Hangin' with the Surrealists

On the eve of this most surreal election day, it seemed appropriate for me to make a pilgrimage to the home of the Father Surrealist, so I found myself today at the Museo Dali in Figueres.

The brochure describing the "world's largest surrealist object" begins:

Avis! Si tenin en compte la idiosincràsia de Salvador Dalí, origen del Teatre-Museu Dalí, potser s'hauria de recomanar que no se segueixi cap circuit preconcebut. Malgrat això, s'ha establert un recorregut unidirrecional, que només pretén conduir el visitant de l'entrada a la sortida, sense que es perdi cap racó del Teatre-Museu. No té, ni vol tenir, cap funció sistematitzadora, ni cap sentit cronològic.

[Notice! If we take into account the idiosyncrasy of Salvador Dalí, the origin of the Teatre-Museu Dalí, then perhaps we ought to recommend that you not follow any preconceived route. In spite of this, a one-way path has been laid out, which simply guides the visitor from entrance to exit, without skipping any part of the Teatre-Museu. It does not have, nor does it intend to have, any systematic function nor chronological sense.]

Words to live by.

If you'd like to see the various other photos I took while there, check out my galleries at flickr.

Voting for Sand

I've voted already. I did it before I left for Barcelona. It was so easy. I think I'll never vote on election day again.

I have been reading incredibly long, incredibly absorbing, and uniformly tortured blog entries of undecideds turning into decideds with more drama than a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

My favorite (barely) Bush butterfly: Jane Galt.

Kerry's record for the first fifteen years in the senate, before he knew what he needed to say in order to get elected, is not the record of anyone I want within spitting distance of the White House war room. Combine that with his deficits on domestic policy -- Kerry's health care plan would, in my opinon, kill far more people, and cost more, than the Iraq war ever will -- and it's finally clear. For all the administration's screw -ups -- and there have been many -- I'm sticking with the devil I know. George Bush in 2004.

My favorite (barely) Kerry butterfly: Daniel D. Rezner:

So are Kerry supporters taking risk? No, I suspect they, like me, are adopting a minmax strategy. The question to ask is: assume both Kerry and Bush will completely embody their worst stereotypes -- which candidate leaves the country better off? By a hair, I think it's Kerry.

I voted for Kerry, along with my kindred spirits at Kerry Haters for Kerry.

My main concern is that now that path from money to policy has been paved so smoothly by failed campaign finance "reform", the more government does, the more bad policy it enacts, and the rational thing to do is put a enough sand in the works (e.g. a Democratic president against a Repulican congress, not a Republican president who has never vetoed a spending bill, or any other, in his life).

I can't think of any federal program, reform, or policy created or enacted in my lifetime that has had a positive effect on my life, and I can think of several that have had a negative effect. The saving grace is that existing institutions already in place when I was born (a stable federation of states, a working public library, english common law, a federal highway system) have not been completely destroyed.

Given the candidate choices, and the method of choosing (don't get me started on electronic voting or the electoral college, both of which I consider criminally irrational) the best I can do is cast my lot for grit. Course grit.

Speaking of Talking Points

The most recent article at Talking Points Memo on the suddenly-found-missing Iraqi explosives escándalo is scary reading.

Bloguejo ergo sum

In the middle of the U.S. election coverage in the Catalan edition of El Periodico is the headline L'atac dels 'bloggers': Una nova raça de reporters està canviant la política dels EUA navegant per internet (sorry for the lack of an article link, I read it on paper). The lead paragraph:

Present d'Indicatiu del verb Bloguejar: Jo bloguejo. Tu bloguegues. El blogueja. Nosaltres bloguegem. Vosaltres bloguegeu. Ells bloguegen.

Interestingly, in two tabloid pages of reportage, only two blogs are mentioned, www.talkinpointsmemo.com [sic] and dailykos.com.

Not exactly a representative sampling of the political blogosphere (I mean, where is the instapundit?), but I think the source material for the interviews was taken at the DNC convention, which set the tone of the report.

I trust, though, that they got the conjugation right.

A Foggy Day in London Town

It is raining today in London, and I was hoping to play outside. Bummer.

I went to the first night of previews of The Producers here at the Drury Lane Royal Theatre. Boy, is that a good show. Nathan Lane is his usual completely entertaining self, and Lee Evans as Bloom is quite possibly more funny and outrageous than Matthew Broderick was on Broadway.

The voices (especially that of Nicolas Colicos as Franz Liebkind, the Nazi playwright, with whom I'm madly in love, but he doesn't know it), were exceptional. Poor Lee did seem a bit strained in some places. If this were opera, I'd be critical. Fortunately it's not, and besides, it was probably a good character choice on his part. Go Lee!

And, since it was the first show, little bits of props, hats, costumes, etc, were flying inadvertently around the stage (one dancer was repeatedly kicking bits of stage flotsam into the wings, with panache). This was all adding to the excitement.

Ah, the theatre, the theatre.

Quote of the Day

Found on Slashdot:

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-Sir Stephen Henry Roberts

Nano Taste

Since I'd been traveling a few weeks, I came home to a pile of Science News magazines (which I normally read like religion every week on their arrival). So I wouldn't normally talk about old news, but the Sept 25 issue has a long article on nanotechnology in the food industry that I thought was fascinating.

Kraft (of course) spearheads the effort to develop food nanotech, as sponsor of the NanoteK Consortium. The article discusses developments in the usual stuff about sensor arrays for detecting pathogens or spoilage, etc. Then this idea caught my eye:

... polymer sensors could help a customer analyze his breath to discover his own food preferences. A customer in a grocery store might breathe on a sensor and the device would detect a set of breath chemicals that it would correlate with specific taste preferences or dietary requirements.

Can't you just see it? Breathalyzer's at the supermarket recommending mouthwash, or dietetic candy, or just telling you, "You know, you eat too much. Go home." No, I suppose that wouldn't happen (at least, not more than once).

Internet Addiction

Yahoo and the OMD media agency commissionsed a study to see how Internet deprivation affected the daily lives of Americans. The Christian Science Monitor reports in: No Internet for two weeks? How 28 people coped. | csmonitor.com.

The study is surely too small to mean much, but the diary entries by the participants are pretty funny. Example:

"I'm cringing.... It's almost like a fast," said Glecia, a mom in Chicago who often spends at least an hour online when she comes home from work. One man was so eager to get back online that he said, "I'm even looking forward to seeing spam."

Now that's sick.

Information Makes Sick Sicker

The Cochrane Collaboration (a great name for an organizaition) published a review of a study by the University College London that looked at the effect of online health information on people with chronic illnesses. It was reported in E-Health-Media

The study found that such access to information can be damaging, and makes some hypothesis. For example:

One reason suggested for this is when people see unfiltered information about, for instance, effects of the treatment of diabetes, without it being put into perspective it discourages them from moderating their behaviour to control their sugar. "If you become more knowledgeable, you realise it's all rather a long way off. They are less frightened and that reduces their motivation to be really strict in their control." Another could be that advice on the internet could superficially contradict that of clinicans.

Now, I take it for granted that "what you know doesn't determine what you do" (or else the incidence of smoking and obesity would both be lower). However, what I'm not getting is any sense of cost/benefit. Is this more than a tiny problem in a sea of effective and positive patient self-education?

The motives of the study, to see "how health webiste can be structured to counter [the negative effects of e-health information access]" sound good to me.

The crux of the matter

So someone besides me thinks that the incessant focus on terrorism here is destructive and diversionary, and that's not a good thing. From the New York Times, The Bush Record: Challenging Rest of the World With a New Order:

The president speaks of the threat almost daily, but leaders elsewhere do not. In Europe, terrorism is not new and so seems less menacing; in Asia, the rapid growth of China and India continues to fuel an optimism that dispels, or at least diminishes, the dark clouds from the Middle East; in Latin America, trade and economic issues seem at least as important as Al Qaeda. The shared perception of a common threat that was the cornerstone of America's cold war alliances is gone.

But what I really liked was the discussion of French/American relations, here summed up by Ms. Rice:

"The relationship's fine," Ms. Rice said, citing the French role in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Relations with France are always "better in practice than they are in theory," she added.

Practice, theory, american, french. How cliché. How true.

The Poor Own TV's

Of course, the penetration rate of "luxury" goods (like televisions and telephones) is somewhat a red herring. The goal is to get the kids fed, not to get everyone online.

A Harvard Business Review article from 2002, entitled The Payoff for Investing in Poor Countries, notes that one can be abjectly poor, and still own a television:

It's also incorrect to assume that the poor are too concerned with fulfilling their basic needs to "waste" money on nonessential goods. In fact, the poor often do buy "luxury" items. In the Mumbai shantytown of Dharavi, for example, 85 percent of households own a television set, 75 percent own a pressure cooker and a mixer, 56 percent own a gas stove, and 21 percent have telephones. That's because buying a house in Mumbai, for most people at the bottom of the pyramid, is not a realistic option. Neither is getting access to running water. They accept that reality, and rather than saving for a rainy day, they spend their income on things they can get now that improve the quality of their lives.

We're Better Off

The common election year question is, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Arnold Kling over at Tech Central takes a longer view in How Much Worse Off Are We? He gives lots of statistics to show how much better off we are than we were in 1970. For example:

Item	Percent Lacking in 19701	Percent Lacking Now2,3
telephone	13.0 %	2.4 %
complete plumbing	6.9 %	0.6 %
refrigerator	17 %	0.1 %
Stove	13 %	0.3 %
color television	66.0 %	1.1 %
Vehicle	20.4 %	10.3 %

Today, 68.6 percent of households own their own homes. This is an all-time record, four percentage points higher than in the 1970's.

Back in the U.S., after a decade of decline, poverty rates are increasing (they started heading up in 2000). In 2002, one third of children in the United States live in families that earn less than twice the federal poverty line (FPL is $18,850 in 2004), which is the limit at which NCCP says a family of four is unable to provide housing, food, and health care to its children.

One third! Shame on us.

Some Hysterical Clips

Some excellent Quicktime clips come thanks to ATMO in Sweden.

The only one you really need to watch is the Bush/Blair love duet.

From their website:

In March 2000, Atmo was founded by a handful of friends who shared years of free-lance filmmaking and reporting from places like Bosnia, Beirut and South Africa.

Atmo primarily work for fun, not for profit. Atmo believes in independent media and the power of public service.

I'm laughing and I'm crying.

Hearing Voices

I've been a huge fan of clinical tales, ever since I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Saks. His stories of the strange worlds of his neurologically impaired patients are told with both skill and compassion. Also, each essay is rather short, so they fit nicely before bedtime.

It was therefore with much pleasure that I discovered James Baker's blog, wherein each entry is a little bag of Saks.

Example, from Mental Notes: When Hearing Voices is Normal:

A worried mom brought in her four-year-old to see me because the child has an imaginary friend with whom he talks and even seems to see. His friend also tells the child things to say - usually bad things about his mom!

The question was: normal, or early-onset schizophrenia?

The answer is, of course, normal.

Note: my cousin Helen also works (as a forensic psychologist) with disturbed (typically violent) children. Not many know that she is the wife of the Instapundit, who, in the blogosphere, is my inspiration.

Reserving for Congress the Right to Ban Gay Marriage

Glenn writes, over at Instapundit.com ,

So would a Congressional effort to overturn state bans on gay marriage in support of an unenumerated right to marry constitute a similar affront to local autonomy? I'm just, you know, asking. . . .

Of course, my cynical self immediately responds, "since when has such affrontery stopped Congress from acting?"

I'm actually waiting for the interstate commerce argument for reserving the right to ban marriages to Congress. Well, Google didn't help...

The conversation over here in Spain is so much simpler. It involves headlines like Gays se pueden casar en España.

El Gobierno español aprobará hoy una reforma del Código Civil sin precedentes que permitirá a los homosexuales casarse y adoptar hijos y que ha levantado las críticas de la Iglesia y algunos partidos, mientras las asociaciones de gays y lesbianas la consideran un "hito histórico".

My spanish teacher (a straight woman), considers the adjustment a technical improvement in the law, as if there were accidentally some once-tragic-now-amusing law on the books left over from the Spanish Inquisition. I asked her if the ruling was a done deal, if it would be reversed, if politicians would make political hay and try to overturn the government. She looked at me like I was from mars.

Much bigger news is the capture (e.g. Diaro Vasco, or Washington Post) (after many years) of important members of the violent Basque separatist organization (ETA) in france, complete with hidden tunnels and lots of explosives.