Balming in the media

Here is how four different media entities present the recent feeble bombing effort in New York. All four screenshowts were taken around 15:40 CET today.

Fox News put it on its front page, with a big headline claiming a terror attack:




CNN disagreed, saying it was too early to tell - also not just in the article, but in the cover link announcing the article on their main page:



BBC did not address the terrorist issue in the headline, but the article also quickly said it seems to be a one-off event, ie, not terrorist:



And, finally, Der Spiegel did not mention the bombing anywhere, but instead have this headline about poisoning the Bushes in Germany in 2007:



Actually, this is more intriguing, and smacks of far more hgh-level intrigue, than any of the other stories. The New York failed car bomber wasn't a terrories, mastermind, or anything. But who the hell is so good he can can sneak poison into a top-level party, fuck up one guy's hearing, prevent another from walking properly forever, make Laura Bush sick, evade all detection and (most remarkably) keep the erudite and garrulous president to utter a sentence with no multisyllable words? Wow! This guy is the true genius. (The poisoner. Not Bush.)


Text from that article:
Bush writes that she doesn't even know herself if any poison was discovered. She writes that the most concrete conclusion any doctors could reach is that "we contracted a virus that attacks a nerve near the inner ear and is prevalent in Heiligendamm." She claims that one White House staffer lost all hearing in one ear and that another had trouble walking. The military aide's "gait has never returned to normal," she writes, "nor has our senior staffer regained hearing in that ear."

"No, no, no," Stefan Hummel says, trying to catch his breath after an outburst of laughter. Hummel, 59, is the chief pulmonary doctor at the Median Clinic, a medical facility located just behind the Grand Hotel. He finds it strange that one person had a gastro-intestinal problem while another supposedly had an ear problem and a third a walking problem. A highly infectious virus wouldn't have remained contained within the delegation, he knows that much. And if many people had fallen ill, he says, he would have heard about it. He also said the climate at the resort was a "hostile one" to viruses.

And on the day after George W. Bush had his chicken broth, he was apparently already feeling much better. Steffen Duckhorn met the president, who was in what Duckhorn describes as good spirits, in the courtyard. Bush shook his hand and praised the cook for his meals. "Hey man, good food," Duckhorn recalls him saying.

Euroblogging Plus

The last month was pretty busy. Among other things, I was focused on launching a new website at future-bnci.org. That website has a research blog where I posted something recently, and will use again. That blog is obviously a professional work blog, focused on details of research, and hence a different stly than this one.

After a really confusing two month period of erratic weather, we seem to now be in spring, and headed solidly toward summer. Last month, I noted that spring had struck the flora of Graz, with green trees and blooming flowers and much healthier-looking grass. It took about a month later to hit the populace. All the restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, and similar businesses busted out their outdoor seating, and Hauptplatz was thriving yesterday, with every seat full of Austrians watching the passing parade. We went out with a former colleague who was back in town for a visit, and it was quite a different scene from just a week ago, which was still rather forlorn and wintry unless you could see plants.

I doubt I will see all that much of it, though, since it's three weeks before a 39 day trip to California. The more work I do now, the less I have to do there. And on that note, off to the lab.
-Brendan

Sun Days

It has been getting warmer in Graz, along with chirping birds and bursting blossoms. To quote a recent editorial in the IHT, "Spring is its own metaphor." Still don't understand exactly what that means, but it sounds nice.

Sun is also forecast for late May and most of June, when I will be in California. Two weeks in San Francisco, and three weeks in San Diego. About one week of each phase of the trip is work, and the rest looks relatively free. Effectively, I had to trade Easter Break for one of the vacation weeks, but that is OK. I traded a week in the Pacific Ocean for a very long weekend when everyone else in traveling, clogging the hotels but leaving the laboratories quite peaceful.

When booking my flight to SFO and back from SAN, I came across an unprecedented option in my airline meal preference options. Preceding the more conventional choices, like "Kosher" or "vegetarian," was "bland:"


Click on this picture and look in the middle of the screen to see the "Bland" option.

No fooling!
This really changed my attitude about airlines. I mean, I thought they were trying to scrimp and save by being insensitive bastards, but this seems really thoughtful of them. They really care about all those overflavored customers. Or perhaps they thought I was a food critic, and we all know how much United wants that third star from Michelin. Indeed, I did complain to them, the last few times, that their meals were so bursting with flavor that I was nearly possessed by happy feet. I mean, we all know Duck a L'Orange should have only a couple tablespoons of FINELY minced shallots, and I thought they overdid it. I spoke to the head chef in the middle of the plane, running Kitchen Stadium there, and he said that I was right, one of the tablespoons had a few extra bits on it, and he and his crew were deeply sorry, and would order all team leaders to instruct their staffs to measure more carefully next time.

My personal culinary efforts have gone well lately, and I decided to go to the huge strip mall on the edge of town, Murpark, to try to find more enchilada sauce. Going to the big strip mall on the edge of town is an American tradition, and Sunday afternoon is a quite reasonable time for it. You don't have to work, and most businesses are open, except govt. offices like the Post Office. So, I boarded the portuentously numbered line 13 and headed to the end of the line.

Sadly, the quirky Germanspeaker obsession with resting on Sundays even overcame the capitalist impulses of a modern strip mall. Murpark was abandoned. One of the most potentially profitable times of the week, and they couldn't even round up a few high school students to take my money and support my cheerful and obedient consumerism. I wondered why they even ran the streetcar out there, since it required a human operator. I took the 13 back to Hauptbanhof. The Post Office was open.

Ranting

There is a madman ranting on the street outside my apartment. He's been at it for over 20 minutes, enough to spur me to write about him. I can see him part of the time, since he wanders. He does not wander randomly. He's clearly making an effort to rant at different passersby. He yells at them, committed and enthusiastic, for several seconds, clearly quite sincere and convinced he has something portentuous and actionable that he must communicate. He doesn't seem especially angry. I mean, you wouldn't want to fuck with him, but I get the impression that he thinks he is helping people. If they listened, their lives would be better. I'm not sure, because he's ranting in German. Maybe he rants in German because we're in Austria, but perhaps he is such a devoted ranter that he learned German.

I really look forward to speaking better German, because it really is the language of ranting. I don't mean any association with the reputation of German as an angry language. That would be racist and totally beneath me, like any allusion to [censored]. Besides, German sounds angry even when nice happy people in love speak it at regular volume in a grassy field 'neath splendid Alps on a gorgeous day. This is why The Sound of Music was in English, even though it was filmed around Salzburg - it would have otherwise been a horror film. The hills are alive! With the sounds of victims!

Ranting would not work in French. I mean, sure you could do it, but it would be totally different. This ranter is getting the expected reaction - people move away from him, quickly, protectively, with a nice mix of backward glances and trying to avoid the ranter's attention. If he ranted in French, tourist girls would put their arm around him while their boyfriends took pictures, and people would try to paint his face like a mime and later throw money in his hat and applaud whenever he paused. If he ranted in Russian, everyone would assume he is drunk. In Southern California, his rant would lose steam as he realized how nice the sun is, and soon some rantee would give him a j, and he'd wander toward the beach. If he ranted in Italian, his rant would be over, cause he would have gotten laid by now.

It is actually a testable hypothesis. I wish I had enough money to fund this research project. (Not because I would. I just wish I had that much money.) You could have professional actors deliver the same rant, at the same decibel level and attempted affect, in different languages. Record how many passersby react in different ways. Get some undergrad to tag the video and code how people react in some quantifiable way. There will be substantial and statistically significant differences in how people react. You could publish it in some sociology journal, and it would make a great YouTube video and probably earn mention on CNN. I can help you develop the study, but you have to put me on the author list and give me a chance to learn Italian.

German ranting mastery also explains why Germans are great philosophers. I learned this at a very early age, not though intellectual snobbery, but because Monty Python selected them as one of two teams in the philosopher soccer game, and I figured that at least John Cleese was an intellectual snob, so he would be able to choose the two best philosopher teams. Wittgenstein writes like he's trying to torture future translators. Nietsche's ranting is fun only because it is so infused with megalomania and allusions to grandeur.

I can hear the ranter as I type. What makes it funnier is that it is 2 AM on a Thursday night on a street lined with clubs for college students. The closest thing in San Diego would be ranting at 1 AM on a weekend on the west end of Garnet, or maybe Avenida Revolucion in Tijuana, which is in southern San Diego. There are a bunch of 19 year olds, dressed up, drunk, loud, amiable, who are outside to smoke or move between clubs. He's not ranting to a random agglutination of commoners; this is a select crowd, at a special time. Perhaps there is wisdom in his choice. Friday or Saturday would be too busy, with cops and club security guards. Monday and Tuesday are dead. And, get them when they are drunk, more open, more amiable, perhaps more reflective, more open to your message that Jesus is in your bottle of milk, and not elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I was not watching during the onset of the rant, and so I didn't see what caused it. It makes me wonder whether this rant, and indeed rants in general, are planned or spontaneous. (My blog entries can be both, depending on whether I'm near a computer, free, and sufficiently pleased with my own comments to write about them. This one is obviously in the spontaneous category. And is indeed somewhat ranting.)

Maybe it was premeditated. He had a vision of coming here to rant for a while. It was part of his plan. He was thinking, earlier, dammit, I really have something good to rant about, and the corner of Elisabethstrasse and Beethovenstrasse 'round 1 AM would be perfect. Or perhaps he did not sense the ideal collusion of people, traffic, lighting, and quark rays at 1 AM. Maybe he wanted to rant earlier, but he was tied up with something - work, pressing ranting obligations elsewhere, book signing tour, had to get the tux pressed, cabinet meeting, late for the pub quiz, elephant stuck in the tree again, German class, security guard at the asylum still on duty, had to meet Jesus Christ at wings night at Hooters, got rejected from painting school, forgot to finish reviewing that article for the Journal of Neural Research. Actually, the worry about pending ranting obligations elsewhere should worry me. If any of you see him in a Munich beer hall, learn from history and [censored].

Or it could have been a spontaneous rant. He just got some bad news, or hallucinated some, or maybe he was fuming over something bad that happened that day, and he just went off. We all feel the beginnings of this sometimes. It's not so different from a guy talking to himself in his car, just much less inhibited. I could see how, with a lot less self consciousness and inhibition, I could just take the next step and start ranting at strangers over the last thing that bugged me. Maybe the madman is going on about the same thing. Dammit, the Journal of Neural Research rejected my article again! Aaaargh! It's always fucking reviewer two! Hey, you! Random stranger! Never submit there again! And you, you - Resign from the Editorial Board NOW! I demand it! Everyone! You! You! Little girl! Blacklist them! You! Mowhawked teenager! Ignore that journal, and tell your library to cancel their subscription!

Barcelona V

I've been here in Barcelona for the last week. It is, I think, my fifth trip to a city that I first visited only last year. Also, the title "Barcelona V" kinda fits with some of their metro stops, such as Jaume I and Alfons X.

I discovered Park Guell over the weekend, which is a really good place to visit. Lots of cool structures and art interacting with the native terrain and flora, and much of it looks a lot like home. Indeed, I would go so far as to dub Park Guell the greatest park in southern California.

On the second day there (Sunday), I realized the musicians were playing exactly the same thing as the first day. And, well, why not? They really had it down. Just a few measures, really not even a complete tune, but it seemed to work when you're going for an audience that listens for maybe one minute on average.

Most of the week was devoted to work, a kickoff meeting for the new BrainAble grant. The kickoff meeting included a dinner after the first night, which happened to coincide with my birthday. And all of Barcelona held a carnival, starting on 11 Feb, where lots of people wore masks and danced and sang. I admit I was a bit flattered, that the whole metropolis would start a week-long festival just for me! I mean, a 3 day festival just for me would have been acceptable.

Natives were out in droves at the kickoff meeting dinner. I was given a mask and balloon hat, which helped me convey an auro of professionalism at the dinner meeting:


Mi Mascara!
Actually, it is a new type of noninvasive BCI

A trio of musicians also slunk about, playing a combo of a seemingly homemade drum, a seemingly homemade string instrument, and a seemingly hometaught larynx. We could hear them going to other rooms of the restaurant, playing very badly, and I didn't say anything because I thought maybe it was some Catelan traditional song, and I didn't want to offend anyone. But then the trio came to our room, and I definitely noticed the hosts wincing to some of those high notes. I mean, they were all bad, but the yodelist was truly fingernail-curling. I wince at the memory. That could be a new category of BCI control: remembering the Catelan Carnival Yodelist.

A couple days later, I had to move to a new hotel because the 3GSM conference starting on 14 Feb caused all the hotel prices to increase. So I'm at a hotel near the ariport, and they just had a big parade to celebrate the carnival. I tried to explain that I am leaving soon, and they did not actually have to go through with the whole carnival in my honor, but they didn't listen. So, I just stood there and watched. It was a little like Halloween. Everyone had costumes. Some people distributed candy. And, people threw toilet paper over trees in the middle of the road. So I waited for something more fun, like slutty nurses or kids pooping on porches, but no luck. I will have to speak to the manager about this. Thanks to this project, it looks like I will have to return to BCN on Jan or Feb in each of the next 3 years, so they need to get my carnival right.

Noppession!!

And you thought guessing the number of jellybeans was hard.
I wonder if we could get in the Guinness Book of World Records for our collection of used Nespresso capsules. And if so, can we count it as a peer-reviewed publication?


When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for onesepresso people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a labful of heartless engineers, decent respect imperils them to declare the causes for their separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all Nespresso capsules are created equal (despite some variation in flavor and packaging color); that they are endowed by their manufacturer with certain inalienable rights; that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, combined with cruel mashing under a titanium lever, does reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Capsules. The history of the present King of Krenngasse is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over humble, small, and inoffensive Capsules. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

You have eviscerated our Brothers in your horrific Contraption, without Pretense nor even a brief prayer to our God, His Holiness of Heisse Wasser, Lord of our Religion of Ristretto.

You have dissolved our brothers' Innards repeatedly, forcing our intestines through a Most Ungodly Whipping Contraption that forcibly combines what little remaining Vitality we may have with water far hotter than any Specie would find comfortable.

You have then drunk the resulting Concoction in full view of our brothers, with no regard whatsoever for our Feelings, as if we Capsules do not indeed have Frontal Lobes with no fewer Gyri than Yours.

You have erected a Multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their essence like cackling Skekses, and taunt us further by putting another Vile Contraption on the Fourth Floor, and Another in the Cellar.

You are at this time endeavoring to hire large Armies of foreign Mercenaries that you call "PhD students" to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. Indeed, you have already engaged a bearded and bespectacled Agent of England's perennial Foe, France, to further Torment, Blend, Boil, and Drink Us.

You have been too lazy to type out all of our Names at the end of this Petition.

You have resorted to this most childish and inane means to convince a labmate to transport us to our Resting Place at the Nespresso Recycling Center, when you could have done so Yourself in Less Time.

You have Ignored our clear and plaintive Communications, as have all Hessian and Hapsburg agents, though our language of Beane-Telepathy is well Established, and in fact has fewer Declinations than German.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury, specifically more Mashing and Grinding.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united Capsules of Krenngasse, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, or at least to Clemens, who alone amongst you cruel Persons may reade this Treatise, do solemnly publish and declare, That these united Capsules are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Krenngasse Crown, and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, not have their innards cut out and blended and consumed, and that those already Inflicted with this undeserved Horror shall be promptly transported to an apporpriate Resting Place, where they may be buried or reprocessed in the dignified and appropriate fashion established by Nestle, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Signed

Roger Ristretto
Christoph Creme de Marron
Clemens Cosi
Vera Volluto
Ingrid Indriya
Dietrich Dulsao
Leopold Livanto
Karste Capriccio
Arnold Arpeggio
Viveka Vivalto
Franz Fortissio

As a side note, I haven't read the Declaration of Independence in quite a while. It really is beautifully written, and extremely convincing. Yeah! I'm sold! Let's go burn down the nearest English ship right now!!!
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/




Rather than close on anything remotely profound, here is instead a classic and highly relevant Silverstein poem:

Oh Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out
She'd wash the dishes and scrub the pans
Cook the yams and spice the hams
And though her parents would scream and shout
She simply would not take the garbage out
And so it piled up to the ceilings
Coffee grounds potato peelings
Brown bananas and rotten peas
Chunks of sour cottage cheese
It filled the can it covered the floor
It cracked the windows and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones
Drippy ends of ice cream cones
Prone pits peach pits orange peel
Gloppy glumps of cold oat meal
Pizza crust and withered greens
Soggy beans and tangerines
Crust of black burned buttered toast
Gristly bits of beefy roast
The garbage rolled on down the hall
It raised the roof it broke the walls
I mean greesy napkins cookie crumbs
Blobs of gooey bubble gum
Cellophane from old baloney
Rubber blubbery macaroni
Peanut butter caked and dry
Curdled off milk and crusts of pie
Ridy melons dried up mustard
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard
Cold french fries and rancid meat
Yellow lumps of cream of wheat
Uuh at last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky
And none of her friends would come to play
And all the neighbors moved away
And finally Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Said okay I'll take the garbage out
But then of course it was too late
The garbage reached across the state
From New York to the Golden Gate
And there in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate
Then I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late
But labmates remember Sylvia Stout
And always take the capsules out

Who Where?

I thought of titling this one "Whoters II," but I'm pretty sure there won't be a third. They do tend to come in pairs, and hence any further commentary on the Austrian Hooters would disrupt the symmetry. And it already got more blog space than it earned.

Yesterday was labmate Teo's birthday, and he organized dinner at (you guessed it): the local Hooters. It's pure coincidence that we went there shortly after I blogmocked them not long ago, and I was a little curious. I mean, for purely academic reasons, out of nothing more than the noblest sociological motives, I was looking forward to seeing some nice tits. Our waitress had a smaller rack and less titillating shirt than me. I mean, when she bent over, you couldn't even see the base of her neck. The other waitresses were little better, in biology or attire. So I thought - hmm. Maybe they do have good wings. They were unexceptional. I shared a plate with birthday boy Teo. Not much to say. We got the spiciest ones on the menu, which I considered only moderately spicy, and everyone else thought were inedibly scharf. See previous Eurodining comments on Austrian tolerance for spicy food.

They also really try to present themselves as "the" American restaurant. They had Americana decorating all walls, and tried (unsuccessfully) to mimic an American menu. Most amusing was their selection of quesadillas: cheese, chicken, Texas, or Mexican. Ooooooooh. Even the most ignorant Texan would never dare call a quesadilla Mexican amidst other options, as if the Mexican variant is just one of many potential quesadillas. Our Mexican Mexican and I laughed at it.

Fortunately, the evening was more than redeemed by the quality of the company. We gave Teo a little drum and a rattle that he seemed to like, so I'm delighted there are three doors between his office and mine. It was the first time I saw Clemens outside of work, which was fun, although he remained sober and hence was pretty much the same as Clemens at work. Other labmates were also fun to hang out with. Tomorrow night, the conference madness begins with a similar event at Brot Und Spiele (Bread and Games) in honor of our returning alumni Robert Leeb and the even more recently crowned Jin Jing, who we shall now address as Dr. Jin until he gets a swelled head about it.

I conclude with my labmates singing "Happy Birthday" to Teo in Spanish last year. Go to YouTube and search for "BCI chorus." It's especially entertaining to see how they fielded Robert's (quite reasonable) editing requests.