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.

Permanent vacation

The Russian city of Perm made headlines earlier this month with its nightclub fire that killed over a hundred people. This tragedy stemmed from numerous instances of corruption and code violations. Worse, I saw YouTube's video of the nightclub's hired dancers dancing to (of course) American music. They were terrible! Take the money you spent on the dancers, and add it to the money you spent to bribe the inspector, and buy a few more emergency exits.

Anyway. What caught my eye was the end of the story on page 3 of the Pearl Harbor Day edition of the IHT. "Perm ... has sought to rebrand itself as a thriving cultural center. But lately, it has seemed to some residents to be ill-fated. An Aeroflot plane from Moscow crashed on the outskirts of Perm in 2008 as it was landing, killing 88 people. In October, video of an out-of-control bus ramming into numerous cars in Perm was circulated widely on the Internet. Last month, the Perm police arrested three homeless men and charged them with killing another man, eating part of him and trying to sell the remainder to a restaurant."

Of course, the last one is the icing on the, well, ice. Fires and vehicle accidents don't really stand out that much, but the last one is quite new to me. It's a dark comedy sketch waiting to happen. How did the buyer know it was man-meat? I mean, if they ground it up first, or baked it in a pie, or maybe made a stew with some beets or Fried Green Tomatoes, who would know? I doubt they bothered to DNA test it, or that the restaurant manager recognized the taste of human. So we have to assume it was more obvious.




Are you manager?

Yes.

We have here nice fresh meat to sell you.

We have regular butcher, he sell us good meat, sorry, you go away, to somewhere else.

Ah, but this meat very cheap! See? Top quality.

That look like human arm.

It was very skinny cow. And pale. He was albino cow. That is why, so cheap. And taste a little funny. But good with wodka.

The arm has fingers.

Cow from Chernobyl. But very cheap.

There's tattoo on the arm.

No, is brand. Brand from slaughterhouse.

The tattoo look like names. Pavel and Svetlana. With heart around it.

Yes, he was bull in love. Best meat, yes?

Hm. Can I see papers from slaughterhouse? I get arrested for buy meat with no papers.

No, you can bribe inspector. Like nightclub over there.

I do not trust you. I call police chief. Hello? Hello, where is police chief? Hm. They say Police Chief Pavel not here today.

Yes, you see? He busy with more important work.

Still, I not interested. You, go fuck yourself and walk off a short pier.

Wait, I make better deal. I also give you ring for free.

Hm. Ring say: Perm Police Academy, Class of '84.

Ah, very good. I thought it just scribbles, and backwards R.

It is Cyrillic, stupid man with head of shit and ass of jack. We in Russia. For last time, I not interested. You take your ring and put where sun do not shine, because so much shit is there. Then you die and eat shit and then you eat more shit. Then, you go jump in lake. Of shit.

I make even better deal. You buy this meat, or I kill you and eat you and sell part of you to competitor.

Man know how to bargain. I buy the meat.




While I doubt that's precisely how it played out, the incident was probably not the best way to attract tourists. I'm guessing there's a pretty short wait at the taxi stand at the Perm airport. If the airport shuttle is a little late, nobody complains. Travel agents looking for new jobs don't get much benefit if their resume includes "familiar with Perm." William Shatner, who did his best acting as the Priceline Negotiator, probably doesn't have much trouble wheedling a discount out of the typical Perm hotel. I bet banner ads on the City of Perm tourist website are pretty cheap right now. Local signmaking companies aren't getting rich off new "Welcome to Perm" and "Standing Room Only" signs. The company that sells new ink pads to inspectors who stamp passports is probably not thriving either. The tattoo on the next victim probably will also be written in Cyrillic. Hotel owners who rushed to add tea kettles to their rooms after seeing my earlier post are still waiting for that influx of British tourists.

" ... may I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up." -- Graham Chapman, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Episode 32.

Whoters

I returned home to find the usual pile of spam on my doorstep. Not email spam, which is usually filtered to invisibility, or else can be deleted and forgotten - vintage spam, sheets of glossy, colorful paper trying to instill a consuming desire for something I wasn't even considering before. One of them was an ad for Hooters, "the" American restaurant. I thought we had more than one, but I must have been mistaken. "The" Hooters must be very large (the restaurant, I mean), and parking must be a nightmare. The author could assume the Austrians mistranslated "the", but then, they are the grand masters of the definite article, seamlessly matching their every "the" to the gender, the perceived formality, and the number of the associated noun. Notice how the preceding sentence had "the" ten times, and the reader never got confused about which noun each one matched? Two years after first blogmocking this linguistic tailbone, I remain convinced it doesn't help clarify anything, and will eventually become vestigial, just like Englishspeakers learned not to care about whether the listener was formal or informal. Frailty, thy name is waste.

Homey Clemens told me the Austrians innovated their own dialect with fewer articles. Good! Make the Germans use them too. It will be tough; there are 10 times more of them. But the Austrians have surprise.

Back to thinking about hooters. I mean, the ad for Hooters. So, Hooters is "the" American restaurant. We don't have any others. Nice, then, that they seem to have copied it well. The glossy ad is almost indistinguishable from an ad for the American Hooters. Except they have a "kids eat free" day. Hm. I thought the Dutch were much more liberal with kids and sex, but the Austrians relatively conservative. Americans don't really think of Hooters as a kids' restaurant. (And since we have no other restaurants, kids cannot dine out until they hit 18.) Do you want your daughter inspired by Hooters waitresses? On the other hand, it's the only restaurant in the world that selects waitresses for their baby feeding potential. Indeed, while the classic American excuse is that they're going to the Hooters for their wings, I suspect the breasts also hold some sway.



Graz Hooters flyer: front




Graz Hooters flyer: back

Kuhnsummation

A few hours ago, I tried out the new hybrid BCI that we're developing. I used 2 BCIs at the same time, which I wanted to do for over 10 years. It was a major consummation of my principal research interest, which was theoretical until now. In the training runs, I hit 100% accuracy in the hybrid condition, and still did rather well in the online runs. I can't really go in to more detail since the paper is months away from being published. But, we already publicly announced our offline hybrid BCI simulation, and our intent to develop an online version, so I think this is OK.

Thanks to Clemens and Christof for working with me on the project, and thanks again to Christof for running me on a Saturday. Much of the lab is on holiday for the next couple weeks, and nobody is here now. The lack of fanfare is underwhelming. What we're doing will go down in history and revolutionize the field, yet no fireworks, interviewers, champagne, or dancing girls. Maybe I need to give 'em shots. Worked for the Swedes. Sort of.

Why, God, Whyne?!!!?!?!!

In previous blog posts, I gloated about transporting dozens of bottles of wine, pumpkinseed oil, schnapps, and who knows what else across the Atlantic and EU. I took 3 bottles of wine with me on the Berlin - Barcelona trip, since I wanted to give 3 of them to 3 people in Barcelona. They survived to Berlin, and even survived through Berlin, which is remarkable, because it's very good wine. Nice blend up front and a veritable tannin explosion afterward. Bonus feature: the wine is produced by the family of one of our PhD students, which makes it an even better gift.

I wouldn't have built it up like this without the inevitable. I arrievd in Barcelona and got my bag from baggage claim. Nothing seemed wrong, and I headed outside before feeling something wet on my right leg. I looked down and saw a deep red fluid running down my leg. Please, God, let that be blood. But no, He was not so merciful. Only two of the noble travelers survived. I abandoned my elaborate public transportation plans and took a taxi to the hotel. The fallen hero was not simply cracked, but thoroughly shattered, and I studied it for quite a while without figuring out how he was slain. He was packed in bubble wrap and thoroughly surrounded by clothes, which also gave their lives in a vain effort to protect him, and a successful effort to absord wine that might otherwise have damaged my camera or cell phone. Their sacrifice is noted here. Be warned that sommelier viewers may find this image disturbing.


And it was good wine, too.

I can't talk about it anymore. My vocabulary is inadequate. I cannot express The Horror. A fine and innocent bottle, cut down in the prime of his youth! He was only three years old! There can be no surer proof of the absence of a just and loving God.

Um.

I'll try to change the subject.

Here are some cool buildinga in Barcelona:


Some funky Barcelona buildings

Uh.
I gave 3 talks to different grant partners, each of which was followed by an enjoyable dinner. I discovered some cool new places, mostly around Las Ramblas. I had a couple nice Riojas, and -

NO!!!

Aaagh!

Berlinterhältig

I'm at the Innside Hotel in Berlin, which I chose mainly for narrative closure with the Innside in Bremen. Indeed, my first blog entries mentioned that decidedly hip hotel, which had fresh OJ at the breakfast bar. The one in Berlin did - on only one day. But this is OK, since the table wares were entertainingly slanted, as if about to tip over:


Too much movement for breakfast. Good thing I wasn't hung over.

You can learn a lot about different cultures by reading their complaints in hotel reviews. Germans seem most likely to complain about road noise. The Dutch are most likely to complain when a restaurant does not serve fresh squeezed orange juice with their morning buffet, which seems quite reasonable to me. It's really good! British reviews are good only for a laugh. Their reviews are heavily influenced by in-room tea kettles. If you see a review that complains about no kettle in the room, it was written by an English tourist. My favorite was a review that called a hotel "barbaric" for its kettlelessness. That's quite a stringent threshold for barbarism. The review went on to state, "Good thing we brought our travel kettles!" I seem to have forgotten mine.

But I am an increasingly popular one, thanks to the Big O. Barry's election restored the English to their apparently well-earned role as most hated tourists in Europe. Every old limey I have met is extremely polite, but the young ones are by far most likely to be drunk and disorderly, and ruin it for everyone. The last presidential election did not make Amercians into polity, savvy polyglots, but it did represent a vague recognition of how bad Bush was, and you can't get around that black thang. Indeed, the Brits would have to elect an even more exotic president to top us.

Their best opportunity is advertised on every public transportation nexus I have seen in Berlin: The Blue Man Group is here. This fits, somehow. Berlin loves anything new, artsy, avant-garde, and weird. I never saw this Group, but they must be doing something right, since they graduated beyond Vegas and now play in far more discerning cities like Orlando. I have to respect them for overcoming all the obstacles they did. Except, I'm starting to suspect they aren't really an oppressed minority at all. I won't vote for them, but they might fool the British. Or especially the French. For that matter, there might be a trend emerging with other false minorities. Be on the lookout for mauve mountebanks and chartreuse charlatans.


Blue Man Group ad and graffiti by Checkpoint Charlie.

I did not get to see them, or any other blue men, since I spent most of my time in Berlin working. I got to meet with 3 BCI groups, and it did feel like consummating a tourist destination. I long wanted to see the famous Berlin BCI group, and try the legendary dry electrode system. After Graz, Tübingen, Berlin, and Lausanne, the only longstanding group left is in Rome. Fortunately, new BCI groups are popping up so often that, by the time I get to see FSL in Rome, there will be 30 more on my list.

I spent an afternoon discussing the Big Issues in BCI research with Thorsten Zander and his colleague Marty. Thorsten is one of only three people in the BCI research community who has the endurance, patience, courtesy, and masochism to talk about BCIs with me indefinitely. (The other two are Gerwin Schalk and Febo Cincotti.) We then walked along the Wall, which had a busy street where the Death Zone used to be. He pointed out where guards with machine gun towers used to be, where they rewarded the hurried masses, yearning to breathe free, with free lead. The guard towers weren't visible any more, but I wonder if they were just relocated to well hidden pillboxes, because The Wall was the only wall I saw in Berlin (or practically Europe) without graffiti. Why not, I asked? Well, people respect The Wall, he said. Naw, I said. I bet them gunners are hiding somewhere. Graffiti sprayers will attack everywhere from the beautiful art under some LA overpasses to the Berlin Blue Man Group posters. And maybe that explains the Blue Men themselves! They really are victims!

I indulged in one other conventional tourist stop. Checkpoint Charlie has Germans dressed up as American soldiers holding American flags. This worried me, because I thought we had more than enough genuine American grunts in Germany to fill that role. The German guards were quite polite, which worried me even more. Sneaky Germans pretending to be Americans tried to make a lot of trouble, with some success. If they start playing with signs to Malmedy or popping up on beaches in Florida with the plans of our light manufacturing plants, don't say I didn't warn you.


Checkpoint Charlie


Ominous Checkpoint Charlie guard. Like any picture, you can click on it to get the full image. He really does scare me.


Trabi for rent near Checkpoint Charlie. Cute, but not that authentic, since it probably runs fine.


You aren't really leaving anything.

Yes, Checkpoint Charlie still had its famous sign warning that you are now leaving the American sector. The sign is meant as a relic, but it's even untruer than that, because you can never really leave the American sector - or more accurately, the sector of mass homogeneity that originated in America. Within 2 blocks of the Checkpoint, you're assaulted with McDonalds, Subway, and Dunkin Donuts. Even The Wall is painted with enthusiastic, funky, generally pretty art. East Berlin is as perky and bright as the rest of increasingly homogenous Europe. I was looking forward to the depressing, soul-snuffing, vodka-sledgehammer-inspiring Communist Bloc gray I heard so much about. Why did I leave Graz, or for that matter, San Diego? At least we have one thing that marketing and franchising still can't fake: beaches.

Here is a relevant quote fron an editorial:
"It’s funny how we crave the authentic, the unspoiled, the genuine — the un-globalized and un-homogenized and un-gentrified — only to destroy them. And then, as if in remorse, attempt to create unthreatening Disney versions of the authentic, the unspoiled and the genuine. It’s funny how the rich, tired of grilled tuna or Chilean sea bass, weary of New York generic (never simmered, always seared), want to eat like the poor, while the poor just want to be rich."
-- Roger Cohen, New York Times, 20 Nov 2009

Rather that end this long post on a whimisical and decidedly antiflaneurian note, here is instead a picture from Berlin Schönefeld airport.


You gotta click on this to see the Wurst wit. Nobody said the Germans don't have a sense of humor. Well, at least, I haven't said that. Not recently, anyway.