La Dolce Via: How to Drive in Italy

Three major tips for understanding Italian driving. For even more excitement, follow my example and learn to drive stick at the same time!

1) CARS ARE BIG SCOOTERS - Italians can't drive until age 18...but they can drive scooters as young as 14. When they grow up, they treat their cars like big scooters: weaving around wildly.

2) PRAGMATISM, NOT RULES - Americans follow rules. They stay in their lanes and stop at stop signs/lights. The Italians will stay in their lanes--but not if there's extra room. They will stop at traffic signals--if there is someone to stop for. Americans expect cars to come to a complete stop for pedestrians, but Italians just weave around them (remember rule 1: Cars are just big scooters). It's actually much more efficient.

3) DIFFERENT SIGNALS - Take a look at this handy chart:

Signal	Meaning in US	Alternate Meaning in Italy
leaving your left turn signal on in the left lane	"I am old and forgot to turn off my signal"	"I want to pass you" or "I will move over when I get a chance."
hazard lights	"I am pulled over and don't want you to hit me."	"sudden stop/slowdown ahead."
honking	"F--- you!" or "Get outta' my way!"	"Hey, just so you know, I'm here" or "I'm not going to let you in."

Labels: driving, italy

Posted 13:25 PST | (0) comments

Know-Nothing Veep: How the VPILF Broke My Heart

...the trouble is that...the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell, "The Triumph of Stupidity"


I'll admit it: John McCain had already broken my heart--wooing religious demagogues he once denounced, proposing unfunded tax cuts he once decried, and slinging mud he once disdained--such that I wasn't going to vote for his ticket even if he chose a resurrected Mother Teresa as his running mate. But I must say that when I first heard and saw Sarah Palin, I was impressed. Yes, her relatively thin résumé undermined the Republican argument that Obama was "inexperienced," but what a talker! (And what a looker!) She rightfully gave the campaign a fresh, reform-minded, outsider--and, let's not forget it, feminine--jolt of energy.

Over the subsequent weeks, I saw snippets of interviews and, despite her masterful performance at the RNC, a few doubts began to seep in: Was she really up to the job? Or were these just a "gotcha" moments of nervousness?

Then I saw SNL's parody of her interview with Katie Couric. In it, Tina Fey (born for the role) responds to a question about the Wall Street Bailout with a nonsensical talking-point stream of consciousness. Hilarious. It reminded me of Miss Teen South Carolina 2007's much-played YouTube moment. (I'm not the only one.) But truth is stranger than fiction: the line was almost verbatim from the real interview. It was so embarrassing, even Ross Douthat, a thoughtful Republican writer who had suggested Palin as a VP pick early on, cringed.

Noam Scheiber's article put the final nail in my "I love Sarah" coffin. He describes her start in politics on the Wasilla city council, and her meteoric rise to the Governorship. What emerges is a portrait not only of a opportunistic power-grabber (let's be honest: what politician--Obama included--is not?) but, more disturbingly, a spiteful, willfully ignorant ideologue who not only didn't know simple aspects of government but who didn't care to learn. In short, she has more in common with the current President than just saying "nucular": she takes a perverse pride in her simple-mindedness.

It's this shoot-from-the-hip, loyalty-over-competence, don't-think-things-through, we-don't-do-nuance approach that got us into so much trouble under the current administration. Paul Krugman laments that the GOP, once the "party of ideas" has "become the party of stupid...the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise."

It's too bad: I once believed that John McCain was the sort of thoughtful rebel who could buck the GOP's current trend of ideological handcuffs and know-nothing ersatz-redneck stupidity. Alas, whichever way this election goes, we'll have to wait at least four more years to see if the party of Lincoln can live up to its former greatness.

Update: William F. Buckley's son also apparently feels the same disappointment at the "new" McCain.

Labels: politics

Posted 14:12 PST | (0) comments

The World's Healthiest Food for Thought

My friend Bryan is fanatically devoted to a book called The World's Healthiest Foods. You can preview author George Mateljan's list of healthy foods on his website. Of course, I'm more concerned about taste, and thus prefer The New Best Recipe, which I tell my friends is like "being given the answers to the test ahead of time."

This war of cookbooks points out what I think is a larger trend (as noted by David Kamp's United States of Arugula and Mark Bittman's excellent NY Times Magazine article) that eating and cooking--both for health and pleasure--has become a national obsession. Some interesting reading on the subject:

• Real Food
  
  Nina Planck, a farmers' market organizer, has become a proponent of "Real Food"...which means not only eating local/non-processed food, but also eating meats and other animal products (including lard!). She used to be a vegan, and her book largely chronicles her journey from only-olive-oil-and-lentils to a wider range of "real" foods. A brief interview gives you the gist of her thesis, as can a longer video of her speaking in Seattle. An obvious criticism is that poor people cannot afford the free-range organic meats that she promotes, but her thesis is still compelling.



• Pollan's Polemics
  
  Michael Pollan seems to be making a career out of food politics, including a thought-provoking article on "Nutritionism", what he calls the obsession with eating nutrients instead of--you guessed it--real food. The article likely excerpts from his new book, In Defense of Food. Also interesting is his shorter article on how the Farm Bill should really be called the Food Bill, which will make you even more angry that the Democrats squandered a chance to finally reform food subsidies.
  
  Pollan's best writing may be in the highly popular Omnivore's Dilemma, which poses the question, "What should one eat"? Among its very interesting chapters is a critique of, and defense of, eating animal products. Essentially, he comes to the same conclusion as Nina Planck: that perhaps there is much evil in industrialized farming of animals, but eating traditionally raised animals can be completely ethical and even humane. If you enjoyed Fast Food Nation, you'll also enjoy this book. Parts of it are a bit pretentious and overwrought, but the interesting subject matter and thoughtful conclusions are worth the occasional ramble. One of his early points, that (heavily subsidized) corn is the cash crop behind much of the "food" in the supermarket, is featured in the movie King Corn.
  
  Both Pollan and Planck have the same dietary message: forget the health fads of the 20th and early 21st century. So long as you eat "traditional" foods that your (or somebody else's) great-grandparents would eat, you'll probably be alright.



• Foodstuff Fanaticism
  
  Trevor Corson's The Zen of Fish, a fascinating tell-all about sushi, got me curious about what other foods have books devoted to them. A cursory Amazon search yielded books chronicling the complete history and anthropological significance of sugar (and another one), salt, potatoes, corn (and another), bananas, olives, peanuts, tomatoes, lobsters, oysters, cod, caviar, chocolate (and another one), honey, nutmeg, saffron, curry, coffeee (and another), milk, rum, tea, and no fewer than three books on vanilla. Several other books group several foodstuffs: Pollan's The Botany of Desire discusses apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes; Spice: The History of a Temptation covers various spices; Seeds of Change discusses quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, cocoa, and the potato while its sister book Seeds of Wealth discusses wine grapes as well as inedibles tobacco, timber, and rubber; A History of the World in 6 Glasses goes into beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.
  
  ...now all we need is the "untold story" about how haggis "changed the world"!

Labels: cooking, food, healthy eating

Posted 21:39 PST | (1) comments

Is Jesus Red or Blue? The Politics of Bible Translations

Just as it is supposedly possible to tell someone's political party from their consumer preferences, you can separate the Blue and Red Christians based on which translation of the Bible they use.

While Muslims believe the Qur'an is the direct Word of God and must be read in the original Arabic, Christians don't insist on reading the multiple Greek and Hebrew antecedents to the Bible. Thus, one must choose which of the several dozen English translations to use. Here are the major translations grouped geneologically with their political significance:

• KJV (King James Version) - Traditionalist. Perhaps the most poetic (although often less "accurate") translation, phrases from the KJV echo in our popular consciousness--from Handel's Messiah to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream". Christians of all sorts like the KJV and the various attempts to update it, but some fundamentalists believe that only KJV should be used and that it is actually "more accurate" than the original Hebrew/Greek!
• ASV (American Standard Version) - Jehovah's Witness. Based on KJV, this is the old granddady of all of the following translations, but only Jehovah's witnesses still use it.
• RSV (Revised Standard Version) - Mildly liberal. An update to ASV which had a few features that, among other things, got it into trouble with Sen. Joseph McCarthy! Declining in popularity--most folks who would have used this now use NRSV/NIV/etc.
• NASB (New American Standard Bible) - Most literal. Of all mainstream English translations, this is the one truest to the original languages, although this sometimes detracts from its clarity/poetry/theology.
• NRSV (New Revised Standard Version)- Liberal/academic. Updates RSV with Dead Sea Scroll material, eliminates "thee/thou", and (controversially) includes "gender-neutral" language. There are several scholarly versions used academically (particularly in secular contexts, such as in university "great works" courses).
• ESV (English Standard Version) - Conservative. A recent (2001) revision of RSV, like the NRSV, except without the gender-neutral language and other perceived liberalisms. Less literal than NASB but more literal than NIV.



• NIV (New International Version) - Mainstream conservative. One of the most popular English translations, used in many Protestant American churches. Somewhat less literal than other versions, since it translates idea-for-idea vice word-for-word (a practice known as "dynamic equivalence")
• TNIV (Today's New International Version) - More liberal. An update to the NIV that includes "gender neutral" language and other such liberalisms.



• NEB (New English Bible)/REB (Revised English Bible) - Mainstream/More Liberal British. Both are commonly used by the Church of England and others in Britain; REB is a gender-inclusive, revised version of NEB.



• CEV (Contemporary English Version) - Simplified. Paraphrases the Bible into simpler language like you'd hear on TV.
• GNB (Good News Bible) - Straightforward. Paraphrase designed originally for non-native English speakers.
• NLT (New Living Translation) - Paraphrased. Updated version of the once-popular paraphrase The Living Bible.

Catholic Bibles are different not only in that they get a fancy imprimatur but they also include the deuterocanonical books:

• NAB (New American Bible) - Mainstream Catholic version (actually slightly different versions between 1970 and 2006); conservatives like the "Ignatius" RSV-Catholic Edition and liberals like the Catholic NRSV (approved by Canadian but not US bishops)...über-conservatives hope for a Catholic ESV. New Jerusalem Bible is a less-literal (dynamic equivalence) version.

More Bible translation blog fun: an interesting discussion about what translation has to do with dog urination.

Posted 03:21 PST | (1) comments

Crash Into Stereotypes

I just finished watching Crash, an ensemble film likely to win a number of awards (including, perhaps, the Oscar for Best Picture?) this year. WARNING: Spoilers below if you haven't seen the movie!

Oscar-Made Ensemble Films

To me, the film had a similar feel to the less popular Thirteen Conversations About One Thing--a bunch of random folks end up having connections to each other in an artsy way. This style of film (the random-ensemble-comes-together, vice just a film with an ensemble cast) seems to be growing in popularity especially amongst Oscar contenders, with such titles as Love Actually, Magnolia, and Pulp Fiction.

Preachy or no?

At first the movie seemed like yet another can't-we-all-just-get-along several-hour exercise to show that "racism is bad." However, once two of the characters simultaneously bad-mouth and live up to the stereotype that "young black men cruising a white suburb must be up to no good" I knew the film was more complex.

Indeed, each person defies a stereotype in one way or another: The "good" non-racist cop kills a Black man, the "bad" racist cop saves a Black woman's life. The "gang-banger" Latino ends up being a tender father, the "hoodlum" black car thief ends up saving a truckload of immigrants from slavery. The "hothead" Persian store owner sees the light; the "Latin-bashing" rich white woman realizes her Latina housekeeper is her best friend. By the end of the film, each of the characters suprises you in some way or another.

Asians get screwed again

However, one group never gets any multi-dimensional characters or moves beyond conventional stereotypes: Asians. Despite LA being chock full of Asians, there are basically only two kinds of Asians in the film: FOBs (represented by the Korean couple who each get into an accident) and Nerds (represented by the inspector who tells the Persians that the insurance company won't pay them back).

The only "suprising" the Asian characters do is not be Chinese: the "chinaman" under the truck is Korean, and the "chinamen" in the truck are Southeast Asian. (As the director mentions in the DVD commentary, this "not all Asians are Chinese" falls in line with the "not all Latinos are Mexican" and "not all Middle Easterners are Arab" theme.) Other blogs noticed the same thing. Although the movie has aspirations of initiating dialogue about stereotypes and racism, at least where Asians are concerned, it merely replays the same old schtick.

Linguistics and racism

African American Vernacular English (or AAVE) plays an interesting role in one scene: Tony Danza, in a cameo as a TV producer, comments that one of the characters isn't talking "Black" enough. The film sets up his comment as thinly veiled racism, but I disagree: Perhaps the way he said it--"Eddie's supposed to be the smart one, not Jamal," thus equating AAVE with stupidity--was wrong, but it's true that some characters (just like some people) speak more "standard"/white English than others. Most African-Americans drift easily between the two linguistic forms, but it does "ring false" (as Danza's character points out) if a character who always speaks in AAVE suddenly sounds like a WASP-y Harvard grad.

Posted 08:07 PST | (1) comments

OHIO in the News


OHIO Media Day

We recently had our Return to Service ceremony (basically the same thing as a Commissioning ceremony except that OHIO was never de-commissioned), so OHIO is now all over the web! Here are some of the best links:

• The Navy News Site has a bunch of photos, including one of much of the wardroom "manning the rails" in front of the Captain reporting OHIO "manned and ready." Since we're arranged in height order, I'm about 5-6 people too short to appear in the photo! Also, the one showing sailors in front of the sail with our "726" hull number includes 2 guys in my division. Other Navy photos are at the CSG9 webpage and slideshow.


• Before the ceremony, we had a "media day" underway when various organizations were invited on board to see the sub in action. Yours truly was stuck back in "the box" (the Maneuvering space in the Engine Room where the reactor is controlled) so there aren't any photos of me...but there is a photo accompanying the Kitsap Sun's article of some of my fellow JOs pretending to plan a mission with the SEALS in our Battle Management Center.


• Media Day happened to be a very windy one, so the vessel that was supposed to take the media back home had some trouble...The Tacoma News Tribune article mentions the stormy weather and cheesily calls it "a metaphor for Ohio's new mission." Also check out LTJG Ryan Schow's head just barely peeking out in front of his freezing lookouts (YN2 Mcleod and MM3 Simpson).


• One of the film crews on board for Media Day was from the Naval Media Center, who produced a short Windows Media Player news clip that features a bunch of my shipmates and the Captain.


• Supposedly KING 5 news brought a film crew as well, but the only clip I could find on their website was this older one of OHIO passing Seattle on our way out for Sea Trials.


• Finally, the Navigator's wife, Heidi Evans, wrote the best description of the RTS ceremony in her weekly Saturday column in the Kitsap Sun (you may need to register to see it).

Posted 01:36 PST | (0) comments

Submarine Movies

So, what's the best submarine movie? Clearly Das Boot is the classic choice, although The Hunt for Red October, with its Cold War drama and classic Sean Connery lines ("One ping only!") is a close runner-up. Of course, each has its problems: The former is in German (and thus the subtitles will put off a lot of viewers) and the latter requires close attention (otherwise its dense plot will confuse a lot of viewers). Nevertheless, if you only see two sub movies, these should be the two.

What of the rest of the movies?

Well, having ridden the ALABAMA, I am compelled to mention Crimson Tide. It features excellent performances by Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington and an interesting dilemma regarding nuclear war, but in the submarine community it's a laughingstock. Pretty much every scene has multiple errors, a handful of which are on the IMDB goofs page, but the funny thing is that the dialogue is fairly accurate (e.g. what people say when the ship is diving, as opposed to what you see--a fast attack diving!). My guess is that they had a submariner help them write the script, but that they didn't have anybody on hand (or didn't listen to him) during filming.

I wasn't all that thrilled with Run Silent, Run Deep. I honestly don't remember much about the movie, other than when I finished it, I remember thinking, "That is a classic?"

U-571 is a bit silly/trite in points, but is still an enjoyable movie.

K-19: The Widowmaker features a horrific nuclear accident underway and an even more horrific Russian accent by Harrison Ford, but it tells its (true) story well. It's important to note that the Russians' reactors had (and, as far as I know, still have) many fewer safety features than the Americans'!

I recently saw a forgettable submarine rescue movie from 1978, Gray Lady Down, starring Charlton Heston ("Let my people go...um...back to the surface, Pharaoh!"). In an interesting twist, Gray Lady Down's cast features two stars from the same year's Superman: Christopher Reeve (who of course plays Superman/Clark Kent) as LTJG Phillips, a bit part, and Ned Beatty (who plays Otis, Lex Luthor's bumbling assistant) as Chief Mickey, Stacy Keach's slightly-less-bumbling assistant. For much better sub rescue fare, read the excellent book The Terrible Hours by Peter Maas (there was also a halfway decent TV movie Submerged based on the book, starring Sam Neil (lead in Jurassic Park and XO on the Red October) as Charles "Sweede" Momsen).

However, the most accurate portrayal of submariners and their antics is definitely Down Periscope, the silly comedy featuring Kelsey Grammer. Ask any submariner and they'll tell you the same!

Posted 23:30 PST | (1) comments

Frequently Asked Questions about Submarines

Having returned from a ride on the ALABAMA, I thought I'd post answers to questions folks have been asking me:

Do you have any windows?
Nope. NR-1, the Navy's research submarine, has a window, but that's about it.

But don't you want to see the fish?
Well, seeing as sunlight only penetrates down a few dozen feet, you wouldn't be able to see them without a powerful light anyway. However, I did get to see about two dozen dolphins jumping around just outside of San Diego through the periscope!

Is the nuclear power plant like The Simpsons?
Exactly. I spend 100% of my day eating jelly doughnuts and saying "Doh!"

Don't you get claustophobic?
Despite the fact that our "racks" (beds) are called "coffins," no. It's very much like having to stay inside for days at a time with the windowshades drawn.

Do you get email?
Yes, depending on the ship's schedule, we can both send and receive email. This is an improvement from the Cold War days when sailors would get only short, telegram-like "family-grams" every month or so.

What's it like?
Probably the hardest thing to get used to is the schedule. Pretty much everybody is in one of three "watch sections," which rotate every 6 hours. Thus, you are up for 12 hours (6 of which is watch), sleep for 6, up for 12, sleep for 6...always getting up at a different time (due to the 18-hour vice 24-hour day).

For more FAQs, see the excellent Boomersailors page.

Posted 18:04 PST | (0) comments

Another Reason Why Old Star Wars Better Than New Is

Geoff Pullum analyzes Yoda's syntax in a fun Language Log post, noting how Yoda tends to do two separate things: First, pull various phrases to the front of their clauses (in "XSV ordering"), as in "When nine hundred years you reach, look as good you will not." Second, "Yoda also extracts verb phrases that are catenative complements of auxiliary verbs, so those auxiliary verbs are left stranded at the end of the sentence" as in "Begun, the Clone Wars has." The second kind of Yoda-speak seems artificially backward to me, almost a caricature of the first, more natural "backwardness."

The interesting thing is that almost all of the examples of more normal/natural (in the sense of being like human natural languages) patterns come from episodes IV through VI, while the second kind of backwards-ness almost all comes from I through III. In other words, George Lucas seems to have made Yoda's speech even more unusual in the "prequels," thus making his once-sage pronouncements seem comical.

Posted 21:51 PST | (0) comments

Open TSP to All Americans

I recently emailed Senator Feinstein--always a fun part of democracy, even though her website pretty much admits that at one's opinion is merely "tallied"--about Social Security. Here's the substance of the letter:

Like many Americans, I am concerned about the long-term viability of Social Security. However, like many Americans, I recognize that the President’s plan to divert money into private accounts will only exacerbate the problem.

However, there is a simple way to allow citizens to establish their own accounts without undermining Social Security: Open the Thrift Savings Program to all Americans.

As a member of the military, I enjoy TSP's easy, low-cost, straightforward way of saving for retirement, just as many government employees enjoy the program. If it's good enough for the military and government, why not let all Americans contribute some of their income to TSP?

Now, this isn't a new idea--indeed, even the conservative Heritage Fund supports a similar measure called KidSave...but I think it's a good way of framing the debate. I'm not opposed to private accounts, just as I'm not opposed to the President's portraying Social Security as being in "crisis" (because it is at least a looming crisis): I'm merely opposed to making the problem worse by siphoning off Social Security money into those accounts.

Posted 21:02 PST | (3) comments