I had hoped, almost selfishly, that Christopher Hitchens’ cancer might spare him for a little longer, so that we could enjoy more of his wonderful writing. Alas, no.
Hitch was just about a year older than me, and like me he moved to the USA in 1981. We were both socialists in our youth, and we each spoke out about our atheism in a country and culture which mistrusts and despises non-believers. But it would be silly to stretch the identification further. I loved his writing, particularly his book reviews, even as I was infuriated by his melodramatic politics. I admired his courage and determination to live life to the fullest. I’ll miss him.

For me, driving is a question of balance. Over the last 30 years, I’ve owned many cars (that’s the subject of another post), and I’ve tried to balance the practical and the playful, the economic and the expressive. At one point I tried to cover the bases by having two cars: a sensible one (for commuting, shopping, passenger-hauling) and a toy (for scooting around with the top down and the wind in my hair). Alas, such an approach doesn’t work well in New England except in summer. In my final Boston-area car, I tried to have it both ways, with the Subaru Legacy GT: a practical four-door sedan with excellent power and handling. That was a good car; I hope that my son Chris is still enjoying it.
When I moved to Seattle, I was living in the city, and I didn’t need a car. A ZipCar membership (or was it Flexcar then?) meant that I could use whatever kind of car I wanted when I really needed one, from a Mini to an SUV. That was neat. But in 2009 I came to California, where a car is essential. The question of balance returned with a vengeance. After looking at a number of cars, I decided to buy a Toyota Prius, as a way of combining geek technology and prudence about “peak oil”.
The Prius served me well. It’s a good, efficient, economical car. But it has to be said: it isn’t fun to drive. Acceleration, handling, stability (especially on poor pavement in the rain): it always felt “just enough”, with no reserves. A week ago, we were in Monterey for a short break, and I drove up Carmel Valley Road and then across the Laureles Grade to Laguna Seca. That’s always been one of my favourite drives, but when I lived in Massachusetts I could only experience it in rental cars. (Unfulfilled dream: I always wanted to take the Miata across the Grade.) Alas, the Prius couldn’t really do justice to the swooping, twisting road. It wasn’t fun.
And so yesterday I drove up to Burlingame and bought a new car: a Hyundai Genesis Coupe. I test-drove the 3.8 V6 and the 2.0 I4 Turbo; both were really nice, but the equipment level on the (Grand Touring) 3.8 was outstanding, so that’s what I bought. It’s the first rear-wheel drive car I’ve owned since the Miata, and it really feels like an outstanding value.
Is it fun? Yesterday all I did was to drive it home and read the manuals. (A big manual for the car, a slightly smaller one for the navigation system, and quick reference guides for both of them!) Today was grey and wet, with low clouds and drizzle: not the ideal conditions for cruising in a sports coupe. But what the hell… let’s see what it can do. So we drove down to Santa Cruz, including the challenging twists of Highway 17. (We didn’t see much of the scenery, because we were in the clouds most of the time.) Then up Route 1 along the coast to Half Moon Bay, stopping briefly at Pigeon Point to see if there were any whales inshore. (There weren’t.) Lunch at Cameron’s (the pub with the two English buses outside), then home on I-280. Traffic on 17 was moderate, and everybody was cautious because of the mist and the every-present Highway Patrol. By contrast, route 1 was wide open, and I was able to cruise at a steady 65. And yes: the Genesis Coupe is fun. Plenty of power, precise steering, excellent suspension, and a decent 6-speed automatic transmission (with paddle shifters and a limited slip differential). And comfortable: I really like the driving position. (I’m not sure how Hannah will feel about the vestigial back seat, though…)
The geek factor is also high. When I paired my iPhone, the car sucked in the address book, and I was able to voice-dial entries by name from the address book. I was also able to browse the iTunes tracks on my iPhone using the car stereo UI. The navigation system is very nice; it gets traffic info through Sirius XM, and the UI is excellent. (Recalc is almost instantaneous – in fact a less hasty response might be easier to absorb.)
Why the Genesis Coupe? Well, what other choices are there for a RWD coupe under $30K? The Camaro is really ugly, the Mustang is technically OK but I don’t really like the 40-year old retro styling. (Can we declare “retro-everything” over? Please?) The Dodge Challenger? Sorry, I can’t bring myself to suspend disbelief and buy a Chrysler. That’s it. (Sad but true.) And Motor Trend’s four-way shoot-out is pretty compelling: their verdict on the Genesis Coupe:

The only one that looks and feels like a sports car. Surprise, we liked it best.

I’m going to be travelling for the next three weeks, and so yesterday was filled with packing, shopping, and taking care of a bunch of stuff. With that completed, today was declared a field trip. Usually that involves heading to the ocean, but for a change we drove inland, to the Joseph D. Grant Park in the mountains behind San Jose. Our optimistic objective was to get all the way to the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, but we were flexible.
Google Maps suggested that the best way to get to the park was to go down 101 to Tully Road, and then go east on Quimby Road. Quimby is an amazing drive. I had to concentrate on my driving, but as we climbed out of San Jose I could hear Kate saying “Wow!” as the panorama of Silicon Valley unfolded. (Later exclamations were mostly in reference to the width of the road and the tightness of the hairpin bends.)
We set off on a trail that looped down the valley and back, about two miles. Almost immediately, we saw some kind of creature on the meadows above us. The unaided eye couldn’t identify it, but maximum zoom on my Nikon P90 pulled it in: a wild turkey:

More pictures from the trail:

After completing the trail, we decided to follow CA-130 towards the Lick Observatory. I was under the illusion that because it was a numbered state highway, it was going to be wider and faster than Quimby Road, but after a few miles I realized my mistake. There was another complication: traffic. There were very few cars, but many cyclists and motor-cyclists. Going downhill was no problem – in fact the cyclists went faster than I did – but uphill was a different story. Eventually we turned a corner and got our first sight of the observatory, several thousand feet above us. There was a trail-head car park on the left, and we decided to stop and have lunch.
Here are the photos that I took of the Lick Observatory, at 1x and 24x zoom:

After lunch, we decided to abandon the Lick and head home. The Prius likes this kind of downhill run: I don’t think the main engine came on the whole way down….

I only really watch three channels on TV these days: Fox Soccer Channel, SpeedTV (for Formula 1 racing), and Turner Classic Movies. OK, I guess I spend a little time with PBS, National Geographic, and The Discovery Channel,but I’m getting really frustrated with the quality of documentaries these days. (That’s for another post, though.) And I watch streaming video from Netflix on my Roku. But that’s about it.
Turner Classics is my favourite, though. I’m having a blast discovering the great films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, and I’ve been developing a serious crush on several stars of the female persuasion. This evening we watched “Ball of Fire” with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, and Barbara Stanwyck was simply red hot. She was clearly having an absolute ball in her role as a sexy vaudeville singer dropped into a house full of dusty academics.
Anyway, I think I’ll drop a short entry into the blog whenever I run across a film that really makes me curl my toes with delight. Odds are it will include one of my heart-throbs, like Myrna Loy and Joan Blondell. And of course there’s Jean Simmon‘s brilliant “drunk in Havana” sequence in “Guys and Dolls”, even though it would have been better opposite Gene Kelly.

As Andrew Sullivan said , if this had happened to me, my head would explode. But what a way to go! Here’s the background:

MasterCard has been the proud sponsor of The BRIT Awards for 12 years and to celebrate 30 years of the BRITs and thank music fans across the country for their passion and support, MasterCard devised the ultimate Priceless experience – a once in a life time opportunity for a member of the British public to win a BRIT Award winner playing live in their very own living room.

Lorraine Sands, a Project Manager from Twickenham won the prize. “When I opened the front door and saw Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe standing on my doorstep I thought I must be hallucinating! I’ve been a massive Pet Shop Boys fan for over twenty years and to have them play a gig right in my front room, for just me and my closest friends, was too good to be true!”

Check out the performance here. Four songs, and a really impressive production in somewhat challenging circumstances. It’s wonderful – I would have been in heaven…

As I was planning for my new job, with its regular travel to China, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to rely upon my AT&T iPhone. Yes, it would be OK (but expensive) for calls to and from the US, but I couldn’t really use it for local calls and text messaging within China, and I certainly couldn’t afford to turn on data roaming. So while I was at SFO awaiting my flight to Hong Kong, I bought myself an unlocked GSM phone, intending to put a pay-as-you-go SIM into it when I reached China.
The phone I bought was a Palm Centro. Cute as a button, nice keyboard, and Palm OS, which is a bit primitive but still oodles better than Windows Mobile. I arrived in Shenzhen, plugged a China Mobile SIM into it, bought a prepaid card from a street vendor, topped up the balance to just over 100 RMB, and I was ready to go. And during the first week, I used it a lot: checking email, text messaging ((Tons of texting – I never really used it back home, but here everyone texts all the time.)) There was just one problem. The phone didn’t handle Chinese characters. Any Chinese character – in email, SMS, SIM management, caller ID, etc. – simply displayed as a “?”.
Now you might think that this wasn’t very important. After all, I don’t speak or read Chinese. But there are lots of cases where the ability to receive (or even send) Chinese email and text messages is really useful. For example: this afternoon, Jim and I were in downtown Shenzhen, shopping for electronics. (More of that anon.) By 6:30, we were wrapping up and thinking about dinner. Jim texted a colleague of his, and asked him to recommend a really good restaurant. Back came the reply, with the restaurant name in Chinese. As we navigated the maze of streets towards the restaurant, Jim was able to get directions by showing the SMS message on his phone to several people who then pointed us in the right direction. We’ve used the same trick with taxi drivers.
All of this explains why we found ourselves shopping this afternoon. Jim was looking for some networking gear, and I was hoping to find a reasonable unlocked phone that “spoke” Chinese. Jim had trodden this path before, and after a wild taxi ride we found ourselves in a street full of vast electronics bazaars: department store sized buildings full of stalls and shops where people were selling everything from resistors and ribbon cables to graphics cards to cellphones to cameras to laptops… and everything in between. It was a geek’s heaven. Jim found what he wanted, and I was browsing and on the point of giving up when I spotted a G1 Android. Was it unlocked? Of course: the stall-holder invited me to remove the SIM from my despised Centro and put it in the G1, whereupon Jim called me and sent me a text message. I went down to the ATM on the ground floor, got some cash, and returned to close the deal.
Flushed with success, Jim and I went out to dinner at a restaurant which is one of the best we’ve ever eaten at; I would give you the name, except that I can’t read their business card! (But it’s a chain, and they have a cool web site, and the phone number of the one we went to is 26492008. Does that help?)
Back at the hotel, I checked out my new toy. There was only one flaw: the charger was actually for a different phone, with the wrong kind of mini-USB connector. ((Why are there so many different types of connector for a “standard” interface like USB???)) Fortunately the regular USB cable was correct, and I found that I could use my iPhone’s charger with the G1. Everything else is just fine, and the Android itself works like a dream. 3G data access is lightning fast, and Google Maps works fine here in Shenzhen.
Who knows? Perhaps I’ll wind up getting a prepaid SIM in the USA, just to show off the new toy. Although from what I hear, none of the carriers offering prepaid service in the USA support decent data plans

Via the Barefoot Bum, Bobbie-the-Jean gives us 50 hilarious reasons to reject evolution. My three favourites:

12.) Because the fact that science is self-correcting annoys me. Most of my other beliefs are rigidly fixed and uncorrectable.

17.) Because I’m 100% correct about everything 100% of the time and there is 0% chance that some snooty Oxford educated scientist with numerous honorary doctorates could possibly know something that I don’t.

19.) Because I don’t understand why, if we share common ancestry with chimps, there are still chimps. And when someone with more than three brain cells in their head inevitably replies: “for the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Brits but there are still Brits, I can’t follow the logic. It’s just too big a leap. Who am I, Evil Knievel?

Last Friday, I checked the Seattle weather forecast to see what the prospects for the weekend were. Morning fog, cloudy skies, damp, low 40s. Sigh. It was going to be typical Seattle winter, just as I’d been promised when I moved here.
Except that it wasn’t. On Saturday the fog and most of the clouds disappeared by lunchtime and it turned into a beautiful day. So when Sunday dawned with thick fog, we crossed our fingers, and by mid-morning things were looking brighter.

Driftwood and stones

Seattle container port, with Mt. Rainier behind

We’re in the middle of what is being described as the most severe cold snap for Seattle in twenty years. Yesterday it was supposed to snow, but downtown escaped because of a “rain shadow” effect. Last night and this morning, however…

The Uwajimaya courtyard in the snow

Today’s Questionable Content.
Yesterdays xkcd.
Sunday’s Sinfest.