Relevant History

The obligatory giant clam picture

At Monterey Bay Aquarium.

This place is packed!

Not a surprise, I suppose.

Watching the otters

At Monterey Bay Aquarium.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium

The Real Cost Cafe is the kids' favorite exhibit.

Foxes, hedgehogs, and prediction

John Kay, in a review of Philip Tetlock's book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, talking about Isaiah Berlin and expert opinion:

Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas, made a distinction between the intelligence of the hedgehog – which knows one big thing – and the intelligence of the fox – which knows many little things. Hedgehogs fit what they learn into a world view. Foxes improvise explanations case by case. The world needs both but today it needs fewer hedgehogs and more foxes. Berlin’s terms are used to describe styles of reasoning by the American psychologist Philip Tetlock, who has spent 20 years asking pundits to predict who will win elections, what countries will acquire nuclear weapons or enter the European Union and how the first Gulf war would end. He has tested 30,000 predictions from 300 experts against outcomes.

Mr Tetlock finds that his respondents are not very good. They do better than a chimp who answers at random, but not much, and worse than simple forecasting rules based on extrapolation. But some pundits are better than others. A little knowledge is helpful. Dilettantes – people with the information you will acquire from diligent reading of this newspaper – do much better than undergraduates who based their judgment on a one-page summary of the issues. But experts have little advantage over dilettantes. The reputation of the experts is a guide to which are worth following. But not in the way you might expect. Bad forecasters are consulted more frequently than good ones. The more famous the expert, the worse his prognostications....

Foxes are better at prediction than hedgehogs because they derive information from many sources, adjust their views in line with events and see a range of perspectives on each situation. Hedgehogs have one clear view, seek evidence that confirms that view and have ready explanations for apparent failures of foresight.

But these hedgehog characteristics are exactly those that politicians, journalists and business leaders demand of advisers and commentators. Harry Truman famously sought a one-armed economist, who would never say: “On the one hand, then on the other.” Broadcast media look for snappy soundbites. Corporate executives demand “the elevator pitch” for new ideas. Fund managers want specific forecasts. Business audiences do not want to hear that the world is a complex and uncertain place. But, unfortunately, it is.

(John Kay, "The World Needs More Foxes and Fewer Hedgehogs," Financial Times, 20 June 2006)

Via Mid-Life MBA.

Berlin on hedgehogs and foxes

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. (from Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox)

culture

Picture from Hamburg

I discovered this picture that my son took with my camera while we were at a cafe in Hamburg.

via flickr

After he took the picture, he went to the bathroom and managed to get himself locked in a stall. The manager had to get him out.

I fully intend to tell that story again at his wedding.

Germany, Hamburg, self-portrait

I just hope there's enough

Traditional holiday and Korean thing- grilling tons of food.

The sociologist of science in me loves this

William Saletan has a piece in Slate looking at the (not very strong) dispute over whether Michael Phelps won the 100-meter butterfly, in which he edged out Serbian Milorad Cavic by 1/100 second. (Cavic, incidentally, was born in California, and went to UC-Berkeley. Like lots of Olympians, he seems to be as much a product of the U.S. as members of the U.S. Olympic squad.)

The problem, Saletan argues, is that in a race this tight, the uncertainties created by the way the scoreboard records times may make it impossible to determine who really won. The scoreboard, he contends,

doesn't tell you which swimmer arrived, touched, or got his hand on the wall first. It tells you which swimmer, in the milliseconds after touching the wall, applied enough force to trigger an electronic touch pad.

[Cornel Marculescu, head of the world swimming federation, FINA] says there's ''absolutely no doubt'' who won, because the clock registered Phelps' arrival first, and "the touch stops the clock.'' Not true. A touch doesn't stop the clock. The touch pad is designed to require a certain degree of force, because otherwise, slight pressure from the water would trigger it. "You can't just put your fingertips on the pad, you really have to push it," the race timekeeper explains. A FINA vice president says the crucial moment is "the instant of depression, of activation of the touch pad, not contact with the pad."...

Technically, the question of who touched first doesn't matter. FINA and the Olympics honchos agreed beforehand to use the touch pads; the touch pads require pressure; all swimmers and their coaches should know this.... I'm not saying the touch-pad system is fishy. It beats the heck out of the old stopwatch method, not to mention the mysteries of judging gymnastics. It's the fairest, most precise system around. And that's the point: Even the most precise system leaves a gray area. In this case, it's the area between touching and pressing. Did Phelps beat Cavic to the wall? We'll never know.

This is the kind of thing that sociologists of science are familiar with. Experiments, they argue, aren't simply direct engagements with Nature, but with things that are proxies for natural phenomena. A neutrino experiment, to paraphrase Trevor Pinch's book Confronting Nature, doesn't generate a bowlful of neutrinos; it generates a set of signals that are translated into graphs that conform (or don't) to theories about how neutrinos ought to behave.

We saw in the 2000 election that even something apparently as straightforward as counting votes was pretty complex, and that we normally weren't aware of the complexity not because it didn't exist, but because normally it didn't seem to matter. And Saletan points to another example of how an instrument-- in this case a touch pad-- that's intended to measure something in a straightforward way and eliminate ambiguity can, under certain circumstances, be revealed to be another proxy.

sports, STS

Quote of the day

"We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." (Winston Churchill)

I've been away a while

My favorite cafe changed its name in late June. I just discovered the change today.

Working today

I'm trying to finish a conclusion to a big report, and often find that I think better when I stand.

via flickr

There's definitely something about writing on a big space that is psychologically different from writing on a piece of paper. And when you're standing it's easier to pace around, look at things from different angles, and throw a lot of ideas up on the wall.

IFTF, paper spaces, work, writing

Harsh

The Guardian reviews the new Star Wars: Clone Wars.

Drained of wit, charm or intelligence, (un)animated avatars of what were once, figuratively as well as literally, flesh-and-blood characters drag their way through an opaque and tedious farrago, uttering lines that would disgrace a speak-your-weight machine.

Tags: starwars, movies, reviews

The best picture from vacation

Written on the wall of Brasenose College, Oxford:

via flickr

children, England, Oxford, Oxford University, signage

Blenheim Palace and the tourist peasantry

Friday we went to Blenheim Palace, which is one of the greatest of England's great country houses. Begun by the first Duke of Marlborough after his great victory commanding the British forces at the Battle of Blenheim, finished years after his death, and then updated, renovated, and expanded since, it's pretty amazing for a single-family home.

via flickr

There's a cool new exhibit about the history of the palace that reminds me somewhat of Pirates of the Caribbean (the ride, not the movie) or other animatronic diorama-type things. You walk through a series of rooms with different scenes from Blenheim's history, with the ghost of a servant as your guide. Maybe the most interesting thing about it is how they solve the challenge of being distracted by the poor facial expression on animatronic or robotic figures. In a couple rooms, they have large displays that project full-body video; in others, they have animatronic figures facing away from the spectators (sitting at desks with their backs to us, for example), and their faces are visible in mirrors (displays). It's a pretty good solution.

via flickr

We also wandered around the gardens a bit (Capability Brown redid the grounds in the mid-1800s or thereabouts), and visited the maze and kids' area. Those were a big hit with the children.

via flickr

Something struck me when I was walking out of the gift shop: tourists are the new tenants. 200 years ago, a significant source of income for a place like Blenheim was rent: peasants lived on your land, grew stuff, and gave you a cut. Today, the peasants are gone, but tourists have replaced them. It costs about $100 for a family of four to visit Blenheim, and the place was crowded; add in the income generated from the cafes, gift shops, private tours, etc., the place must be like the Roach Motel for tourist dollars: I'd guess that tens of thousands of tourist dollars check in, and don't check out.

via flickr

We tourists don't live on the edge of the property: even better (to quote The SImpsons Mr. Burns after he starts a casino), we come in, empty our pockets, and leave. The fact that a servant-- albeit a relatively high-ranking one, the first Duchess of Marlborough's personal servant-- is your guide through the interactive exhibit is another clue to your status.

Bus to Heathrow

We're on the bus from Oxford to Heathrow, where we'll fly out for San Francisco this afternoon. We've got power but no wifi, so my son is listening to iTunes on my machine, rather than borrowing my iPod (he couldn't find his before we left).

Traveling with kids has been a challenge, but an interesting one.

My son is six, so he basically lives in his own universe. It intersects at certain points with the rest of the world, but those points are unpredictable: which means outside Westminster Abbey he might be fascinated by a dog, or see the Greenwich Observatory as cool because you could roll down the hill and break your leg. As a result, the questions he asked me had little to do with-- well, anything, from an adult's point of view. Here's a list of what he asked me on Wednesday, and where:

On the bus:

• Why doesn't the bus have seat belts?
• Are we allowed to keep the headphones?
• My foot is warm.

At Westminster, in the gift shop:

• Do they have arrowheads?
• Are those real daggers?
• Are they made out of metal?
• What's the Holy Grail?
• Was there an Indiana Jones movie where he looked for the Holy Grail?
• Why did the Nazis want the Holy Grail, too?
• Can you put milk in the Holy Grail?

On the London Eye:

• Why can't you go to other countries without a passport?
• Why aren't the seagulls flying up here?
• Why can't you sell living things on eBay?
• Why do they have tugboats?

Everywhere:

• Why was Homer Simpson a bad teacher?
• Where are we having lunch?
• Can I have a snack?
• Where are we having dinner?

Generally, not the kinds of questions I'm used to having to deal with when I travel.

bus, children, England, ox, Oxford, Travel, Travel

Turned off troublesome Twitter notification

It turns out that my blog about my kids was sending notifications to my Twitter feed. Since the kids' blog is password protected, this was causing some consternation. I think I've got it fixed.

Encore performance

Tonight after dinner we realized that there was a second performance of the pyrotechnic performance art piece that I stumbled upon last night. The dads took several of the kids out, despite worries that they (the kids, not the dads) would be used as fireworks, drowned, or simply left outside a bar to be gang-pressed into some passing merchant marine vessel.

The kids quite enjoyed the show. On the way back home, one of them paid it the ultimate compliment: "That was even worth missing World of Warcraft for!"

art, children, Germany, hafencity, Hamburg, Travel

Really cool (and fiery, and wet) performance art piece

As we got back from dinner tonight, we saw a container ship in the harbor, being turned around by tugboats. This is always interesting, even more so when it happens right outside a friend's apartment.

via flickr

While we were watching, we realized that there was something happening in Marco Polo park, just a few hundred yards away, so a couple of us went to check it out. Turns out it was performance art piece. I can't really describe it, so I'll just put up a few pictures to give a sense of the event.

just low-level fireworks and stuff, via flickr

now we're getting more serious, via flickr

wwitching to water a few minutes later via flickr

the crowd gets soaked, but has a sense of good humor about it, i think, via flickr

Here's a brief video of one portion of the show:

Pyrotechnic performance art in Hamburg on 12seconds.tv

art, Germany, hafencity, Travel, Travel

Stefan Sagmeister on diaries

A friend of mine recently introduced me to Sagmeister's work. As a dedicated journal-writer, I agree entirely with the video.

art, design, writing

Back in Hamburg

I got up at 2:30 this morning, after not quite sleeping for a few hours-- more like drifting in and out of consciousness. Fortunately, the night porter opened the restaurant up for just me, brewed some coffee, and made sure I was taken care of until my ride to the airport arrived (five minutes early).

If there is a heaven, I suspect it bears more than a passing resemblance to a well-run English hotel.

via flickr

The ride to the airport was interesting, as my driver lived in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, at the end of the ride was Stansted, which was its usual multilingual, middle-of-the-night madhouse. With all the various languages, the slightly desperate yet all-too-often unhelpful signage, and people sleeping everywhere, the place feels like a refugee camp with duty-free shopping.

via flickr

My flight was delayed an hour, though, because the pilot forgot to fill out some critical piece of paper, so we had to turn around when we were on the tarmac, go back to the gate, and have him do it all over again. And since the cabin door had been opened, we had to listen to the safely video a second time.

However, we did eventually make it back to Hamburg. I'm here until Sunday, when we all fly back to England, and head for Oxford.

airport, England, Stansted, Travel

Why I love England

I came across this sign today.

via flickr

It reads:

Metropolitan Water Board
Motor Car Act 1896 and 1906
Notice.

This bridge is insufficient to carry a heavy motor car the registered axle-weight of any axle of which exceeds three tons, or the registered axle-weights of the several axles of which exceed in the aggregate five tons, or a heavy motor car drawing a trailer if the registered axle-weights of the several axles of the heavy motor car and the axle-weights of the several axles of the trailer exceed in the aggregate five tons.

By order.

The great thing, the bridge doesn't really go anywhere. It crosses the stream, but opens into a tiny field.

England, signage, Travel, Ware, river

Quick post

My last night at Fanhams Hall; I'm tired, have to get up at 3 a.m. tomorrow to get a cab to Stansted, so I'm singing off soon.

I had an excellent day, which consisted of doing nothing-- or nothing by the standards of my usual life. Last night I ended the day with several pints of beer (or three of beer and one of cider), so I woke up pretty late this morning. I briefly entertained thoughts of going to Cambridge or London, but realized I rarely get out into the countryside, so why not take advantage of it?

via flickr

I walked around the village of Ware, which is pretty nice. After topping up my phone and buying some postcards and stamps, I stopped for lunch at the Old Punch House, and had Yorkshire beef and pudding, in convenient wrap form.

via flickr

I then wandered over to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, which was quite impressive, as it's been there (in one form or another) for almost a thousand years, and the oldest stones date from the 1380s.

via flickr

From there, I found the River Lee, and walked along it for a while.

via flickr

From there, then cut through town to a field that's being preserved as a piece of Real English Countryside. I felt a bit like a character from Jane Austen: they always seem to tramping through fields, when they're not in drawing rooms.

via flickr

England, Travel, Ware

Strange signage choices at the Lübeck Airport

Okay, enough vague complaining about the Lübeck Airport. Some examples of signage or other things that make no sense.

First, when you come into the airport, you're confronted with information about the airport lounge and other amenities in the 300 motif:

via flickr

Why is this appropriate? I looked at this and thought, "This is not madness. THIS... IS... LÜBECK AIRPORT!"

via flickr

Proceed next to the main departures hall (aka the tractor parts swap meet). There are two things that really caught my eye. The first was the signage above the bathrooms. Take a look at this and see if you can spot anything ambiguous:

via flickr

The symbols on top have the woman on the left and man on the right, but the doors are reversed: the men's room is actually on the left. You have to look at the yellow sign first to see that "bathrooms are over here," then double-check the doors-- and you stand a pretty good chance of going into the wrong bathroom, if you first pay any attention at all to the yellow sign. Needless to say, I nearly went in the wrong door. That's why I hate this sign.

Notice also that the wall is fabric. FABRIC. As in, like a tent.

Finally, notice anything missing from this map?

via flickr

The countries that Ryaniar doesn't fly to don't exist. This "dude where's my continent approach?" to cartography may not be noticed by people who haven't yet learned of the existence of places like Belgium or Switzerland or France, but I find it strangely disconcerting. Of course, it's possible that dark blue dye is more expensive than... lighter blue dye... so there was an economic reason for drawing the map this way. But I doubt it.

airport, Lübeck, signage, Travel

Fanhams Hall Hotel

Late last night I got into Fanhams Hall, the hotel I'm staying in for the next couple nights.

fanhams hall at night, via flickr

I got checked in pretty quickly-- there weren't many people up, needless to say-- and got settled in my room. I did a little work on my talk, set a bunch of alarms, then went to sleep.

my chair is so squeaky, i think it might be haunted. via flickr

This morning I woke up to what sounded like half a dozen different kinds of birds-- I would guess partridges, something that sounded a lot like owls, and who knows what else. They were loud, though, whatever they were.

via flickr

The grounds looks pretty impressive-- there's a formal garden, a miniature Mount Fuji somewhere, and they've very smartly created some new rooms by filling in space between the older buildings, a la the great court in the British Museum.

the giant jello mold topiaries are famous throughout england. via flickr

I'm here for a couple more nights, thanks to the complexities of booking flights on Ryanair (which I now hate with a burning passion), but more on that later. I guess there are worse places to be stuck....

England, Fanhams Hall, hotel, Travel, Travel

Made it to Stansted

I'm in a taxi on my way to Fanhams Hall, which seems to be deep in the country. This should be interesting.

Flying Ryanair is the aesthetic equivalent of having an overdose on bad branding. Never before have I felt Cayce Pollard's allergy to logos and advertising. And I have two more flights on them in the next week. Gaaak.

Worked on my polishing my talk on the plane-- I was able to fall effortlessly into Airplane Thinking Mode (well, with the help of two cappucinos, served to me by a bemused Ukrainian barista), and work out the transitions and turns of phrase. For me, it often feels like 80 percent of the work of writing a talk is at one of two levels: the structural, where you focus on the big ideas and logical construction of your argument, and the fine details, the rhetorical joinery that make the pieces snap tight in the mind of the listener.

We're really out in the middle of nowhere: we've driven through two picturesque villages so far, and when the GPS sys "continue on this road for six miles," you know you're into some serious Country. I'll have to get enough sleep to get up early and explore before breakfast.

Third tiny village. We're getting into a Wicker Man level of remoteness.

Follow the course of the road for four miles. Oh my. Wait, we just turned onto a freeway, All is not lost.

airport, England, Stansted, Travel

I know Robert Venturi talked about decorated sheds, but this takes things a bit too far

I'm at Gate 5, waiting for my flight.

I'm in a shed.

Not exactly, since it's too big to really be a shed per se. But it's clearly a temporary structure. A tent with a wooden floor and fabric sides (all covered with huge Ryanair ads, by the way.) The kind of temporary architecture designed to be the cafeteria of a Boy Scout camp, or the main hall of a tractor parts swap meet... not international travel.

If you could take every bad design choice you could think of, put them all together, and scatter than randomly, I would have found them all between the Hamburg bus station and here.

From Changi Terminal 3 to this in two weeks. What a life.

airport, Germany, Lübeck, Travel, Travel

Mystery solved

Apparently there's a music festival called Wacken 2008. A lot of people are wearing t-shirts from that show, along with cargo shorts, dreads or long straight hair, goatees, or some combination of leather miniskirt, lace shorts, and boots. Fascinating.

airport, Germany, Lübeck, Travel, Travel

Lübeck Airport, my home away from home

I'm in the Lubeck airport for the next few hours, waiting for a flight to England. I'm giving a talk on technology, organizational learning, and the future to a group at World Vision International, a Christian organization that does a lot of work in development, disaster relief, and global change. It should be an interesting time, as it'll give me a chance to pull together some of my thinking about the end of cyberspace and the future of futures, but in a context that's novel.

I can't believe that of all the places in Europe, the Lübeck and Stansted airports are the ones I'm going to see the largest number of times. The Lübeck airport is tiny-- basically it's only Ryanair that flies in and out of here, though there may also be some Herczegovinian charters that stop here to refuel. But it's not just physically small. More perfectly than any other space I've encountered in my adult life, this airport reproduces the feeling of the Trenton, N.J. Amtrak station late on a winter's night: its mix of people who are waiting to go somewhere, yet have the vibe of people who have nowhere to go; downmarket retail; closed shops-- it's like a petting zoo of varieties of anomie.

There are a surprisingly large number of young people dressed in what I think in the U.S. one would call Goth-- lots of dyed ponytails, black clothing, aggressively ugly boots, and men who look like they're kicking their methadone addictions. Though since we're in a place that actually was Gothic, I'm not sure what you'd call it. Probably there was some music festival in the neighborhood, or maybe they're all flying out to Copenhagen to score some hash in Christiana. Maybe this is just the way kids dress here.

However, I found a reasonably comfortable chair and a working electrical outlet, and I have my Mac and some headphones. So unless they cut off the oxygen, fundamentally all is well. I've got to be in that space that's defined by what I'm thinking and writing rather than I am, anyway.

I may have gotten onto the free wifi network. On the other hand, it may be that a Chechen wireless company has used my insatiable thirst for mobile bandwidth against me, and is actually downloading all my personal information. All your passwords are belong to us.

And I'm certain that I'm breaking some rule by plugging into the electricity here.

Nonetheless, i consider it a minor victory that I got here, got settled, and haven't yet missed my flight (I've got another 5 hours before THAT happens).

airport, Germany, Lübeck, Travel

The surreal Minatur Wunderland

Today we went to the Minatur Wunderland, a train museum in Hamburg.

via flickr

I was never really into miniature trains, but I found this place pretty amazing, in the surreal, hyper-real way that miniatures can be.

The museum is two large stories in an old warehouse in the Speicherstadt, and includes a dozen or so gigantic dioramas.

Vegas, and possibly Miami, via flickr

Every few minutes, the lights go down, and they simulate night. Then things get really cool.

What happens in miniature Vegas staying in miniature Vegas, via flickr

For the right kind of person, working here has got to be absolute heaven.

Germany, Hamburg, museum, Travel

Evening walk

After the kids got to sleep, I took the camera, and went out for a walk along the water. There's an artist who's been lighting up the Hafencity, putting massive sets of blue LEDs on things, and sucker that I am for lighting tricks, I wanted to see what it looked like.

via flickr

I see a lot of interesting lighting and signage, and some pretty good public art projects-- one of the benefits of spending time in London and Singapore (and Budapest, at least along the Danube). Hamburg is a very industrial city-- you don't eliminate 800 years of being one of Europe's major shipping centers overnight-- and it hasn't really made the dramatic jump that other major cities have of hollowing out their industrial base, and replacing it almost entirely with services and finance.

via flickr

So that made the installation really interesting. Because 99% of it is on cranes, docks, and other industrial infrastructure. Partly this reflect the fact that these things are really tall and dramatic parts of the skyline-- any good artist would think of using them.

via flickr

But I also think it turns the whole project into a meditation on the vibrancy and beauty of industrial things-- not just industrial design, but of objects that are made to do very hard, generally-ignored, but essential jobs. We take for granted that TVs and move from China to Switzerland or the US in a few days, but that everyday miracle happens because of places like this.

via flickr

Nobody notices these technologies; they're everyday, and if we don't edit them out of our reality, we think of them as ugly. But maybe this is how they should look.

via flickr

architecture, art, Germany, hafencity, Hamburg, Travel, Travel

Fireworks

Last night during the Hafencity Festival, there were some pretty cool fireworks.

via flickr

We watched them from the patio of the apartment of the friends we're staying with. The cool thing, I thought, was that this brought us close enough to the fireworks to really get a feel for the materiality of the objects. Normally they're more like pixels in the sky-- just cool visuals-- but when you're this close, you can see the canisters explode, and pieces of paper and embers falling from the sky.

via flickr

fireworks, Germany, Hamburg, night, Travel, hafencity

Me and my son

via flickr

He's always running ahead these days.

Germany, Hamburg, Travel, Travel

My daughter stealing a taste of my dessert

She thought she was being subtle.

via flickr

Germany, Travel, Hamburg

Brilliant literary spat

At the Guardian: restaurant critic Giles Coren goes after sub-editors who changed the ending of an article he wrote.

They write back: "There was a sharp intake of breath when your e-mail hit the inbox of subs throughout the industry this week - that was after we'd stopped laughing."

The whole exchange is really pretty incredible. Read it for yourself.

From Stansted to Hamburg

We're now in Hamburg, having arrived this morning from Stansted. We had to leave at the crack of dawn, so it meant that we (or some of us, anyway) slept for a couple hours, then we all got up and went to the airport.

via flickr

We flew on Ryanair, which was, as they say, a trip. Briefly, though I'm going to be traveling on them quite a bit these next few days-- I go back to the Stansted area on Tuesday to give a talk, so I'm going to be pretty familiar with this run before I go home-- I find Ryanair pretty horrifying. Not because they're a thousand times more evil than, say, Southwest Airlines; but for aesthetic reasons.

via flickr

The interior of a Ryanair plane feels like it was designed by someone who was inspired by a gas station bathroom designed by Lego. It's done up in yellow and dark blue, and it manages to remind me of the Ryanair Web site, which itself is a digital disaster area. The seats don't recline. The tray tables feel cheap, and have advertisements on them. There are no seat pockets in front of you. Above the tray tables, in the space where real airlines have little movie screens, are posted the instruction cards that normally go in the seat pockets (which don't exist). I suppose it's better than not having them at all, but it increases the visual clutter of the space tenfold, and subtly communicated the idea that "you're going to crash." Taken together, the whole effect is really something.

via flickr

Stansted Airport is also an interesting cultural experience. On one hand, in the wee hours it's filled with backpackers who've crashed on their bedrolls and are waiting for their flights to wherever; on the other, it's one of the more frenetic airport shopping experiences I've ever seen. Not two populations you think of as overlapping, but I suppose everyone like cheap flights.

via flickr

I think it's a testament to European unity that the EU has managed to survive in the age of EasyJet and Ryanair, and more generally the globalization of bad behavior that they've enabled. Brussels is still moving forward on currency reform and eggplant standardization despite the fact that some of the most regular contact between people from different countries comes not through cultural exchange programs or art exhibits, but soccer hooliganism, bachelor parties, and sex tourism.

Travel, Travel

What day is today...

I'm so tired I couldn't remember if today was Saturday or Sunday. This is my fourth time zone I've been in in the last eight days. I've covered eighteen hours.

Travel

Greetings from Stansted Airport

It's pre-dawn in England-- Hell, it's the middle of the night-- but we're up because 1) we have to go to Stansted Airport at 4 a.m., and 2) the kids are seriously maladjusted and have no idea what time it is. My daughter got a few hours of shuteye, but my son never went to sleep last night; I suspect he's going to pay dearly for it today.

We flew in yesterday from San Francisco to Heathrow. I'm pleasantly impressed at how good my kids are at travel: of course they lose things, drop stuff under their seats, or leave critical things in the car (we're traveling with only one Nintendo DS), but all these things will get better as they get older. Besides, speaking as someone who thought he lost his international SIM cards and extra SD cards, only to discover them in a pocket in his backpack, and who carries a travel mug on the plane precisely because he's saturated one too many of the small areas that constitute your seat and tray table, I can say that even the best of us can make those kinds of mistakes.

After clearing customs and getting our bags (United is now landing in Terminal 1, but their videos still talk about what you do when you get to Terminal 3), we caught a coach to Stansted, then an airport shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express. It's a totally forgettable, corporatized/globalized hotel, staffed entirely with Eastern Europeans (that seems to be the law-- at least a law of economics-- here). Our room has an exciting view of the parking lot. We had dinner early, then played some poker (the kids are now big fans), before turning out the lights. After a certain amount of thrashing, giggle fits, arguments over exactly where the center of the bed was, and complaints about everything from the size of the bed to the sound of the air conditioning, my daughter fell asleep. I don't think my son went out for even a minute.

Nonetheless, I went downstairs, did some e-mail, and caught up with a couple people at the office. I'm trying to keep the amount of work I do down to a minimum, but the fact is one can't be completely out of touch; the best I can do is focus more on my own articles and writing projects, and trust that the Institute-- particularly the wonderful new people we have working on my main project-- will take care of itself.

On to Hamburg, via Lubeck.

airport, children, England, Germany, hotel, Travel