February 18, 2007
Washington DC photos
Washington Monument
Vietnam wall
A Yankee fan in President Lincoln’s court
Le art c’est moi – A work at the Hirshhorn
Steam on 17th St.
[Tags: washington_dc dc photos travel]
February 18, 2007
Washington Monument
Vietnam wall
A Yankee fan in President Lincoln’s court
Le art c’est moi – A work at the Hirshhorn
Steam on 17th St.
[Tags: washington_dc dc photos travel]
My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…
If you’re going to visit the WWII memorial and the Vietnam memorial, do them in chronological order. The WWII is a big, open space with nothing to hang feelings or memories on. The Vietnam memorial — which, amazingly, I’d never been to before — is heart-breaking. No matter what we thought of that war, we all feel the full stop of those young lives.
The Hirshhorn is a truly enjoyable art museum. I usually conk out aesthetically after 45 minutes, but we did this museum from its opening hirsh to its final horn.
Because I am a mature individual, I refrained from yelling profanities at the White House.
I’ve never liked its palatial air.
We had a delicious Indian dinner at Nivana at 1810 K Street, NW. It’s completely vegetarian, and much of it is vegan. The owners are very friendly and will tell you anything you want to know about Jainism.
Disturbing fact: Some of the wines they serve are marked vegan because, the owners say, most wines are “filtered through fish.”
“Only Human” is a Spanish movie about a Jew who brings home a Palestinian fiance. We went because the Washington Post claimed it was laugh-out-loud funny. Eh. It had a couple of chuckles, but otherwise was just predictably silly. “My Big, Neurotic Jewish-Palestinian Engagement.”
[Tags: washington_dc dc vegetarian travel]
October 1, 2006
After a very long trip, I arrived at the MarktPlein conference in Maastricht last night at 6pm. So, I have a jet-lagged impression of the place based on a fifteen minute schlepp from the train station to the conference hall. The brief version: Twisty old streets. Broad river. Bikes, not cars. Good beer. Dutch people everywhere. Conclusion: I’m ready to move here.
The conference is on “Markets are conversations” and all around the hall they’ve stuck sheets, each with a different thesis from Cluetrain.com. Maybe it’s just the jetlag, but my first impulse is to scribble wiseguy comments on them. If only I were Rageboy…
September 21, 2006
If an airline offered a High Risk Flight on a plane where they just waved everyone through security, I’d consider taking it.
It’s a college town, with three of ’em, including one founded in 1451.
It is becoming the arts center of Scotland, even thought that other city has the big festival.
The architectural styles are highly mixed.
The museums are free because they belong to the people.
The grain silos are closed, but the city is on the upswing.
The Wellington memorial statue in front of the Museum of Modern Art always has a traffic cone on its head.
September 19, 2006
I hitchhiked (hitchhook?) through Glasgow in 1971. Now I’m back and just spent a few hours wandering around down town. I am thus quite the expert.
I do love having these found afternoons when I can walk around in a city I don’t know. I think 80% of what we learn of a place we learn in the first half hour, although a serious part of the next 20% is undoing what we thought we’d learned in the first 80%.
I went to the Cathedral and had my usual dumb reaction. The stacking of the stones that must have seemed as close as human effort gets to miracles strikes me as cold and dark. I have to think my way into cathedrals, and, as a Jew, I lack some (a lot?) of the supporting structure. My appreciation, which is real, is abstract.
Then I wandered around the city center for a couple of hours. I had a veggie burger that was a deepfried patty of corn, peas and batter. I bought some books. (I seem to have been in a 17th-18th century science/philosophy mood these days.) I went into an “Everything for a Pound” store and resisted asking “How much is this?” It rained, it stopped, it rained, it stopped.
Now I’m at the SECC, a conference center, where exhibitors are hot-gluing together booths that are in every way possible the opposite of cathedrals.
Tomorrow I keynote the Scottish Learning Festival — 150 sessions, 800 session attendees and 6,000 people walking through the exhibit hall.I’m on immediately after the minister of education. I’m going to talk about the changes in authority and knowledge in this crazy, mixed-up ol’ world. And, given how much trouble I’m having understanding the Scots, I’m going to try to speak slowly on the principle of Symmetrical Unintelligibility of Accents.
September 12, 2006
Ethanz is on the road and writing vividly. Not to mention the cool photo. [Tags: ethan_zuckerman travel]
July 18, 2006
My wife and I went to Susur for our anniversary meal after it was recommended by our friends and the hotel concierge. Everyone, including the waiter there when he was greeting us, pointed out that the chef has been on Iron Chef, a show where you compete by making five courses out of a specified set of ingredients such as a yam, an octopus sucker, and the first flatulence of a new-born lamb. Apparently, being on Iron Chef is taken very seriously.
Everyone at Susur gets the tasting menu, which means you get whatever the irony chef cares to give you. We went for the five-course vegetarian meal. When the waiter kindly asked if we had any dietary restrictions, I unleashed the dogs of war: No fish, no mushrooms, nothing sweet, and I don’t much like vegetables. Nevertheless, over the course of 2.5 hours, Chef Susur amazed. Each course, starting with the entree and then working down in size until you get to dessert, was some startling combination of ingredients, carefully narrated by the server in a French accent so thick that when he asked if we wanted more bread we thought he was asking if we wanted more wine. Some of the courses had multiple pieces, so the waiter would take a good seven minutes describing the component parts: “The paler one is a comfit of Brazilian pear puree, run twice through the small fingers of a boy who sings alto, topped by a black olive puree marinated in the juice of two pomegranite seeds blessed by the Dalai Lama, ringed by a wreath of mint leaves plucked from the side of an imaginary mountain.” Absolutely delicious, though, and well worth the $60, if you’re in a splurgey mood.
This morning we went to Ontario Place to walk around, but found out when we got there that it’s $34 each to ambulate. So, we hiked along the lake for free, and then walked up the connecting series of underground malls that have emptied the streets of people. It’s a Big Dig for shoppers, albeit without any fatal ceiling collapses that we know of.
Now I’m in the airport, downloading gazilliondreds of emails, punishment for having a good time with my wife. That’ll teach me. [Tags: toronto travel restaurant susur canada]
July 16, 2006
My wife and I are in Toronto for a couple of days as a belated anniversary present to ourselves. My wife hasn’t been back since we finished U of T in 1979; business has brought me back every few years or so. I love Toronto.
We just talk a walking tour of places we lived during our seven years here, although we skipped the one at Dupont and Avenue Road ( yes, it’s called Avenue Road). We think we got close to locating the three houses we lived in — two were coops with three other people and one was just her and me — in the Annex (Manning St., Follis, Barton). But we’re not quite sure. And it doesn’t actually matter much to either of us. There’s nothing magical about the particular row houses we were in. although being in the same neighborhood does bring back some remembrance. Mainly it’s been an opportunity to refresh memories before they vanish, like playing a song every few years to make sure you can still do it. “What was the name of the law student who lived with us for a semester or two?” “The one who cooked eggplant and bleu cheese casseroles?” His name is gone but the lease on his stinky casseroles has now been renewed.
The neighborhood has changed. What had been the first homes for Mediterranean immigrants, replacing Eastern Europeans who had moved up and out, now have different occupants. The little Greek and Italian cafes and gift shops on Bloor have been replaced with Korean stores. Because it remains a port for the newly landed, the language is new but the streets are still spotted with clumps of extravagant flowers, and sunny with hope.
Tonight we’re having dinner with an old house mate. Tomorrow we’re going to wander down to the Philosophy Department where we met in a remedial epistemology class. We’ll do some more tourist-y things. Tuesday morning we come home. (The hotel’s Net connection is on the fritz, so expect intermittent bloggery.)
Did I mention that I love Toronto?
June 5, 2006
(Disclosure: I am just not a Las Vegas sort of person.)
I’m at a resort at Las Vegas Lake for the day to give a talk at a company’s annual user meeting. LV Lake, about half an hour from LV, is a built around a long, skinny lake. The place seems to be patterned on Florence, complete with a Ponte Vecchio spanning the lake. Nothing that 400 years and a Renaissance wouldn’t make interesting.
At every intersection in the “village” there are small water fountains, about half the size of a kid’s wading pool, with little spritzes of water shooting up from them. At least they architects didn’t go into full Trevi Emulation Mode when designing them. The amazing thing to me is that into every one of these pools visitors have thrown some coins. So, we can now add to the table of equivalences: Gambling in a Las Vegas casino = Walking through a Las Vegas casino with a hole in your pocket = Leaving a tip for a mobster = Losing your wallet = Throwing money into a Las Vegas fountain.
Actually, I’m assuming the coins in these fountains came from tourists. Maybe they’re seed coins placed there by the casinos. But if they’re real, they’re a form of meta-gambling: Toss money into the water so that hyou’ll have better luck tossing money into slot machines. In fact, as the world turns more meta, here’s a meta-gambling ploy I’m surprised the casinos haven’t hit on yet:
The only place I could get breakfast agt 6am this morning was in a casino. On the way out, I tried to find a slot machine into which I could put a quarter, because the reptilian portion of my brain responded to the twinkling lights. But the machines only take bills or vouchers. And since they pay out only in a voucher you redeem for money — bring back the analog cash! — they let you bet uneven increments. Anyway, let’s say you buy a $100 voucher. Why not have some slot machines next to the cashier that don’t pay out in money but instead increase your odds at the other machines? Meta-gambling!
(Someone please inform Captain Copyright and his good friend Reichsmarschall Patent that I own this idea. Thank you.)
[Tags: whines las_vegas gambling casinos florence]