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Bachelorette party

Yesterday Cecilie went off to our mutual friend Katrine's polterarbend, or bachelorette party. Pictures here.

From what I heard, it was mellow fun- they went on a boat tour around Copenhagen, then went kayaking (the weather's been super-warm lately), and then learned sushi-making from a chef at one of the top local sushi places.

I like how the Danes make a bachelor/bachelorette party into an all-day event. It really does bring friends closer, also because just planning the thing and getting all the logistics together shows some real commitment!

At my friend Klaus's bachelor party a couple of years ago we went kayaking and then had a go-cart race and then went to a paintball range. When we got to the paintball place we ran into a bachelorette party that was a close match for our numbers (there were 11 of us and I think 13 of them), so we played boys against girls. What these women lacked in tactical ability they made up for in sheer viciousness. Usually in paintball, when you're hit you just say "Ow, I'm hit" and then that ends it. You sit out the game until the next game starts. But these women had the idea that you just keep shooting as long as your target is still in view, and they didn't recognize the international hand signal for "Oh God, please don't shoot me in the balls again."

Maybe it's a good thing that Katrine's party stayed away from the paintguns.

Boston

Like I said in a previous post, I really loved Boston and could have easily spent more time there. The city reminds me in a way of San Francisco, but without the freakiness (that's both good and bad).

Maybe it's because both Boston and San Francisco are coastal cities with a strong internal culture, and both are overshadowed by huge neighbors (Boston has New York and San Francisco competes with LA) and so maybe they struggle even harder to maintain a unique identity.

Here are some pics from the latest trip. Mostly work focused, unfortunately, but I'm grateful that work gives me a chance to see all these places.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

On one hand, I'm really bummed that my co-worker Sylvia left the company and has gone off on a globetrotting adventure (she's planning on moving to Dubai after spending the summer in Canada).

On the other hand, I can understand why she's going and I'm happy for her. And on a purely selfish note. I'm glad she's going to Dubai because I'm desperate to visit and now I'll have someone on the inside to show me around next year.

Before she left, we took her out for a night on the town and ended up at Sam's Bar, this really raunchy karaoke place - compromising pictures at this link. Fun stuff.

Best of luck out there Sylvia, keep your head down.

Get Mad

Heh, I had my annual performance review a couple of days ago (my boss was in town from the US). She told me that generally I've been doing pretty well, but that she'd like to see me use a wider variety of negotiating tactics.

My job is basically focused on negotiation and damage control these days, both working with people inside and outside the company, but mostly internal- getting the information, resources and buy-in from other teams inside the company, and giving them the information they need in return. It's kind of a strange job sometimes but there are parts of it I really enjoy. I like the travel, and I like the feeling that everything is constantly on the verge of collapsing into utter chaos and I'm helping keep it all just within the margin of safety.

Anyway, my boss noticed that my only real trick is to build consensus, get everyone to the table and try to drive an agreement that everyone can live with. This is good, she said, if we always have time to wait for consensus, but we don't always have time. Her advice was:
1) I should do more backroom dealing.
2) I should more often just do what we need to without asking.
3) I should get mad more often. I don't scream and shout enough.

I like how this is going (I was especially amused by the third suggestion). I figure if I stick at this for another couple of years I will finally be able to fulfill my dreams of moving to Washington and becoming some kind of evil political apparatchik.

Josh Lyman is my role model.

Strange diplomacy

Condi Rice is being sent on a mission to Israel, supposedly intending the tell the Israelis to scale back their attacks on Lebanon. At exactlly the same time, this story surfaces on New York Times (free registration required):

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

WASHINGTON, July 21 — The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah...

So, unless someone can explain this to me in a different way, the US is telling Israel to stop bombing targets in Lebanon while at the same time supplying the bombs the Israelis are dropping on Lebanon.

This seems duplicitous, or at least unhelpful.

Some context on Lebanon and Gaza

If you can handle his didactic tone of voice, Steven Erlanger, New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, just recorded a pretty deep and comprehensive interview for NPR's Fresh Air on what he's learned about the latest misery.

I'm also getting some good context from Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting), which offers short, detailed daily podcasts. The podcasts are also available through iTunes

Too hot

Before I sign off tonight can I just say that it's too hot to even think lately? It's usually only blazing hot for a couple of weeks in the summer here so no one in Denmark has air conditioning. I swear to fox the inside of my apartment is like the surface of the sun right now.

And I had to flee work today because there was some kind of runaway greenhouse effect happening in my office. I felt like calling Al Gore for help--we were all sweating into our keyboards and getting antagonistic and vicious with each other. It was the heat. The heat got to us. Too hot.

Last.fm gets a remake

Ooh, hey, looks like they just rebuilt Last.fm.

In case you don't know this resource, it tracks all the music you listen to in iTunes (or whatever player you use), and then shows you other people on the system who are listening to the same tracks. The idea is that if you discover people with similar musical tastes, you can find tracks that they are listening to that you might not have heard of before. It's really brilliant if you find yourself living in a city that's not overflowing with underground or non-mainstream music.

You can also listen to "neighbour radio" and stream tracks that are in your musical neighbors' listening stacks, which is another good way to get turned on to music you haven't heard before but might like. It takes some patience (you have to block a lot of the tracks that come through because even your neighbours sometimes have dodgy taste), but I've found out about some cool bands that way.

Looks like the new feature they've built selects album art from the bands you've listened to and displays it next to your statistics. Gratuitous, but fun.

And while you're at it, check out Live Plasma. It's a graphical music relationship browser. Do a search on your favorite band and it comes out all in colored bubbles and curvy lines. Looks like the inside of my head.

Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Bill

Just when I think I'm so numb that I've lost the ability to feel outrage, this guy goes and does something even more fanatical and loathesome. With all the horrific problems we're facing these days, THIS is the issue he decides to use his first-ever veto on? He values the moral rights of a six day-old ball of cells that's going to get thrown out anyway over the suffering of tens of thousands of people with cancer, Parkinson's disease, and Fox knows what else? Come on!

It's like I'm living in a James Bond movie and he's the bad guy- all he needs is an eyepatch and a fluffy white cat.

On the Washington Post.

Throwing darts at the map (part 2)

I'm still a little hung-up on Chicago too. Hannah took me to this "Darkwave Disco" night at one of the local clubs. The crowd was fantastic- cool cats, all dressed up PoMo, and the music was this electro I'd never heard before, like the love child between Chicks on Speed and I don't know, AC/DC or something. Fantastic.

I miss the big city bad. It was hard to get on the plane this time.

Throwing darts at the map

I thought I was over the jetlag from Boston and Chicago, but I sprang awake at 430am and couldn't go back to sleep. Had a repeat of a dream from the night before where I was a reporter embedded with a Russian mechanized unit as we were in full retreat from a battle in Chechnya. The lines had been compromised and we'd lost contact with command, fighting through rebel ambushes and firing from all sides. A lot of running and shouting. Very heavy and unpleasant.

Now that I'm awake I wanted to do something useful so I looked up an emerging markets project that my company is kicking off in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. There are a lot of jobs opening up but the only one I found that's a perfect fit for my profile is based in Istanbul. When I first heard about the project I'd been hoping for something in Moscow, Budapest or Warsaw.

Need to do more research.

Alas, Lebanon

I just got back from a week in Boston and Chicago (two awesome cities I'd be happy to spend more time in someday), and haven't been able to stay up to date with the news. The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, and the Israeli strikes on Lebanon really blindsided me.

It's such a tragedy because it appeared as if the situation in Lebanon had finally stabilized, with both the Syrians and Israelis officially out of the country (though Syria still had heavy influence and I'm sure southern Lebanon was riddled with Mossad agents). One of my colleagues at work is from Lebanon, and he told me such great stories about the place that I really wanted to go. Apparently Beirut had become the Paris of the Eastern Med again, like it was in the '60s when you'd see cats like David Niven and Jackie O lounging in the bars and casinos there. My colleague said the city was up all night, every night, and the bad memories of the civil war were just memories. He's got pretty deep knowledge of the region, having worked in Dubai (which he loved) and being currently stationed in Saudi Arabia (which he hates).

Cec and I were meant to go to Beirut for a long weekend last fall when there was a special deal on airline tickets, but the place was so popular that we couldn't get a flight before the promotion ran out. Now I'm wishing even more that we had gone while we had the chance. The place will probably be too hot for another year or two for Western tourists to sneak back in.

Looks like the Israelis are prepping the border for a major invasion to try to cripple Hezbollah for a generation. That explains the bombing of Beirut airport, the roads and bridges, and the blockade of the coast. The slowness of their border prep is worrying too- they're taking great trouble to draw fire, isolate pockets of resistance and knock out minefields, which means they're probably looking at a major conventional attack rather than special forces raids. If they follow through on their stated intention to take out the rocket launching sites that have been bombarding northern Israel, they'll probably have to invade all the way into the Bekaa Valley, and that may bring them in contact with the Syrian army. An Israel vs. Syria punch-up would be some seriously bad mojo, but Syria doesn't seem interested, yet.

The question is what happens if major Hezbollah units do escape the initial attack and retreat across the Syrian border--will the Israelis pick a fight with Syria? I don't think so, but still.

I just sent a mail to my colleague and friend, telling him I hoped his family was safe, and got an out of office reply saying he's in Lebanon himself now and will be offline indefinitely. Keep your head down man, we all want to see you again.

Quick one from Boston

Just got back to the hotel from another party with some work people. Boston is great, even though I haven't had time to see much of it yet. Will have most of the day on Friday to skulk around time and try to check as much as I can off my shopping list.

Wish I could stay longer, but it's always like that whenever I'm in a great town. I would love to spend a couple of years here, and in Vancouver, and Moscow, and Chicago, and Amsterdam, etc. Life is never enough.

The conference is going well- the usual grind. A lot of booze and no sleep. I never appreciated how much of a business asset sheer physical endurance is, until I took this job and got thrown into the deep end. I'll be asleep in a few minutes but most of my team is still out there on the town. I just reached my limit of jetlag and alcohol.

I got to that point of exhaustion today that begins to feel like religion, the lack of sleep and food making it seem like my senses expanded, very aware of the sounds and quality of the light in the convention center, watching the expressions of all the people I passed.

I make it sound like this is difficult, and it is, but at the same time I'm grateful to be thrown into this rarefied environment. To experience parts of the world that are not revealed to everyone. I'm tired but tonight I'll sleep confident in the knowledge that despite the horrors, the world can be a strange and good place.

Off to Boston

I'm flying out to Chicago and Boston tomorrow afternoon (assuming I can get out of Copenhagen- the airport's been a mess lately). Chicago will be great because I can go out and have sushi with Hannah, and then Boston is going to be great because I have such good memories of the town from ten years ago. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's changed since then. I'm struggling to find the motivation for the actual work that's bringing me there, but it'll be fine. It always works out somehow, and as soon as I'm on the ground I know I'll be back into the game.

Terrible but I'm looking forward to the airplane ride too, just so I can get away from the computer and phone for nine hours. SAS has the broadband access on the transoceanic flights now but I have a feeling I won't be taking advantage of it this time. My only wish till I land in Chicago is to find a sympathetic flight attendant bearing a smile and a large bottle of Scotch.

The Shuttle Connection

Turns out Sara has a connection with the shuttle program I didn't know about. Just got this email today at work... You're always full of surprises!

Discovery launches successfully

Space Shuttle Discovery is up and on its way to the International Space Station. Yesterday's launch is only the second flight of the Shuttle after Columbia broke up on re-entry in 2003. So far, all systems appear to have worked according to plan.

I'm sure everyone at NASA is breathing a big sigh of relief now, but still, I'll feel much better when the three surviving orbiters finish the last 15 to 17 missions expected and the Shuttle fleet can finally be retired. The Shuttle has done things that no other system could have, but the system relies on obsolescent 1970s-era technology and there's a limit to how safe we can make it. We've lost two out of five orbiters in the life of the fleet. That's a higher loss rate than most military aircraft in combat.

It's a shame that NASA screwed around so long in the 90s and still hasn't settled on a final design for the craft that will eventually replace the Shuttle (and "eventually" in this case, isn't too far away. The plan is to retire the fleet in 2010). We've lost so much time that I'm not optimistic they'll be able to build a follow-on system before the fleet retires, and that will be the end of human spaceflight for a few years at least.

I know a lot of people say that human spaceflight is too expensive and overrated, and to a large extent I agree- it's amazing that with a much smaller budget we've been able to send robotic landers to Titan and the asteroids, and space probes out beyond the solar system. Unless some completely new technology is discovered, it's unlikely we'll ever be able to send a human out so far.

But I do think there's something that touches us deeply, when we send people out in space to risk their lives on our behalf for the sake of adventure and discovery. I can't look at the moon without thinking "Yes, we have been there," and feeling proud.

Godspeed, Discovery. Come back safe.

The death of Ken Lay

Ken Lay, former head of Enron, trusted personal friend of George Bush, perhaps the greatest corporate cheat and financial criminal in the history of the United States (so far), collapsed from a heart attack and died at an exclusive ski resort in Colorado as he awaited sentencing.

It's always a strange feeling when someone you really despise suddenly dies. No matter how bad someone is, the standard line goes, there are only a few people in the world that actually deserve to die for the shitty things they've done.

And in the case of Ken Lay, I agree with that. By all accounts he was an arrogant, loathesome, despicable person who destroyed the lives of thousands of people who trusted him. But I don't think he deserved to die yesterday as he basked in luxury at a resort in Aspen. I think justice would have been much better served if he had rotted away in a prison cell for the next 20 years.

Religious theory tested against lion; lion wins

This just in on the BBC:

Here's a somewhat extreme example of two opposing views of reality being tested against each other. It also bears out the principle that the simpler a hypothesis is, the more likely it is to be correct. In this case, the man's hypothesis was built on many separate assumptions, each of which had to be correct in order for the hypothesis to succeed. For example:
a) God exists
b) God is omnicient, and sees everything happening on Earth, including the man climbing into the lion enclosure
c) God is omnipotent, and has the power to pacify the lions in the enclosure
d) God cares enough about the situation to bother using his powers to pacify the lions

Clearly, one or more of these assumptions were incorrect when tested. The lion's hypothesis, on the other hand, was very much simpler:
a) Ah look, here comes lunch.

The other possibility is that the man was actually testing his faith using the scientific method (notice the use of the phrase "God will save me, *if* he exists.") If that was the case though, then another problem arises. In order to go from a hypothesis to a theory, the experiment needs to be repeatable, and this one (besides being overly dramatic) self-evidently is not.

Koizumi cuts loose

Here's another newsbyte I couldn't pass up- did you see Koizumi, the Japanese PM, singing Elvis at graceland?

Koizumi cuts loose

Cute.

Operation removes lightbulb from anus

It's the "Thanks Allah, now I feel comfort" bit that makes this poetry...

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Fateh Mohammad, a prison inmate in Pakistan, says he woke up last weekend with a glass lightbulb in his anus.

The doctor treating Mohammad said he'd never encountered anything like it before, and doubted the felon's story that someone had drugged him and inserted the bulb while he was comatose.