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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| For my final full day in France, I took a small-group tour to the wine region of the Côtes du Rhône. In contrast with the previous day's trips, I wasn't very familiar with the Côtes du Rhône vintages. This, of course, is why I went. I find that, when traveling, some mixture of the familiar and the new is ideal, though I expect the proportions would differ for everyone. While I don't think I'd ever had a wine from this region before, some of the grapes they're based on are fairly popular to grow in the US. The tour group itself was pretty interesting. Some of us ugly Americans, a couple from Quebec, and three people from Australia, who, while initially distrustful of my Americanity, quickly warmed up when I assured them (out of earshot of the tour guide) that I very much enjoy Australian Shiraz. While the guide insisted that Syrah, one of the grapes in Côtes du Rhône, is not the same thing as Shiraz, it totally is; it's just grown on very nearly the exact opposite side of the world. The tour guide himself, who looked a bit like Kiefer Sutherland, was otherwise very knowledgeable, and spoke good enough English that all of us varied Anglophones mostly understood him. The problem comes in when some unknown place name, or grape name, pops up in spoken French. Like, if someone comes up to me and says "Bonjour, peux-je vous aider?" I can work out what they're saying. But if I'm at a wine tasting, even if it's mostly in English, it might go something like this: "This wine comes from the pl***du*** region, near B***on and the S**** river valley. If you visit there, be sure to go to D****de*****, a fine restaurant that serves bl*****, v*******de la *******tion, and many very good wines, including Petit ********tre, Vo******** Blanc, and sparkling Dr*******" It's tiring, to be honest. I started asking for spellings. To make things worse, my hearing isn't that great thanks to 50 years of rock concerts (no regrets), and I'm not asking you to repeat yourself because I don't understand French; I'm asking you to repeat yourself because I literally can't hear you over the ambient mumbles. Ah, well, soon I get to complain about the same thing in Dutch (or at least the version of it known as Flemish; I don't know the details there), as I'm leaving for Bruges today. It's a tight schedule: catch a train to Brussels, transfer to a train to Bruges, get to the hotel from there somehow (Uber seems to be wonky in Belgium; apparently, only taxi drivers can do Uber, thus defeating the whole purpose but providing job security), then find a certain statue in a city saturated with statues to meet a beer guide who will take me... well, I don't care, as long as there's Belgian beer. I'll wrap up with another landscape picture, this one of the Rhône Valley.  |
| The weather decided to give me a break, just in time for another wine tour out in the countryside. Yesterday's excursion took me into the nearby wine region of Beaujolais, source of one of my personal traditions. I've talked about it enough in here before, but, in brief: Beaujolais Nouveau is released on the third Thursday of November, just in time to ship it to the US for drinking with Thanksgiving meals, which it accompanies very well. I try to get a bottle every year. This is not, of course, the only wine produced in the region, and their more traditional offerings are very good. But the funny thing I found out on this trip is: the French consider it a trash wine. Which probably explains why the US gets so many bottles in November; they unload their stock on us so they don't have to drink it themselves. Every year when it's released on Beaujolais Nouveau Day,  though, they get together and party to drink the stuff and complain about how bad it is. And probably to laugh at the Americans who they can pass it off onto, but for some reason none of the tour guides I talked to would admit to that.Thing about it, though, is the wine may be crap, but it's cheap crap, and to me, the price of the stuff figures into the taste. So yeah... I like it. Deal with it, France, because I have to deal with beer drinkers claiming to love Bud Light. In other news, today is my last full day in France, but I'll talk more about today's events tomorrow, which is when I'm scheduled to get on a train to Belgium. I'm of the considered opinion that no trip to France is complete without at least one decadent, elegant, crazy expensive formal dinner. So I had mine last night, in the restaurant on the top floor of my hotel. The only thing more boring than hearing about someone go on about their dream last night is hearing them talk about their decadent and crazy expensive French dinner, so I'll spare you most of the details, only to say it was everything I expected and not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be (and that neither snails nor frogs were involved). I accompanied it with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, which is not from this region, but what the hell, I like it and it was on the menu. When I say bottle, I mean bottle. Damn right I polished it off. Today's vacation photo was from an overlook where we stopped on the tour for a glass of wine. You will note that it's not raining, and that the view was incredible.  |
| Dealt with rain all day yesterday. I can't complain too much, though. Had I stayed home, I would have had to endure many days of rain, mostly spun off from Hurricane Helene. We didn't get anywhere close to the worst of it where I live, and being in other parts of the South would have sucked even worse. So I try to keep things in perspective. Still, rain on vacation isn't ideal. I walked around Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) anyway, slipping and tripping on ancient cobblestones and occasionally juggling my umbrella and camera phone to get a shot of something interesting. As I mentioned in my previous entry, the travel agent had lined up a food-tasting tour for me. This involved more walking (in the rain) around Vieux Lyon, trying to keep up with younger, healthier tourists while cramming ourselves into tiny shops. The food and wine were worth it, though. This place has its own traditional cuisine, which mostly involves cured meats and cheese, and, needless to say, both pair really well with the local wine. I'll have more to say about the wine in future entries, but I did want to share this lucky pic I caught on the way to the food tour. I've censored the faces for privacy; what's important are the words on the woman's umbrella. It may not mean much if you're not familiar with French, and, as with anything funny, explaining it negates its impact (though I might comment with the explanation later, if people want). But it made my entire day and almost made up for the relentless downpour.  |
| Another kind of slow day yesterday, partly because of another run on the TGV. This one took me from Dijon south to Lyon. I should note here, as a bit of a warning to other Americans who want to visit France: while many people, especially in the travel and hospitality industry, speak some English, and many signs are multilingual, the vast majority of the train announcements and postings are solely in French. While I have some facility reading the language, it's not as easy for me to follow the spoken language (yet). To be fair, I can barely understand train announcements in English. Ever been on the NYC subway system? The announcements there only add to the confusion. The hotel that the travel agent arranged for me in Lyon is a step up from the others I've been in here. Five-star instead of three or four. For this particular hotel, part of the upscale amenities is a really remarkably well-stocked bar on the top floor. Naturally, it became incredibly important for me to check out the bar. And oh, man, was it worth it. While many of the spirits are also available in the US, they're a bit cheaper here. Even the Scotch, so it's not just because of the EU. The menu featured several interesting-looking cocktails, too, some of which I, of course, had to try. I was the only one sitting at the actual bar, and the bartender did the whole bartender-showing-off thing with the flipping behind his back and squirting drinks from an arm's length away and juggling shakers and all that. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was flirting with me. Or at least angling for a tip, which really isn't done here, from what I've been told. They also have an 18-year Yamazaki (Japanese scotch-style whiskey), which I've had in the US, but only rarely. I restrained myself, though; I'll be here for a few days, and I'll have other opportunities to drink the really expensive stuff. With all that, I haven't yet had much opportunity to explore Lyon, which is a really quite large city compared to all the others (except Paris). Today isn't looking good, either, with rain in the forecast, but I have a food-tasting tour lined up for later. That's for tomorrow's entry, though.  |
| For my final full day in Dijon, I didn't have anything planned out—no wine tours, no mustard discoveries, not even a "let's meet for lunch" (because unlike Paris and, by lucky chance, Tours, I don't know anyone here). So, as the day was fine and sunny and neither hot nor cold, I took a walk. Dijon, like most European cities, is really quite incredibly old (from a US perspective). And, as with other cities, there's only so much one can do in a day. Turns out that Dijon has a self-guided walking tour embedded into it. Literally; there are brass plaques with engraved owls  on the sidewalks, pointing the way.Why an owl? Well, on the side of the cathedral here (also named Notre Dame, because Catholics weren't very original) perches a small stone owl, barely recognizable as such from the accumulated wear of people touching it. Supposedly, touching it (but only with one's left hand) will grant a wish. Apparently, no one has yet wished for "restore the Notre Dame owl to its original carved glory." Or maybe they have, and it's just another silly superstition. Following the trail eventually gets you to the owl, and then it moseys on along through other historic sites. It's like following the quest markers in a video game, which made me want to play a video game, but that can wait until I get home again. I didn't touch the owl. For one thing, it's a silly (if mostly harmless to everything but the owl itself) superstition. For another, even if there were something to it, making a wish is tantamount to acknowledging that there's something missing in my life, and there isn't. For yet another, over half a century of reading and writing stories, and playing fantasy role-playing games, has instilled in me a deep, abiding distrust of wishes. And, for a final thing, some beggars were approaching with their cups out, so I hoofed it out of there, continuing to follow the brass owl arrows. These led me next to a mustard shop, on the same street (Rue de la Chouette, naturally), where I finally got to see the thing Dijon is most famous for and holy condiments, Batman, there's a lot of mustard there. At some point, though, around the Ducal Palace, I lost the trail and never did pick it up again, despite looking and even trying the internet. All I could discover was that it was not, in fact, the end of the trail. Oh, well. Much later, in the evening, I returned to the palace area (Palais des Ducs) and its accompanying semicircular courtyard, Place de la Libération, which is surrounded by cafés, bistrots, restaurants, bars, and brasseries, the differences between which are subtle and very French. (Brasserie also means "brewery," but not all brasseries are actually breweries, much to my disappointment.) Point is, I went back there for dinner because it's pretty, and I sat outside with a beer and a burger as the sun set and the Palais des Ducs lit up, and the shifting, multicolored lights in the Place's fountains illuminated their waters. This sort of thing is one of the reasons I wanted to go to France.  |
| The association of Dijon with mustard is universally-known and inescapable, but I'm not here for the condiment; I'm here for the wine, because Dijon is also part of Burgundy. As I mentioned a few entries back, Burgundy (or Bourgogne) has a connection with wine that's also universally-known and inescapable. Oddly enough, despite it lending its name to a particular shade of red (as detailed in an entry I did a while back, "Burgundy" ), the majority of the wines here are white; mostly Chardonnay. It makes a much better wine here than in the US.In that entry, from way back in February, I said, "Incidentally, these blog entries are inadvertently helping me plan a trip to France." Et voilà, here I am. But back to Beaune, which isn't actually pronounced like bone: it's south of Dijon and the road takes you through a multitude of vineyards and wine-producing villages. There, while others in my tour group grabbed snacks and ran through some historic sites, I dined at a very French restaurant. Well, I say "very French," but they have an English-language menu, so they do cater to tourists. We only had two hours in Beaune, and, ideally, I'd have liked to seen the old stuff as well as enjoyed the food, but I couldn't do both. Faced with a choice, it will always be, in order: beer, wine, distilled spirits, food, history. And this place, naturally, offered wine with the food, which included the famous dish bœuf bourguignon. That dish is, of course, another famous cultural export of Burgundy. The truly amazing thing, though, is this: the meal started with an apéritif, then an entrée with a glass of white Burgundy (recall that in French, entrée is like appetizer), then the bœuf bourguignon with a glass of red Burgundy, and, finally, a cheese plate. I was shocked that it only cost about 80 euros. So, yeah, I wish I'd seen more of old Beaune, but I have my priorities. I hope to make up for it today by seeing some historical crap here in Dijon. And maybe pick up some mustard.  |
| Most of yesterday was taken up by traveling. To get from Tours to Dijon, apparently there's no direct way, or at least not one that gave kickbacks to my travel agent. So it started with me taking an Uber from my hotel to the Tours train station, because now I know better than to roll luggage for that mile. Then the TGV back to Paris, during which, for some reason I absolutely cannot comprehend, my assigned seat was right next to someone else... while there were maybe 2 other people in the entire car. But the real fun was when I got back to Paris and met the chauffeur for the ride from Gare Montparnasse across the Seine to Gare de l'Est, which is the station with the train to Dijon. The chauffeur didn't speak very good English or French, but he spoke excellent Ukrainian. At least I assume he did; I know almost nothing about that language. But he was very good at pointing out the Paris sights along the way, in some version of English with a Ukrainian accent. "There is Tour Eiffel. And this building on left?" He indicated one with scaffolding. "Ukrainian mob has construction contract." We drove a bit further. "There on right is Notre Dame. And over there, building by Ukrainian mob." I wanted to ask him if the mob also did the Notre Dame reconstruction, but I knew better. He pointed out other important Ukrainian construction jobs along the way, too. Now, look. It's entirely possible that "mob" was a bad translation of something else in Ukrainian. Something innocuous like "Fine Upstanding Ukrainian Construction And Renovation Company And Not Mob At All We Promise And Pinky Swear." But I choose to believe that my chauffeur, who was about my age, was an actual member of the actual Ukrainian mob and did the chauffeur thing as a day gig. Just in case, I gave him an enormous gratuity. As Skinny Pete said in The Italian Job, "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother-in-laws, and mother-freaking Ukrainians." After that, the train (the slow kind) to Dijon was a letdown. Hell, the rest of the trip might well be a letdown. Things picked up again, though, once in Mustard City. The hotel, this time, is like 100 meters from the station. It has a lovely little bar. I had dinner elsewhere, but came back for the bar, where I got acquainted, for the first time, with a regional (the east of France) custom: Picon bière. Mostly, they drink Belgians here, because, as I've said numerous times, traditional French beer is ass (also, it's wine country). But apparently, it's not flavorful enough for them (QUOI?!) so they add a shot of a kind of orange bitters called, you guessed it, Picon. And whaddayaknow, it's actually a pretty good combination. Sadly, Picon isn't generally available in the US, so I'll have to enjoy it while I'm here and then smugly brag about it every time I drink a Belgian beer back home.  |
| Mystery solved! (Maybe.) According to the guide yesterday, at least, the city of Tours is named after the Celtic tribe that used to live there. I guess it's kind of like America where we ran off or killed all the natives then named some towns and rivers after them. But it turns out that the city's coat of arms features three black towers. Yes, that's right, the city's heraldry is a pun. That sort of thing isn't unheard of. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head, though, is the Northern England town of Berwick, whose coat of arms features... a bear. This wasn't the only thing I learned yesterday, during my guided tour of some of the wine country east of Tours. Another cave was involved, this one belonging to a winery in Vouvray. Vouvray being some of my favorite wine, this particular tour was the primary reason for my trip, and it did not disappoint. Part of the reason Vouvray tastes like ambrosia of the gods, while other wines made with chenin blanc grapes in other areas of the world taste like piss, is that there's a unique combination of soil, climate, and process (among other factors) in this tiny part of France. What I learned was that part of the terroir is because they force the vines to dig their roots deep, very deep (the guide said something like 10 meters is possible) into the ground, where they delve into limestone. Limestone is a fossil rock. Billions of years ago, tiny sea creatures died and their skeletons built up and got compressed and turned into limestone over the eons. So the flavor of my favorite wine owes its greatness to the death of these long-ago organisms, thus demonstrating once again the circle of life. And also, it seems Tours has a thing for Rene Descartes, the scientist/mathematician/philosopher I'm sure I've mentioned in here hundreds of times. One example is here: "I Drink Therefore I Am" I understand he was born in Tours, or at least somewhere nearby. My hotel was, in fact, right next to a statue of him, inscribed with his most famous quote. |
| My schedule yesterday was pretty much: go on a tour. Now, I've been trying really, really hard not to make a joke about Tours tours. You have no idea how difficult that is for me. It's sitting right there; how can I not pick it up? I've been unable to find a reliable etymology for the city's name, for which, incidentally, the s is silent. Wiki says there's a "popular folk etymology" that it's named after a Roman named Turonus, nephew of Brutus (but not that Brutus). I've long thought that it comes from the French word that translates as "tower" in English, as in La Tour Eiffel. Far as I can tell, though, there aren't any significant towers here. Perhaps there were, once. Hell if I know. The point is, I'm trying really, really hard not to make a pun about it. What I do know is that it's wine country. Pretty much everyone has heard of Bordeaux to the west and Burgundy to the east, as well as Champagne, which is located between Paris and Belgium. I think the Loire valley, or Val de Loire, is not quite as well-known internationally, though it absolutely should be. Getting back to what I originally set out to write, the travel agent had arranged a small group tour to run outside the city. By "small group," I mean there ended up being three of us. Continuing my run of coincidences, the other two were a couple from Fairfax, in northern Virginia. The guide was this small French woman who'd prepared an entire booklet of illustrations, some quite amusing. First stop: Château de Chenonceau. I'd never heard of it before this trip, but apparently it's the second most visited castle in France, after Versailles. The really interesting thing about it is that it straddles a river. Like, the brief version is: someone built a castle on the bank of the river Cher. Later, wanting an easy way to get to the other bank, they built a bridge from the castle to the other side of the river. And still later, a massive three-story structure got built atop the bridge. The day was rainy and nasty, and I didn't get any really good pics of the outside, but you can see the bridge-castle here.  I was starting to gain an understanding of what might have led the French peasants to revolt in the 18th century. Then we went to a cave. Not just any cave, of course, but a wine cave. And yes, of course, a wine tasting was involved, complete with a brief tasting class led by a sommelier who supposedly passed on some of the "secrets" of his profession. I mean, they're not secrets anymore, now that I know them. What are they? I'm not telling. After eating lunch (with wine) just outside the cave, we went on to the next castle: Chambord. Sadly, it had nothing to do with the berry liqueur called Chambord. Or, really, with any booze. It was another example of the excesses of the French nobility, further deepening my understanding of why the guillotine was invented. Still raining (which the sommelier had assured us was a Really Bad Thing for this year's grape harvest, because apparently it hardly ever rains in the Val de Loire in early autumn, and I didn't point out that this was probably my fault because I've been known to end droughts in California just by visiting the place), so again, none of my photos are very good and I'll defer once again to Wikipedia.  So, with all the crappy weather, what pic from this tour can I share? Oh, I know! This dude was hanging out in a stable at Château de Chambord. You might need to enlarge it, but I promise the white streak on the right side belongs to a horse.  |
| Yesterday's adventure took me on the TGV from Paris to Tours. Don't ask me what the letters stand for. You can look it up same as I could, but I don't really want to know. Far as I'm concerned, they stand for Train Go Vwhooosh! Out of curiosity, while on the train, I checked a website that used GPS data to determine one's current speed. Now, obviously, French high-speed rail can only move in km/h, and I can convert just fine in my head, but having spent most of my life moving at mph, I clocked in at 180-190mph. Upon arrival in Tours, I made the questionable decision to walk to my hotel. Google said it was mostly flat, and it didn't lie. What it didn't tell me was that it was also mostly tiled sidewalks. Try rolling two suitcases on tiled sidewalks for 1600 meters. The travel agent had some suggestions for what to do in Tours for the rest of the afternoon, and they were good suggestions, involving historic neighborhoods and buildings. I like that sort of thing well enough, but I have my priorities, so I set out to find beer. What I found was very good beer, and a couple of hours later, I staggered back to the hotel, only to find, upon logging in to WDC, that our very own Annette  was, by cosmic coincidence, also in Tours at that moment.So of course I had to stagger all the way to where she was staying which was, comically, right next to the train station. At least I wasn't dragging luggage, this time. Now, look, I don't just go knocking on random peoples' doors, even if they are regulars here on Writing.com. But I'd spent a week in the L.A. area a while back, being shepherded around by Annette and her husband. So it's not like we didn't know each other. I didn't knock on her door, either; we met in the lobby and went to have drinks. Soft drinks, because even I have my limits. I got back to the hotel just after midnight, which probably wasn't the best idea, either; I had to get up at some ungodly cow-milking hour this morning to go on a planned-and-paid-for tour of some of the catwaters in the area. Catwaters? Wait, no, I mean chateaux. (The best part about learning another language is gaining the ability to make horrible puns in both languages.) But that's a discussion for tomorrow. Pic posted with permission:  |
| So, yeah, I didn't go to the Louvre yesterday. Look. I'm not a young man of 55 anymore. Sometimes, my knee hurts. Yesterday was one of those times, because I'd spent the last two days hiking around Paris. Paris was never the purpose of my trip. I agreed to three days there because I figured I could use the time to get over any jet lag, and see firsthand how bad my French pronunciation is [Narrator: vraiment très mauvais], and also to meet my new friend there. No, the purpose of the trip was wine tasting in the countryside, and beer drinking in Belgium later. If I'd gone to the Louvre, that would have been more walking and standing and stopping and staring. I would have liked to have seen some of the art, of course. But not the Mona Lisa. There's only one reason to see the Mona Lisa, and that's to be able to brag that you've seen it, while complaining about how small it is and how crowded with tourists the room is. The obvious hypocrisy there is that you're contributing to said crowds. I can skip the seeing it bit and accept the information that the painting is surprisingly small and the room is extremely crowded. Besides, if I can't paint a mustache on it, what's the point? So, in an effort to preserve my walking ability for the really important stuff (chateaux and wineries and such), I kept things pretty low-key yesterday while my knee recovered. But I did get a bit of walking in. For instance: Remember how I said most French beer is ass, except for some breweries in the east? One of those breweries produces a lager called 1664. It's a fairly large brewery that exports, so we get bottles back home. I've heard it's pretty popular in England, too. I buy it to drink when I want a lager, because it's a better alternative for that style than the pisswater the big names try to pass off as lager. Anyway, I found it on tap at a restaurant near the hotel, so of course I ordered one, and it was even more delicious than the bottled and exported version. And also, if I'd wasted the day at the Louvre, I never would have encountered this delightful example of street art:  |
| Yesterday morning got off to an auspicious start as the really quite obnoxiously loud building alarm went off. Naturally, being American, I sat down to write an official letter of complaint to management, and prepared to give the hotel 1 star reviews on Yelp, Google, and Tripadvisor. How DARE they inconvenience a US citizen? ...yes, I'm kidding. Duh. I took long enough to put pants on, which may not have been the wisest course of action for myself, but you know me, always thinking of others' comfort. And then I proceeded down five flights of narrow, steep, half-spiral stairs that are probably older than my entire country. I'd been awake, though not for long, when the alarm went off (hence the pantsless state, as I was only beginning to get ready to go to the hotel breakfast), so at least I didn't have another heart attack from waking up to that. But on my way down, I got to wondering whether my travel insurance would cover the loss of all my shit from the hotel burning down. Probably not, I reasoned, because insurance only covers whatever doesn't happen to you. On the descent, I was joined by other people who also had the good sense not to use the elevator during a fire alarm (one of whom had stopped to pack his bag), and we all spilled out into the lobby, where a receptionist explained to us, in perfectly good English, that someone had made smoke in the breakfast kitchen and it wasn't actually a fire threat. My fellow travelers grumbled and started marching back up the stairs (the elevator is one of those tiny European ones with the manual outer doors, obviously retrofitted at some point after electricity was invented), but I followed my original plan and slipped down to breakfast, where I specifically asked for le petit déjeuner bien cuit, or breakfast well done (in the sense of a well-done steak). Because I am, after all, an asshole, but at least I'm a funny asshole. The travel agent's plans for me yesterday were: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs "Ulysses" [sic], and the Seine. But none of them involved tourist reservations; those were just their suggestions for famous shit to do while in Paris. So, instead, I did what I always do in a new-to-me city: I found breweries. You don't think of beer when you think of France, and generally for good reason. There are a few decent large-scale breweries in the east, adjacent to Belgium and Germany so that those countries' skill in brewing manages to spill over the border. But for the most part, French beer is, historically, liquid ass. But, like the Anglophone countries I'm used to, France has developed a craft beer scene. I only had time to visit three of them, but my overall impression is: just like the aforementioned Anglophone countries, some of the beer is excellent, and some is... well... less than excellent. I'd never know that, though, if I didn't try. I'm pretty sure I've said this before in here, but I enjoy tasting all beer, even the bad stuff, because, as the great philosopher said: "If everything was cool, and nothing sucked, how would we know what was cool?" (I can't remember if that was Beavis or Butt-Head.) Now, when I say "tasting," I don't mean I got pints (or, you know, 500ml, close enough) of each one, but did the small-serving flight thing. So no, I wasn't utterly wasted when I was done. But I had achieved beerenity, which has been elusive to me lately. I might have actually smiled as I walked back to the hotel, across the Seine, and through the courtyard of the Louvre, where I paused to snap what is surely the most French photograph I could possibly shoot.  |
| I don't use fitness apps, so I have no idea how many steps I took yesterday, or how many kilometers they added up to. But both numbers were very, very high. While I was still exhausted from the trip, my contact here texted me around lunchtime. We'd never met. A mutual friend introduced us. It's probably only the mutual friend that kept us from going "what if the other's a psycho killer?" Anyway, she's like "I'll be at [landmark] and we can meet at 1 o'clock." (She's American, incidentally, so we're texting in English.) At that point, it was 12:10. I checked Maps. Walking to [landmark] would take 45 minutes. I can just make it... ...except that I'd be walking through one of the most historic and architecturally interesting parts of Paris, and there is no way I would be able to resist stopping and gawking at something. Especially when the destination was on the other side of the Seine, and what foreign tourist can NOT stop and look at the river while crossing it? Maybe someone with more self-control than I have, but certainly not me. So we met here at the hotel and started walking. I won't bother you with all the world-famous shit I saw yesterday, but there was a lot of it and it's world-famous and it's still thrilling to see that shit in person. Just one example: my hotel is a couple of blocks from the Louvre. Well, a couple of blocks from one corner of it, maybe a kilometer from the opposite corner. It's that big. Even without going in, the building itself is a work of art. And we didn't go in anywhere; it was Saturday and the tourism was in full force, creating chaotic crowds. Hours later, we parted, and I made my utterly exhausted way back to the hotel. Along the way, though, I paused to snap a picture of perhaps the most culturally significant of all of Paris' landmarks, located on Rue de Rivoli. Because, though I may have gotten some of the details wrong, it was here where, sometime around 1990, famed American visitor Vincent Barbarino discovered that, in France, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is not, in fact, called a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, but a Royale with Cheese. Because of the metric system. These events were related in the documentary, "Pulp Fiction," which depicted quite the embarrassing and tragic ending for Vincent, but at least he got to spend time in fine Parisian restaurants.  |
| New country, unfamiliar keyboard, jet lag... so short entry. The plane out of DC got all the way down the taxiway when there was some sort of mechanical issue. As the jet was made by Boeing, they weren't taking any chances. So it went back to the terminal and then left late. Consequently, it arrived late, which I suppose is somewhat better than not arriving at all. First impression: if you ignore all the famous landmarks (like the ones Annette has been taunting us with lately), Paris looks a lot like any other big city. I'll give it this, though: the graffiti is way better, in keeping with the city's reputation as an artist paradise. The lines are sharp and, unlike the graffiti in, say, northern New Jersey, you can actually sometimes make out what some of the letters are. Not that the words make sense. I mean, they might, if I knew more French, but I doubt it.Now, let's see if I can find my way around. Maybe tomorrow, I'll have pics, too. |
| One more article today, before this turns into a travel blog for a few weeks. Appropriately enough, it's about food. Most food tastes better in a restaurant. This is partly because they generally hire people who cook for a living (kinda like how a professional plumbing job is going to be better than your own handiwork), and partly because their secret is to drench everything in butter (which doesn't really work for plumbing). When it comes to baked potatoes, though, I can do better than most restaurants (except, of course, high-end steak houses). Not bragging here; just finally cracked the code. Well, with a little help from the internet. Baked potatoes are a classic, homey, comforting side dish that almost always tastes better at restaurants. Another reason for that is that Americans, at least, keep insisting on wrapping the spuds in aluminum foil. Don't fucking do that. It can be disappointing to prepare a baked potato at home, only for it to come out tasting dry, stale, and nothing like the fluffy, flavorful potato you would order at a restaurant. On the flip side, I've been disappointed by restaurant baked potatoes, too. I haven't been to an Outback in years, but I recall theirs sucking hard. The reality is, there are a myriad of advantages that professional chefs have at restaurants that you just may not have at home. Knowledge, especially of how to do it properly, is a key advantage. From knowing the type of potato you should choose to having the right cooking equipment to choosing the right toppings, making baked potatoes at home can be more of an intricate process than just popping a potato in the microwave for a few minutes. Yeah... there's only one method worse than foil-wrapping the things like you're trying to protect them from government mind-control rays: microwaving them. (And it should go without saying that doing both is a Really Bad Idea.) I've nuked taters before, because the big advantage of microwave ovens is speed, and sometimes, that's what counts. The result was edible, but that's the best I can say about it. Type of potato: Russet. Or russet. Or maybe russet. Really, if you have other varieties you need to use up, there are better things to do with them than baking. The right cooking equipment: Look, if you don't have an oven (not a toaster oven or microwave), cook something else. As for "choosing the right toppings," I'm going to pass on that one. It's more a matter of personal preference and what else is going to be on the plate. What I care about is getting the actual potato to come out all fluffy with a nice crisp skin (which is why I come down so hard on foil; it keeps the skin soggy). It is not, however, by any stretch of the imagination, an intricate process, and I say this as a terminally lazy person. You're not making a soufflé, here. Or even a many-layered hamburger. You're sticking a damn potato into a damn oven. There really isn't all that much more to it than that, apart from the toppings, which, again, isn't my point here. Thankfully, we spoke to a few industry professionals who gave us insight into what exactly gives restaurants the edge up when it comes to tasty baked potatoes. On the other hand, yes, I'd definitely listen to an industry professional and not me. But, as we're about to see, some of their advice just doesn't work for me. Stephanie Edenburgh has noticed that many restaurants use russet potatoes because of their thick skin and starchy interior. On that, we can agree. (There's a bit about storage in there, too, but I have no comments about it.) The ideal temperature for baking a potato, according to Stephanie Edenburgh, is around 400 F to 425 F. Also agree. I like 400, but it usually takes an hour and a half. Most of the recipes I've seen say 425 or even 450, which, it should be obvious, takes less time, but I think the longer bake makes for a better finished product. The technique you use to cook your baked potato is important, too. Corrie Duffy recommends baking the potatoes directly on the oven rack initially, so you get a crispier skin. I do this. One thing you have to watch out for is leakage, though. There's usually not much, but cleaning baked-on black starchy buildup out of an oven is a right pain in the arse. Baked potatoes are always delicious, but they are not often the quickest dinner side dish to make. In fact, many online recipes call for anywhere from 45 minutes to 60 minutes to prep and bake a baked potato, and on an average weeknight, many people do not have the ability to spend that much time on dinner. Unfortunately, the solution is often to pop your potatoes in the microwave for a few minutes, or even as long as the "potato" button on the microwave allots for. But this is not the best idea. Told you. Still, it's not like you're spending all of that time messing with the potatoes. You do other stuff while they're baking. It did raise a question in my mind, though, which is: how do restaurants get the potato to your plate in 20 minutes or so? Do they take a guess at how many potatoes will be ordered on a given day, and start prepping them in advance? Or do they, in direct contradiction of the article, use a microwave for part of the cooking? Can you tell my only experience in a restaurant kitchen was dishwasher, and then only for one night? Your dish is only ever as good as the ingredients you use, and most restaurants are sure to have some of the highest-quality ingredients on the market — and they are not afraid to use them. Utter nonsense, unless you're, again, talking only about high-end steakhouses. Your average casual grub spot cheaps out on ingredients. According to Ranveer Brar, making a restaurant-quality baked potato might mean participating in a par-cooking process. Par-cooking — also known as partially cooking, or non-continuous cooking — is a cooking method that involves cooking a food item only partially through, and finishing the cook right before the food is served. Well, I guess that sheds some light on my question above. According to Jessica Randhawa, other important preparation tasks include washing and drying your potatoes thoroughly and poking them with a fork to make sure steam is allowed to escape during the baking process. No, no, no, NO. I mean, sure, it can be satisfying to jab a fork into the tater like it's your boss's or ex's eyeball, but I find it's better for the texture and presentation to cut a slit about 1/2" deep (or a bit over a centimeter) for about 3/4 of the length of the potato. You're going to cut it open anyway. You bake it with the slit on top. There's plenty more at the article, but instead, I'm going to share the best cooking method I found, one which I only had to make small adjustments to. Here it is, from "The Kitchn." My adjustments? Deeper cut, as I already noted, and I find an average-sized russet potato only needs about 90 minutes, not 140 like that site says (yes, I tried it at 2:10 the first time, and they were overcooked.)Obviously, do what works for you. But don't invite me over if you're going to nuke them; I might just give my honest opinion. |
| After tomorrow, entries will happen at weird and unpredictable times; they won't be my usual stuff, and I might even *gasp* miss a day. But meanwhile, here's another Cracked article that hits a little close to home. 4 Medical Myths We Got Thanks to Bad Reading Comprehension A bunch of doctors exchanged jokes. People took them seriously and canceled Chinese food You don’t need to spend your nights carrying out experiments or poring over data. That’s the job of scientists. Then scientists summarize their findings in papers. Then the media summarize those papers in articles. Then other outlets summarize those articles with their own articles. You might not even read those articles, but luckily, those are summarized as headlines. And that's as good a summary as any of lots of the science reporting I post here. 4. MSG Causing ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ Was a Joke Not much worse than having a joke escape into the wild and be taken seriously. For decades, monosodium glutamate (MSG) has had a reputation for messing with people’s health. Some say it gives you headaches, while other people imagine various more serious long-term effects. In reality, MSG has the same effects on your body as salt does — except, it takes more MSG than salt to get that same effect. "But MSG really does give me headaches!" Yeah, look up the nocebo effect. The idea that MSG may be bad originated with one letter written to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 by a doctor named Robert Ho Man Kwok. One reader wrote demanding the original letter’s true identity, reasoning that Robert Ho Man Kwok had to be his troll name. It sounded like “Human Crock,” didn’t it? In reality, that was the guy’s actual name... I gotta be honest, I thought it was a troll name at first, too. Soon, newly informed members of the public reported feeling headaches and tingling after eating Chinese food. They didn’t in clinical studies, but they did in the wild, and they blamed MSG. And this might be the best example ever on why clinical studies should carry more weight than personal anecdote. Of course, now that "MSG is bad" has permeated the public consciousness, no amount of fact-correcting is going to get people to change their minds. Some of you might feel baffled or even outraged that a scientific publication like the New England Journal of Medicine should act as a forum for comedy. No more baffled or outraged that a comedy publication like Cracked should act as a fact-checking source. Incidentally, I did a whole entry on the MSG bullshit last year: "Umami" 3. Medical Errors Aren’t a Leading Cause of Death To come up with stats, the JHU analysis averaged results from a few previous studies, and it averaged them badly. One was a study of 12 deaths, while a second was of 14. You shouldn’t use tiny numbers like that to extrapolate a total of 400,000 deaths nationwide. What have I been saying about small sample sizes? Yeah, I know I just said to trust studies over personal anecdotes, and I stand by that, but one must also remain skeptical of the study methods. Which this section of the article does, and better than most sources I've seen. The JHU analysis said 62 percent of all hospital deaths may be from medical errors. Other metanalyses come up a number more like 4 percent. Which is still a lot, but that’s a big difference. It’s the difference between “let’s go to the hospital and get that gaping wound looked at” and “actually, with all the mistakes they do there, we’re better off just staying home and hoping for the best.” In fairness to everyone involved, "cause of death" can be tricky and complicated, and it's why we have professionals to make those determinations. And then you get the same sort of denial as I talked about above: for instance, when certain people refused to accept any "cause of death" that included COVID, because they held a strong (wrong) inner conviction that COVID couldn't possibly be fatal and because I don't know, some sort of conspiracy about funding and politics. Still, based entirely on what this section says, it's probably not the third-greatest cause of death. Which I have issues with, anyway, because every time we work on #1 and it gets pushed to #2, then we work on the new #1 and it gets pushed down the list... I guess what I'm saying is that there will always be a leading cause of death, even if we somehow cure cancer and heart disease and keep people from going out where there are snakes and cliffs, and personally, I think we should worry less about that and more about enjoying what life we have, because we're all going to die of something. 2. Men Aren’t More Likely to Abandon a Sick Spouse No, but it's apparently okay to be sexist if the target is men. The researchers now did the right thing and issued a formal retraction. “We conclude that there are not gender differences in the relationship between gender, pooled illness onset, and divorce,” they now said, and you’ll today find only the corrected second paper they published, not the original. Some news sites even reported on the retraction. But those articles we linked to before are still up, with no corrections. And, just like with Wakefield's shameful connection of vaccinations to autism, there are, and always will be, stubborn people with primacy bias or confirmation bias, who will continue to believe the lie in spite of all the retractions. 1. Left-Handers Don’t Die Younger Than Right-Handers Huh... I'd never heard this nonsense. Or maybe I did and dismissed it because I didn't care, being right-handed. Many articles that round up all the indignities lefties suffer mention a stat from a 1991 study, which says left-handed people on average die nine years younger than right-handers. Nah. If I'd seen that, even back then, the alarm bells in my head would have been heard for miles. Then, when we dig up the study, we see that it was based on just 19 car accidents by left-handed people and tried extending that rate to the population at large. oh for fucks sake In conclusion, science is great. Sometimes you get wrong conclusions, though, because people are involved and people are fallible (see also: death from medical mistakes). But it's generally self-correcting in the long run. Which hardly matters as long as there are people who only pay attention to what they want to believe, or to the first headline on any subject, ignoring the retractions and corrections. But hey, as long as there are bad studies, bad science articles, bad reading comprehension, and idiots, I'll never run out of blog fodder. |
| Today's article, from Popular Mechanics, is a few years old, but I'm not aware of any related developments since then. Let me state right off the bat that I have multiple issues with the way the headline is phrased. I'll give it a pass for now, though, because what's really important is the actual article. Could life as we know it have begun on Mars instead of Earth? Could it? Sure. Now, how about some evidence? A handful of scientists believe so, and even more think we should at least consider the possibility. One of my issues with the headline, and this sentence, is the use of the word "believe." It's as out of place in science as a clown at a black-tie ball. This special case of the overall theory of panspermia, where life on Earth began somewhere else and traveled or was planted here, has some prominent supporters. "Traveled or was planted" could imply that some sentience or conscious guidance was involved, so I don't like that in science either. As I've said before, if aliens planted life on Earth, where did said aliens come from? There are some good hypotheses as to how life emerged from non-life (though the distinction isn't a bright bold line) right here on Earth; where are the competing hypotheses for extraterrestrial origin? I've described it before as "kicking the can down the road," and I suspect the underlying impetus for wanting to "believe" this is either a) an attempt to bring religious beliefs into science, or b) a conviction that life on Earth is not "special." Or maybe both. In a new Salon article, these proponents say the theory makes intuitive sense based on what the two planets are like. If there's one thing you need to know about science, it's this: the whole point is to question intuition. Lots of solid scientific theories and discoveries very much contradict intuition. On the other talon, there's some evidence (as the article later points out) that Mars cooled off to the point where it had liquid water—essential for life as we know it—way before Earth did, so, okay, perhaps the chemical reactions that turned non-life into life took place there and not in our own oceans, only getting kicked off that planet by asteroid impacts. There's also some evidence that simple life can survive such a journey. So I can accept the possibility. But again: evidence? "Can" isn't the same thing as "did." There is, of course, at least one other possibility: life started on Mars, and also started on Earth, perhaps later, but separately. BUT. If you're going to assert that sentient aliens did it, then you also have to ask when and how said aliens got their start. Or, of course, you can hand-wave it and say "God did it," but then it's not science, but religion. And I have one more quibble with the article: Either way, Mars’s once-molten core slowed and solidified, reducing the planet’s gravity and atmosphere to nearly nothing and removing essential protections for any life form of which we know. Solidifying a molten core would do exactly jack and squat to the planet's gravity, which is correlated to its mass. I guess maybe a tiny fraction of a bit, due to energy/mass equivalence, but come on. I think they meant "magnetic field," not gravity. It's the magnetic field (which on Earth is probably generated by processes in the molten interior) that keeps the worst of the dangerous emanations of the accursed daystar from knocking complex molecules (like proteins and DNA) apart. Now, don't get me wrong, here; I'd be as excited as anyone to hear that real evidence for life, now or in the past, on Mars has been confirmed (by which I mean microbes or their equivalent, not pop-fiction sentient Martians). And maybe then we can compare it to Earth life and have a better idea if the one came from the other. But right now, it's all speculation, and, again, we have some very compelling, evidence-based ideas for how inert molecules might have come together to initiate the self-replicating process we call life, right here on this planet. |
| My random number generator is working just fine. Randomness just sometimes leads to clustering; hence, another one from Cracked today. 5 Secrets Found Buried at Famous U.S. Landmarks Until we opened a secret panel, no one realize this planned for the apocalypse No, this article isn't a stealth ad for some new Dan Brown novel. This Fourth of July, we want you to celebrate America by visiting one of the nation’s most famous sites. We also want you to bring a shovel with you, so you can dig for treasure. Yes, this article has been in my queue for over two months. It happens. There are older ones. It's mathematically impossible for me to get to all of them before I leave for Europe, and I won't be doing this format there, so they'll be even older when I get back. 5 The Lost Town at the Hoover Dam The whole point of most dams is to flood a portion of the upstream river. As it is a river, chances are people lived next to it. Some of those people lived in towns. So it shouldn't be surprising that "lost towns" exist under dam lakes. With Hoover Dam, that reservoir is Lake Mead, and when the country flooded the area to create Lake Mead in the 1930s, there happened to be a town in a way. Fortunately, it was a town full of Mormons, and Mormons are great at moving around, so it was a simple matter to pay them all to go elsewhere. Pay? good thing they weren't Utes or Paiutes. Because they wouldn't pay Utes. That joke is not funny. Of course, if you’re not interested in old Mormon buildings, there’s also the chance that you’ll stumble upon one of the several skeletons that have turned up as Lake Mead has dried up. No, there is no straightforward explanation for how those bodies got there, and investigations are still ongoing. That's sarcasm, right? Because there's a desert city nearby that was famously run by the Mob for decades. 4 The Other Hollywood Sign The Hollywood Sign wasn’t originally a landmark just designed to sit in the background as people walk through Hollywood. It also serves as the only universally recognizable structure for establishment shots of Los Angeles. The area doesn't exactly lend itself to massive, easily-recognizable structures like the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower. Blame Andreas; it's his fault. At the same time as that sign advertised Hollywoodland, a second sign advertised another housing development called “Hillside Homes of Happiness.” I guess this was before marketing moved out there from NYC. “Hillside Homes of Happiness” would have been too long a message to erect in 30-foot-tall letters. So, the ad consisted of just the word “Outpost,” since the land around the development was known as “Outpost Estate.” Though these letters were a little shorter than the ones in the Hollywoodland sign, they were lit in red neon, so as to be even more visible. Okay, now I wish I'd seen that. 3 The Brooklyn Bridge’s Fallout Shelter Yes, I thought the same thing you're thinking now: the Brooklyn Bridge was built before atomic bombs were a thing. In 2006, workers tinkering on the Brooklyn Bridge found a vault full of provisions stockpiled by those fearing a nuclear strike. These supplies included drugs, blankets and 352,000 packets of crackers. This makes no sense. Any nuclear strike would turn all of Lower Manhattan into a glass crater, along with that often-sold bridge. 2 The Radioactive Hazard at the Grand Canyon In contrast to the other entries here, the Grand Canyon wasn't built by humans. In 2019, park officials at the Grand Canyon realized that the museum contained three 5-gallons buckets of uranium ore. Presumably, the museum was. The uranium’s radiation wasn’t so powerful that the whole museum had an elevated radiation level, but it was powerful enough that the area near the buckets did. Yeah, I kind of figured that would be the case when they said "ore." It's not like it's refined plutonium. 1 The Capitol’s Forgotten Bathing Area This final discovery happened in 1936. No wonder politics stinks. They forgot their bathing area. If the building would only reopen and expand its baths, and if all legislators agreed to bathe communally, we could reestablish camaraderie and get around to solving everything. You say that like it's a joke, but it seems to work in Japan. |
| We all know I like Cracked. This is partly because, like me, they try to be amusing and informational at the same time. Sometimes, that doesn't work out on one front or the other. Companies That Make Only Two Wildly Different Products It’s usually a bad idea for, say, a coffee shop to start selling auto parts As a business, diversifying your product line is a surefire way to grow your customer base... Not always. Some companies, however, decide that they do two things. Two things only. Two wildly different things only. 5. Guinness It’s not just a coincidence of nomenclature — the Guinness Book of World Records is the same Guinness that produces the world’s carbiest beer. No. I mean, yes, originally. Guinness reportedly started the World Records book as a way for pub-goers to settle bets, as the article notes. Later, the publication (which I'll call GWR) got sold to another company, with rights to the name. That company then eliminated every world record related to drinking, on safety (read: liability) grounds. While I understand their reasons, this ripped them from their roots. Would you call a piece of paper and a tree the same thing? No. Then GWR has nothing to do with the Irish manufacturers of dark and delicious malt beverage. Guinness, the brewer, also sells merchandise, and even has showrooms for it. I've been in one in Las Vegas. Well, at least they did pre-pandemic, and I can't be arsed to see if they're still doing that. Point is, though, not only is GWR no longer affiliated with Guinness, but even if they weren't, Guinness would be selling more than two products. 4 Coors Yep, the company that makes beer as cold as the Rockies is also involved in the production of high-tech ceramics. I would argue that they don't make beer, but I'm admittedly a snob on the subject. Also, it's Molson Coors now, and they suck even harder than AB/InBev, which at least has the decency to (mostly) leave craft brewers to their own devices when they Hoover them up. 3 Yamaha The customers for Yamaha keyboards and motorcycles couldn’t be more different, and technically, they’re not the same company. As noted, they're not the same company, so this shouldn't count, either. Also, why can't bikers be keyboardists, or vice-versa? 2 Bridgestone Bridgestone is another Japanese company that successfully divided itself, not out of prudent business sense but for the love of the game — literally. Tires and golf balls? Come on, they're both round, dimpled, and made of synthetic rubber. 1 Michelin Speaking of tires, it’s often said that the Michelin tire company created their restaurant rating system to get people to drive more and wear down their tires faster, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Okay, I'm going to grant them this one. In 1900, people had to be convinced to buy and drive cars at all, so Michelin began publishing car-specific travel guides that included where to get gas, what time the sun set at different times of year (because there were no street lights), and yes, the best hotels and restaurants. In the US, at least, there was another, way worse reason to have to know sunset times. Now you know, once our car-centric society has destroyed the planet and global warming kills us all, you can blame the French. Technically, the Industrial Revolution only kicked into high gear after Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot figured out the whole "thermodynamics" thing, so we might as well blame the French. |
| In rooting through the archives at random, I pulled out this entry from early 2020: "Gotta be Aliens" The linked article, from aeon, is still available as of this post.The entry was, apparently, one of my earlier attempts to criticize popular coverage of the sciences involved in the search for extraterrestrial life. Today, I'm going to talk about aliens again. I checked, and I'd had ET or ET-adjacent entries at least twice before in that month, but it certainly hadn't taken over my blog. If these topics seem random, that's because they are, in part. I don't choose articles at random to put into my queue. I add to it when I come across (or someone sends me) something I find interesting or might have something to quibble or laugh about. It's the order in which I draw from the queue which is random. In this particular case, the linked article plays off the question in its headline: how would we recognise an alien if we saw one? One of the reasons I do this retrospectives is to see if things have changed, either in the world or with my own opinion. As far as the latter goes, I don't think I've changed my mind, and I'm pretty sure I've done several other blog entries supporting my view that complex life is probably rare in the galaxy. In the world, things change all the time. One part that didn't age well was the part about someone saying that what would convince them that aliens were out there would be a photograph. I said: I'm not sure that would convince me. After all, photographs can be faked, and the technology needed to fake them is widespread and always getting cheaper. Since then, we have of course seen an explosion in what's commonly called AI, making it way easier and cheaper to fake a photograph of an alien (or anything). Because discovery of any sort of life elsewhere than on Earth would be such a Big Deal, there would need to be multiple kinds of robust evidence for such a discovery to be accepted. The rest? Like I said, I haven't changed my opinions on the subject. |
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