Midsummer, I got pretty fed up with United/Continental's post-merger leadership team and how they were gutting benefits for frequent flyers (I had been wondering why I wasn't getting upgraded, even I should have been, and found this thread, and then this thread about the leadership's perspective about elites). So, despite liking Continental so much ( Read more... )

I just checked into a hotel in New Haven. My reaction upon entering the room: "oh, that's a big bed. And a desk and chair! and large TV! and a fridge and microwave!" ::rounds corner:: "and a couch and coffee table?!?!"

I've been staying in far too many European hotels lately...

I know as Americans we think we have bureaucracy bad. But it's really child's play compared to European bureaucracy. I used to think it was only Southern Europe that operated this way, with such maddening degrees of pointless precision. Our experiences in France and the stories we heard from pirate_artist in Spain made it seem like a byproduct of a culture of ( Read more... )

There's a place in the Netherlands called 's-Hertogenbosch. The punctuation is driving me nuts. Or maybe it's just thoughts about the two men in the city's coat of arms...

There's a suburb of Stockholm called Aspudden.

While waiting in Frankfurt, we were watching the Breaking News on CNN, which simply had the text "Naomi Campbell testifies" repeated over and over in several variations ("supermodel testifies", "Campbell witness in the Hague", etc). Finally enough textual information had appeared on screen for us to deduce that Naomi Campbell had initially denied, ( Read more... )

Christian and I were in a bookstore the other day. Now, I don't normally buy comic books, but the cover of this comic book screamed out at me:


( Read more... )

I've been going to the pizzeria across the street pretty often now--4 times total since I've been here, including last night and tonight. I keep missing Leon, but I end up talking to the Kurdish guy (argh, I forget his name) who runs the place and last night we even talked for two and a half hours! I completely lost track of time. We got on the ( Read more... )

Persi Diaconis, a statistician who himself has an interesting biography, related at lunch today an interesting aspect of the history of Markov chains.

Apparently, when Communism came into power in Russia, a biologist named Trofim Lysenko became rather influential. He had theories that rejected Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution because ( Read more... )

Today we went on a road trip to a small rural village in France where one of Christian's colleagues lives. It is south of the rather large historic town Vienne down river from Lyon. Yet, when I type "Vienne, France" into Googlemaps, it takes me to this tiny village whose full name is not simply Vienne. It's only when I specify the Departement of ( Read more... )