chez pim

qualia

At work, we always struggle to quantify the value of our research. It is difficult, to say the least, to point to any easy number and say that was the direct result of the work we had done. Not that our work is completely inconsequential, but my research training taught me to be careful with causality.

Anyway, I'm thinking about this issue again because our new VP is a number guy. He literally believes that everything can be quantified, even emotions.

I guess he hasn't heard of Qualia, huh?

So my computer is dead.

So my computer is dead. How much of my data survived remains to be seen. This sucks beyond words. So much of me was in that computer. I wondered around the office yesterday, aimlessly, from meeting to meeting, getting absolutely nothing done. Today is the same. Well it's not like I lost a leg or anything, but perhaps an index finger....

I'm using Chris's new IMAC. You know, the cool one with the flat screen and all---but I have to say I still miss my little IBM notebook, with my shortcuts and links and half my brain in it. :-(

Well, anyway, I've been mildly disturbed all weekend, and perhaps that did it to the half of my brain known as my computer. The reason for that was both Linda and Valerie have bought and moved into new houses. I find this mildly disturbing. They are acting all grown up! I don't like this one bit.

Though I did something fun this weekend. Chris and I went for a 10 mile hike. Yes, friends, 10 miles. You didn't think I could do it, did you? Well you see, the key to it was that I was hiking in *my* element. In the city that is. We walked from our place all the way down to Cafe Claude for lunch (it was closed so we had Thai), then to a gallery in Union Square for an Odd Nerdrum show. The gallery was closed, we didn't have much luck that day, so the two of us were pressing our respective noses on the window like small children. Let me tell you it was worth it. The paintings were phenomenal. From there we walked all the way up to North Beach, then up the Vallejo steps, down to Polk street, to Holy Foods and home. That's a good ten-mile walk folks. Ten San Francisco up-and-down-hills miles no less. Impressed now?

That which we call a Financier

Last night Matt and I had dinner after work at the bistro. (Others know it as Bistro Elan in Palo Alto.) The food was great as usual. Patrick gave us a rose as our aperitif, and we had a lovely dinner as usual.

For dessert, we ordered Financier with berry sauce and meyer lemon and butter ice cream. And therein lay a problem. What arrived at the table was this little round tubular cake, with a bit of the berry sauce all around and a scoop of ice cream on top. It was tasty enough, especially the meyer lemon ice cream, but where oh where was my Financier?

This is really one of my pet peeves. I *hate* it when people take liberty with classic recipes. I mean, if I ordered a Financier, I expect a Financier, not some round cake that called itself a financier. A proper Financier is baked in a rectangular mold, to resemble a gold bar. Hence the name Financier, get it? One acceptable exception, because Pierre Hermé has done it and he is God, is to bake it in a boat-shape mold. That's it, it's either like a gold bar or a small little boat. The Financier has a nice crisp crust, with sublimely soft and melting interior. This texture contrast is also key to a classic Financier. What we had at the bistro was a nice little cake, but definitely not a Financier.

It is not that I am opposed experimentation, just that if you order something with a classic name, you have a certain expectation that can easily transform into annoyance when it is not met.

Taking liberty on classic recipes also happens a lot with Thai dishes. Most Thai restaurants around here cater to Americans, who have no idea what the food is supposed to be like. When I order from a menu, expecting something with certain characteristics and ingredients based on the name, more often than not I would be served something that is, though tasty enough, completely unrecognizable. Something mascarading in a classic name, but nothing like what it was supposed to be.

irks me to no end.......

I just found out from

I just found out from the Guardian Weblog that Salam Pax is blogging again.

This is such great news! I have been fearing what fate had befallen him after his last known blog on March 24, at the beginning of the war. Now I found out he's alive, well, and blogging again. I am happy.

There is one wierd thing though. This morning when I first read Salam's new blog, he had a piece on an hilarious interview with a NY Times reporter. His friend G., who apparently has done some work for the Guardian arranged the interview for a translator job. Salam described the wierd scene of the reporter presiding "like a god" wearing only a small towel, and later a pair of shorts.

When I went back to his blog again to reference the piece on my own blog, I found it had disappeared! The multi-paragraph recounting of the story was gone---poof! What was left was just one line reference to his visit to the Meridian hotel, "G and I went to the Meridian to do an errand."

Blog censor? Curious, very curious.

In case you haven't heard,

In case you haven't heard, UC Berkeley has imposed a ban on summer students from the SARS affected areas from attending classes at Berkely this summer. Civil rights groups are furious and call for an immediate lift of the ban.

This is really interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it. The university claimed that they acted because they have examined and found campus health services inadequate to deal with a potential outbreak of SARS on the campus. On one hand, that makes some sense. They don't know what to do, so they opted for a safe route to protect their regular students and staff on campus.

On the other hand, yes there's always the other hand, the campus administration has no way to control regular students from those areas who may be going home for the summer from returning to campus. Nor will they have any way to prevent Berkeley residents from visiting those areas and perhaps bringing SARS home. Oh yes, and what about them Canadians? Basically, keeping out a handful of prospective summer students from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore is not really going to keep the pervervial Genie from coming out of a bottle, or is it?

The news coming out of

The news coming out of China about the SARS epidemic and the Chinese government's more and more draconian methods of dealing with the spread of the disease, as well as the society's reaction to the mysterious virus, brought to mind a fastinating book I read a while back. Jose Saramago's Blindness.

In the book, a city was under seige by an epidemic of blindness. No one knew how it started or how it spreaded, yet the only certainty was that it was indeed contagious. As more and more people became afflicted society's reaction became more drastic. A large group of the newly blinded were quarantined in a mental hospital, and it was all down hill from there.

The book deals with both the social and cognitive effects of the affliction. On the cognitive level, Saramago recounts the ways in which those afflicted must relearn, or remediate as we say in my field, their ways in the world. The lone naturally blind man, erroneously thrown into quarantine with the afflicted, became King of this new world order because he was the only one who could cognitively navigate the dark world.

On the social level, the book highlights how our very own actions are restricted by the believe that there is such things as rules and expected behavior, and what happens when the ever so fragile fabric of our civilized society breaks down. In other words, so much of our reaction to things depends on our ability to predict or expect how others react---and everything goes hay wired when our expectations are no longer met.

Seeing what happened in Baghdad in the days following the fall of the Saddam regime and the reaction of the Chinese to the new amorphous threat of SARS reminded me of the scenes that Saramago aptly described in the book. Read it and tell me what you think.

The book, incidentally, is on the UK Guardian's list of top 100 books list.

This day last year Chris

This day last year Chris and I were yelling Fuck Le Pen in the Place de la Bastille. Remember Le Pen? The guy who said Hitler was misportrayed by history---Hitler wasn't so bad really, dit Jean-Marie, it was those damn Liberal media again!

That was Jacques Chirac lucky day. He won that election merely because the French were horrified by the prospect of having a neo-Facist as their president. Whatever he is, Chirac is no Le Pen.

Chirac's political life was hence spared, barely. This was his last chance and he knew it. Perhaps that had something to do with why Chirac felt that he had to make such a grand stand about opposing the US's war with Iraq. It was his last chance at legacy.

I mean, not that I disagree with him about the war, just that I'm wondering where it all came from.....