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Description of experience traveling with the iPhone, tips for reducing international charges, and recommendations for using your American iPhone in Europe.
links for 2009-09-30
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Monthly Archives: September 2009
links for 2009-09-28
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Increasing the efficiency, safety and reliability of European electricity transmission and distribution systems and removing obstacles to the large-scale integration of distributed and renewable energy sources.
Off To Germany
10 days in Germany (and Austria): Frankfurt for a conference, followed by Salzburg for Mozart, Munich for Oktoberfest and Dachau. We can’t wait, although I have the beginnings of a cold. Please, god, let it not be H1N1. Achooink!
Americans in Europe. This ought to be fun.
Whad’Ya Know? At College Of Wooster
This is going to be quick. I just got back from New Mexico and Columbus and am running out of time before D and I leave for Germany next weekend. My main woman Julie (from Wisconsin) and I (from Wisconsin) got a chance to see Michael Feldman (from Wisconsin) conduct a live recording of his famous NPR variety show Whad’ya Know? at the College of Wooster’s McGaw Chapel. Wisconsin came to me. Whad’ya know?
When on the road, Feldman highlights the specialties and quirks of his host town. One of the interviewees this time was Paul Locher of The Daily Record, Wooster know-it-all and author of When Wooster Was A Whippersnapper. For instance, we learned that the town sits at the intersection of three large Native American trails, which are now major state highways. The natives held off the Presbyterian influx for quite a while until one of the settlers shot and killed a chief named Beaver Hat and took over the center of town (at which a couple of women in the audience shrieked with laughter – killing natives, very funny). We also learned that Gerstenslager, now an auto body maker, used to make carriages for the likes of German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm and Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobiles (again with that whole Wisconsin connection). And the average commute time in Wooster is 11.7 minutes. That long, huh?
Here is a slideshow of pictures Julie and I took at the event.
The WYK? band killed as usual – John Thulin on piano, Jeff Hamann on bass and James Brown’s own funky drummer and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Clyde Stubblefield. We got to talk with Michael Feldman, John Thulin and Clyde Stubblefield at length after the show, when Thulin encouraged me to go after my dream of re-learning piano, but only on a Yamaha if I ultimately choose an upright.
And, darn it, I forgot to get Feldman on board with the HinJewism movement. Next time.
A New Bookshelf, Please
See what two weeks can do to my reading list? Of course, it doesn’t include Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which I haven’t yet purchased. (Suffice it to say that my shoulders are yet to recover from carrying around The Baroque Cycle.)
Good, I’ve been eyeing a certain bookshelf or another.
Donate Care Packages To Our Soldiers
While visiting my company’s Ft Collins office, I noticed a large cardboard box soliciting donations for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They weren’t asking for money, of course, but for things that make up a care package containing things we take for granted like lotion, shampoo, drink mixes, cereal, gum, i.e. items that will not perish during shipping to hot or rough lands. It never occurred to me that, while military stores exist, most of our deployed military personnel lack access to some basic American things.
Not having anything to offer at the time, I searched online and found a reputable outfit called Soldiers’ Angels. You can pick from pre-packaged care packages, blankets, backpacks, books, etc. and send them to a soldier of your choice or anyone who can use it. Prices have come way down in the last month, so there’s your impetus. As a suggestion, I donated a Hero Pack (good variety of everyday items) and a calling card to an anonymous soldier. I get to talk to my mom and spouse almost everyday; so should our soldiers.
A couple of weeks later, Athenae over at First Draft initiated her own call for donations towards soldier care packages.
I e-mailed leinie and asked if there was something we on the blog could do, could send, could contribute. What her son and his friends might want. Good coffee, snackies, games and prepaid phone cards was the answer. A little food therapy, some fun, and a chance to call home. Not a tall order, really.
First Draft readers, the rockstars that they are, raised $700 and leinie’s son and his friends are in for a lovely treat! Whether you agree with our foreign wars or not, this is the least we can do for kids putting their lives on the line in tremendously harsh and hostile conditions.
After six months of living in India in 1990, I beseeched my American cousins for things like Jergens lotion, Wrigley’s gum, lip gloss, tapes of latest music and all things western teenagers long for. Even after three months in India in 1995, my heart and mouth ached for things like pizza, burgers, ice cream and potato chips, not because I consume those things on a regular basis normally, but it was a taste of home. Money is tight in this economy, but it is likely tighter for the soldiers and their families. Miles and miles away, unsure and unsafe, they await the day they can return home. Until then, let’s let them know we’re thinking of them.
Fort Collins From Horsetooth Reservoir
With gorgeous Dakota sandstone dipping away from the sunset.
My Interview With Edward Tufte
I recently attended Edward Tufte‘s Cincinnati lecture on Presenting Data & Information and interviewed him for VizWorld. The post and audio interview are available here.
Who is Edward Tufte? In the immortal analogy of @polarisdotca, “Tufte : graphics :: Feynman : physics :: Gretzky : hockey.” Recommended by computer science and art professors alike, the dog-eared works of Tufte have graced my bookshelves ever since I was a wee computational sciences graduate student.
That reminds me to frame and hang up the print of this amazing infographic created by Charles Joseph Minard in 1812. Click on the image to get a better look. I love it when history and the principles of good information design come together to tell a compelling story.
links for 2009-09-10
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Yeah, we should be talking about what Obama said, but this is just too damned funny. I love the internet.
Compare. Contrast.
Obama Tells Students In 2009: “We can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world. And none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.”"
Reagan Told Students In 1986: “We have to remain economically competitive, and that means being aware of two things: first, what makes economies tick, and second, what works in other societies. We’ve been trying very hard in Washington to make America even more economically fit by really overhauling our entire tax structure. When we came into office, the top personal tax rate that the Federal Government could put on your income was 70 percent. Now, you can understand, I think, that if you were getting up in those brackets — there were 14 different tax brackets, depending on the amount of money in each bracket you earned. And when you could look and say, “If I earn another dollar, I only get to keep 30 cents out of it,” you can imagine the lack of incentive there. Well, we lowered it to 50 percent, and the economy really took off. Now we’re trying to lower it yet again so that families can keep more of their money and so the national economy will be lean and trim and fit for the future.”
Reagan Told Students In 1988: “These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes and other economic reforms that they’re using, copying what we have done here in our country. I wonder if they realize that this vision of economic freedom — the freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property without the interference of the state — was central to the American Revolution when the American colonists rebelled against a whole web of economic restrictions, taxes, and barriers to free trade. The message at the Boston Tea Party — have you studied yet in history about the Boston Tea Party, where, because of a tax, they went down and dumped the tea in the harbor? Well, that was America’s original tax revolt. And it was the fruits of our labor — belonged to us, and not to the state. And that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama’s speech “has roused controversy among some conservatives, who have said he is trying to indoctrinate their children with a ‘socialist’ political agenda.”
And there you have it. B.C.E.D. Batshit crazy erat demonstrandum. Know it but don’t discount it.