Published!

It's official! I'm published! Hooray! Well, so it's only one co-edited chapter in a very big book, but nonetheless, it certainly counts.

Today I had a planning meeting for another project and we have a abstract for a conference due Tuesday. Eeek!

So, things remain in motion. Slowly but surely, as they say.

Dunes

If I look out the bedroom window, I see drifts of white. The wind has been fierce, and I can watch it sculpt the drifts, creating the undercut that makes them look like waves as they are about to crash. The wind picks up the top layer and blows it into the air. The small particles sparkle and swirl, showing the patterns of the wind.

If I squint just right, I can almost convince myself that I'm standing by the ocean. Even the cold isn't quite wrong, standing outside waiting for the bus it's almost like the coast. Those early spring days, where it looks so lovely outside and then it turns out to be soooooo cold. It's like that but colder, much much colder.

The snow is often so beautiful. It's so cold here that the snow isn't flakey or lumpy but instead it's tiny granules. They shine and I actually need my sunglasses here. They also sting just like the sand as they just get blasted towards all exposed skin.

The comparison falls apart quickly but, in a way, it brings me a little comfort to pretend, just for a minute, that I'm home.

Exhaust: Good for the Environment

The past two days, the high, the HIGH, has been about 258 degrees Kelvin (or 5 Fahrenheit. You might remember from Chemistry class that Absolute Zero = 0 Kelvin = -273 Celsius = -459 Fahrenheit). At night, the temp has reached a balmy -9 F; you can actually see the cold air moving our curtains on the windows. Fortunately, we are inside and usually nestled under our electric blanket.

I don't write this to complain, although I've barely left the house in the last 48 hours. I am mentioning this because of something we've noticed lately.

We were sitting in a bar the other night, looking out the window, drinking a beer, when I noticed that one of the cars parked outside had smoke coming out of its tailpipe. Since the wind was blowing snow all around, we weren't sure if it was exhaust, meaning the car was running, or if it was just an illusion. Kimberly assessed that the car was running, since the snow on the hood of the car was all melted. I thought that was crazy; I know we're in Iowa, but wouldn't someone drive off with the car, a drunk college kid or something?

At least an hour later, a guy from the bar walked right out to the car, stepped in, out it in gear, and drove away. Apparently, he left the car running so that it would be warm inside when he needed to leave. Peculiar.

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed unoccupied cars idling all over the place - the grocery store, outside the coffee shop, the gym.

So I have to wonder: do people here leave their cars running so that they're not cold when they get back in them? And are people really that nice here; I've definitely seen some homeless people around, so why wouldn't they just take a car? Do you need to carry 2 keys with you to keep the car running, but lock the door? Doesn't gas cost a lot? I grew up and went to school in some really cold places, and I'm pretty sure this wasn't common there; or was it and I just didn't notice? Or maybe a lot of people here have automatic starters (a good idea), and I've just happened to walk past all the cars just after they were started?

If anyone has any insight on this, I'd love to hear about it, because I think it's really kind of weird that there are all these cars running with no one inside them here.

Winter Break Reading

Well, spring term is just a few days away and the work load is starting to sneak up on me. I actually whined in bed this morning about how I wasn't ready for the break to end and couldn't I just please stay in bed all day? (To his credit, Peter just turned out the light and told me to go back to bed. As it was already 10, (or maybe later?) I actually got up. sigh).

Anyway, I have enjoyed the break, and I've been able to devour a few books. Although I think my in-laws think I'm a wee bit nuts (what with the frantically reading at every moment while I was there), I got a lot of pleasure reading done. Here's the recap.

• His Dark Materials series (aka the Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) (aka the Atheists are going to corrupt our children)

This was a pretty cool series that I'm looking forward to rereading and appreciating more deeply. There were terribly sad and scary parts (as Peter can attest to), happy and exciting parts, and lots of cool creatures and fighting polar bears. While the books can be interpreted as anti-Christian, the anti-Christian parts take place in a different dimension. It's much more clearly an attack on the establishment- both political and religious- that compels conformity and blanket acceptance instead of investigation and searching for truth or truths. While my mom certainly wouldn't enjoy the series (nor would anyone who isn't interested in talking animals a la The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe or The Hobbit), it's a nice set of books for us scifi and fantasy fans. The controversy around these books is rather amazing, especially since the books have been out for a long time. Apparently the movie sparked a large religious boycott (and even some attempts to ban them).

• Bury Me Standing
  

This is an interesting book describing the life, history, persecution, and travels of Gypsies in Europe. Peter got interested in Gypsies during our travels this summer, and his aunt recommended this book. While it's not best written (the author stumbles around a bit in time and place, and I wasn't always certain if she was talking about past, present, or future) it's a powerful history of a poorly remembered and rarely acknowledged people. she lives with various groups, discusses their language, cultural norms, opportunities (or more often lack thereof), and individuals. The local governments come off particularly bad.

• The Zookeeper's Wife

I picked up this book from the new books section of the library on a whime and it was an interesting read. The author writes a biography of Jan and Antonia Zabinski, two Polish zookeepers who saved numerous Jews during WWII. While the book suffers from time to time by straying off point, the story is so marvelous to almost be unbelievable. Antonia in particular is an amazing woman who communes with animals and uses her unconscious knowledge of animal behavior to successfully dissuade the German police from investigating them. Jan works for the Polish resistance and both are driven and moral individuals who save people for no other reason than it being the right thing to do. this is a great biography and wonderful story to remind us both of the evil and the goodness that people can do to others.

• The Center Cannot Hold

This was an interesting book by a USC law professor who is also schizophrenic. It's her memoir, and she discusses her journey with the disease as well as her life. She's clearly an amazing woman (various degrees, a stint at Oxford, accomplished professor) and also battles a very severe illness. Her descriptions of her obsessions and the details of her disease were fascinating and very illuminating. I'd recommend it.

• Julie and Julia

This book is a great blog-turned-book describing the author's (Julie) attempt to make every recipe (some 500+) of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking during one year. You might have heard the author interviewed on NPR or in the NY Times, it was very big for a few weeks. While it's not quite a book, and both Peter and I felt like she didn't spend enough time on the FOOD part of the story, it's fun, light, and entertaining. Don't read this book if you can't handle swear words, drama, or the cooking/eating of offal.

So that's what I've been up to. Of course, I also read the textbooks that I'm teaching (all three of them, sigh) and have gotten started on my own textbooks for the classes I'm taking. Fun, fun fun!

So, have you read anything good lately?

Pick A Winner

Hi, my name is Peter. I'm addicted to television.

There, I said it.

I'm working on stopping here in the New Year, but still being unemployed doesn't help. Regardless, Sunday tv is the best. Even when football ends(which is only a few short weeks away, sob), Sunday night tv is generally really good. Last night was particularly interesting:

The Live Free or Diner
The Simpsons last night skewered the whole 'first-in-the-nation' primary thing. While it focused mostly on New Hampshire and Springfield, it was also relevant to the atmosphere here in Iowa over the last few months. The hype, the influx of press, and the rallying behind a candidate for no apparent reason, that's been all around us the last 5 months. And they got in some really good digs at some candidates, especially Kucinich and Fred Thompson

[Ever since the caucus ended last Thursday, they have stopped running political ads on TV. At one point, every commercial break was a political ad, one after another, on virtually every channel. Obama talking to the kids, Clinton being all motherly, Thompson on Law & Order (DA-DUM), Romney attacking Huckabee, Huckabee praising Jesus, and Ron Paul and Denis Kucinich being kind of invisible, it was amazing how many there were. It's kind of weird to be back to Viagra and Oxi-Clean ads.]

Gladiators, are you Ready?
I was really excited about the return of American Gladiators last night. When I was in elementary school, I used to watch it every Saturday, then go to a friends house, where we would set up our own challenges, throwing tennis balls at each other and giving bloody lips. It was the coolest show on tv. I never really realized how cheesy it was until I watched a few old episodes on classic-sports tv.

It seemed like the new show was going to be as cheesy as the original - dumb gladiator names, too much spandex, even Hulk Hogan as a host. But in the end, it disappointed.

The problem, as with most modern remakes of old classics, is that they took themselves too seriously. They took a cult classic that originally aired on Saturday afternoons, and tried to class-it-up for prime time. Too much production, not enough cheese. People were getting injured (one girl looked like her knee broke in half during the show) because the gladiators were overly intense. Too many lights. Too much stupid water.

Maybe the show was really as cheesy as the original, and my tastes have just matured. That's probably closer to the truth. But in my head, I'm still blaming tv for this one.

Thanks for ruining my childhood memories, NBC.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 2]

Now that was quite the experience. The caucus was really interesting. And really chaotic. By now, I'm sure you all know that Obama won the Democratic caucus. People were really excited about him; being in a college town helps, I'm sure, but that certainly isn't true for the whole state (white and rural much?).

Right from the start, we knew it would be pretty hectic. As we entered the building where our caucus was, as well as 4 or 5 other caucuses, it was packed with people, including candidate representatives handing out stickers and doing a little politicking. As we forced our way towards our room, there was a line of people four across. It went around a couple corners before disappearing into the main room. We got there plenty early, so were able to make it in the room with time to spare.

Around 6:50, they announced that they wanted to close the doors around 7, but they weren't sure if they would be able to get everyone registered and in the doors by then, so they were going to delay the start until they were ready.

Apparently, turnout was huge this year, somewhere around 12% of voters; four years ago, turnout was 6%. Four years ago, there were about 110,000 Iowans at the Democrat caucuses; this year, there were about 225,000. They were expecting 300 people to attend our caucus; about 550 people were there. I would say, the organizers were a bit unprepared and overwhelmed by the number of people. From watching the news, a lot of Independents, and even some Republicans, came to the Democrat caucuses, creating all this chaos.

Not too long after 7, the doors were closed, and the caucus started. Before we started picking candidates, we had a bunch of local 'party business' to take care of. It would have gone much smoother if the precinct presidents had read up on Robert's Rules of Order. The voting part didn't really go much smoother.

The room we were in had about 250 seats, with barely enough room between them for aisles. Add another 250-300 people standing around the room, and it was packed. Fire capacity packed.

The way the caucus works is pretty basic: go stand in the 'corner' of your candidate, then count. As most rooms only have 4 corners, and there were at least 8 choices (7 candidates plus Undecided), trouble was brewing. They wanted to separate the biggest groups (they predicted, quite accurately, that these would be Obama, Clinton, and Edwards - using polling data makes predicting the future much easier. Tell that to Trelawney), but ended up putting them all in the same half of the room. These people should be running for Congress with these problem solving skills.

Finally, they unleashed us. I was leaning towards Obama, but went to the undecided corner - I just wanted to experience the moving around the room, the being approached by different candidate reps, and civics in process. I thought Kimberly was going to go with Hillary - she'd been talking about her the last few weeks - but she went straight to the Obama camp (I'll let her explain her reasoning, if she wants), along with about half the people in the room.

When they started counting people, I was on the far side of the room from Kimberly and the Obama camp. Every other group in the room was done counting before the Obama group - it ended up with just under half the people in the room. Pretty much every other group, except the other top two, were deemed not viable (you need 15% of the vote to be considered viable, which in our caucus was around 80 people, which apparently is abnormally high. Hillary wasn't even viable in Grinnell, which is home to a small Liberal Arts college.] Then, some horse trading of votes began, which I didn't really understand, and didn't really seem to go anywhere (this summary of some of the Des Moines area caucuses has a better description of the horse trading of votes).

I was expecting more people to come up to me to try to convince me to go to their group. But whenever someone talked to me, and I voiced a concern about their candidate, they were just like, 'whatever' and walked away. Aren't they supposed to try to convince me and assuage my concerns? I was slightly annoyed.

I eventually worked my way back over the the Obama camp, where I was counted with the rest - in the end, more than half the caucus was on the Obama side. Clinton and Edwards pretty much split the other half.

Kimberly and I went out for a celebratory ice cream (actually, frozen custard). I was pretty invigorated by the whole thing, despite the lack of preparation by the organizers. I think Kimberly was annoyed by the process, which is understandable: it was disorganized, chaotic, suppresses participation, and voids all secrecy in the voting process. But other than that, there's really nothing to not like.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 1]

In just over an hour, Kimberly and I will be attending our very first Iowa Caucus where we will get to decide who you eventually vote for. Other than the one time I voted in Seattle, this is the first time my vote will actually count for something; growing up in always-Democrat-Massachusetts somewhat minimizes the worth of your vote.

This is the biggest thing going in Iowa, except for the State Fair. It's basically been the lead story on the news every single night since we moved here. If we had been more motivated, we could have met almost all of the candidates - Obama, Clinton, Richardson, Romney, and a handful of the others were in town just over the last few days.

I always thought it was kind of weird that Iowa was the first chooser-of-the-President places. It's kind of a small state, with a pretty small population. It's also really, really white. And rural. The 'First-in-the-Nation' status of Iowa is why farm subsidies will never go away and why inefficient corn-based ethanol is being forced down our throats.

On top of that, the caucus-concept is a pretty strange thing. I could try to explain it, but this interactive piece from the Boston Globe does a much better job than I ever could. Basically, we'll be going to a big room (a lot of the caucuses are held in people's houses, especially in really rural towns), standing in a corner, and talking about the candidates. There's no absentee balloting and all the voting is public (both remnants from the days of Town Meetings and the like). Add to that the fact that it could last for 2-3 hours, and the caucus is even weirder. But I hear they usually serve punch and dessert, so that's nice.

But having lived here for 5 months now, I realize that the Iowa Caucus is more important than I originally thought. Iowans take this stuff seriously Really seriously. They view the caucus as their opportunity to vet every candidate for the benefit of the rest of the country. They ask every question, push every button, and turn over every rock. And the state is pretty evenly balanced Republican-Democrat (it's a Purple State), so both sides get the same thorough review.

I still have no idea who I'm voting for. I don't think Kimberly does either. I might just use totally arbitrary criteria: we met Chris Dodd, so he's got a point; Obama sent us a Christmas card, so he gets a point; someone wrote a hip-hop song for Kucinich, so he's got that. Maybe I'll just pick whichever candidate has the best snacks at their table. Or whoever has the most people at the start (aka popularity). Totally arbitrary seems about right: I'm pretty sure that's how the rest of the country chooses, so why not.

I'll check in later on with a summary wrap up. And since the process is all public anyways, maybe I'll let you know who we voted for.

Happy New Year!

We had a pretty mellow celebration here in Iowa. Barack Obama invited us to his New Year's Eve party, but we decided to lay low and party with Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest instead (this is not a joke). We drove 17 hours on Saturday to come home, as I had some housekeeping I needed to take care of here on Monday.

[4:15 pm edit: Way back when, I complained about the Central Time Zone and how annoying it is. Well, last night, they played New Year's Rockin' Eve live. No tape delay. Do you know what that means. People here in the midwest celebrate the New Year at 11 pm. Why? I don't know. people here are weird. For some reason they live life like they live in the Eastern Time Zone, with most people starting work at 7 am. There's a lot of things I don't understand about this place; Central Time may be the hardest for me to understand.]

We also we wanted to be back in time for the caucuses on Thursday, and judging from the weather report I saw/heard for the Northeast, I think we made a good choice in leaving a little early. Incidentally, I still don't know who I will be caucusing for - if you feel strongly for any candidate, please make your case in the comments - but I'm not voting for Tom Tancreado, no matter how good your argument. I can go either way, in terms of party, I mean.

I usually don't make Resolutions, because I usually don't keep Resolutions. But this year, I've made a few. Most of them will remain in my head, but one of them is to try to be more productive in my writing. Hopefully, that means more posting on this here blog; hopefully, it means interesting posts on this here blog. We connected with some old friends while in Boston and spread the word of the blog; in addition to the legions of fans already visiting, I want to keep people happy.

Kimberly and I are also working on something else for the internets which is a little more interactive and collaborative - we're keeping it private for now, but hopefully it will go public in the future.

My first post of the year will be right below this. I'm sure Kimberly will check in soon to complain about the weather - it isn't supposed to get over 10 degrees today, so I have to agree with her for right now.

Please feel free to comment if the inspiration strikes. We hope to see you soon.

2007 The Year in Pictures

Last year was pretty exciting for Kimberly and I. We drove all over the country, including a move from Portland to Iowa. We spent two months in Italy eating and drinking everything in sight. And we got a niece, 1900 (who, coincidently, kind of looks like a pumpkin right now, because of her red hair and chubby cheeks).

1900 with her grandmother Nonnina

As part of a project I was working on in December, I went through pretty much every picture we took last year (and pretty much every picture I've taken since I was 6). Since I already did most of the work, I uploaded some of the ones I thought were the best of the bunch to Flickr.

Most of them are from our trip to Italy.

Some you may have seen before.

Some are a peek into future posts.

Some are technical.

Some are dramatic.


There's a bunch more on the Flickr page: my preferred viewing method is the slide show.

Hope you enjoy.