I’m in Berlin for one night

After reading the accounts of sleeping in Schoenefeld airport in Berlin, I thought I might take it up. However, given that I would be in this fair city for a good 16 hours — after having spent the better part of the day on a train (that’s seven hours, 440 miles, or 710 kilometers, depending on how you feel like counting it) — I decided to shack up one night at the Heart of Gold hostel — where I get to share a six-person room for 17 euros ($23). There’s cheap döner kebap nearby and free WiFi.

I would have stayed with John Borland, but he’s out riding the rural Romanian rails, or at least he was when I texted him as I was pulling into Berlin Hbf. I’ll catch up with him when I’m back in town on my return leg through Berlin in two weeks.

After a 24-hour journey (Oakland –> Dallas –> London Gatwick –> Amsterdam –> 2 hr train to Breda), I finally made it.

Saturday was spent, as I mentioned, eating and drinking it up in Antwerp. I enjoyed a big cone of Belgian fries as a snack, then had a hearty bowl of mussels with a serious goblet of Westmalle Trippel. Mussels here are more expensive than at Café de Bruxelles, but the beer is way way cheaper. I love how you can get beer that’s five times better than what we can get in the US for about half to a third of the cost.

On Sunday, Giselle, George and I spent the afternoon in Rotterdam, where we caught the tail end of a street market. Although George and I just snacked on a bloedworst sandwich, we happened upon a salted herring stand. For the low low price of 1.75 euros, you can get a four-inch salted herring covered in diced onions. I can’t say that I recommend it two minutes after finishing a sausage (my stomach churned a bit), but I can see how for intrepid Dutch sailors, it’s probably quite tasty.

After that, we stopped in at a Surinamese place and had spicy chicken and roti, then stopped for beers at a canalside café, then walked around a bit, and later chowed down on raw seafood and more beers. (Fortunately, George shares my appetite!)

I like the parts of the Netherlands that I’ve seen thus far, but one thing strikes me as being a bit weird: it’s bizarre how well the Dutch speak English — I mean, every Dutch person I’ve ever met speaks perfect English, but it’s just trippy going everywhere and just busting into English without anyone batting an eye. Giselle and George said that they quickly gave up on asking if people speak English after having been there about a month — because every Dutch person is somehow born with the ability to learn to speak perfect colloquial English.

Germany, on the other hand, is another story. Many people do speak English, and many people who speak a little bit of English claim that they don’t speak it at all. Fortunately my German is “good” enough to ask for really basic things — “Ein bier, bitte” — which I don’t (yet) know how to do in Dutch.

I’m off to Tallinn tomorrow.

Spending the day in Antwerp

I made it to Breda without any problems. Giselle and I are going to spend the afternoon across the border in Antwerp, Belgium — our plans are to drink beer and eat loads of Belgian fries! Yay!

Damn, Gatwick is expensive

So my flight to Amsterdam got delayed. While I was waiting for them to put up the flight status on the monitors, I went to grab a sandwich at Upper Crust. Seeing as I’m spending as little time in the UK as possible, I don’t have any British pounds on me — just dollars and euros. My first instinct was to whip out my credit card, but the clerk informed me that they only accepted pounds, euros, or dollars. No problem, as I had some change in euros and could pay that way. But sadly they only accept “notes,” and further, wouldn’t give me change in Euros, I had to take my change in pounds (which are basically worthless to me). Fortunately though, a magazine vendor took pity on me and let me buy a magazine that should have set me back three quid for two and change.

Oh, and did I mention that as a T-Mobile USA subscriber, I pay $0.18 per minute to use their WiFi in the UK? I’ve already racked up a four-buck-and-change bill by now. Yeesh, I gotta get offline.

“Mossadegh plays with fire”

Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown in Operation Ajax on August 19, 1953.

The New York Times Editorial, August 15, 1953.

The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye, on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier Mossadegh.

Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry, personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own people. We have seen this onetime chamption of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.

His power would seem to be complete, but he has alientated the traditional ruling classes — the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes. There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russian and the Russians. The peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.

All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer’s apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.

Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians because she has nothing to fear — and there the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.

I found this editorial from Hoder, and while I might not agree with everything that he says, he draws an interesting comparison between this editorial and a contemporary editorial in the Boston Globe.

I’m off to Europe!

I’m en route to Breda, The Netherlands to visit Giselle de Grandis this weekend. Then I’ll take the train to Berlin on Monday, and catch an EasyJet flight to Tallinn on Tuesday night. I’ll spend two weeks there doing research, and then will swing back via Berlin and one night in the new Yotel at Gatwick airport in London. I’m back in Oakland on July 28.

It’s Monday morning in Oakland

Me and seven of my most intrepid friends went camping this weekend at Big Trees. Our stuff got tossed around by a bear cub that we dubbed Floyd — he put minor slashes in my tent and broke one of the poles while we were away hiking around Lake Alpine on Saturday. An inconvenience to be sure, but everything turned out ok.

In other news, here’s what I’m reading these days:
Taco truck sales divide Salinas Latinos (SJ Merc, June 26 2007)

The Amateur Future of Space Travel (NYTM, July 1 2007)

Google Maps: Change Directions With New Drag-And-Drop Tools (WN’s Compiler, June 29 2007)

Russian tried fake $100 bill (Seacoast Online, June 29 2007) [via FP Passport]

Bangalore wages spur ‘reverse offshoring’ (Financial Times, July 2 2007) [via FP Passport]

New Senegal record cocaine haul (BBC, July 2 2007) [via FP Passport]

Fight Different (Mother Jones, June 20 2007)

Local Academic’s Blog Generates Premature Controversy (92510, June 28 2007)

I’m back

Me and some friends are headed to the Sierras to go camping this weekend. Then I’m back working in Oakland early this next week, then I’m off to Europe (mostly Estonia) July 5-31.

Texas-Sized Supercomputer to Break Computing Power Record

Wired News:

by Cyrus Farivar
June 26, 2007

There’s an old saying: “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”

That now applies to supercomputers as well.

Sun Microsystems announced today that its hardware will power the largest supercomputer ever built, weighing in with 62,976 CPU cores, 125 terabytes of memory, 1.7 petabytes of disk space, and 504 teraflops of performance.

The computer, which has been dubbed “Ranger,” will be hosted at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, Austin. It is due to go online on January 1, 2008.

Ranger costs $30 million in hardware alone, and an additional $29 million for staffing and maintenance — and is being entirely funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Monday evening

Today: Teotihuacan. No rain. Pyramids are huge and literally awesome. Walked around Zona Rosa and Insurgentes. Had some cafe con leche at a place called Gabi’s on the corner of Napoles and Liverpool and played cards.
Tomorrow: Museums and then a lucha libre match downtown. (Yes!)
Wednesday: Markets, drinks with Franc, and dinner with Ruben et al.
Thursday: More museums, walking around, last minute shopping and a baseball game.
Friday: I’m home.