Grasping Reality with Both Hands

Only in Berkeley...

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Posted via email from http://braddelong.posterous.com/only-in-berkeley at Brad DeLong's Scrapbook

And Now the Poultry Have Moved in...

By the edge of the driveway, in the blackberries:

They Are Getting Bolder...

It's 40 yards from my kitchen six hours after dawn...

California Budget Project Spring Conference...

...is today:

The CBP's 2009 Conference:

Sacramento Convention Center
1400 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Prospects for Peaceful Coexistence Are Slim...

But we will make one last effort: a set of admonitions to the small furry and feathery woodland creatures:

1. To a small member of class mammalia: The blue reflector embedded in Lucas Ct. is there so that the fire truck can find where the fire hydrant is in the dark. It is not a suitable place for defecation. We know you are there. You do not need to leave additional "messages." Lucas Ct. is also used by a teenager next door with a license. Being squashed while defecating at midnight by a monkey-driven vehicle is not a dignified way to die.

2. To another small member of class mammalia: The sewer cover embedded in Lucas Ct. is there in case we have a public-health emergency. It is not a suitable place for defecation. See (1).

3. To a skunk: Spraying the BBQ is not good for either of us. We win when we use the BBQ. You win too--in grease and food scraps. If you spray the BBQ, we are less likely to use the BBQ. Capisce?

4. To yet another small member of class mammalia: When I leave my hiking boots outside because they are muddy it does not thereby make them a fit receptacle for substances that even a small concern for the delicacy of my gentle readers prohibits me from mentioning.

5. To sundry members of class aves, a subcategory of suborder theropoda, a subcategory of order dinosauria, a subcategory of class reptilia (what can I say? Linneaus did not get it right): You have your oak trees. We have our house. If you do not respect the border, we have our vergeltungswaffen--terror weapons: dinner plate-sized robot spiders that drop from the sky. Be warned.

6. To sundry members of class aves, a subcategory of suborder theropoda, a subcategory of order dinosauria, a subcategory of class reptilia (what can I say? Linneaus did not get it right): Just because you are turkeys does not give you the right to perch on top of the Prius and defecate there.

7. To yet another small member of class mammalia: Biting the house every four inches so that your needle-like teeth punch holes in it is annoying. There is a reliable source of year-round water 100 yards north north east at the spring in the blackberry thicket.

The Peaceable Kingdom

That is the roof of our house at the top of the picture frame.

You would hardly think that we have a 60 lb. dog...

A Once Every Five Years Event

Leila Abu-Saba requests some blogging about the visible snow on the top of Mount Diablo:

Ask the Internet: Berkeley High-End Lunch Restaurants

So at the start of the semester I took Jim Hines (visiting from U. Michigan as we try to persuade him and his family to leave his underfunded public university in a place with absurdly low house prices for another underfunded public university in a place with absurdly high house prices) out to lunch at Adagia.

At the end of the semester he has escalated by taking me out to lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe.

I now have to re-escalate next semester. But to what? I don't believe the French Laundry serves lunch--and it is a Berkeley restaurant only by pure legal fiction. What are my other options?

Celebrity Wine

A new concept? Or a very old one?

Dawn Patrol

6:59 AM, looking southeast from the top of Burton Ridge:

Friday Morning Condiments Blogging

At Yali's Cafe East in Stanley Hall...

• The squeeze bottle that looks like honey is honey.
• The carafe that says "half and half" is half milk and half cream.
• The carafe that says "skim" is skim milk.
• The shaker labeled "cinnamon" is cinnamon.
• The shaker labeled "chocolate" is chocolate.
• The shaker that looks as if it holds vanilla holds salt.
• The shaker that looks as if it holds nutmeg holds pepper.

Be advised.

Death to Acorn Woodpeckers

We too suffer from woodpeckers--just like the people at the retirement community just over the hill. But we have not yet applied for our Depredation Permit:

Dennis Cuff: A Walnut Creek retirement community where deer nibble on lawns and wild turkeys strut across the golf course is calling in a hit man to shoot woodpeckers that drill into homes to stash acorns. Two Rossmoor homeowner associations are bringing in a federal hunter soon after receiving U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits to kill as many as 50 acorn woodpeckers... the homeowner groups contend that they have installed nets, hawk squawk boxes, owl decoys and battery-operated spiders, and yet homes are still getting drilled by the birds. "People here don't want to shoot them, but after spending eight years and $170,000 without success, the homeowner groups don't know what else to do," said Maureen O'Rourke, a Rossmoor spokeswoman. "The birds can do a lot of damage."... The shooting is expected to start within a week or two once the hunter, who works as a nuisance wildlife controller for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is available.

The license to kill — called a depredation permit — was granted in June and is good for one year under federal rules aimed at balancing the needs of wildlife and protecting human crops and property, said Al Donner, a spokesman for the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. Acorn woodpeckers, which are highly communal creatures that will raise other acorn woodpeckers' young, depend heavily on acorns for food. The permit allows killing by a shotgun, pellet gun, or snap trap....

One option is to erect a decoy tree for the woodpeckers to drill into rather than into people's homes....

To protect [Duke] Robinson's house, his homeowners association installed sound-activated spiders, which scared away the birds, he said. But when the spider batteries went dead, the homeowners association did not replace them, Robinson added. Gary Beeman, a Lafayette biologist who hires himself out to control wildlife problems, said he has used the spiders to scare off woodpeckers with "90 percent" success at many homes...

Why are the woodpeckers scared of these battery-operated robot spiders? How large are they? That is what I want to know...

Birds-Away Attack Spider

A testimonial:

Birds-Away Attack Spider® - Woodpecker Deterrent Testimonials: These spiders work great.  They have other applications as well.  Thanks again for your prompt service and a wonderful product. Ray Reed. Coarsegold Ca

America's Silliest DogbloggingTM

Did you know that turkeys can take off while running uphill, if they are provided with sufficient incentive?

I did not think that was possible...

Seven Turkeys Beseige Our Neighbors and Summon Them to Surrender...

It looks like four adolescent males who think that if they make themselves look large and threatening enough they can scare off a blue four-door Acura. Accompanying them are three chicks... hens...

I feel a Nature Channel special coming on: Adolescent Turkey Gangs of the California Chapparel...

Another Day of Stanford Weather

High 80s in Berkeley with no sign of fog, and a need for lots of sunscreen...

Uh-Oh...

I have been In Teh Zone for the past three hours, furiously writing and finding connections falling into place with the effortless grace that comes about when one is In Teh Zone.

But at some point during the past three hours--I cannot remember doing it--I went to the refrigerator and grabbed the large iced coffee I was saving for breakfast tomorrow.

The glass is now empty beside my computer--I don't remember drinking any of it. The problem is:

• It was caffeinated.
• I have not had caffeinated coffee in three months.
• It's 11:30 PM.
• I am now bone-tired and exhausted from having gotten up at 5 AM.

I don't think I can sleep. And my brain is now too fried--I've come down from Teh Zone--to do anything serious.

I think that I have just flunked the Turing Test. This isn't the kind of thing that a sentient intelligence would do to itself, is it?

Maybe I'll go buy Steven Brust's Jhegaala on the kindle and read it until dawn...

The Hispanic Pickle Menace

The plastic containers of handmade pickles sold by the lady with a thick Polish accent at the farmer's market contain... a large jalapeno!

The old Kowalski-Garcia family recipe, no doubt...

These Are the Tomatoes We Have Been Waiting For!

Heirloom tomato season is at its peak:

Ask the Internet: Cookies

• How much more of the reading would my students in American Economic History do this semester if I hypnotized them into believing that we are in some sort of gift exchange relationship by feeding them cookies--specifically Berkeley-themed cookies (i.e., Cal, Oski, the campanile, Birgeneau) from Parker's Crazy Cookies?
• How many cookies would I have to feed each student in order to accomplish the desired effect (the cookies are small)?
• At what price point is this worth doing (Parker's list price is $0.50 a cookie, and wish me good luck in finding any place in the teaching budget to reimburse me for this)?

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A commenter emails:

1. Muffins or donut holes are extremely effective at increasing attendance, alertness and participation in early morning sections
2. Cookies do NOT increase reading. There's a high depreciation rate to glucose-based gift relationships - it works for the duration of the class in which the cookies are given, but does not influence out of class behavior.
3. Cookies baked by a faculty member's wife (and distributed as such) are NEVER EVER EVER okay.
4. Bringing cookies to classes with particularly tedious math is not recommended; by mid semester the students began greeting the cookies with apprehension...

Berkeley Morning Coffeeshop Blogging

Sign in Brewed Awakening:

All Occupied Seats Must Be Justified by a Purchase

I have heard of justification by faith, and justification by works, but...

Record Prius Parade!

Five--count them, five in a row, red, green, silver, silver, red--proceeding north on Oxford Street...

Sunny Wednesday June Afternoon People in Their Forties Drinking Iced Coffee at Starbucks Midlife Crisis "Wilma!!" Blogging

Adeimantos: I don't know. Back when I was a teenager, I thought that I would grow up and that in my forties I would have a house and a family and an important job and would be--well, would be kind of like Stilgar, Lord of Sietch Tabr, in Dune...

Akhilleus: And?

Adeimantos: And that's not how it worked out! People don't look at me like they would look at Stilgar at all! They look at me as if...

Akhilleus: You were Fred Flintstone?

Adeimantos: Exactly.

Akhilleus: I'm with you. I've been there. I am totally there.

Khelona. Huh. Is that better or worse than dreaming when you were a teenager that you would grow up to marry Stilgar, and finding in your forties that your husband more closely resembles...

Glaukon: Fred Flintstone?

Khelona: Exactly...

Akhilleus: I'm going to deal with this like a man. I'm going to go buy a Kindle and a 3G iPhone.

Khelona: You're not going to have your mother commission a shield from Ogoun? You prefer an iPhone?

Adeimantos: Ogoun? Who is Ogoun?

Khelona: You know, the god of fire and metalworking...

Akhilleus: You're mixing up your pantheons again. That's Yoruba-Haitian voodoo.

Khelona: Who do I mean then?

Adeimantos: Hephaestos...

Things Middle-Aged White People Do (Flooring Edition)

One of the things that middle-aged white people do is that they gradually, room by room, pay someone to replace the 1980 wall-to-wall carpeting that came with the house with stained oak floors. And then they have to buy oriental carpets to put on top of the new oak floor to render the overwhelming bulk of it invisible.

"Why not just put oak down around the edge of the room?" I asked. "And leave plywood where the rugs are going to go?"

"You think you are funny," said one of our floor guys, "and I laugh because you are paying me. But if you ever buy new construction, check--especially it the rugs are tacked down, and especially always check if there are runners on the stairs."

Oh.

So we journey to the Macy's Furniture Warehouse Outlet at 1200 Whipple Road in Union City:

View Larger Map

And we discover that in the past five years the number of handmade oriental carpets at 1200 Whipple Road has greatly shrunk--instead, they now have lots of very attractive (and attractively priced) machine-made Karastans. Nevertheless, we return with 220 square feet of carpet: a "Ziegmahal" and a "Khyber"--and no real idea of what tradition the rugs come out of: to my knowledge "Khyber" is not a rug-making tradition, and I can find no trace of "Ziegmahal" anywhere.

But making them took a lot of work http://www.jacobsenrugs.com/effort.htm, and they should wear like iron.

Summer Is Icumen in!

The dog has beggun--as she does every year--spending her nap time downstairs in the foyer, on the cold marble floor...

Sunday Morning Upper San Leandro Reservoir Kings Canyon Cattle Drive Blogging

Sunday Morning Upper San Leandro Reservoir Kings Canyon Cattle Drive Blogging: We--that is, two monkeys and a Labrador Retriever--just drove 20 head of cattle 6 miles down one side of Kings Canyon and back along the Rocky Ridge trail. I am telling you: these aren't the ancient fearsome aurochs of the Eurasian forests. The only sticky point was when the cattle we were driving met head-on at a narrow place on the trail two quants from Barclay Global Investments and their ancient Golden Retriever coming the other way...

listen

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Now is this a good job or a bad job of voice recognition we have here?:

Sunday morning, Upper Family(?) Reserver King Canyon cattle drive(?) logging. We, that is two monkeys and a Labrador Retriever just drove 20 head of cattle 6 miles down the one side of the King Canyon and back along the Rocky Ridge Trail. I am telling you these are no longer the ancient fearsome ora rasion(?) forest. The only sticky pipe was where the cattle we were driving met a head on a narrow pass in the trail to quants(?) from Barkley(?) global investors and agent golden retrieval coming the other way. listen

Powered by Jott

The Singularity Will Be Blogged...

I think they are getting ready for the Economics Department spring skit party. Whatever they are.

Ben Mathis-Lilley tried to warn me. But did I listen? No!

Do Two Recent Novels About China Obscure the Looming Robot Threat? Yes: The Times review of Alex Berenson’s The Ghost War gave us déjà vu. The novel depicts an imagined war between China and the United States triggered by an idealistic but scheming Communist Party official. It seemed familiar because it reminded us of the other book the Times reviewed recently whose plot is driven by Chinese chicanery, Colin Harrison’s The Finder. In Harrison’s novel, a Chinese immigrant poses as a janitorial worker in midtown in order to steal corporate secrets for her brother’s firm in Shanghai.

Frankly, this threatening-Chinese theme worries us. Not for political reasons; neither book is said to be jingoistic. Rather, it’s because we’re concerned that “the coming war against the Chinese” is going to replace “the coming war against the machines” as our leading fictional-future-war trope.

The inevitable apocalyptic battle against machines has long been a fruitful topic in books (Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov), film (The Terminator, The Matrix), and shit-shooting bar discussions. (We personally believe that simple machines pose an underrated threat; how are we going to lift and move heavy objects when the automaton rocket-blasting helicopters, appealing to intra-machine solidarity, convince levers and pulleys to turn against us?) And this business with the Chinese is a dangerous distraction — a second front, if you will, in a time when America doesn’t have the resources to fight two imaginary future wars at once. In fact, we suspect “Alex Berenson” and “Colin Harrison” are actually Undercover Models AB-246 and CH-391, robotic novelist-simulating fifth-columnists.

In summary, the Times book section is actively working toward a future in which humans are kept alive only so robots can imprison them in cages and harvest their fingernails, which they use to make decorative chess pieces. Need more proof? The Times has resolutely refused to review How to Build a Robot Army, by Daniel Wilson, Ph.D., which — if not solving the problem of an eventual robot uprising — does at least offer humans guidance in co-opting the violent tendencies of robots for our own purposes. Review this worthy book, New York Times, and then we can talk about "balanced coverage" and "not letting our robot masters drive the agenda."

Please share this information with everyone you know. —Ben Mathis-Lilley

Lazy Easter Sunday Blogging

The first of the three copies of Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm that I had loaned out comes back: from Tom Kalil, who wants a reputation as the kind of man who returns books...

Sunday Easter afternoon in Tom Kalil and Maryanne McCormack's backyard: 81F...

Meanwhile, in central Maine the judging of the Easter ice sculpture contest begins...

The Equinox:

Unfortunately, it appears that the time from local sunrise to local sunset tomorrow is 12:12:

Lafayette, California - Sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for the whole year - Gaism: +1 day 07:10 19:22 12:12

So the Equinox is not an equinox.

Home Exercise Machine Blogging

We are finally using the last Christmas present--the Waterrower.As is the case with all fitness equipment, it is hugely expensive,grossly overpriced, and frivolous--if we do not use it. It is remarkably, sober, cost effective, and cheap if we do.

The edge of the Waterrower compared to other rowing machines is that you actually row through water--pull blades through a tank.

But there is no chance of catching a crab and getting thwacked by the oar. No smell of the sea or seamist in the air. No chance of a wave sloshing over and leaving you sitting in a puddle and soaked. No cries of seagulls.

I suggest we hire the kids to stand by with a hand mister and a bucket, and that we play whale sounds on the stereo...

Hazards of Picnicking at the Valle Vista Staging Area

I am always amazed at the number of effectively wild places in Greater San Francisco: six million people live within sixty minutes of the EBMUD Valle Vista Staging Area and the Kings Canyon Loop Trail, and yet we see nobody...

We Should Go See Carrie Fisher...

Edward Guthman of the Chronicle:

Carrie Fisher tames her demons in solo show: Carrie Fisher has a phrase to describe the low points in her life: "Bad reality, good anecdote." It applies equally to her parents' scandal-sheet marriage; her problems with bipolar disorder and addiction to painkillers; her failed marriages to musician Paul Simon and talent agent Bryan Lourd; the morning she woke up and found a friend, 42-year-old Republican operative R. Gregory Stevens, dead in her bed.

It applies as well to "Star Wars," the empire-building franchise that made her wealthy but identified her forever with a hideous, matching-cinnamon-buns hairdo and turned her character Princess Leia into a doll, a shampoo bottle and a Pez dispenser.

In "Wishful Drinking," the one-woman show she wrote and is now performing at Berkeley Rep, Fisher spares no one in her will to spill...

Rainy Grey Afternoon Female Vocalist Blogging

Rainy grey afternoons are so rare around here, they must be savored appropriately:

Rilo Kiley, "Silver Lining":

Bonnie Raitt, "Angel from Montgomery"

Alison Brown, "Angel"

Liz Phair, "Divorce Song":

Department of Things I Wanted to Go to But Didn't Because I Didn't Find Out About Them Until After They Happened

Waterboarding Demonstration:

Rally Wed,. 11/14 @ Noon, Sproul Plaza, UC-Berkeley. World Can't Wait! http://myspace.com/sfbaycantwait

Berkeley Sentence of the Day

Berkeley sentence of the day:

Let's go to Espresso Experience next to Musical Offering: Foucault always liked to go there...

Green Mileage Auto: Prius Parking Edition

Clearly the second person to swing into the Dwinelle parking lot this morning in a silver Prius decided it would be amusing to park right next to the first.

Who am I to buck a trend?

Our Furnace Crashed Last Weekend...

Don't laugh.

"Why not simply reboot it?" you ask.

It appears--I'm not sure I fully understand it--that we had a power outage last weekend that fried the ROM that the furnace boots off of.

This means that--until "Ralph" arrives tomorrow to save the day--that because we are having a cold snap it is 58F degrees here in the family room, which means that the nineteenth-century English professor clothes--the wool pants, the long-sleeved broadcloth shirts with the button-down collars, the heavy tweed jackets, et cetera--actually, finally make some sense.

But I'm going into the kitchen, where it is 64F right now.

Yet more evidence that the Singularity already happened. I have no idea how I would explain this to ancestors like Priscilla Mullins...

King Lear Blogging

King Lear at the California Shakespeare Theater. Very well done.

There are, of course, the Berkeley moments: the announcement beforehand that there is a silver Prius in the parking lot with its interior lights on, and four men (including me) get up to check...

Were I Berkeley law professor John Yoo, I would never agree to take part in the production and come on stage to waterboard and then blind the Earl of Gloucester. And I would never agree to make Gloucester confess not just to conspiring with Cordelia and the French but also to being the twentieth highjacker...

Green Mileage Auto: Grizzly Peak Prius Edition

Three--no, four observations:

1. This is an amazingly popular video game. Of the eighteen vehicles I passed on Fish Ranch, Grizzly Peak, and Panoramic, six were playing it...

2. There appears to be a serious bug in the graphics module of my copy. Today the extraordinarily beautiful hi-res graphics of San Francisco Bay were replaced by a featureless grey background. I must figure out how to reboot...

3. The key to winning going toward Berkeley appears to be to use a light foot on level 1--coming down into Orinda center form the west--and then a heavy foot on level 2--Orinda center to Fish Ranch. That starts the process of discharging the battery so you arrive at the top of Grizzly Peak with enough spare capacity.

4. Winning going away from Berkeley is child's play: you cannot climb from the campus up to the Lawrence Hall of Science without a nearly complete battery discharge.

Amongst our observations are...

Green Mileage Auto: Grizzly Peak Prius Edition

Green Mileage Auto: Grizzly Peak Prius Edition

Jeebus! That was totally lame!

Still 100 vertical meters above the Berkeley campus, and the battery is showing full.

That is 100m x 1000kg x 10m/a/a = 1000000 useful joules that could have gone into the battery it I had managed it properly that were instead dissipated as heat. That is 300 watt-hours gone.

Entropy wins another one.

Sigh.

Miniclimate iPhone Blogging

I am wearing long sleeves, a tie, a tweed jacket, and I am cold: it is 58F out here at 5 PM.

It is mid-September, for Jeebus' sake!

The Pile Grows...

The pile of things to read grows:

• Susan Faludi (2007), The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (New York: Henry Holt: 0805086927).

• Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg (2007), Imperfect Knowledge Economics: Exchange Rates and Risk (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 0805086927).

• Arthur C. Clarke (1992), How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village (New York: Bantam Books: 0805086927 ).

• Alan Greenspan (2007), The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: Penguin: 1594201318).

Yet More Prius iPhone Blogging!

How does one rack up a high score playing Prius: The Videogame?

The instinctive strategy is to try to minimize the percentage of the time the gasoline engine is on.

But that cannot be right.

My Backpack May Be too Heavy

The Prius thinks it is a passenger, and needs a seatbelt.

The Nirvana of Cultural Self-Parody Attained!

Is there anything wrong with driving down out of the Berkeley hills to the UC Berkeley campus in one's Prius, watching regenerative braking fill one's battery and the mpg indicator go to lazy-eight, looking over San Francisco Bay in the warm (but not too hot) summer sun, while listening to Feist pumped from the iPhone through the car's speakers?

Could any higher degree of post-industrial twenty-first century techno-enviro left-coast lifestyle self-righteous enlightenment possibly be attained?

Captain Blythers, First Street, Benicia

Capitain Blythers: "Do you want a table with a downstream view of Carquinez Strait and the bridge or a table with an upstream view of the Martinez refinery?"

"We have a dog with us..."

"You'll be wanting the upstream view, then..."

Both the cioppino and the mixed seafood grill were excellent. The dog appreciated scraps of Icelandic cod and broccoli.

Adagia, at the Corner of College and Bancroft, April 30 2007 12:00 Noon

Eight Berkeley economics professors wanted to have lunch with Alan Taylor of U.C. Davis today. I attribute this to a combination of effects: an end-of-semester effect in which people have given up on completing all the projects they hoped to complete before the end of the semester, and as a result are no longer keeping their heads down and are willing to go out to lunch; and a we-like-Alan-Taylor effect; unfortunately, identification is not achieved.

"So if Britain with its structural trade surpluses could run up net foreign assets equal to twenty months' GDP by 1913, could the U.S. run up a net foreign liability balance equal to twenty months' GDP by 2023?"

"By symmetry, that would mean that the rest of the world would have to play the role of pre-World War I Britain. Yes, it could happen."

"And somebody would have to play the role of pre-World War I Argentina. Would that be the U.S?"

"Usually in international finance the role of Argentina is played by Argentina."

"Doesn't Dani Rodrik say that Argentina is doing very well now? That this time its boom is not led by government or consumption spending, but by investment?"

"Dani is a contrarian."

"Twenty months' GDP in 2023 would be what, $45 trillion?"

"$45 nominal trillion in 2023; about $30 trillion real at today's prices."

"And the current net foreign asset and liability position of the U.S. is?"

"We don't know. It's the difference between two large and poorly-measured numbers, gross foreign assets owned by Americans and gross American assets owned by foreigners. Subtract them and you get a number that is small in context--perhaps two months' worth of GDP, perhaps $2 trillion--and very, very poorly measured."

"And the capital income flows are still in balance?"

"Perhaps not. You've looked at the data much more closely than I have. And there are problems."

"Cash payouts by American-owned subsidiaries abroad are about the same proportion of book values as cash payouts by foreign-owned subsidiaries in the U.S., but earnings retained and reinvested by American-owned subsidiaries abroad are a much higher proportion of book values than earnings retained and reinvested by foreign-owned subsidiaries in the U.S."

"Which means?"

"Either that Daniel Gros is right, and that the standard statistics simply miss a great deal of factor payments from America to foreigners, or Dooley and company are right, and due to American managerial expertise Americans earn much higher rates of return on their investments abroad than foreigners do on their investments in the United States."

"'Dark matter'."

"Yes, dark matter--the source of the extraordinarily high profits of Eurodisney."

"There are too many physics metaphors in this subfield. We should have stuck to metaphors from theology."

"That was not a success."

"Not a success? I counted six mentions of 'original sin' in the Economist in one eighteen-month period."

"Not a success in that it was too often misinterpreted. People read Eichengreen and Haussmann to mean that countries that couldn't borrow in hard currencies--countries afflicted with 'original sin'--had sinned. They had done something bad--and deserved what happened to them."

"But wasn't that Augustine's point?"

"No. Augustine's point was that Adam had done something bad--eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result you were destined for Hell, even though the sin wasn't yours."

Justina Golden's Flos Regalis

My wife's college friend Justina Bradford Golden (one of Dar Williams's voice teachers) gave us a copy of her early music album, Flos Regalis, when we went through Amherst. It's truly excellent. And my favorite his her... unusual version of the Ellington/Russell standard "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" as it might have been performed for Richard III York...

Flos Regalis, a CD by Justina Golden and friends!

Get your own copy of Flos Regalis:

John Stifler says: http://www.justinagolden.com/oldies.html

Checking that Space-Time Is Locally Pretty Flat...

6:47 AM: the reported time of sunrise in Lafayette, California, on April 6, 2007.

6:59 AM: the moment the sun first peaked over the top of Mt. Diablo on April 6, 2007.

Mt. Diablo has 3,750 feet on us, and is about 15 miles x 5000 feet/mile = 75,000 feet away, for a sine value of 1/20, which is an angle of 1/20 radians. The earth rotates 1 radian in 12/π hours, so the sun travels 1/20 radians in 3/5π hours = 11 minutes.

So, yes, locally, space-time around here is pretty flat so that plane trigonometry approximately holds...

Morale Is High!

The sun rises at 7:11 AM this morning--which means that I have enough time to see the sunrise from the top of the ridge and then get back down in time to get the kids to school. It's much better to see the sunrise than not to see the runrise. The past three weeks, since the early start of Daylight Saving Time, have not been good for morale.

America's Silliest Dog^TM agrees. She commences vertical leaping as soon as the first bead of real sun appears.

Another Sign of the Impending Apocalypse

At the Ferry Building at the bay end of Market Street, Peet's sells a "Scharffenberger mocha freddo" for $4.30. Can the fabric of the universe sustain the existence of the $5 coffee drinks that are clearly only a year or two away?