Five male robins were rummaging around in the dead leaves under the front porch and shrub this morning. It looked like they were looking for food. The leaves were flying left and right, and one of them made an angry open-mouthed gesture when another got too close. One guy made a brief dash toward the window where I was sitting and thought better of it. This does not look good, folks. It’s winter. What the hell are the robins doing?

My alma mater got a little cute the other day, sending out a sample admissions essay that they thought would help calm applicants down a bit as the January 2 deadline approached. While most people seemed to think it was just fine, others thought it went over the line. You decide. I think it was classic U of C.

When a big corporation does something right, we should acknowledge it, right? Way back at the beginning of 2009 my trusty Canon A95 started acting funny. Eventually the funniness turned into a permanent inability to take a picture—the image had a magenta cast and bunch of horizontal lines all over it. I kept fiddling with it, hoping it would “fix itself” (yes, I do believe in magic), but also decided to buy a newer model. I ended up with the SX10 IS, which I really like. In late summer I decided to sell the A95′s wide angle lens on eBay, but while I was researching what such things might go for and the A95 in general, I learned about a problem some A95s had with their CCD (the imager): some units supplied by Sony had an issue with the connector, which Canon eventually concluded was not caused by user mishandling, and the company was replacing them for free whether or not the camera was still covered by the warranty (I bought the thing back in 2005). Long story short: talked to a Canon rep, got a free FedEx label, sent the little guy to Illinois, and got a working A95 back two days later. So now I have a nice second camera I can carry around and not worry about anything. (My recent wandering-around-town pics were taken with the A95.) Kudos to Canon. Customer for life here.

Oh, heck: one more testimonial. The Roland Micro Cube is really nifty. I use it with a Yamaha electric violin. You can plug in your guitar if you want. Either way, you can mess around with straight amplification or an array of classic amp decks (JC Clean, Black Panel, Brit Combo, etc.). It’s a gas. Not a lot of power, but enough—it’s really a practice amp. But get this: it runs on batteries, and for a long time (I bought it over a year ago and still haven’t swapped out the rechargeables I put in it). If you need more power, get the bigger model. But this little thing is great just as is.

Okay, that’s enough. Goodbye, 2009.

Addendum 2010.01.20: Turns out the feisty robins are from up north; “our” robins have headed south.

Armenia

Back in August we heard about the incipient rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey that was to culminate in an imminent restoration of diplomatic relations. On October 10, after a last-minute dispute over wording was resolved with input (shall we say) from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the two countries signed a historic agreement to do just that, reopening borders that Turkey sealed in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabagh. Although some elements in the Armenian diaspora expressed displeasure at the terms of the agreement, other major players fell in line behind it, as the New York Times reports:

Despite noisy street protests, some influential expatriate groups in the United States—including the Western and Eastern Dioceses of the Armenian Church, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Knights of Vartan and the Armenian Assembly of America—announced they would back the agreement, in a joint statement that was released Oct. 1.

While I’m sympathetic to those who are unhappy, I think the opinions of Armenians in Armenia trump the feelings of those abroad, and I doubt the pressure Armenia was subjected to caused it to perform a suicidal, or even self-destructive, act. But time, as it always does, will tell.

Bees

The mysterious and devastating decline in honeybee populations in this country (and abroad) was noted here back in May 2007. The evidence is mounting that pesticides are the primary culprit. Now there’s a shocker.

Bikes

Bad news from Paris: their bike-sharing system has run into a nasty patch of human nature in the form of stolen and vandalized equipment.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

I was downtown last night and saw a half-empty SmartBike rack—the bikes that were there seemed fine, and the fact that many were missing I took as a good sign. Whether DC will eventually share the French experience remains to be seen.

Facebook

Still tired of it.

Google

I revisited my street via Google Street View and, lo and behold, I am no longer there. The building under construction on the corner is much further along in the new views—in fact, I can pretty accurately date the shots from the state of the site. So it looks like the Googlemonster is a restless beast, continually revisiting everything it encounters in addition to going new places all the time. Just like the way it crawls the web, come to think of it.

Kindle

Too many people keep borrowing it. That’s not unexpected, since it belongs to my employer, and the borrowing has to do with the stated reason for buying it: to see if we should start publishing on that platform. The upshot (for me) is that it’s a great way to read stuff that flows, where you just flow along with it. It’s not so hot for text that is technical, encyclopedic, laden with graphics or tables, or choppy—i.e., built for browsing (like a newspaper or website), not for reading straight through (like a novel). Also not great for marking up and making notes, in my opinion. It’s still pleasant to read with it, but I suspect Kindle will be seeing serious competition in the years ahead, if it isn’t already, especially from devices with touchscreens and color.

Obama

A year ago at this time we were wondering who the next president of the United States would be. Although he’s only been president since January 20, this is as good a time as any to take stock of Barack Obama. On the plus side, he made a pretty decent Supreme Court nomination and got her confirmed; he initiated bilateral talks with Iran and has ratcheted down the rhetoric; he has scrapped the antiballistic system in Eastern Europe, leading to improved relations with Russia (and maybe leverage in our dealings with Iran); and he has done some heavy lifting in pursuit of true healthcare reform, which will likely pass in some form during this current session of Congress. On the negative side, he has done little to extract the US from Iraq, and even less to shut down Guantánamo; he has continued some of the previous administration’s abuse of executive privilege and government secrecy; and he has made only a half-hearted show of exposing and dealing with White House and Justice Department culpability in justifying and providing cover for torture by the CIA and the military. Still to be scored is his approach to Afghanistan—he is currently deliberating, and the hope arises he will ditch the simpleminded bellicosity displayed in his campaign and find a saner solution to that mess.

Addendum 2009.11.02: I knew I would forget something: a small additional plus for Obama, who “took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.” What makes it small is this: “Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses.” And this: “Mr. Obama has said that he does not intend to reduce military spending while the nation is engaged in two wars.” We are no closer to discarding the notion that the US must be capable of fighting multiple strategic (i.e., nondefensive) wars simultaneously.

Addendum 2009.11.03: A significantly bigger, unvarnished plus: “Without fanfare, President Barack Obama has okayed a large cash infusion to help clean up the Great Lakes, quietly signing a bill that was years in the making and marks a rare bipartisan milestone.”

I saw a teaser today at the New York Times saying that David Brooks is “satisfied” so far with Obama and that Gail Collins is “worried” (didn’t bother to read the article). I’m a bit of both, which says a lot about both Obama and myself; but it’s the possibility of agreeing with the self-satisfied, strange-thinking Brooks that really has me worried.

A lot of people are having fun making their own pseudo-Shepard Fairey posters at Paste Magazine. I hope Barack likes mine.

I’m looking forward to seeing how crazy it gets down on the Mall on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll get a nice photo of me next to Obama (i.e., a Jumbotron Obama). Last week I saw a truck hauling about twenty pedicabs into town, and WABA is sponsoring bike valet parking at two locations. Other than that, I have no idea how people are going to get around. We may end up walking to the Mall from Tenleytown (and back) if Metro is swamped.

Then again, maybe temperatures in the low thirties Fahrenheit will keep the crowds down—maybe only a couple million. We shall see.

And so, to kill some time between now and Tuesday, and to get a post in for the month of October, I’ll cobble together a personal, far from comprehensive, somewhat belated roundup of Russian news.

In late July one of my brothers gave me a T-shirt, for no reason other than the fact it had Russian writing on it and he figured I might like it. I do like it, but as luck would have it, I couldn’t wear it for a while.

It says, “Kiss me, I’m Russian!” (In the States, anyway, you come across such stuff all the time—“Kiss me, I’m Italian,” “Kiss me, I’m Lithuanian,” etc., etc.) Just the thing to wear during my bicycle commute, since my other T-shirts are getting ratty. Unfortunately, in August the Russians invaded Georgia, and my commute takes me past the Russian embassy, where the Georgians picketed for several weeks: “Russian tanks … out of Georgia” was the chant I heard the most as I pedaled by. I resisted the urge to congratulate them on having a president who is just about as reckless as ours. Speaking of whom, how could a person not laugh when George W. Bush, with no trace of irony (of course), criticized Russia’s “bullying and intimidation.” He said “Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.”

The Russia bashing started in earnest, as prescribed by our fetid foreign policy conventional wisdom—even Barack Obama felt the need to join in, unfortunately. One could find scattered attempts in the US press to put the conflict in context, but the tenor of the coverage was Cold War redux. Here are a few pieces I found evenhanded or sympathetic (gasp!) to the Russian point of view:

• Mikhail Gorbachev: Russia Never Wanted a War
• Fred Kaplan on the “feckless response” of the US to the Russian invasion of Georgia
• Glenn Greenwald on being smeared for not toeing the line on the Russia–Georgia conflict
• The Nation: The Cold War That Wasn’t

Earlier in the month, a giant of Russian letters passed away. I would be remiss if I didn’t note, however briefly, the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

As I was coming of age in the 1970s and became infatuated with Russian literature and, soon after, the Russian language, the figure of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sure to appeal to an American teenager, especially during a time of protest against the Vietnam War, racial inequality, and a tight-ass culture. Here was a guy who was butting heads with the Soviet state. Brezhnev was sort of like their Nixon. The reasoning was pretty clear, if juvenile. A trace of my Solzhenitsyn craze can be found in the St. Joseph High School yearbook for 1972: at the back, a donation in the name of Oleg Kostoglotov, the main character in Cancer Ward. (I leave it to the devoted reader to say whether the 54-year-old is any less pretentious than the 18-year-old.)

After the Soviet Union dissolved, Aleksandr Isayevich turned his withering gaze on the West, with its liberal mores and diverse ways of living. It became clear that Solzhenitsyn was in fact a Russian nationalist and theocrat of the Dostoevsky mold—and a monarchist to boot. Whatever relevance he had to Russian public life seemed to fade with each passing year, even after he moved back home, eventually taking up residence in a dacha outside Moscow (between the dachas once occupied by Soviet leaders Mikhail Suslov and Konstantin Chernenko).

Whether or not he ever regains the stature he enjoyed for several decades, he had a big impact on me. And I often think of his breakthrough work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—not the descriptions of the grim conditions of the labor camp, or the political discussions among the zeks. It’s the fact that Ivan Denisovich wakes up feverish and achy but decides to work rather than spend the day in bed in the infirmary. And that night he concludes he made the right decision—he feels better, he ate better (he wouldn’t have gotten his full ration in the infirmary), and he accomplished something. It felt good to work, even on behalf of the Gulag and the Soviet state. The opening page and the closing page—for whatever reason, they stuck.

Time to lighten up a bit. Only recently I discovered you can select a “country content preference” in YouTube, and naturally I selected Russia. Almost immediately I found a video that played off the famous “Where the Hell is Matt?” video, only in this case Matvei does his “dance” in all the stations of the Moscow Metro.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was glad to have the opportunity to “revisit” the three or four I saw in person, and to get acquainted with the rest. The Russian guy starts off doing the exact same goofy dance that Matt does, but in what I would say is typical Russian fashion, he varies it occasionally—out of boredom, or to stave off anticipated boredom in the viewer, or both. In some ways it’s a more artistic product, but it is long; and, as different as the Metro stations are, they aren’t as varied as the locales in Matt’s video. But I like it, and tip my hat to him.

Translation of the introduction:

It took 27 hours to film this video. It took 7 hours to edit it. We visited all the stations marked on the map of the Moscow Metro. At each one, the same dance was performed.* About 300 people witnessed the dance in person.

At the end:

Thank you, Homepage.ru, for the jersey and the fares.

In the YouTube “more info” area for this video, it says further:

Для полных идиотов, без обоих полушарий головного мозга – это видео – стеб над оригинальным роликом танцующего Мэтта. Если вы этого не поняли и пишите, про какой-то плагиат – ВЫ ИДИОТ. [For complete idiots, lacking both hemispheres of the brain: this video is a send-up of the original film of the dancing Matt. If you don't get it and write that this is some sort of plagiarism—YOU'RE AN IDIOT.]

Among many nice touches: at the Lubyanka station, he dances in front of the police booth.

And now that I’ve discovered Homepage.ru, I’ve learned that they have discovered Halloween.

Addendum 2008.11.08: The New York Times has published an excellent piece, “Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question,” based on accounts by international monitors—members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (OSCE is a multilateral organization with 56 member states that has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s, according to the Times.) See also this piece about the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev (“perhaps the world’s most famous Ossetian”) and the heat he took for defending Russia at the time.
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*Not quite true, as noted above.

The city of Washington, DC, finally launched its long-heralded bike-sharing program. It proved to be a smash hit, and plans are afoot to expand it. Within days, an attempt was made to steal one of the bikes from its very public parking place. You didn’t expect that, did you? The bike was fatally damaged, but unstolen. So there, you bad person!

From sunny Racine, Wisconsin, our favorite resort town on the slate-gray shores of Lake Michigan, comes news of a new outlet for the competitive urges of devotés (and devotées—let’s not be sexist) of the derailleur: the Tour de Racine. This is long overdue. Racine is, after all, a French name. Whether it respectfully evokes the renowned writer of that name, or is an arch reference to the river that runs through it (viz., the Root River), or both, I do not know for sure. Perhaps the devoted reader does.* Who won, you ask? Some guy from Winnipeg. Winnipeg! The one in Manitoba, presumably. Did he travel all that way just for the Tour? (Tour? Actually, a dizzying number of laps around a 0.78-mile stretch of downtown Racine.) Or did he just happen to be in town? Do I care enough to research it? No.

Speaking of Canada, good news from Toronto: the bicycle thief is caught. Not just any bicycle thief (like the sad sacks in De Sica’s movie). No, this guy stole around 2,800 bikes. He was a Bicycle Thief. And not just. This guy, Igor Krenk, “was something of an informal social worker, … giving work to street people and outpatients from a nearby mental health institution. Of course, the police say some of that work involved stealing bicycles.” The funny thing is, for a long time Torontoans strongly suspected what was going on—some of the victims of bike thievery would actually buy their bikes back from him. (Did I mention he ran a bike shop?) The cops needed to catch him red-handed, apparently, so they set up a sting. And lookee here: he’s Slovenian! What an intrepid race! What an impressive bike-stealing record! Here’s a more personal take on the whole biking vibe up in Toronto, and I provide this link only to show what a handsome Slovenian dude Igor Krenk is when he’s cleaned up a little.

On a personal note, I finally did what was necessary to bring my Trek 750 out of mothballs (or, more precisely, the road dust and cobwebs of garage level three at my location d’emploi): new cassette, new crankset, new chain, new rear wheel, new brake pads, and, in an unexpected development, a new shifter cable. It’s good to be back on the good old Trek, and it always feels good to have done the work yourself. As usual, I picked up a new tool or two along the way. And I’ve become a chain fanatic, or chain evangelist, or whatever. Chain obsessed. That new chain-wear tool will see a lot of use. Sick of buying drivetrain components.

I read that some employers are taking baby steps toward incentives for bicycle commuters. That’s all—not much to this yet. I know I ain’t getting anything from anyone for biking to work.

Finally, and sadly, a bicyclist was killed this summer in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington. A trash truck traveling westbound on R Street turned right onto 20th and nailed a young woman who was biking to work at the Middle East Institute. The DC police have yet to release a final report. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association placed a ghost bike at the site of the accident and is staying on top of it. She may have made a fatal mistake, or it may have been the driver, or both. But it goes without saying we need to make the streets safer for bikes.
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*Wikipedia says the latter (sans the “arch” part), but begs the question: What was the Root River named after? Is that what “chippecotton” means? Or “kipikawi”? Or “ot-chee-beek”? Or was there some white man named Root who named it? More questions than answers, as usual. [back]

You will recall how Martin Strel last year added the Amazon to the list of long rivers whose entire length he has swam.

Now we hear that Jure Robič has won the Race Across America for an unprecedented fourth time (in the solo category).

In the words of the race sponsors:

[T]he Race Across America (RAAM) [is] the world’s premiere ultra-endurance cycling event. This 3,000 mile bicycle race started from Oceanside [California] and stretches through 15 states, across the Rockies, through the heartland of America and the Appalachians, and finishes in Annapolis, Maryland. RAAM pits competitors against each other, the ever challenging and changing American landscape, and themselves.

The major difference between RAAM and other bicycle races like Le Tour de France is that RAAM is a continuous, one-stage event, meaning that the clock starts on the west coast and doesn’t stop until the racers reach the east coast. Simply put: RAAM is the toughest bicycle race on earth.

Čestitam, Jure!

Hypermiling can even make fuel-sipping gas-electric hybrid cars more efficient. Chuck Thomas, 50, a computer programmer from Lewisville, Texas, said he has been getting 71 mpg from his Honda Insight, a hybrid whose EPA rating is 58 mpg, in the two years since he has been hypermiling.

Among Thomas’ techniques is “pulse and glide” in which he accelerates and then coasts with the engine off until around 15 mph when he kicks the engine back on and accelerates again. “It’s the automotive equivalent of skateboarding,” he said.

You don’t want to get stuck behind this guy.

On a happier note, bicycle sharing is finally coming to the nation’s capital. But I have yet to see the pedicab.

From marketwatch.com:

Ford Motor Co. (F) will unveil [...] a hands-free Bluetooth wireless system and in-vehicle operating system developed by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) as an option for its entire Ford brand lineup. The system will integrate some of the features of a personal computer into a car’s cockpit, according to sources familiar with the auto maker’s plans.

The move is Ford’s latest attempt to spruce up its U.S. product portfolio and follows the company’s recent decisions to expand satellite radio offerings and introduce features such as connection jacks for Apple Computer Inc.’s (AAPL) iPod music player. The new system, to be dubbed “Sync,” will allow for hands-free cellphone communication and other wireless information transfers inside the car, including the ability to receive email.

So why am I bummed by this? Why should I care that today’s hyperstimulated, overcaffeinated, maximally distracted drivers have internet access in their cars? That’s their business, right?

It’s simple: I commute by bicycle.

The news report goes on to describe the Sync system and Ford’s rollout plans at some length before ending on a sour note—the note I heard right off the bat, the note that got louder the more I read:

The drive to install more and more electronic features in cars has sparked debate in the auto industry concerning the amount of distraction that drivers encounter in the cockpits of their cars.

Gosh, it’s reassuring to know there’s “debate in the auto industry” about this! The question is, where’s the US Congress? Where’s 60 Minutes? Where’s Ralph Nader when you need him?

A few days ago, I got a mailing from the League of American Cyclists on biking fatalities and what needs to be done to make biking safer. Among the horror stories was “the case of Matt Wilhelm, who was killed by a teenage driver with four previous traffic violations in just 17 months”:

The driver admitted she was downloading ring tones for her phone when she struck him with the driver’s side of the car as he rode to the right of the fog line on the highway shoulder.

You’re starting to get the picture, right? Driving while distracted can be fatal … to the bicyclist (or pedestrian). The driver almost invariably walks away without a scratch, and usually gets off with a slap on the wrist (in this case, six months’ probation and a $1,000 fine).

Could it be an attitude problem? From the same League letter:

“That’s what happens when you ride on the road …”

That’s what a police officer told an Albequerque cyclist who had just witnessed a fellow rider being killed by a driver swerving into their path.

People often complain (and rightfully) about bicyclists behaving recklessly and making a nuissance of themselves. But from what I can tell, most cyclist who are killed or maimed are following the rules of the road. They are simply wiped out by careless, distracted, or impatient motorists. (Or drunk drivers—a mortal hazard to us all, whether we’re on bikes, in cars, or walking.) The January/February issue of Bicycling magazine has a long article by David Darlington about cyclists who were struck by cars—some of them died, some were paralyzed. All were obeying the law.

For instance, did you know it’s legal in all 50 states for a bicyclist to “take the lane”? Do you know what that means? It means a bicyclist isn’t restricted to riding on the edge of the road. If safe cycling requires it, you can take up an entire lane, forcing cars to pass (using another lane, not grabbing the lion’s share of yours to “slip past”). I used to avoid that technique—until I was doored.

Perhaps you’ve never been doored, or even heard the expression. It means having the door of a parked car opened right in front of you while you are pedaling full out. Luckily, because I was on a side street, I escaped with bruised ribs, a bruised hip, a twisted shoulder, and a permanently heightened tension about parked cars.* (Have you ever had a bruised rib? It’s no picnic.) The fact that I was cycling properly was no defense against a guy in a hurry on a drizzly evening with crying kids in the back seat who opened his car door all the way with great force without looking. In this case, the door whacked me and sent me flying. Others have had the door present itself suddenly before them, offering the split-second option of somehow diving over the handlebars into the driver’s lap, or hitting the door edgewise, or glancing off it and ending up in a sprawled tangle with the bike in traffic, or God knows what.

Depending on whom you listen to, a cyclist should give a parked car three or four feet of clearance. Did you know this is acceptable (i.e., legal) behavior for a bicyclist? Sometimes this means taking the lane, and believe me, I am no longer shy about doing it. Some drivers seem to understand, and some seem not to. It’s never too late for the latter to learn. I don’t know if some people will ever accept the fact that bicycles are a legitimate mode of transportation, not just a plaything. The dirty looks and honks I sometimes get—for no good reason, believe me—seem to say: Why don’t you move to Europe? (Actually, what they’re probably saying is: Why don’t you go to hell?)

A sidebar to the Bicycling article asks: “Is it getting worse?” And answers: “Apparently, no. But actually yes—and for a surprising reason.” Which is this: while the number of cycling fatalities has remained steady over the last decade, the number of “serious” cyclists has declined, leading to a higher fatality rate. (Are there really fewer serious cyclists now than in 1995? Do commuters count? The data cited leave room for wonder.) “What becomes clear,” the author concludes, “is that, as numbers of cyclists increase, the rate of fatalities decreases.” He cites a recent study:

This inverse relationship is borne out by a 2003 report entitled “Safety in Numbers” by Peter L. Jacobsen, a public-health consultant in Sacramento, California. Studying cities of varying sizes from California to Scandinavia to the United Kingdom to the Netherlands, Jacobsen found that collisions between motor vehicles and people walking or bicycling declined with increases in the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists, partly because motorists in foot- or bike-prone communities are themselves more likely to walk or bicycle occasionally, and thus give greater consideration to others who are doing it.

I had thought the reason might be different: I figured the more drivers see me, even if I inconvenience them a little bit, the safer it gets for cyclists because drivers are more used to seeing cyclists (not because they’re cyclists themselves). Whatever the causation, Jacobsen’s fundamental conclusion is this:

“A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling if more people walk or bicycle.”

So do me a favor and ride your bike in traffic!

Failing that, when you’re in your car remember that you’ve got at least two tons of steel and stuff protecting you. Act accordingly. Don’t be like that Albequerque cop. In addition to all their other advantages over cars, the fact remains: bikes were here first. Cars should have respect for their elders.

Thank you, and see you on the streets!

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*Somehow the laptop slung over my shoulder escaped harm, even though I ended up on my back. But the hard drive in my mp3 player in the saddlebag was toast after the crash. [back]

Don’t believe everything you think

A block or so later, this:

MILITANT AGNOSTIC
I don’t know & you don’t either

Skeptic to the right of me, skeptic to the left of me …

Discuss quietly within yourself.