newsletter update 2016-07

Synecdoche

Been absent from newsletter feeds for a year plus. During that time, several POVs changed markedly. Home: relocated from the shadows of the new Google X building …  to a rural part of Russian River Valley. Work: swapped more than an hour commute up to a SF tech start-up … for a 20 min bike ride to O’Reilly Media. Plus a few other priorities. While the newsletter name changes, its themes carry forward. Plus a few other priorities. I’ll cover: conference summaries, open source projects, interesting news items, recommendations … data science, machine learning, advanced math, sustainable ag, art, travel, artisan foods, cider, flying cars, etc. Albeit running in slightly different circles and casting a wider net.

Changing POVs: new “backyard” has less actuators, more pollinators

Confs

Been trying to keep pace with our 20+ tech conferences each year. Lots of travel, lots of interesting people and insights into their projects. Some upcoming:

• JupyterDay Atlanta, ATL, 13 Aug: will present Oriole: a new learning medium based on Jupyter + Docker
• Artificial Intelligence, NYC, 26–27 Sep: plus a drinkup at Wassail
• Next:Economy, SF, 10–11 Oct: plus a drinkup at Upcider
• Big Data Spain, Madrid, 17–18 Nov: will deliver a keynote, hopefully some workshops too!
• Strata+HW Singapore, SG, 5–8 Dec: I’ll present Computable Content: Notebooks, Containers, and Data-Driven Organizational Learning

De Pijp in Amsterdam during Scala Days 2015

Strata EU 2016, 31 May - 03 Jun. Venue moved to the much larger ExCel London space and that afforded an expanse of incredible people, tech innovations, data insights, etc. Also, it proved to be a good base of operations for exploring two recent interests regarding London: connectography and cider. More about both in a moment :)

Strata kicked off with a “Hey, are you busy?” text from the brilliant Alistair Croll, which led to one of the best pub crawls ever. Still parsing our discussions in those London pubs. Those provided the basis for several essays linked here. Seriously. Pay close attention to the intellectual sculpting that emerges from Alistair’s endeavors.

Strata tradition: team #noscurvy w/ BLL Ladies @holdenkarau @j_houg

Anirudh Koul invited me to a session with his Microsoft colleague Saqib Shaikh, where they delivered Beyond guide dogs: How advances in deep learning can empower the blind community. Sure enough, a favorite talk at Strata. Microsoft’s been busy building cognitive services in the cloud which developers can integrate into other software in general. Following retina surgery in both eyes in the 1990s, I experienced serious vision impairment. It was way too much to write code for a while. Switched to working on VR design for a while: shapes, colors, contrasts were much easier to manipulate than source code. Years later my vision still changes abruptly. Grateful now to see (pun intended) these AI innovations by Microsoft and I look forward to many interesting applications.

The proverbial “Full English”

Arrived back to Sonoma County just in time for Foo Camp 2016. Translated: that’s an unconference while camping with 200 fascinating people from around the world. Held in the apple orchard behind our office. DJ Patil and Ed Felten opened the weekend with a lively group discussion about data ethics, where Cory Doctorow delivered the punchline: when you own a mobile device, who choses to override settings, you, the manufacturer, or the government? Lives may depend on the answer.

One decidedly tangible result of Foo: “Blockchain of Love” by Ellie Volckhausen, Edie Freedman, Ally Miller, Johnny Diggz, Tony Parisi, Brian Fan, and yours truly helped with a line or two. Tony attempted to explain the ineffable:

Geeks, guitars and a whole lotta booze. We wrote this song in 45 minutes at O’Reilly Foo Camp!!!

Got to try a Copenhagen Wheel, courtesy of Assaf Biderman @ Superpedestrian – most definitely a decade beyond the Bionx on my prior ride. A favorite session was an Ignite talk by GalaxyKate, aka Kate Compton. Check out her work on generators and related tooling at Tracery.

the old Make Mobile

Velocity CA 2016, 20–23 Jun … Noticed that sessions related to Apache Mesos and DC/OS were standing-room-only. In other words, considering the recent Mesosphere investment by HPE and Microsoft, Mesos has arrived for the mainstream. A good illustration of this? The Container orchestration wars session by Karl Isenberg.

Having been away from SV for a while … Andrew Marantz’s recent New Yorker article How “Silicon Valley” Nails Silicon Valley struck a nerve or two. That rollerblade “scene” took place right behind our former house. Recommended.

Media Theory

One evening in late 1992, between the first Cypherpunks meeting and the FringeWare launch … I climbed aboard an opaque bus, allegedly headed to a private event at Intel Santa Clara. Probably had “press credentials” from Mondo 2000, or something. Sat down, turned around, met the person sitting in the next row. Brilliant, utterly mellifluous, compelling immediate engagement from all around, someone who soon became a star in the industry and also a lifelong friend: Mark Pesce. That evening was all about wandering into different worlds. For a brief interlude, the word “environment” itself became entirely fungible. Alice, down the rabbit hole. Guided tours of the latest in VR by Eric Gullichsen, et al.

offspring in tribal garb

Some things come full circle in the next generation. Our tween daughters recently chose their first “concert” experience: a first-of-its-kind world tour by celebrity YouTubers Dan and Phil. If you haven’t been tracking what’s changed in media, take a close look.

This time, the virtual from the Interwebs gets projected live and in the flesh. Spoiler alert: millennials may have leapt the Selachimorpha.

Read more in my Medium article: Wandering into an entirely different world

Oriole

Les Guessing posed an interesting question recently:

Surprised how data “Storytelling” mostly talks about visualization, not video or other great storytelling mediums.

Well said! Oriole is our update on that point. This new medium combines a video timeline with hyperlinked rich text, code, data, results, instrumentation, and visualization. The point is about repeatable science, in a sense, applied to the matter of contextualized hands-on learning about technology. Also a great step toward personalized learning, with brilliant dev+design from our Brooklyn Team. We’re eager to see how other authors leverage this.

Oriole

For a much better introduction, try it yourself! Check out the coding challenge in Regex Golf by Peter Norvig. That’s the first Oriole we published, as an exemplar.

Read more in my Radar article: Learning alongside innovators, thought-by-thought, in context

And join us for the first public talk about Oriole, at JupyterDay Atlanta on 13 Aug.

AI

David Beyer recently published an excellent series of interviews about the Future of Machine Intelligence. Favorites include:

• Ben Recht on what ML can learn from many decades of control theory, in particular due to similarities with classic dynamical systems – two distinct ways to consider models
• Anima Anandkumar on the use of tensor decomposition and multilinear algebras for non-convex optimization – to represent higher order relationships among latent variables
• Gurjeet Singh on the use of topology: “Data has shape and shape has meaning”, i.e., mapping from one space to another

One thing has been really bothering me about recent media coverage of AI. There’s a disturbing tendency to equate ML with AI, at the expense of considering how control systems are inherent in almost any business application. For example, Uber may use lots of machine learning; however, at the heart its business a control system manages drivers, customers, offers, and other vital aspects of supply chain and contingency. Note that the field of AI emerged from control theory and early cybernetics.

Read more in my Medium article: Beyond the AI Winter

A recent conversation on video by Tim O’Reilly and Peter Norvig explores applications of AI technologies, conversational interfaces, etc. That dovetails with how Google pointed DeepMind at data center power usage, for a dramatic 40% decrease in energy needs. That prefigures many industrial uses for AI, given how “the algorithm is a general-purpose framework to understand complex dynamics” in manufacturing, transportation, energy, etc. Note that Tim and Peter will be honorary program chairs at the new/aforementioned Artificial Intelligence conference in NYC this September.

Meanwhile, other arcanum about the Greater NYC Area … note the curiously shaped post horn which marks the façade of our Brooklyn office:

O’Reilly Brooklyn office, “front door”

The Trystero are out and about, and the sign is not stable.

Neurons and Art

More about applied AI, perhaps for dessert … What have artificial neurons been doing in the art world lately? Apparently they’ve evolved far beyond assembling art boxes that recall the work of Joseph Cornell. Check out the aftermath of the DeepDream: the art of neural networks show in SF this past February by Gray Area.

For an even more intense dose of narrative closure … Terence Broad applied his dissertation, Autoencoding Video Frames to have deep learning deconstruct the film Blade Runner. Using unsupervised learning in a way that Hollywood lawyers might not comprehend for quite a while, this work prompted Warner Brothers to issue a DMCA takedown notice … Except that (surprise!) the work did not include any Blade Runner footage.

For an epic recounting of neurons and art, check out Neural Networks and the Digital Hallucination by good friends over at Lumo Interactive. Also, links highly recommended in Beyond the AI Winter:

Check out the inexplicably entertaining short film Sunspring, authored by an AI named Benjamin.

That script writing AI leverages a recurrent neural network approach called long short-term memory (LSTM ) which takes abductive reasoning to new levels.

ebumna lw’nafh

What AIs aren’t quite dreaming about (yet) are seemingly less probable matters in generated imagery: crystals in a 4.57 billion-year-old meteorite found in Chukotka, Russia showed the first naturally occurring Forbidden Symmetry. YMMV.

Reading

Recently finished Connectography by Parag Khanna. Well worth a good read on several levels. See the especially interesting insights about city-states and SEZs. Had me at the maps. Even so, I’d suggest taking this text with a sizable grain of salt. Perhaps a boulder, caveat lector. The basic premise obtains: how supply chain economics have usurped national borders and trade restrictions. To wit:

Infrastructure, markets, technologies, and supply chains are not only logistically uniting the world, but propelling us toward a more fair and sustainable future.

brilliant maps in Connectography

OTOH its trappings as a book-length hagiography of corporatist values may required antiemetics. Read more in my Goodreads review:

The analysis of geography and history is thought-provoking, albeit some flawed historical citations. Clearly he loves major cities. Plus, there’s a bunch of “US bad, China good” on the surface. Quite a bunch. Dig deeper, it’s worthwhile.

Not to change the subject, but for a truly fun read: The Peripheral by William Gibson. One of the best novels I’ve read in a long while – had much catching up to do on books by the Great Dismal. Read more in my Goodreads review:

Chapters alternate POV between a young female protagonist of near-future and our male anti-hero of farther-future. Extra points for picking up the narrative at the start of some chapters in the “wrong” tense, rear-view mirror syntactic suspense for major plot beats. Like a video rewind after an unexpected concussion.

If you’d like to compare books, reviews, etc., please friend me on Goodreads.

Orchard Brew

A few years ago I was enjoying a seasonal, organic, farm-to-table meal with a close friend at Farmhouse Evanston. Ordered a cyser to drink, notably a Puff the Magic Cyser by Vander Mill – for something local to the Midwest. One sip took me on an adventure that’s kept unfolding in marvelous ways ever since.

ICYMI, ciders are making a huge comeback. Cider used to be the most popular alcoholic beverage in the US, prior to the insanity and cultural warfare of Prohibition. Especially in Sonoma West, where we live on a property that’s partly apple orchard, where we work on a campus built amidst an apple orchard. One fun aspect is that the ciders tend to be hyperlocal. In other words, one can travel the globe and encounter novel brews which stay close to their orchards of origin.

ngram occurrence for “cider” in Google Books, 1650–2008 ce

Here in Sonoma, ciders have little to do with the nasty, too sweet, apple-juice-with-vodka mush flavors that so many folks associate with the phrase “hard cider”. Cider makers here use champagne yeasts and other techniques to produce dry brews with complex flavors. Along with that, federal legislation in the US just revamped arcane tax laws that made The new CIDER Act allows small producers to get in the game with artisan brews, without getting stomped by weird post-Prohibition wine laws. This renaissance is good for the land, good for family farms, and great for drinking IMO.

Cider Bar @ Foo

So we held a taste test at Foo Camp this year. Brought in some of the more popular and interesting ciders from orchards near Sebastopol. Almost everyone (except DJ) favored Cider with Hops & Honey: a personal favorite from our neighbors Horse & Plow run by Chris Condos and Suzanne Hagins. That’s both good and somewhat dangerous, since Chris and Suzanne just opened their new “tasting barn” across the road from O’Reilly Media.

Also … LONDON! One of the best places in the world for cider. Fine folks at Orchard Pig recommended visiting The Williams Ale & Cider House, which was outstanding. Will be hosting drinkups there whenever I’m in London. Another couple great venues for sampling UK ciders are Euston Cider Tap and The Green Man. Favorite ciders in the UK? Reveller by Orchard Pig brings the fine flavors of Somerset, available far and wide. Top delight of this trip was Scotland’s Thistly Cross: off-dry, crisp, so smooth, the closest thing I’ve experienced to a Devoto Cidre Noir outside of Northern California :) Another treasure to seek out: Wild Summer by Kentish Pip:

Hints of Elderflower alight sea foam spray in a Nordic summer. Delicate, lightly astringent aftertaste.

As we tour the world with O’Reilly conferences, I’ll host drinkups at nearby cider bars. Here’s a toast to meeting you and sharing a brew or two! Meanwhile, if you’d like to share reviews of ciders, beers, etc., please friend me on Untappd.

Kane’ohe Bay Sandbar: grateful to visit with family in Hawaii recently

Ag+Data

Loved this informed, scathing rebuttal by the brilliant Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, et al. Money quote:

What is remarkable, but unsurprising, is that these two gentlemen managed to write an entire column about agriculture without mentioning farmland or farmers.

That, in response to a NYTimes op-ed piece earlier this year entitled We Need a New Green Revolution. Note the key word entitled in that sentence: beware just about anyone who lauds a “Green Revolution” without recognizing the terrible consequences that resulted, i.e., financialization being a polite term. In other words, vast claims of battling starvation, while the most wealthy leveraged this vector to institutionalize mass starvation as their business model. There’s far too much “science” bandied about w.r.t. agriculture, pumped into media, heavy on funding ties yet light on scientific falsification.

I believe that politicians and other corporatists who side with Big Ag are behaving immorally. No other word for it.

Read more in my Radar article: Ag+Data

OTOH, absolutely LOVE it when intellect, integrity, and endurance overcome oh so many tedious decades of thoughtless aristotelianism. Check out How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology:

“Toby took huge risks for many years,” says McCutcheon. “And he changed the field.”

VRTX

Apropos of the above, I’ve been testing chapter ideas and other material for a new Liber 118. In particular, I’m a huge fan of Universal Basic Income, which has intriguing historical precedents plus enormous implications for the game that comes next.

After running the numbers for what UBI might cost in the US, implications became all the more urgent. It’s within striking range of commercial alternatives, i.e., corporatist funding in lieu of government initiatives. That got me thinking … about parody and science fiction to caricature what UBI might look like if everything went horribly wrong? What if corporatist values seized the day? Key portions of that parody got trumped, so to speak, by an even more bizarre happenstance in alleged reality.

¿quién es más macho? alleged reality vs. parody

Read more in my Medium article: Guaranteed Basic Income (cynical remix)

I’ll just leave you with …

Flying cars. It’s happening. When friends at Bloomberg first gave a heads up about this two years ago, the whole spiel sounded unreal. Now 2 out of 3 of the promises foretold in Planet Unicorn have come true. The big picture is that people travel into work in metro areas via line of sight. No more traffic congestion. Or something.

I guess that’s great for people who work in large cities. Not everybody. But there are likely some other intriguing uses.

Meanwhile, in the lesser hells of drone wizardry, one regrets that the noun #WTFery does not enjoy more regular usage in the English language.

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Thanks for your attention, and I wish you all the best in your endeavors. Sign-up for the newsletter version at liber118.com

SV Synopsis: Fundamentalism in Technology

I am grateful for perspectives gained because our family lives in Silicon Valley. Many options here to work at novel ventures, and on fascinating projects… Opportunities to drop by Stanford or Berkeley for some remarkable guest lecture by a visiting expert… The wonders of an almost perpetual Maker Faire as one walks through the neighborhood on any given evening… Tech camps that our daughters can attend locally, as they wish… And, generally speaking, the lack of any real need to engage in ridiculous commutes…

As an open source evangelist and as an investor, I've felt grateful to learn from a veritable parade of interesting projects. However, I am troubled by the incidence of a particular problem. Far too often one runs headlong into what I could characterize as a close approximation of cocaine-fueled misogynistic narcissism. The condition is subtle, but systemic here. Even recently, I have witnessed this up close – along with the regrettably pervasive and predictable non-reactions to it. Increasingly, zero tolerance appears to be the only effective response. Or perhaps the tech industry percolates out elsewhere, far from SF and its inertia?

Without mentioning names, two well-known billionaire-club investors in Silicon Valley personify this character sketch. Evidence of panspermia ad absurdum festers in the "cultures" that they promote. Personal jihads seemingly to self-perpetuate their fundamentalist ideals.

A nagging question lingers… Why work alongside an ilk of people with whom I would never encourage my daughters to mingle? Granted, I believe quite strongly in the need to talk with just about everyone, to keep dialogue open, to reject the notion of "enemy". Even so, there are absolutes. Practical realities of livelihood aside, as a parent what kind of examples do my professional actions and affiliations set?

In addition, a question that investors ask over and over when considering whether to fund a new company is "Will the team scale?" Any measure of the toxins described above almost guarantees that the answer will in practice be "No."

That represents a dirty little secret. There is an amazing level of demand for tech talent. It's not exactly because these companies are raging commercial successes; most early-stage ventures by definition are not. It's because few people who are capable of making good judgements are willing to compromise their futures to work for ineffective caricatures. Many start-ups encounter difficulties in scaling their team. Or – more likely over time – they encounter high attrition rates.

While I have in the past focused for several years on the same project, lately I don't stay long in most early-stage firms, generally moving on after an organization demonstrates its nature. To paraphrase Lady Grantham from Downton Abbey, there is a point at which malice ceases to be amusing. On the one hand, that's a terrible way to leverage stock option packages. On the other hand, arguably I have pursued a portfolio career strategy. That approach has helped me build an amazing network. Long-term benefits of my network have far surpassed the potential upside of my aggregate stock options. Therein dwells an important lesson about Silicon Valley.

westward ho

Some friends of mine live in the Westport area of Kansas City, across the street from a marker which notes the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and the California Trail. For many people in North America during the 19th century, their resolve to migrate west was tested there.

View Larger Map

So it is for us, with two little girls ready to travel. Our oldest is eager to live in hotels again, because they promise TVs, room service, and jacuzzi pools. She was done with KC as soon as she got her fill of fresh snow. Our youngest has been missing the ocean, especially the seals. She's asked, "When do we go home?" just about ever since we arrived in KC.


A woman from Kansas a few days ago made a few rather hostile remarks about how Californians feel about seals -- right after my little girl got through declaring how much she loves seals and whales.

Unforgivably callous. Intolerably ignorant. Not entirely unexpected. In other words, par for the course. I'm sorry to have to feel that kind of resignation, but it is entirely realistic. I bit my tongue to avoid making an offhand retort about "fly over zone". After all, parts of the Midwest are highly recommended.

Two bright spots have made these past 10 months worthwhile...

One is my team in the Analytics department at Adknowledge -- a.k.a., "Team Mendota". Those people have been a joy and and honor to work among. In addition to several contributions to R, Hadoop, AWS, RightScale, and points inbetween, we've made big strides in methods for having statisticians and developers working side-by-side on "Big Data" projects -- with tangible results. Frankly, I would have left much soon (supra 3 yr old tugging daddy's heartstrings) if it had not been for how much I appreciate this team. Flo, Chris, Nathan, Chun, Bill, Shan, Vicky, Margi, David, Gaurav -- I wish you all very well. My regret is that I did not get to work with you long enough.

The other is our collective friends and families in the area, met through our kids -- mostly because of their school, Global Montessori Academy. My wife has served on the board there. The teachers and just everyone involved have been amazing. Not sure quite how that place emerged here inside of KC, and I'd be hard-pressed to believe that anything much like it exists between Chicago and Austin... but GMA and the people associated will be missed.

I found myself thinking, many many times while living here in KC, "How can I teach my daughters about the principles in which I believe, if I cannot live them here?" GMA actually does represent those principles. Highly recommended.

For everyone else, see you back on the Left Coast!

a sample chart

Been wanting to try out the recently released Google Chart API. It looks great for implementing things on web pages like Tufte's sparklines.

So here is a sample chart, with my respective ethnicity. Our family is a mixed bag, part which looks like a cross-section of early North America, and part looks like a cross-section of Central Asia, sampled right along the Silk Route. These things happen.

Anywhoo, it took all of about 2 minutes to build a first chart and have it labeled and colored the way that I wanted. All that plus the data is URL-encoded. Nice work, GOOG.

Meanwhile, happy Chinese New Year!

jarad on vh1

My nephew Jarad DeRochey makes a cameo in Gotti's Way, episode 4, beginning at about 01:41 -


Hint: visualize my daughter Laurel (below) as a UFC fighter.

generations

My mom, Cherie - circa 1942, in Rifle, CO.
My daughter, Laurel - circa 2007, in Avila Beach, CA.

Their visual resemblance at that age feels uncanny to me. Laurel has a wee bit o' the Persian side of our family asserting, more like my brother and sister do.

Sixty five years. Thirteen hundred kilometers. Yours truly, gratefully in-between.

Laurel's photo by Flo Leibert

the western lands

Out on the Western Slope of Colorado, great mountains spill their bowels into a vast desert. Standing at one point along the Colorado River, one's view up the mountain is filled with snow-capped peaks, while downriver the view opens into a desert scene of mesa, scattered now with vineyards emerging out of near-Martian dust. Arriving out of France, out of Canada, out of Iowa, my people settled there. Open range cowboys. French mostly, with a wee bit o' Irish, plus a few blue-blooded Brits "gone native", along for the ride. Mountain people, ranchers, "rugged individuals".

You'll wreck in hell to leave me out. When me you fly, I am the wings.

The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world, for it is a journey beyond death, beyond the basic god-standard of fear and danger.

It is the most heavily guarded road in the world, for it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts, the gift of Immortality.

Meriwether Lewis, one of our blood kin, led his expedition across the continent in a lifestyle not terribly unlike how my grandfather lived, how my uncle is said to still live, way off the grid.

Along that same blood line, my great grandmother's great uncle, Oscar Rush, chronicled the life in The Open Range, which J. Frank Dobie praised as "a sensitive range man's response to natural things". Part of the canon of Southwestern literature. Oscar was born before the start of the Civil War and lived up until the beginnings of World War II. I can only image the contrasts he experienced, but thankfully I have in my hands one of his own copies of the book as a guide.

The road to the Western Lands is devious, unpredictable. Today's easy passage may be tomorrow's deathtrap. The obvious road is almost always a fool's road. And beware the middle roads, the roads of moderation, common sense, and planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation, and common sense.

Out in that land, my sister tends a ranch on the banks of the Colorado, not far from where our grandparents in their day raised some of the most prized Angus bulls in the West.

A mountain burns nearby, has burned for more than a century from a coal mine fire. Cul tir was the origin of our family name in Celtic, back in County Sligo and stretching further into Prehistory. Back on the green coast where Yeats learned his love of verse. Black lands, filled with coal, which burn and choke the air.

A dangerous road. Every pitfall, every error, every snare to which every man has been liable since the beginning, you are sure to meet on the road to the Western Lands.

These days the landscape is littered by the flotsam of drilling rigs and the human litter of petroleum search crews. I wonder what they'll find searching beneath our family detritus?

My other grandfather likely hid my father there, following WWII and manufactured revolution sweeping through our corner of Central Asia. Following the rise of the Soviet Union, and the incursion of the UK and US into the Middle East. Other petroleum search crews, striving beneath that other part of our family detritus. Out there on the Western Slope, it must have seemed safe, remote, unreachable by our enemies -- compared with the intrigues of Tehran or Paris or Moscow. My other grandfather was wise to imagine it, but my father was brave to embrace it.

To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Can you free yourself from fear by cowering in your physical body for eternity? Your body is a boat, to lay aside when you reach the far shore. Or sell it if you can find a fool. It's full of holes. It's full of holes.

It is a black land, a land of terribly bloody history, of battles larger than could be imagined on the Eastern coast. Our family cannot hide from that dharma. Perhaps the thirsty majestic mountains themselves demand it as tribute for tolerating our mortal kind in their shadows. And so they burn.

I want to reach the Western Lands. It's right in front of you across the bubbling brook. It's a frozen sewer. It's known as the Duad, remember? All the filth and horror, fear, hate, disease, and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands.

On the banks of the roaring Colorado river, beneath the shadow of peaks, watching a sunset over the mesas, my sister stood in white, presiding. I gathered my two young daughters close, to brace them from fear. Our family fired a twenty one gun salute -- via .44 magnum no less, as one might only expect from French cowboys gone feral in the American West. A small raft lit aflame and floated quietly downriver, our tribute to my nephew, Lennon, as his wake. "Daddy, is that for the boy who died?" my oldest daughter asked. My younger daughter gathered rocks, unflinching. Neither seemed to fear, from either weapons firing or our ritual celebrating death. As by the blood coursing downriver through their veins, would likely so.

How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he "wants?"

You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a Joy as old as suffering and despair.

with kudos to WSB, Material, and the neteru

attack at cia headquarters

I can neither confirm nor deny that members of our party were in any way responsible for several unfortunate events which occurred last Friday evening at the Culinary Institute of America (California Branch) in St Helena. Because I plead the Fifth, my comments may not be construed to support any of the alleged acts, including but not limited to: (a) the disappearance of a wrought-iron rooster from the wall ("Sir, we know that you have the rooster"); (b) contributing to the delinquency of a wait-server by suggesting to bribe said CIA employee in the face of mounting distress on the part of the maître de ("Only if it comes from Humbolt"); or the willful inciting of a "cougar" attack ("Gee, you smell great!") on our way out the door. I can confirm however that two of my friends, the aforementioned rooster rustlers and designated "cougar" bait - to whom we shall refer by the utterly fictitious pseudonyms "Karsten" and "Charlie" - did in fact score an autographed chef's hat for somewhat less than the winery price of a Stag's Leap 2002 Estate Grown Petite Syrah.

A member of our board has a bed and breakfast in the family, located on a beautiful stretch of Silverado just a few clicks up-valley from St Helena. They graciously hosted our firm's first "off site" week. We initiated festivities with a visit to Dean & DeLuca which involved intense negotiations en français followed by dropping a few bills (non-expensable) and holding up the checkout line for nearly an hour. Our ensuing ratatouille feast and successive raids on said family's mountain cellar provided fine food, wine, and conversations all week long, fueling some amazing sorties into the metaverse, which I hope we can begin to share with the world soon.

After months of crunch time, preparing for a wide set of technology demos, we deserved a little pampering - so we availed ourselves of the local terroir. In a private room at Tra Vigne we learned the intimate details of Pighed's recent forcible detainment by LAPD for running a red light after midnight on a girl's bike. For the up-scale down-home version of local fare, various attendees made excursions to Market throughout the week.

Lobster Roll at the latter was so amazing that Erin and I missed our flight home from Oakland. I've reviewed it for a first contribution at Lindsey Simon's new Dishola site. And as I type, our girlies are both nearly unrecognizable after munching on their chocolate duck bling-bling from Woodhouse, right near Market. Be certain to check out The Olivier next door.

Ah, Napa! Not quite as dear as my home terrior in Edna Valley, but the best thing this side of Tuscany. Moreover I can confirm that thanks to the oneological genius of Opus One, I got more smashed than I've ever been outside of Russia or Japan, and the Scallop Gnocci at CIA alone is well worth an immediate trek up to Napa.

bay-nays foster

My daughters call bananas "bay-nays". This recipe, with which I've been experimenting since 1996, is approximately as old as my first Java code. It's also the only dish that I've ever served to (otherwise seemingly civil) adults which caused them to fight and steal at a dinner party ;) Be sure to use dark chocolate and light, fresh flour ... and in the name of gopod, prepare enough to avoid the fighting.

• Serves: 4
• Prep Time: 60 minutes


• Ravioli Pasta:
  • 1 cup Banana pulp
  • 1/3 cup Sugar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 Egg
  • 2 cup Flour (Semolina)
• Filling:
  • 1 Chocolate bar
  • 1 Egg yolk
  • 2 Tbs Water
• Sauce:
  • 3 Tbs Butter
  • 3 Tbs Sugar
  • 1 Lemon, small
  • 1 shot Liqueur
  • dash Cinnamon, Nutmeg
  • 1 Banana
  • 1 tsp Powdered Sugar
  • 1/2 cup Chocolate Sauce

Blend banana pulp, sugar, vanilla, egg. Blend in flour. Process to make pasta sheets. Pound chocolate bar into powdery small chunks, then spoon in to ravioli. Coat seams with egg/water mix and cut. Boil until ready.

Saute butter, sugar, spices on low heat until caramelized. Add sliced banana and lemon juice, then stir. Carefully add ravioli and saute until browned. Pour in liqueur (a mix of rum, Everclear and banana liqueur works well) and let heat for 30 sec, then light with a match. Spoon flaming ravioli into dishes, and lightly sprinkle with rum caramel from the pan, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar.

wal-mart's peanut butter manifesto and "Slavery 2.0"

Is the world's largest multinational corporation, Wal-Mart, on the decline? Or is it simply riding the political ebb and flow as it tracks a neoconservative agenda to undermine people of color and drive a wedge through the Democratic Party?

Interesting news comes today that a judge in Chelan, WA has declared the building permit illegal for a new Wal-Mart "supercenter" being constructed there.

The mix of reactions from locals in Chelan seems characteristic of other areas in which Wal-Mart has faced opposition. Older or poorer residents look at consumer prices and tend to want access to cheap goods, which Wal-Mart provides. Local retail businesses generally know that they'll be forced into a situation in which they can no longer stay open, resulting from changes in traffic and spending patterns, changes in zoning, etc. Real estate organizations lobby ardently on behalf of Wal-Mart, often in direct opposition to homeowners. Local political officials get paid off and cut corners legally to accommodate corporate plans. Homeowners know that as a supercenter comes into an area, the crime rate tends to rise, the traffic becomes clogged, and the home values tend to fall.

Where we own a home in Austin, news came last month that Wal-Mart had obtain a building permit to open a 220,000 square foot, 24/7 "supercenter" in our residential neighborhood. To place this into perspective, that would become one of the largest "big box" stores in the state of Texas - in our residential neighborhood.

In brief, there is an old shopping center called "Northcross Mall" which was built decades ago when this area was on the very outskirts of Austin. When my wife was a kid here, Northcross was the shopping center of the region, but for several years it has been largely vacant - mostly due to rather harsh policies by its absentee landlord. The city has grown to a point where this neighborhood is now considered "central" and is mostly residential. When I bought a home in this neighborhood 12 years ago, nearby retail properties were mostly in decline; however, several innovative small businesses have worked hard to renovate the area, so that we have a place were neighbors can walk to local businesses. WMT came in, arranged with Austin's city manager to obtain a building permit without a public hearing, the city manger recused herself from further comment on the issue, and now we're going to have semi-trucks driving through our neighborhood to supply a 24/7 superstore. On one side there is the Real Estate Council of Austin, pushing hard to promote the WMT/Clinton agenda. On the other side, there are five neighborhood associations - in other words, the political power of approximately 2500 soccer moms plus their best friends, family, and neighbors, which multiples into about 10% of the city population - looking ahead toward rising crime rates, lower home property values, degraded public schools, etc.

It is interesting to look at the political activity of Wal-Mart. Notably, they spend most of their political funding - more than 80% - on conservative, "Religious Right" Republican candidates. At the executive levels, WMT contributions to RNC exceed their contributions to DNC by approximately a 30:1 ratio. Those candidates tend to represent the bulk of WMT customers, two-thirds of whom come from "Red" states: poor, under-educated, working-class people in rural America. However, there is also a healthy stream of WMT political funding heading toward Democratic leadership, particularly in the Senate, such as Clinton, Ford, Bayh. Clinton in particular was on WMT's board of directors for several years during its major growth period - during its main period of destroying "ma & pa" retail businesses throughout the US, during its main period of undermining laws for employee benefits.

What is intriguing and arguably appalling is how much emphasis WMT has placed on African-American political lobbies. One blantant example is found the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, where WMT with its Democratic party candidates in tow has been systematically acting as a wolf in sheep's clothing to tear apart support for Black voting rights, labor protections, etc. Lee Walker of Heartland Institute argues a racial case for "sell on the downside" case on behalf of WMT:

When a city government steps in and makes it illegal for some businesses to pay less than $10.00 an hour and an additional $3.00 an hour in benefits, it effectively makes it illegal for those businesses to hire many black applicants. Crucial entry-level jobs that would enable young blacks and ex-offenders to start climbing the career ladder to better-paying and more fulfilling jobs will be closed to them.

IMHO, if Walker, et al., do not represent a neo-conservative push toward "Slavery 2.0", I don't know what else would be reasonable to call them.

Looking at the arguments about Wal-Mart, the issues are not about "access to reasonably priced consumer goods" or "protection of a free market". WMT is just about as oppositional to "free market" economics as any entity in the world, considering how their growth in recent years has been built by literally threatening local elected officials into changing laws which support WMT at the cost of destroying existing businesses and communities, not to mention their lobbying against labor protection laws, minimum wage, health care rights, etc. The underlying issue is about how to compel poor people - mostly people of color - to work for less than an affordable living, as the conflict in Chicago exposed so directly.

Admittedly, I am a Green, and in some ways the WMT corporate history of predatory acts have helped to illustrate what I believe are the fundamental and unresolvable flaws of the Democratic Party - racial prejudice being among the foremost. Even so, I am encouraged to find that currently DNC front-runners such as John Edwards and Barak Obama have broken ranks with Clinton, et al., with respect to WMT. The issue there appears to be foreign policy: Clinton arguably has no foreign policy beyond "Let's increase the trade deficit with China" or "Maybe we should invade Iran". Thankfully, other DNC candidates appear to have a more global (read: less self-serving) perspective for the long-run.

If one were to take a counterpoint position, what would be important to consider vis-a-vis WMT in terms of conservative American interests? Notably, WMT is one of the largest employers in the US, and it accounts for a substantive chunk of our foreign trade. Given those measures of strategic importance, it is interesting to review the security risks which WMT faces. For example, while they appear to have built and continue to nurture a solid foundation for political support and a huge base of consumers, they have a systematic weakness in their vendor relations. Quite arguably, a culture of fear has emerged where WMT actively pits one vendor against its competitors, to leverage that fear for lower wholesale pricing. While in the long run their pattern of sublation will most likely expose WMT to antitrust actions, in the short term their vendor policies expose a significant vulnerability to so-called "terrorist" attacks. If a non-state actor were to arrange for systematic delays of the supply chain of vendor deliveries - even on the order of trucks being delayed on the highways by mere minutes - then some of the most essential WMT policies would be triggered and come into play. Effectively the corporation would begin to attack its own internal operations.

Not that I am encouraging such acts, but as a thought experiment, does that risk worry anybody? If some non-state actor were ambitious enough to stage that kind of attack, the most likely outcomes imply that it's time to "stop eating peanut butter" in Bentonville.

in praise of seitan

Recently my wife asked me how to cook eggplant. First, we had received some nice egg-shaped eggplant with our Greenling delivery last week. Secondly, there's a popular eggplant dish in Persian cuisine which I like to fix for the family, and Erin was perhaps hinting :)

The Persian word for eggplant is "bademjan". I remember a similar word used to describe a popular eggplant salad in Russia - which was delicious, but perhaps not quite as savory as the Persian variety.

However, this time we changed up the recipes a bit. We had a craving for "setian" - also called wheat roast or fu. So here goes one for our recipe book, an adaptation of a Persian lamb stew called "khoresh" with our substitutes for the meat - in prase of Seitan:

Slice eggplant - optionally peel them if the peels are too think and tough.

Soak eggplant in brine overnight, to leach out the bitterness - not required for Japanese style eggplant.

Drain eggplant, removing the bitter brine.

In a large iron skillet, heat a centimeter of grapeseed oil, adding freshly grated nutmeg, black pepper, and Hungarian paprika.

Once that begins to snap, add eggplant slices.

Cover and cook, stirring occaisionally so that all the eggplant becomes cooked evenly.

When the eggplant flesh becomes soft and somewhat brown/purple, add equal amounts of seitan (roasted kind).

Stir together, adding enough tomato paste to coat all the "meat".

I like to garnish with a chiffonade of cilatro and garlic chives, which just happen to be locally in season.

I also like to serve this over rice. A nice basmati should work well enough... Persian dishes tend to use a technique called "chelou bah tadig" where the rice is slightly under cooked, then placed into a tall pot which has hot oil and saffron in the bottom. Make "holes" with a wooden spoon all the way from top to bottom of the rice, and wrap the pot's lid with a towel.

The result is a golden crisp at the bottom, where the the rice above becomes a little fluffy and gains an almost "nutlike" or "popcorn" flavor. Place the tomato + seitan + bademjan mix atop that and you'll enjoy a tasty entree.

In fact, I have been tempted to name this dish The Great Seitan.

greenling

I prefer my food slow, local, and organic.

Eating at restaurants too often - in other words, more than a few times per week - just does not feel wholesome to me. Eating fast food often at all just feels wrong.

For one thing, I cannot stand the size of portions which are typical at American restaurants. It's absurd. A friend of mine in Japan remarked that it's great when he visits because he can just order one meal and then carry home another entire meal!

The amount of fat, the horrid condition of ingredients, the excesses in packaging - all of these factors make restaurant food unlikely for me, except for really good meals, which are probably 4x food cost anyway and not what I'd care to buy other than for a special treat or a social gathering outside a home.

I prefer slow food. I love to cook at home - and spent a whole bunch on building a nice home kitchen. After those early years where I earned my keep as a cook at times, and after so many fun evenings hosting dinner parties - or "FringeWare Fridays" back when we had the bookstore in the late 1990s - a meal cooked by a stranger just doesn't necessarily sound fun.

Ah, but where do all those lovely ingredients for fine home-cooked meals come from?

There has been a notion of CSA and excellent farmers markets around Austin for a long while - quite appealing. Several years ago I met the couple who run Tecolote Farm... imagine getting a basket of fresh, locally, grown organic vegetables delivered to your doorstep weekly. Then imagine having to wait on a list for a year or two! Alternatively, the Austin Farmer's Market is a treat - I enjoy taking my daughters there on the weekend. For that matter, Austin is the headquarters for both Central Market (which I adore, admittedly corporate but supportive of locals and independents) and Whole Foods (which I detest, ultra corporate green-posers aka "Hoalf Udz"), and the area features some wonderful natural food co-ops. We even have an organic farm inside the city - Boggy Creek Farm, which has sustained since the years when Austin was the source for most fresh spinach in the region.

As a home cook, I've been a fan of growing veggies, herbs, raising chickens, etc., since I was a kid... Growing up on the Central California coast, I had not questioned the idea of "slow food"... Local seafood was abundant - each week we ate the abalone which my uncle couldn't sell from his catch. Many of the neighbors were from Portuguese families which had immigrated there, largely for the fishing - and they showed up everbody when it came to fixing seafood well! Local farms featured fresh berries, apple orchards, all kinds of vegetables - especially artichokes - and fresh dairy. We used to buy a side of beef for the freezer, selecting a steer out on the ranch... ranches tended by families who had gained the land 200 years earlier as Spanish land grants, or often some Swiss-Italian immigrants who brought Tyrolian styles. And of course, what wasn't ranch or farm was soon to become wall-to-wall vineyards, with soil and microclimates approximating a range from Burgundy to Tuscany.

Moving away from SLO, I found the rest of the US held no such values. Especially in Texas, where a "meal" seems synonymous with a drive around the block to Whataburger.

There have been exceptions. One chef transplanted from France to Austin - Jean Luc Salles - teamed up with Boggy Creek Farm to feature local, organic vegetables in season at his bistro. I was lucky enough to catch Salles and author Carol Ann Sayle from Boggy Creek give a cooking course at Central Market, and I highly recommend Sayle's cookbook Eating in Season.

Of course, all of this requires extra time and effort, and probably would seem obscure to people who don't share my values (or half-French blood?)


Which is why I've been stunned to find the wonderful value of a new service called Greenling. They take the notion of "CSA" plus home delivery and cooking foods in-season - and bundle it into a family-oriented package. Wonderful. It convinced my wife, and is convincing my neighbors - about as fast as they hear about it. Greenling delivers an ice chest of fresh vegetables, plus extras - each 1-2 weeks. For our family, we've chosen 2 week intervals at first, but we're switching soon to weekly. We get a surprise selection of in-season produce from local organic farms. We manage our delivery account on the Greenling website, and can take on extras like organic dairy, honey, etc.

We're forced now to cook at home, using whatever is seasonal and local. It's delicious. I'm actually learning to love okra again. We've reduced our trips to the grocery store (I have mixed feelings, because I love to shop at Central Market, but I appreciate burning less fuel to drive there.) We've been sharing with neighbors and friends.

The idea of a CSA is great, but the close pairing of one farm to a set of subscriber families - it comes out a bit awkward. With a service like Greenling, there can be some economy of scale, some buffering and variety, by incorporating producer/consumer relations between many farms and many residences. I could imagine this kind of service hanging around the farmers market just about when it closes - to bid on what's left over.

More importantly, one could imagine this kind of service going national. Soon.

bedtime story

When asked to make up a bedtime story, my 2.5 year old daughter composed and recited the following:

One on a time
Something, something
All by myself.

...then giggled profusely - as a full body endeavor - in the way that only a toddler can.

I am amazed.

first day at the new job

It was my first full day at the new job. Still in stealth, we're making good progress. As the Technical Director, my day starts out with a quick peek through Gmail. What's come in from our Executive Producer in Australia before she called it a night? There's a blurb from Google Calendar, describing my agenda for Skype meetings throughout the day. Any news from LA while I was alseep? A few personal messages, then check through Google Reader for interesting news - maybe I'll forward one or two to my partners. Shut down the iBook, time to spend a while with the kids, feed the chickens and the koi, do a few dishes, clean up my new "office" space in the oven-temperature garage, and then off to my real workplace... Just a short ride away on the mtn bike to park for a few hours in a local coffeehouse. Austin has 40C weather, but early in the day it's not so bad; ozone levels won't peak until much later in the day.

Curling up to a mocha and iBook, it's time to twiddle for a while on the company's network architecture diagram, then get to real work for the day on Second Life, winding my way through LSL. Two aging Boomers at the next table are scamming/being scammed for an investment in a bogus Third World water treatment technology. They stare nervously, trying to detect anyone who's seeking to steal their IP. I have my headset blasting Thirteenth Step to drown out the ambient babble so I may focus. This is how life was meant to be.

After a few espresso shots and plenty accomplished, I put my helmet and cleats back on, and ride back home just about the time the sitter is leaving. At few more dishes done, never enough of that with two toddlers in the house. Watching the younger girl while my wife gets a breather. Later, I'm back in Skype to catch a conf call with our Executive Producer and Creative Director, getting prepared for some video production work.

I have time again. Time to spend with my wife and kids. Time to think about what I'm working to build online, or what I need to write. Time to nurture a small urban farm, to show my daughters the different kinds of trees on our property. Time to cook food, slow food, the kind of food that doesn't cost 4x for convenience while causing excess obesity amongst the population, such as most of Corporate America "enjoys" for lunch. Food that makes me feel healthy, working at full potential. Time to rest. Time to return to my regular practice of yoga, fitness training, and mountain biking. Time to exist in my own personal terroir. Time to become, again.

On one hand, some things about my previous job will be missed dearly: some good friends met (online or in the office) daily, a wonderful developer team in Russia, the health insurance package, ... but not the mainframes. On the other hand, I'm enjoying the entertainment business much, much better already :)

Meanwhile, I tend to judge my quality of life based on a couple of factors: how few times per week I must drive a car, and how many times per day I get to cook my own meal. So far, so good!

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tags: Second Life, Slow Food, Terroir