Jim in Real Life

Oct 17, 2008 - coolest bathroom ever

The view from the urinal in the men's room at Felix - a restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. I have never enjoyed such a spectacular view while I peed.

Oct 15, 2008 - en route to PDX

OK, so this picture isn't really worthy of a blog post, but I want to test the Typepad iPhone application and see how easy it is to snap a pic and upload it.

So, for all you dear readers viewing this, stay tuned for more posts... From Hong Kong!

The most oddly inspiring thing I've seen lately

With the combination of geographical gaffes, FISA surveillance "compromises" and terrorist fist bumps (which my 4-year old son and I have done for two years now, usually accompanied by a joyful "BOOYAKASHA!! Respect!!"), it's easy to feel a bit discouraged, overwhelmed or isolated.

That's where this... idea... comes in. Go to every place in the world you can think of and dance with whoever happens to be around there. No politics, religion, race, ethnicity... just a bunch of people dancing.

Every time I watch this, it brings tears to my eyes as a simple reminder that we are all one on this wet spinning blue marble. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

The music is a piece called "Praan" by Garry Schyman. You can buy it here from Amazon.com in a non-DRM MP3 format.

The haunting lyrics are based on a poem and the spirit of the words definitely makes the piece even more powerful, even if you don't speak Bengali:

From Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (sung by Palbasha Siddique).

“Stream of Life”

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

------------------

If you like the piece, buy the song. And buy Stride Gum. They sponsored it. See, Virginia? Viral marketing DOES work...

And now for something completely awesome...

An inspiring idea to reduce oil consumption

This is sheer brilliance. Simple, achievable, and above all... DOABLE.

http://www.pickensplan.com/

Pass it on.

The New Yorker joins the sleaze parade

Well, I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the New Yorker magazine has chosen to publish this as its most recent cover. I'm sure they meant it to be "ironical" and all, but the truth is that this simply reinforces lies and innuendo about Barack Obama.

The New Yorker can fuck off. I am a part of the liberal elitist uber-cultured in their core demographic, and I'm fed up and offended. Below is the text of the letter to the editor of the New Yorker that I submitted this morning:

Frankly, I'm appalled that a magazine which I had, until now, considered respectable and a fine source of objective and interesting journalism would stoop so low as to publish a cover like this. When I first saw the cover image, I was sure it was a joke until I came to the Web site and was shocked to find it wasn't.

By publishing an image like this, you are actively perpetuating the lies about Barack Obama in an insidious way. Regardless of the "point" of your choices or who your editors plan to vote for, the New Yorker should be utterly ashamed. While I expect that sort of unethical journalism from Fox News, it was absolutely appalling to discover the New Yorker participating - however slyly - in attempting to demean a candidate through lies and innuendo.

Though it has been several years since I subscribed to your magazine, rest assured it will now likely be many more before I would consider it.

You simply should be ashamed. Very very ashamed.

The Colbert Monster strikes again...

I can't even find the words for how cool this is.

RECIPE: "Pantry" Risotto

So what do you do when you invite someone over for dinner, then realize you don't have time to go to the store and yet want to impress them at least a little bit? Well, when I found myself in that situation yesterday, I ended up making risotto using quite literally the ingredients at hand. When all was said and done, it was actually quite lovely, though a bit untraditional.

Keep in mind, I'm not by any stretch claiming these ingredients will be found in everyone's pantry. Far from it; I know what a freak I am. So I'm going to present the recipe as cooked yesterday, thinking that perhaps some of you will wish to rename it "Smoky Saffron & Asparagus Risotto" and not use it to clean out your pantries.

Ingredients

About 1/2 lb of grilled asparagus, cut into 3/4" slices
2 tbs freeze dried shallots
1/2 cup medium dry red wine
1 cup arborio rice
4 cups water
1 tbs Penzey's chicken soup base
1 tsp Penzey's ham soup base
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese + 1 tbs or so for garnish
3 tbs butter (preferably rich variety like Kerrygold)
1/4 tsp saffron
1 slice canadian bacon, cut into 3/8" x 1/8" dice

Prep

Soak shallots in red wine for 15 minutes, scoop/strain out shallots, reserve wine.
Boil water and add Penzey's soup bases. Either keep hot or return to heat before next step.

Directions

Melt butter over medium heat and add shallots. Sautee for about 3 minutes, then add rice, tossing to coat the rice grains. Toast for about 2 minutes, then add saffron.

Pour wine over rice and cook until evaporated. Add soup base 1/2 cup at a time, stirring rice constantly until the risotto is done. Stir in the asparagus and the parmesan cheese.

Garnish with the reserved parmesan cheese and canadian bacon.

Voila... smoke, saffron-y, and from the pantry.

Visualization and votes for Obama

I thought this interactive graphic on the New York Times website was cool on a couple levels. First, it's a perfect example of how to make a VERY simple and intuitive data visualization that allows the user to see multiple dimensions of a data set by making easy choices. Really freaking cool in that regard.

But just as importantly, I got some really interesting insights out of this tool:

• Older people don't like Obama. Click the 60+ button and look how radically the result skews toward Clinton.
• The New York Times has a REALLY screwy definition of how to segment household income. I'm not a social scientist, but splitting the income demographic so that there are three bands between $0 and $50k (household) and one band for $50k+ seems very odd. There is a HUGE difference between a family earning $50k and a family earning $150k and the data won't reflect this visualized this way.
• I'm not yet convinced that race isn't a bigger factor than sex. Especially when you view how the "white vote" and the "women vote" stacked up by these measures.

Anyway, cool tool and some interesting insights.

Remembrance

Nineteen years ago, there was this Chinese dude who stood in front of a tank, and for a moment time stopped as all eyes were on Tiananmen Square.

Even more than I want to be Tony Stark, I hope in my life to have an opportunity to do something as unbelievably inspiring and awesome as this man did.

So the next time you meet someone who is 19 years old or younger, smile softly to yourself and remember where you were on 4 June 1989.

And always remember, as our next president said... "It is important to focus not just on how to win, but why we should."

Sometimes just being the guy who stands in front of the tank is more important than what happens after.