com again

English Commentary: Empty its contents and set yourself free…

Engrish.com has another most excellent discovery (among so many). I’ve also discovered that they have a store where one can buy Engrish clothing, greeting cards, and much more.

iPod-iction

I hate to admit it….but I’m now addicted to my iPod. I’ve loaded on lots of my CDs (and have spent a bit of cash at iTunes) and now can have my favorite music whenever and wherever I want. I’m not really a very music-oriented person, but this….is great. (I can even now enjoy my favorite Ethiopian jazz; I got turned on to it by the many Ethiopian, Tigrayan, and Eritrean cab drivers in D.C.)

And when I’ve got more of a chance to concentrate, I can listen to books from Audible.com. I’ve gotten through a bit of Roman history (including the works of Sallust) and hope soon to move on to the unabridged Gibbon. The iPod is so much better than the other devices I had tried, which didn’t allow you to rewind to find your place in the text, something that I find necessary when listening to recorded books.

(I also found that having my little iPod allowed me, for the first time in my life, to be a DJ at the birthday party for my friend Pierre Garello at the IES Europe seminar in Romania.)

Old Dogs and New Tricks

iPod, therefore…

Well, I think I’m sold. I’ve been looking into new ways to communicate libertarianism and have noticed that probably half of the men at my gym work out with iPods and that it seems that most of the under thirty set at the Cato Institute where I work carry iPods or similar devices. I’m currently looking into creating a new format for the Cato University tapes that I produced some years ago, but which are only available on cassettes (and which the engineers assured me can’t be put on CDs, since the content is more than a CD will hold.) So, since I had tried to listen to audible books on the tiny and hard to handle “Otis” device some time ago and gave up, I figured I’d get an iPod and try that. Wow! I’ve downloaded (all legally, via Audible.com) works by Thucydides, Gibbon, Sallust, Tolstoy, and Virgil (and listened to a good bit of Sallust’s Jugurthine War). And then I discovered why most other people first got interested in iPods: music. I’ve transfered (also legally) a variety of music, from Falco to The Calling to The Comedian Harmonists to Gregorian Chants. I expect less time being bored in uncomfortable airline seats in future. (Just in time, as I’ll be flying to Bucharest next week to teach at two Institute of Economic Studies - Europe seminars, in Varna and in Belis, near Cluj-Napoca.)

(I’m listening at the moment to Falco’s “America,” but the printed lyrics don’t capture the Viennese dialect, which I very much miss.)

A Segue to Something a Bit Different

I frequently ride my Segway to the office and back. It saves me from the other options: Paying cab fare; A 40 minute walk loaded down with books, computer, briefcase, etc.; Buying a car and a parking space and paying for car insurance. So I just try to ignore as politely as I can all the people who stare at me and wonder “Who’s the dork in the suit?” as I whiz by.

Now I learn that D.C. will……hushed anticipation….be the host city for the national Segway convention this fall. I didn’t know that there was such a thing. Anyway, the Washington Post article (simple registration required) through which I discovered that may be a bit aimless, but it does have some interesting information on Segway ridership around the country. Most amusing were, however, the names of some of the Segway enthusiasts quoted in the piece: William W. Hopper, Chris Walker, and — a staunch defender of guiltfree use of the Segway — Neil Schuldeinfrei.

There is, by the way, a D.C.-based company that arranges Segway tours of the city: Segs in the City.

A Healthy Brain Is a Happy Brain

MRI of a Happy Brain
I’m going to use this article in New Scientist on “11 Steps to a Better Brain” for my shopping list. I’m stocking up on nutrients and more motivated to keep up my physical exercise, too. (I also take Juvenon on a daily basis.)

Living Forever?

Gnarly! One of the oldest living organisms on the planet
Slate has a nice piece on a biologist who, like our friend pictured above, is rooting for immortality. That reminded me of my friends the Extropians.

More Self-Defense News

One Form of Gun Defense

Tonight I went through a rather exhausting but very rewarding Krav Maga session. After practicing more combatives (kicks, punches, and elbow hits; here are a few videos), going over ground fighting and getting up and away quickly and with minimal exposure (all in full body armor, which adds some weight), we focused the last half on gun defenses, i.e., how to disarm someone who is threatening you with a gun. Practice your form and practice being really fast, because it’s got to be done before he knows what’s hit him.

Coincidentally, the District of Columbia government has responded to our lawsuit to vindicate the Second Amendment rights of residents of the District. (Here is the District government’s motion to dismiss our suit and here is our response, to which the District responded today.) As a key lawyer in the case, Alan Gura, put it in his email to me today, “It’s all up to the court now.”

I Feel Awful...But I Want More!

I took my first Krav Maga course today. Yikes! I’m in rather good shape (yeah, yeah…for a man my age) but I was ready to throw up after the exertion (and the experience of having the simulated stuffing kicked out of me). I’m ready for more — lots more. I’ll be taking private instruction, as well as group lessons, and am very much looking forward to it. I hope to focus on knife and gun disarmament and knife fighting, as well as hand-to-hand combat. I was very impressed and already feel more confident (not to be confused with complacent) for my trip to Iraq. One of my colleagues is fairly advanced in Krav Maga and has recommended the program to me, as has my brother, who is an instructor in Tai Chi, but who recommended Krav Maga as a survival skill.

Note: Posting this note is also a way for me to precommit to being successful in my training, as I would be greatly embarrassed were I to have written this and then dropped out.

Brainy Toys for Kids

I just got a cool catalogue from a company called Mindware, which offers “the very best in brainy toys and games.” Uncle Tom will be ordering a few items for a variety of nieces and nephews. They’ve even got a game called Made for Trade, through which “kids will experience pirate attacks, the first stirrings of the Revolution and many more seemingly unrelated historic occurrences, each affecting how the game unfolds. As useful objects are traded, they explore the game-board village and truly understand the subtleties of living in the era.” I’ll buy.

Holiday Gifts from Uncle Tom

With my niece and nephews now old enough to have their own children and with various friends having successfully reproduced, I’m buying lots of children’s gifts for the holidays. The ones that get good reviews from both parents and children include the Leapfrog learning toys. They’re well designed and take kids from infancy to the early teens. The latest hit is the Leapster Multimedia Learning System, which my eldest great niece has been enjoying since her birthday. (I got my niece and nephews the Apple GS — “GS” for “Graphics and Sound” — with such games as “Reader Rabbit” and “Math Blaster” years ago and this is just the next step for the next generation.)

Of course, none of the above is likely to be handed down from generation to generation, so I’m still a big fan of the old fashioned information storage and retrieval devices known as “books.”

Advertising Can Be Sooooo Cool.

I just learned how to post little advertisements into my site. Very nice. I’ll have to ask my friends at Laissez Faire Books if they can do that, too.

Segsess!

With my neighbors as training wheels (and in exchange for letting them ride, too), I took my Segway out for practice and a spin around the neighborhood. It feels pretty weird the first time you get on, but after a few minutes it feels fine. The hardest thing to adjust to is turning; the left handle controls left (rotate forward) and right (rotate toward you) turns. If you’re accustomed to motorcycle controls, that seems odd and unnatural. I’m starting to get the feel for it, but It will take a few more rides for that to seem natural. I’m planning on Segwaying to the office tomorrow.

My Segway Arrives on Election Day

I’m eagerly looking forward to the arrival of my new Segway on November 2.

I’m not looking forward to voting, which will be, at best, a distasteful act. Gut prediction: a narrow Kerry victory in the popular vote but a decisive victory in the electoral college. Sure prediction: about half of the voting population will be quite upset in a few days.

Capitalism + Science = Fun

I recently bought a new Motorola V600 cell phone, as my old one was not up to what I needed. The new one has text messaging, Bluetooth, and a built-in camera. I’ve since taken a lot of photos with the camera, but was surprised to learn that I could just email them to the email addresses of people who needed them — directly from the phone! I was even more astonished to discover that the Bluetooth is useful for more than the little wireless headset I got with it; I was at a CVS Pharmacy and found that I could send the photos by Bluetooth to a machine in the photo section and it printed the photos for me! Is that cool, or what?

Turning to Another Subject

I suppose that after my comments on books, debates about the public good, creepy anti-Semitism, and so on, it may be appropriate for me to make a Segway to a new subject, which is the new means of transportation that I’ve ordered. It should come soon and start saving me money on most of the taxi fares I have to pay to schlep my self and my books, laptop, etc., around town. I certainly hope that I do better than George Bush when he rode one. (Keep in mind that, as a defender of Fidel Castro below points out, George Bush and Fidel Castro are alike, because they both fell down. If I fall down, will I be like Fidel Castro? Yes, I will. But, to use that terribly outmoded Aristotelian terminology, Fidel Castro and I will share, not an essential property, but merely an accidental one.)

Guinea Pigs Wanted to Try New Cuisine

Try this new dish out, but if you have small children, don’t let them find out what they’re eating.

One of My Favorite Little Companies

I buy from these nice people every year. Their products make great gifts and let you feel good about supporting “biodiversity.” I’m referring to Applesource, an Illinois based family farm that grows and ships an amazing variety of incredibly tasty and beautiful apples. Many of the tasty ones are not beautiful, but all of the beautiful ones (among those that I’ve tried) are at least good. (They have some really ugly potato-ish apples that are remarkably tasty. I recommend the “Ashmead’s Kernel,” which is described online as “ugly by modern standards” and “tart (not for sissy palates).”

Techno Hell

I’m experiencing a bit of technological hell. When I switched DSL providers from Earthlink to Verizon, it gummed up my email (which I finally ungummed thanks to the help of PJ Doland), after which Earthlink grabbed the line back, thereby terminating my internet service. Aaagh. I’ve been waiting for it to be turned back on for days…..That and the death of my PDA (which Dell promptly replaced, I’m pleased to say), the breakdown of my clothes washer and the subsequent flooding of my apartment, and more has led me to rethink the benefits of technology. Of course, a few days without internet service and clean clothes (not to mention the prospect of a toothache without modern dentistry) got me over that pretty quickly.

Inspirational Depression

If you’re feeling down, be sure to read this article from The Onion.

I Can See! Thank you, John Wahl.

I am extremely happy with the results of my Lasik surgery. I feel liberated from eyeglasses and contact lenses. My friend John Wahl, who’s an eye surgeon, did the work and provided the overnight hospitality (at his brother’s home) for my recovery. Although the first hours after the procedure were a bit difficult (unlike for my colleague, who also had the same procedure), by the next morning I felt like a new person. This morning I got up a bit disoriented and looked around for my glasses for several minutes before noticing (I was, after all, in my pre-caffeinated state) that I could see everything quite clearly. I couldn’t find my glasses, not because I couldn’t see them, but because I had put them away.

It looks like I won’t be needing reading glasses, at least not for some time, since my myopia was slightly undercorrected. I can read quite well but the tradeoff is a bit of blurriness in the distance. That I can correct whenever I need to see things in the far distance with a single mild corrective daily wear lens in my right eye, or with glasses for night time driving (when one’s pupils dilate to let in more light and therefore cannot focus quite as well as during the day), hiking in the mountains (when seeing distant peaks is part of the enjoyment), and so on.

Thank you, John! (And my deepest thanks also to his lovely wife Rosie and to his brother Michael and his sister-in-law Tina for their gracious hospitality.)

New Eyesight

I’m off tomorrow to have my eyes worked on with Lasik. I may still have to have reading glasses (damn!), but I hope to be free of the glasses and contact lenses that I’ve had to wear since I was young boy. There are some risks, of course, but what else is new? There are also benefits, like not having to grope around blindly in the morning for my glasses (which my cats frequently knock off the nightstand, anyway), not being afraid of falling asleep in my contacts (or worse, falling asleep in my contacts and dealing with painful dried out eyes afterward), being able to swim without having my lenses float off, and so on. I love modern technological capitalism.

Dell Axim and Tom's productivity

In the effort to increase my productivity (no self deception here!), I’ve splurged on a new Dell Axim Pocket PC, an itty bitty palm top computer on which this blog entry was written. I have sent my lovely little Sony Clie to my nephew Andrew, who is about to graduate from college and start a new business and therefore could use the scheduling and contact features (and probably the MP3 features, too; I’m not very musical and not clever enough to figure out how to use it.)

I had not been able to use the Sony Palm OS system for writing essays, so when I heard a rave review of the Dell Axim on the radio, I checked it out on the web. All of the reviews were enthusiastic, and now that I have one, I can see why. I had used an Apple Newton some years ago and wrote a fair amount on it. It was a LOT bigger than the Axim; it only worked with Apple (or at least that’s all I could do with it); and it is no longer supported, so I gave that little marvel to a neighbor who I found (to my surprise) specialized in Newton work. (To each his own.)

But the Dell Axim is light years ahead. I bought it with a very useful little collapsible keyboard and its own built-in Wi-Fi system. (It works on my own system at home and I might spring the money to purchase a subscription to the T-Mobile hotspot system you can use at Starbucks and other locations; that system is, unfortunately, a bit pricey.)
I hope that I will use this to write enough to make the investment worthwhile. Wish me luck..