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August 30, 2005

Much Ado About Muffin

CHIANG MAI, NORTHERN THAILAND -- While the US media have obsessed about some hurricane, it's easy to miss some of the great stories one reads only when he's on an airplane.

1) You'll just have to take a F**king picture. The city of Fucking, Austria, has erected (no pun intended) theft-proof signs after British tourists kept stealing their Fucking signs. Instead of screwable metal signs (again no pun intended), the new signs are rock-hard. Read all about it.

2) Much Ado About Muffin. Bill Safire has come to the rescue of TH and me, who were recently discussing girls who wear tight low-rider jeans but are a bit too flabby, resulting in some gut hanging over the belt.

When the wearer's abdomen is flat, a display of flesh above and well below the bellybutton produces an eye-catching picture of what The Scotsman in Britain has called "the Britney belly-flash." However, when the wearer's midriff is flabby, a vivid culinary metaphor is used: muffin-top. ...

"Muffin-Top Mayhem!" was the headline in The New York Daily News this summer, atop a picture of a woman whose midriff was overhanging her belt. The unfortunate loser of this battle of the bulge was said by the writer, Mark Ellwood, to be called a muffin-top. He defined the display as "the unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight pants." The locution is not sexist: a male actor, usually characterized as a "screen hunk," photographed in such a state is called a stud-muffin-top. (I am indebted to Ann Wort of Washington for this citation.)

Rarely can slang lexicographers find "first use" of such a phrase, but blogging helps: coinage is claimed by a Netizen named Dyske Suematsu, who proudly informs the Internet set of having sent the compound noun to www.pseudodictionary.com in May 2003.

Safire goes on to note that "muffin top" is distinct from "love handles," which occur only on the sides of the body.

3) Only one's face turns green. The NYTimes also has a story on Beijing's attempts to clean itself up before the Olympics. As I noted last week during a live-blog from Beijing, the air quality there is so poor that several members of our group complained of burning eyes and throats, and a thick haze hangs over the city, thicker than any I've ever seen. Here is the NYT's analysis in an article called "Beijing's Quest for 2008: To Become Simply Livable."

"Bad planning over the past decades has already become a point of embarrassment for the city," said Wang Jun, whose best-selling book, "The Story of a City," documented the demolition of many of the city's old "hutong" neighborhoods, the ancient, densely populated enclaves of narrow, winding streets and crumbling courtyard homes.

Mr. Wang said Beijing never recovered from the 1950's, when Liang Sicheng, the country's pre-eminent architectural historian, warned that destroying the hutongs would lead to traffic and pollution and urged Mao to preserve Beijing's ancient city walls. Instead, Mao demolished them as a symbol of Chinese feudalism.

More recently, the hutongs have been steadily demolished, dislocating untold thousands of people, to make room for the thousands of development projects swallowing the city.

"Now, his predictions have come true," Mr. Wang said of the pollution and traffic.

I discussed the plight of the hutong here in 2003. Read the whole NYT story.

4) Guess the milk isn't free. China Daily recently reported that a man nearly paid money to have sex with his wife. He went to a Chinese brothel to procure a prostitute and discovered his wife working there. The wife apparently took up the profession to earn money because the man squandered the family's money on hookers. This will be an interesting divorce.

Posted by adrianjo at 09:03 AM

Update from northern Thailand

CHIANG MAI, NORTHERN THAILAND -- The world has changed. Young monks here in this city in Thailand's hilly far north, clad in orange robes, now wear photo-IDs around ancient temples. They look like Mr. Smithers at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. I'm just glad I made it, since I left my passport at the hotel this morning and nearly missed the flight. (And I left a bag with $50 of new clothes on a plane last night; I think it's a loss.)

Macau is changing, too. The tiny territory, ruled by Portugal for over four centuries before being handed to the Chinese in 1999, is undergoing massive development as two new American casinos come on board. Mini Mao (John), The Columbian (Claudia), and I took a jet-ferry there from Hong Kong on Saturday to check it out.

The gambling market is almost entirely mainland Chinese playing a mixture of both US and Chinese games, with baccarat by far the most widely-played. We pooled our money and bought a MOP5 token (that's about 75 cents US), dropped it into a strange machine, pressed some buttons, and quickly got a "game over" message. So now I have been gambling in Macao and Stockholm, and I lost it all every time.

Macao also sports a well-preserved old town, where roast piglet, the latest cosmetics, and antique furniture are all on offer. Claudia thought it looked like downtown Cali, hometown of her and the infamous drug cartel, probably because of the Iberain influence on both places. The southern end of Macao is undeveloped, offering a relief and haven from Hong Kong's teeming Times-Square-like streets. A taxi from one end of the territory to the other runs just $10, so we took it to the far southern beach and enjoyed a great Portugese dinner.

As for Hong Kong, well, Hong Kong deserves to be experienced from multiple angles. The best angle is from above: either in a bank's offices or from the Peninsula Hotel. We stopped by two major banks in HK to chat with their folks about the Chinese business climates, though we also spent a significant amount of time taking pictures from their offices high over Victoria Harbour. The Peninsula is Hong Kong's old grand hotel, almost always mentioned as one of the world's top 5 hotels. I don't know if that is true--the lobby crowd is rather touristy--, but the drinks were outstanding. I suggest the Lady in Red, made with lychees and perfectly balanced yet stunning like a beautiful woman. After 6PM, the Peninsula's bar at Felix is a must-visit. The crowd is of the international jet set variety, enjoying 28th floor views over the harbour in a Philippe Starck interior.

A number of members of our group decided to finagle their way past the "polite but firm" door staff at Felix both nights in Hong Kong. However, on the first night, Mini Mao, the Columbian, and I met one of Mini Mao's buddies at a Shanghaiese supper club for a more typical Chinese banquet than one usually gets in god-forsaken hotel restaurants. From there, we walked up to one of Hong Kong's few bar streets and found ourselves at a trendy Scandinavian lounge. The nightclub crowd in Hong Kong is fairly rigidly split: expats and tourists in one area, native Hong Kongers in another.

What else?

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August 25, 2005

I would have written sooner if the Commies hadn't closed the internet cafes

HONG KONG, SAR, CHINA: A long week in China, punctuated by both highs and lows, is drawing to a close tomorrow. Shanghai, where we spent the last two days, exceeded everyone's expectations. Shanghai's 17M population makes it one of the world's largest cities, but its scale makes it feel much cozier and more human. The food was generally fairly good, and the nighlife along the river (the so-called "Bund") was world-class. Shanghai also has a Wal-Mart (one of 45 here in China), which sells such products as traditional potions, pigs feet, live bullfrogs, slimy live eels, and 5-foot dried fish. (I will have pictures.)

Beijing, by contrast, increasingly feels like its communist cousin, Moscow. As I noted following my first visit to China, Beijing authorities in the past few years have destroyed most of the city's historic areas and erected giant communist monoliths--hotels, office blocks, anything. The result is a city that feels sterile, is boring to walk, and has terrible traffic problems. The Chinese authorities are sorely mistaken if they think that this is the kind of building that impresses Westerners.

Shanghai, in a distant echo of Russia's second city, still retains much of its pre-war architecture. (Unlike Beijing, Shanghai came under colonial control.) The French Concession, for example, is a delightful green neighborhood of both towering skyscrapers and low-rise houses. Whereas Beijing has many 12-lane roads through town, Shanghai has elevated many of such roads, resulting in roads of up to 19 lanes that are visually appealing and easy to cross.

Shanghai also features a train that tops out at 431 km per hour, or 267 mph. The world's fastest train, it accomplishes this speed by floating in the air using magnetic levitation. It makes Europe's high-speed lines like Thalys seem downright pokey by comparison, though the air resistance provides the shaking that the ground does not.

There have also been a number of frustrations, chief among them either the incompetence of the Chinese tour company or their desire to rip us off. Several meals were terrible--even by Chinese standards. Meals also do not include water, which some restaurants gouge us at up to US$5 per bottle, even though a bottle of water here costs US$0.10 at Wal-Mart. The guides have been of no help at meals, even though we're paying for two guides. (I have yet to see one of the guides do or say anything--she's about the laziest Chinese I've ever encountered.) Tensions have run very high at times, higher than I would expect. Then today in Hong Kong, they sent a bus to the airport that has storage for only 6 bags and said, "we didn't send a bus with more storage because we didn't expect so many bags." Well, if 40 people are turning up, it's reasonable to expect 80 bags, not 6. Part of this is normal problems touring a third-world country, but part is also the tour companies' seeing us as big moneypots who presumably don't care if we're ripped-off and given bad service. No more group tours for me.

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August 22, 2005

Update from Beijing

BEIJING (PEKING), CHINA: Internet access is ungodly expensive here in Beijing, largely due to the communists' dislike of the internet as a subversive medium. The visit has been enjoyable so far, including another visit to the Great Wall (this time it was as crowded as a sidewalk in Times Square) and a trip up to the Summer Palace. The pollution has been unbearable; I almost cannot describe the burning of the eyes and shortness of breath experienced by several of our group members. The haze is so bad that one wakes up, looks out to the horizon, and thinks it is going to rain; then he looks up and sees blue sky above. .

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August 18, 2005

Fine China

I am off to Asia today: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Bangkok, and Chiang Mai. I will try to post entries here every few days while I'm gone.

It will be a nice relief to be gone and not have to hear everyone bellyaching about gas prices. Incidentally, I tell people to hedge the price of gas by buying commodity funds and stock in firms in exploration, oil field services, and retail energy. As oil prices at the pump rise, these securities tend to gain value. Soon $67/bbl oil starts looking mighty nice.

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August 17, 2005

Pictures with more gore than Vice-Prez Al

Ogrish.com has an extraordinarily graphic picture of a charred body from the recent Greek plane crash. This is the sort of thing you'll never see in any mainstream media. Only click this link if you have a ridiculously strong stomach, and don't blame me for the nightmares it will cause. Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm getting on a plane tomorrow to go to China?

Far less graphic is a video of some Korean cops attacking a protester.

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August 15, 2005

That was the one.

A picture of the wreckage of last week's Copterline crash confirms that the helicopter that crashed, tail # OH-HCI, is the one I took last year. (Copterline's other chopper has tail # OH-HCJ.) See my blog entries, including pictures, here and here.

Here are two pictures published by Russian-language media of the wreckage being recovered. As near as I can translate the Russian, they seem to point out that the water landing floaters were out--this might be the big orange bag.



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That's no khan-man

Louis Farrakhan preacheth the truth. And why is everyone so foolishly sensitive about it?

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August 14, 2005

If anything falls off that truck...

I bought a 1 gigabyte memory card for my new digital camera today. It costs $70 and is a bit larger than a nickel. It's quite amazing that something so small can store 4 billion pixels of information. That many pixels, if printed out, could cover 4.5 million square feet, or 14 acres, or a typical two-lane road for 25 miles. And that's all compressed to something so small it has a child-choking warning.

I figure the little bugger weighs around a gram, which means that one ton of these little things would cost $76M. Excepting fine jewelry, memory cards may well be the most expensive thing, gram-for-gram, that an ordinary person would ever buy.

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August 13, 2005

Better late than never

Here are two pics from Machu Picchu, Peru, over spring break. I received them this morning. The rest of the pictures are here, here, and here. I live-blogged the visit starting with the entry "¡Hey Sacsayhuaman!"

Click for a bigger image.

Our second-day at Machu Picchu was quite rainy--in fact, it really rains hard in the rain forest. My trusty green jacket came in handy.

The big mountain behind Machu Picchu (the one seen in all the famous photos) is climbable via a very steep and wet trail. The view from the top down on Machu Picchu is worth it. I am with a classmate, Ilan.

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Copterline crash update

Helsinki's newspaper has an excellent update on the Copterline crash in the Gulf of Finland, which I discussed here. Mechanical defects seem to be a leading possible cause of the crash, though Copterline management ruled-out mechanical problems very early on and with no evidence to support such a view. The paper published this acccount of a Copterline incident with blade problems:

According to information received by Helsingin Sanomat, the blades overheated some time ago, as the pilot was taking off. The turbine exhaust gases heated up the blades to such an extent that the rotor-blades began to shake on ascent.

The pilot had aborted the take-off and returned safely to the ground. The blade or blades were replaced.

UPDATE 8/15: This helicopter is the same one I took last year. (One can match the tail numbers.

In a ironic twist, one of the pilots killed in the recent crash was active in the rescue from the 1994 sinking of the M/V Estonia. The Estonia ferry was a bit more than half as long as the Titanic and sank within 15 minutes in a fierce Baltic Sea storm. Of 989 people on board, 858 died. The immediate cause was a giant door leading to the car deck that ripped open and fell off. Ferry operators were driving the ship too hard into the massive oncoming waves and the underengineered door came loose.

The Atlantic last year produced a fabulous account of the Estonia sinking, based on several interviews with survivors, including some who were among the last people to escape successfully. For non-Atlantic subscribers, here is the poor man's version.

The Estonia sinking shouldn't be confused with the similar accident in Zeebrugge, Belgium. There, the operator of the bow door fell asleep and forgot to close it before departure. The ferry left dock and sank 90 seconds later, killing 193 in water not even deep enough to submerge the vessel.

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August 12, 2005

Quote of the day

Best thing I heard today:

"I decided to get back together with my girlfriend. We had sorta broken-up when I moved to New York, but I called her up Wednesday and told her I miss her. You see, I was at Marquee on Tuesday hitting on this average-looking piece of Long Island trash and I wasn't getting anywhere with her. It's just not worth it."

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It's getting hot in here

With the high in NYC predicted to hit 97 degrees tomorrow and with my apt having no air conditioning, I will seclude myself in a corner of the Penn Club library. Visitors are welcome.

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Disconnected by Boeing

Here is another sign of how backwards the worldwide airline industry is. Japan Airlines (JAL) now has wireless internet access on its flights from JFK to Tokyo, provided through "Connexion by Boeing". (I will be on JAL's flight to Tokyo when I go to China next Thursday.) Wireless internet access throughout a 14-hour flight would be really swell, and I'd even live-blog with digital pictures of the view over Alaska, the Bering Sea, and Siberia.

It's too bad that JAL hasn't thought it all the way through. How does one get power for his computer after his battery dies in two hours? Here is what a JAL representative wrote me when I asked:

Unfortunately, there are no electrical connections for laptops or other electrical devices in our Economy Class sections on JAL flights departing from North America at the present time. On select aircraft configurations departing from North America, laptop power supply is now available in our Executive and First Class sections.

Many airlines have at least grasped the idea of having power outlets available on the flight: I fly American largely because of the power outlets. According to Seatguru.com, Singapore, Lufthansa, KLM, and others all have outlets.

It's swell that JAL has in-flight internet, but if I can't get a power connection to sustain my battery beyond its two hour life, it just goes to show how little JAL and the airline industry in general understands what it's like to be their customer.

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August 11, 2005

The Baltic Sea claims another victim

Last year I raved about the Copterline helicopter service that runs every hour between Tallinn, Estonia, and Helsinki, Finland. For as low as $60, one visits a downtown helipad and is whisked over the Gulf of Finland in a quick 18 minute flight. The alternative is a two-hour ferry ride between Tallinn and Helsinki.

Today the Copterline helicopter I took lies under 160' of water in the Gulf of Finland, with with two pilots and twelve passengers aboard. The crash's cause is not immediately apparent; there was a storm (not quite as bad as the storm that sunk the ferry Estonia), but the helicopter was at cruising altitude.

Despite the crash, I would do it again. Below are some pictures from my flight. (Note that this is the chopper that crashed.)

Boarding is a relaxed affair that takes about 2 minutes.

View from inside. I don't know how many pilots Copterline has, but one or both of these fellows might have died in the crash. Peace be upon them.

The alternative: a two-hour ferry line

Arrival in Helsinki.


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August 10, 2005

Boring jobs in a Cabinet Ministry?

Megan McArdle at Instapundit links to a Washington Post story that declares that even "high-ranking" jobs are boring. A deputy assistant in some cabinet ministry tells the Post:

You may be in a gilded cage, but if you're just forced to sit there for eight hours all day long, staring at the wall, it can be excruciating.

To which Megan adds:

Even my friends who live and breathe finance [i.e. Wall Street jobs] find a large portion of their work intensely boring. They are doing it because they hope that if they spend long enough proofreading powerpoint presentations and scrutinising IPO prospectuses, they will one day be paid really gargantuan sums of money to fly all over the world and tell CEOs how to finance their companies. ....

There is a tendency among liberal arts types to think that it is grossly unfair that investment bankers make so much money, when said artsy types' clearly more socially valuable work is so pitifully remunerated. Having spent a summer doing [finance], I personally think that anyone who is willing to spend his Saturday night going over the fine print in an SEC prospectus until 2AM is welcome to all the filthy lucre they will pay him. I chose to become a journalist because I've only got forty or fifty years left on this planet.... It seems downright piggy for those of us with ... "English Major Jobs" to demand both fulfilling work and lavish remuneration.

This is consolation for me when all the Wall Street types here at Columbia start getting offers in a few months that pay $20-$50K more than I'll get. At least my job isn't as boring as working on The Street.

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August 09, 2005

MADD: dumb as a drunk

The Washington Post has a good op-ed on parents who throw parties for their kids and supply alcohol for the occasion. It is particularly embarassing to the neo-Prohibitionists at MADD who advocate that the way to stop drunken driving is to criminialize underage drinking such that it occurs not in controlled settings but rather in "cars, in parking lots, in vacant lots and in rented motel rooms."

As I pointed out in a 2000 op-ed, a sensible policy to combat the ill effects of underage drinking needs to acknowledge that underage people will drink. I was definitely not a heavy drinker, but I drank in 5 states and four foreign countries before I turned 21. As long as enforcement policies push teenagers to drink in unregulated, unsupervised environments, we will continue to have a "problem" with underage drinking.

The Post tells an illustrates how ridiculous the law enforcement position is:

The Post reported a while back on a party in Bethesda in which there was no underage drinking at all. Police approached the parents at a backyard graduation party and asked if they could administer breath tests to underage guests. The mother refused. So the cops cordoned off the block and administered breath tests to each kid as he or she left the party. Not a single underage guest had been drinking. The police then began writing traffic tickets for all of the cars around the house hosting the party. The mother told The Post, "It almost seemed like they were angry that they didn't find anything."

Surely there are more pressing concerns for the Washington area criminal justice system to address than parents who throw supervised parties for high school kids. These parents are at least involved enough in their kids' lives to know that underage drinking goes on and to take steps to prevent that reality from becoming harmful. We ought to be encouraging that kind of thing, not arresting people for it.

[via]

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Burning down the council estate

Tucker Carlson is among the more moronic talking-heads, and here is an equally moronic debate over whether half of NYC housing project units should be smoke-free. The panel completely misses the point: if one is living in a home that is paid for by taxpayers like me, he does not have a right to do whatever he wants to that home. In fact, I think the bill doesn't go far enough; all housing projects should be smoke-free. If one wants to burn tobacco, let him buy his own house and do it there. Besides, anyone so poor that they are living in public housing ought not to be spending their public assistance money (again provided by me the taxpayer) on cigarettes.

generalgranthouses.jpg
The General Grant Houses, one of many NYCHA properties in Harlem.

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August 08, 2005

Fiddling away

Here is a musical that will have a very short run. At least it isn't about Boy George.

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Where I'd rather be

The end of the semester is at hand, and I think my motivation to do work of any sort is at a nadir. (At least I hope it's a nadir.) So to help procrastinate, I've assembled some places I'd rather be.

1) Amsterdam, Nederlands (typical Dutch sight alongside a canal)


2) Dubrovnik, Croatia (harbour)


3) Reykjanesfólkvangur, Iceland (volcanic lake with black-sand beaches)


4) Paro, Bhutan. (Himalaya Mountains at sunrise)

5) Turtle Island, Singapore (city skyline in the background)


6) On the high-speed train to Paris


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The Thirty Years' War

Powerline's Big Trunk has posted his Weekly Standard column on the "ACLU's 30 Years War" against the Boy Scouts of America. The ACLU's 30 year war has been pretensed on the notion that the Scouts are a religious organization and therefore cannot be supported by the government. Although I don't subscribe to one particular religion, I was a Scout for about 3 years. I quit when I got sick of being disciplined by being struck with a section of hard pipe.

Despite the physical abuse, the Scouts are generally an honorable organization that turns boys away from the societal ills we face today--a lack of trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfullness, friendliness, etc. It is not a religious organization anymore than the penny is a religious item (the penny bears the words, "in God we trust"). I don't know whether I love or hate the ACLU, but I surely won't be supporting them if they intend to turn the Thirty Years' War into the Hundred Years War. Getting a few gays eligible to earn merit badges in woodworking and stamp collecting is not reason to destroy an honorable organization.

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August 05, 2005

Slow going in Turtle Bay

Here is a picture from a recent visit to the UN's Security Council chambers over in Turtle Bay. I wanted to pay a visit to Kofi's office on the 38th floor, but I was told that he was out.

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I'd rather go naked

For once I agree with Anna Nicole Smith:

Elle Macpherson, shame on you! I got word from a friend at PETA that you're going to model a line of furs. Do you really want to promote the killing of these animals just so rich ladies can wear their fur as status symbols? Some of them are skinned alive. It's wrong and you know it! You're a beautiful and successful woman. You can't need the money that badly. Please reconsider your decision and stop wearing fur!

Anna Nicole can spell too.

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August 04, 2005

They won't make you gordo

TH and I were meandering down Broadway last night when we got tired, walked over to Amsterdam (at 79th), and happened upon a new restaurant: Bello Sguardo. A Mediterranean tapas joint, it combines Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Turkish concepts to provide a surprising variety. The serving size is blissfully small, which means that a 3-course meal is possible without busting the gut. The sleek setting, al fresco seating, and cool candles are worth a visit. That 3-course dinner can be had for under $20/person, which I didn't think was possible at a decent restaurant in New York.

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August 03, 2005

Trial lawyers lose a fight; everyone else wins

When I hired a car to go to Providence last month, obtaining the car proved a challenge. I rode two trains, boarded a bus, and took another train before I arrived at Hertz in Newark, New Jersey. Why? Because a Volvo in New Jersey cost $69/day, vs $129/day in New York. Why the difference? Because back in the horse-and-buggy days, unscrupulous carriage operators leased their carriages to operators who drove uninsured. Hence New York's "vicarious liability" law, which held car hire agencies responsible for the acts of people who hired the car. The cost incurred because of the bad drivers gets bourne by everyone who hires a car in New York.

Once laws get made, it's hard to un-make them, even if they double the cost of something like car hire. The law remained on the books until the passage of the pork-laden highway bill last week. Trial lawyers here screamed that the law "puts corporate profits over the people's well being." That sort of populism is usually a canard, especially when the benefit to "people's well-being" means having to leave the state to rent a car or paying twice what one should. If trial lawyers support a law, it's probably best for the rest of us to oppose it, unless we like going to Jersey.

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August 01, 2005

A toast to the host who can boast the most Stari Mosts

The Ottoman Stari Most (Old Bridge) in Mostar, Hercegovina, has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Mostar is a city divided into Muslim and Christian quarters: Muslims on the right bank, Christians on the left. The old bridge, completed in 1566, was purposefully destroyed by Croat shelling on November 9, 1993 during the 3-way Yugoslav Civil War. (There is a grim video of the bridge being shelled and collapsing.) It was rebuilt and opened on July 23, 2004, a few months before I paid a visit. Aside from being designed by the renouned architect Sinan (or one of his proteges), the bridge represented a link between Christians and Muslims and provided boys a rite of passage into adulthood: jumping the bridge. Here is a link to my live-blogging from my visit last year.

Click the pictures to enlarge.

Stari Most by day as a member of the local dive club prepares for a jump.

Stari Most at night. The bridge was commissioned by Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent for military purposes at the river gorge's narrowest point.

The Neretva river, spanned by Stari Most, is the greenest river I've ever seen.

The bridge is 16 feet wide and is constructed of local limestone. Towers stand at either end where the mostari (bridge-keepers) stood sentry.

Small Ottoman houses are seen from the bridge. This is main street in Mostar's stari grad (Old Town).

The front lines in the 3-way Yugoslav civil war were a few blocks from the bridge. Here is an old restaurant and apartment building that was blown apart by shelling. Notice the scores of bullet holes in the concrete on the side of the building. The building is on the front line.

A large seven-story office building stands silently, its aluminum window frames punctured by machine gun bullet holes from the civil war.

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