Global Cooling ... what the?

I received the following article in a forward that outlines supposedly why global warming is not real. It cites some research and appears at first glance to offer a compelling reason for why we shouldn't get too worked up. Here is my rebuttal, complete with a little intro about how to read these kinds of pieces that crop up on the net.

1) Be very careful about things written by people with extremely biased views. Lorne is not in the business of unbiased reporting or scientific reasoning. He pretty much only writes opeds about politics for a right wing paper. This isn’t someone you want to take pointers from on anything unless of course you are a conservative looking for misinformation that just fits with your mindset.

2) Be very careful about buying into highly scientific claims you know nothing about. It is one thing when a Nobel Laureate who is a climate expert conveys key information about his research. You may not have the knowledge or expertise to understand the why involved, but you can generally accept that if it is coming from a noted scientist (someone who is not affiliated with industry or a right or left wing group, and someone who is published in peer reviewed journals), it can probably be accepted as true. On the other hand, hearing a bunch of random scientific mumbo jumbo thrown around in an op-ed is probably not only unreliable (where are the real sources here? Any published papers?) but also totally misinformed. I often see climate skeptics hijacking some small piece of scientific inquiry to display it for all to see as if one fact somehow causes all of climate science to crumble. They also tend to get these details wrong because, surprise, they are not really scientists, nor do they care about the underlying science. They simply use these assorted facts as a shotgun effect where hopefully, taken together, this random sampling of “science-sounding” stuff will sway the undecided, who are open to either side, towards skepticism.

3) Science is open-source. I love these types of pieces because they give me a great starting point to inform myself about the topics they are discussing. Medieval Warm Period, Positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation, percent of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and of course a few key “experts” in the field. I find that Wikipedia is an amazing place to look these things up and learn about the actual science behind the claims. Often Wiki will have the points that are in question and provide some context for why they are being questioned. Most information is footnoted so you can go directly to the source.

4) Fodder for the ill-informed, confusing for the un-informed. Articles like this generally serve two purposes. One is to become cited by the ‘skeptics’ who already have their minds made up on the matter and are simply looking for stuff that fits with their warped view of the world. The other is to confuse the issue and create a sense of debate among the people who don’t really know much about climate science. It’s a tactic known well by the Heartland Institute, Exxon Mobil, Greening Earth Society and the array of oil-backed (or simply head-in-the-sand) message repeaters who write these op-eds and appear on ‘debates.’

5) Is there really any debate? Yes, on very specific, highly scientific issues, there is indeed some question as to how much global warming will occur, which models are most accurate, etc. There is NO debate on whether or not it is human-induced, if indeed we are experiencing climate change, and any of the other mainstream science that cannot be refuted by conservatives no matter how many opeds or non-peer-reviewed papers they write. You might be led to believe there is because occasionally items pop up in the “hippie-controlled” media that allows a so-called scientist to weigh in on the matter. These are few and far between, and no, the fact that it’s one guy against all the big bad scientists is not what makes the one guy wrong. Surely, he can be a lone Einstein or Copernicus, and have a brilliant conclusion where he somehow disproves all we know about climate science in his research paper and sees something that a thousand other people didn’t see. Unfortunately, none of these conclusions ever hold up to scrutiny. You don’t need to be a scientist to read and learn about chemistry, the gases in the atmosphere, how much CO2 is emitted by humans, what observations from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef tell us, why ice cores are important for telling us historic temperatures, and about a million other pieces of indisputable fact.

6) Junk Science. A funny irony is that the term ‘junk science’ was made popular by people who don’t want to believe the actual underlying science. Read the book “The Republican War on Science” for a more detailed account.

Let’s begin…

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

BEFORE reading any nonsense about global warming skeptics who have no credentials, read this: http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics “how to talk to a climate skeptic”.

Lorne is a conservative columnist for a Canadian paper. He is not a scientist and has no credentials. You can find some of his ‘facts’ refuted here:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8836.html

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Clearly this is written by an unbiased, balanced author who really is weighing all the facts. Yes, the climate journals are obviously controlled by those tyrannical environmentalists… or maybe you mean scientists who do not publish uninformed, nonscientific papers.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

Interesting… to go against all the nobel laureates and thousands of climate scientists, libraries filled with research supporting ever more detailed accounts of how CO2 from people is causing a few little problems around the world. Tackle away. Let’s see your proof.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Fair enough. More information on this here:

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/pdo.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

Global warming does not predict everything gets hot. It predicts on average things get warmer, but more notably, extreme weather becomes more common. So a particularly cold winter is well within the predictions of global warming, as are increased flooding, drier summers, longer droughts, (possibly) more large-scale hurricanes, etc.

Interestingly, the skeptics bring in to play obscure facts, like a PDO, which the average person knows nothing about and so cannot possibly refute. If you don’t really understand PDO, then how do you know if this connection to solar minimums even exists, or if it does, how it is even related to climate change from CO2.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

So one meteorologist has ‘discovered’ a link between two graphs and decides to correlate the two. The original paper is here:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/TheGreatSouthAmericanMayColdSpell.doc

here is a fuller explanation of the link between PDO and global warming – basically, it’s nonsense:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-Pacific-Decadal-Oscillation-the-Smoking-Gun.html

But the source of the quote is here:

http://www.metsul.com/secoes/visualiza.php?cod_subsecao=33&cod_texto=947

Basically this guy is specifically refuting Al Gore’s claim (which is indeed under a lot of debate) that global warming will cause more El Ninos. That extremely specific prediction is something to question because of the underlying causes of El Nino and La Nina that does indeed have to do with the solar cycle, but by no means does this remotely disprove any of the many many other irrefutable points that are well understood. This is a theme in these types of articles: to cherry pick a specific thing that someone said (not even a scientist, sorry Al) and use it as a straw-man to knock down, thereby toppling the entire edifice of scientific research in the field. Not going to be that easy.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Ah, a new scientist. First question: who is he?

http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/expert.cfm?expertId=389

He is actually part of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, which represents the paper industry. Fine.

is this even a credible ‘finding’ published in a real journal? Yes published. You can read it here: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025 No, not exactly a respected journal. Let me elaborate:

There are actually very few players in the climate skeptic world. Very few scientists quoted, very few so-called “published” papers, and very few scientific journals that accept anything like this non-science rubbish. So if you look a bit deeper, you find the whole ‘anti-climate change’ arena to be filled with familiar faces. It’s like a low-budget movie where they reuse actors for different parts.

So… this “Energy and Environment” journal that is supposedly peer reviewed? Not exactly. It is a publication, but it is NOT on the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information)’s Journal Citation Report. This is essentially a cross-reference tool to assess scientific journals and how seriously they should be taken.

Journal Citation Reports® offers a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data. By compiling articles' cited references, JCR Web helps to measure research influence and impact at the journal and category levels, and shows the relationship between citing and cited journals.

http://www.thomsonreuters.com/products_services/scientific/Journal_Citation_Reports

Every major journal is on this list. None of the crappy ones are. Guess which one is not on it. The EE journal that seems to publish tons of anti-climate change, poorly researched papers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_and_Environment)

Ok, I hear you say. But what if his paper is correct and he’s just been pushed out by those damn hippies pulling the strings behind Big Science. Here is one scientist’s critique of Loehle’s work:

http://thatstrangeweather.blogspot.com/2007/11/open-letter-to-craig-loehle.html

Here’s another review of it. It’s a tough read for the layperson.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2389

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2380

It seems like this guy has tried to do an honest analysis of warming in the middle ages by taking out tree-rings entirely and coming to his own conclusion. Fine. That is a fair assessment, but as you can see, there is a LOT of debate over what it means, how the analysis/model was done, etc etc. The main point to take from this is this single piece of information DOES NOT upend everything else we know about global warming and previous warming in the year 1005. Also, here’s what this study says:

*based on 18 non-tree-ring samples of 2000-year-long temperature sets, there is a warming trend in the middle ages.

IT DOES NOT SAY:

* Carbon doesn’t cause global warming

* humans have not had an impact on climate change

* anything else that would cause one to question climate change.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

Prior to the past decade? I’m not sure this author has a clue how much research has been accumulated over the last decade on climate change.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies. Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

There is no supporting evidence for the author’s claims. Interesting that the author believes all of climate science rests on this one hockey stick graph. True, it may not be completely accurate, but it is just one of probably thousands of pieces of information that connect observed warming with industrial revolution greenhouse gases. This is a typical skeptic tactic – they take one piece of the entire claim, attempt to refute it, and then somehow by refuting that, they’ve caused all of science to come crumbling down.

Here is an in depth look at this so-called “hockey stick” graph. Basically, it’s hard to figure out what happened a long time ago, so they reconstruct temperatures based on a variety of data. Then they got attacked by a few guys in the mining industry and all hell broke loose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

Then, when you least expect it, a guy with no ties to oil companies, no ties to Republicans… just a scientist who is WAY outside the realm of accepted science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfCFZ7zNWbs

He believes we will enter a COOLING period in a few years. He thinks global warming is real but there’s nothing we can do about it because, uh, it’s not caused by CO2. Hmm. He seems like a very nice guy, but kind of in that grandpa sort of way where he doesn’t know what’s flying anymore. He is essentially refuting the concept that CO2 warms the earth and the very simple connection that more CO2 (a lot more) causes the earth to warm more. This is pretty well documented at this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

I especially love it when writers first proclaim that no, CO2 has nothing to do with warming, there is no warming, hell, we’re in a cooling period, according to some fringe scientist. And then in the very next paragraph proclaim that, well, even if CO2 does cause global warming, and human are producing a lot of CO2, well, that doesn’t really matter anyway. A good debate would stop a bit earlier because, assuming you’ve correctly asserted that CO2 doesn’t mean anything anyway, there would be NO REASON to try to argue this. It’s the shotgun effect again – an attempt at overwhelming you with a dizzying array of proof against the science. Let’s see if it works…

First, if you search for this so-called “Michael J. Myers” and google him like so:

+”Michael J. Myers” +”Hilton head”

You will uncover his one quote (boldfaced above), from this article over and over again, reprinted in dozens of sites… but what you won’t find is an actual link to the real person. Finally, at listing # 14, you find a PDF of a paper by Mr. Myers, which talks about a nifty device that you can use to detect environmental pollutants. (http://www.stellarnet-inc.com/public/download/Final%20Draft%20LIBS.pdf ) Anything about global warming? Nah. A quote remotely similar to what is in this article? Nope.

Now, I don’t really understand the point of this quote (which cannot be found no matter how much google-ing you do), because it is a) not true b) not even close to true c) not even presented in a way that is useful.

a) It is not true. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen from roughly 260-280 parts per million over the last 10,000 years… UP TO about 365 ppm. That’s an increase of about 85ppm, or 32%. I’d say that’s a big increase.

b) I have no idea where that .00064% stat came from. Usually things like that kind of appear from nowhere and magically do not have a source, and thus are hard to refute. Making up information is a great tactic to win debates.

c) If you read anything about global warming gases and atmospheric concentration, you find that they are almost always presented as “parts per million” or “per billion”, but never as percentages, since, as you can see, tiny percentages don’t convey useful information in this field. It’s the same idea when someone says “global warming will ONLY cause an increase by 3 degrees… big deal! That’s nothing.” What they don’t understand is that this is a global average, not an absolute number, and so context is completely lost. It’s also like saying “your body temperature only went up 3 degrees, or 2%, that’s nothing!” This doesn’t convey any sense of context for how large or small a variation needs to be in order to be significant. It’s misinformation.

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

Again, a favorite tactic is to a) claim that lots of other renowned scientists agree and b) quote them without actually quoting their names, sources, context or anything that might be checked. The probable source for all of this is in the author’s head.

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

This is actually the only piece of useful data in this article, as it is correct, comes from a real journal… but does not deal a devastating blow. In fact, it again brings up a very minor detail in the big picture. A curious discrepancy, to be sure, but far from a fatal blow to the science, it just brings up a piece of information that needs to be looked into more.

The same tactics are used by the “9-11 conspiracy” people who try to bring up little discrepancies in the narrative of what happened on 9-11, as if a handful of unresolved facts are going to point to a massive conspiracy. So too these handful of unresolved global warming facts do nothing to sway the general scientific consensus of what’s going on.

Take a look at a discussion of Christy’s publication: (I believe this is the one the author is quoting from… though the actual author of the paper DOES NOT say any of the stuff

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf - this one published by Energy and Environment, our old friend.

This is the actual publication, I believe: http://www.atmos.uah.edu/atmos/christy/2007_Dougless_etal.pdf

There is not a single mention of the quote below. It explains that temperature observations made by satellites do not correspond at certain altitudes above the earth with the model predictions. Ok, so the models are off for those altitudes. It doesn’t

And a discussion of it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

This chart stuff is nonsense. A very basic fact about global warming is that CO2 doesn’t have an immediate impact. It is like a train. It has momentum and takes a while to pick up speed. So what we’re seeing now is actually from CO2 that entered the atmosphere years ago – not this year. This momentum effect (and the persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere) is why we should be concerned about doing something NOW rather than later, because even if we cease all CO2 production today, we will continue to see the earth heat up as a result of the existing CO2. It will continue to heat up for many years. It’s why we don’t need scare tactics by the left or skeptics from the right – we need actual change right now.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.

Lovely close – in 500 words the author is already patting himself on the back that he just toppled all of science as we know it. Nice work. Now go read some books on the topic, talk to real sources, and try to bring something to the table next time.

nyc half marathon

Last Sunday was the NYC Half Marathon where 10,000 people ran 13.1 miles (around central park, then out through 7th avenue and around times square, then down 5 miles of the west side highway to battery park).

After Greg's awesome bachelor party weekend, which was white water rafting up in Saratoga Springs/Lake George area, getting very little sleep and driving a LOT, Jon and I managed to get back to NYC at around midnight Saturday night. WOke up at 5:45am and headed off to the start of the race.

I'd say we did pretty damn well for being exhausted, and having just spent 6 hours rafting the day before (we were pretty sore).

Jon: 1:48
Me: 1:51 (i think about the same time i did last year)

Here's a picture of me kicking ass at the end where I smoked a bunch of people.

a productive thursday

This past Thursday was one of my most productive days in weeks.

First, my sister Laura and I went for a 6 mile walk in the morning around the central Park Loop. Then I met up with a guy from craigslist who wanted to buy my 13" TV/VCR for $15. You see, I am trying to get rid of a lot of the junk that has piled up in this apartment over the last few years. Before I even moved in there was a ton of stuff that was just left over from the previous tenants, but during my stay, all the roommates that have come and gone have also left some belongings. So I'm trying to clean out a lot of the apartment before Maddy gets here so she'll have a clean slate to begin her decorating. Anyway, this guy met me downstairs in his car. He was Asian, but I would actually bet money he was Chinese based solely on how rude and impatient he was. It's not that all Chinese people are rude (and I'm talking about Chinese Chinese people, not Chinese Americans), it's just that if someone is Asian and they are extremely rude, chances are they are Chinese and not Korean or Japanese.

After the transaction, I met up with Greg (who had his bachelor party this past weekend). He just took the bar exam and is looking for a place in the city to move in with his soon-to-be wife, and he just happens to be checking out a place two blocks away from me, at 106 and Broadway. The apartment looked pretty awesome, very spacious, great location, and just really nice. We headed down to the Museum of Natural History to check out the frog exhibit. I used my awesome Citigroup ID to get us in for half price. The frogs were actually pretty damn cool. There were a lot of poison dart frogs that are really small and very colorful.

We walked back up town and met up with Greg's friend Tali, who just happen to be checking out apartments with her boyfriend right around the corner from me. So I figured what the hell, I'll check out what these other apartments look like and what they are going for. There were 20 people waiting at the building for the broker to show up. It was a pretty unbelievable sight to see in a few dozen people shuffle into a tiny studio apartment. The prices seemed pretty reasonable for a studio and a one-bedroom, but they just weren't all that great and the second apartment was in a pretty bad location. You can kind of tell as we all walked over to it, as a bunch of kids were playing with a fire hydrant and spraying people with water as they walked by on the opposite side of the street. Also, the broker was a huge asshole, which I guess can be expected, but that's ridiculous.

I then headed back downtown to 57th street to pick up my race number and information for the half marathon on Sunday. I was waiting for the walk signal while walking west on 57th St and I just happened to turn around and look behind me, and as luck would have it my friend Nina was standing directly behind me! I looked at her incredulously and she looked at me and said "seriously?" So we chatted up for a little while since I haven't seen her in almost a year. I gave the usual spiel about how China sucks and don't ever go and visit. She said she went skydiving. When we were sufficiently caught up, she asked me if my sister was still cleaning apartments, because her apartment desperately needed help.

Then I headed over to the Nike store to pick up my race information, and walked down to 36 and third to meet my mom and sister at Patsy's pizza restaurant. My mom was in the city because she had just made her first digital camera purchase (from B&H). She explain how she spent hours in the store, armed with several issues of consumer reports and went through each and every model of the point-and-shoot digital cameras to find the best value and one that would suit her needs. It will probably take her about a year to figure out how it all works.

Next, I continued walking downtown to meet up with my friend Pete, who I hadn't seen since before I left for China. He is a lawyer and works long hours, so we just never got a chance to meet up. But he said he recently got on a kick of mixing drinks and making up interesting cocktails and that if I came by his apartment (in the LES, which is insanely far from my apartment) he would make me a few. So I picked up some lime and mint for his concoctions and we drank and played Guitar Hero on his Xbox. Guitar hero is such a whack game - you just tap the shit out of the neck of a guitar, just like clicking a mouse at a feverish pace. So obviously it made my hand hurt. But it was kind of cool and there was a lot of good music.

Heading back was a real trip and a half. Because of construction, the uptown A/C trains were not running local past 59th St. So I usually just switched to the 1 train, but that was out of service also. So I had to get out and take the M7 bus. The whole journey was about an hour and a half.

augie march (an australian band, at the mercury lounge)

On Sunday night i cracked open 'time out NY' to see what was going on monday night. I never used to read it, but now i'm a huge fan of the magazine. it's all about NYC so it's cool and everything is mostly relevant to me, which is why it's a more useful magazine than, say, wired. some stuff is a bit too hipster, but whatever.

So Augie march was listed for Mon night at mercury lounge (east houston), and I remembered the name: when i was in australia, they were on the radio a LOT and brandon (friend who i stayed with) played their albums incessantly. I thought 'no, these guys are HUGE in australia, how could they barely be headlining on a mon night at a small club!' But yes, they were. for $12. greg and heather (who are getting married in a few weeks and had spent a year in sydney together) and i went. The show was awesome!

I ended up finding a $20 bill on the floor... and that seemed to be an ethical dilema. What to do? No one was standing near it, and it looked like it had fallen as someone probably walked somewhere, so the real owner was likely gone. Do you give it to the bar? And then how would someone even claim it?? "hey, i uh lost a $20... do you have it?"

Greg, who just took the NY bar exam, said that legally you are obligated to report anything you find that is over $20 to the police. Then you have to wait something like 3 years to see if anyone claims it. The amusing thing here, of course, is: say i was the one who lost the money... how would i claim it? Go to the cops, say i lost $100 did they find it. Seems mighty easy to fudge that.

prison break rocked

I just finished season 2 of prison break... what an awesome show. It's themes and surprises got a bit repetitive but everything about it is SOOOO much better than crappy-4 (24), which I watched 2.5 seasons of and thought was the dumbest show I've ever seen. I can't understand why ppl like it. Anyway, PB has amazing acting, great writing, and is entertaining and watchable but not for complete retards in the way that 24 is (Both are high speed pursuit, thriller shows).

PB ends on a ridiculous twist and there is going to be a season 3 soon. Just when you thought the story was basically over....

frozen bananas, part 2

Maddy's frozen bananas made me think of an awesomely awesome recipe idea. So frozen banana actually has the consistency of ice cream - it is a bit sweet, melts in your mouth and is creamy. I figured why not exploit that and use bananas as the "ice cream" base.

I took a few bananas, mashed them up with a fork (til they unfortunately looked a bit like vomit), then added some peanut butter (because frozen peanut butter kicks ass), some milk, and a bit of sugar. Then i froze it.

It still looked like vomit, but tasted really good. surprisingly delicious! and very similar in texture to ice cream, but it's all banana, which is actually very healthy. Also, they were organic bananas.

craigslist karma

In the 'what are the odds of that??' department:
I posted an ad on craigslist to sell off a lamp I have (as part of my craigslist blitzkrieg to try to sell of about 50 things in in my apartment that have been left over from past roommates or otherwise completely useless). Here is the ad: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/fur/387010073.html

Anyway, the first (only) response I got was from a girl I know who works at the same tutoring company as me (she is a bit higher up on the ladder and actually works at the office). Wow! Talk about odds.

Though this reminds me of 2 years ago when I was moving out of my first apt and into my second (currently I'm at my third), and located a twin size bed on Craigslist. Turned out it was Evan's (a good friend who loves sushi and has a TV show www.weneedgirlfriends.tv).

So the pupil has become the master...

frozen bananas

Maddy said her new favorite dessert was frozen bananas. So, thinking that would be a good idea, I pulled off a banana from the bunch that came with today's Fresh Direct shipment and threw it in the freezer a few hours ago. Uhhh. Whoops. Turns out, a WHOLE frozen banana is not a very edible thing. I just took it out of the freezer and realized pretty quick: you can't peel a frozen banana. So I microwaved it for a bit. It just turned mushy but I still ate it. Not bad.

Next time i'm going to peel and slice up the banana first, then put it in the freezer. Genius!

fun weekend w friends and dispatch

I went to the Dispatch concert at MSG on Saturday night w my friend Larry (MHS and JHU). It was an amazing concert -- Dispatch reunion, 25 songs (about 3 hours!), and proceeds going to Zimbabwe. The problem was, somewhere along the illustrious Dispatch history, they picked up half a million high school kids as fans. I'm not sure how, since I was in college back in 2000 when they were pretty well-known, and then I thought they disappeared after their 4th and final original album came out around 2002. Apparently, they disbanded for a few years then had a huge reunion concert back in 2005 where 120,000 people came out. I think that's when all the high school fans emerged. See, i figured Larry and I (both in our late 20s), would see more of our ilk there. Instead, it was a swarm of 20,000 15-17 year olds. Not that I don't like high school kids -- after all, i make my living tutoring them -- but these kids were REALLY annoying and obnoxious, in ways Larry and I couldn't remember when we were in high school. It appeared as if they replaced smoking weed with taking speed, coke and other amphetamines. These kids were AGGRESSIVE, like at a sports event, roudy, loud and a little crazy. You'd think Dispatch, with their relaxing groove attitude would allure a much calmer crowd, but I guess the anticipation of the 3 successive nights of shows - several years of waiting -- made the teens anxious.

It could also be that Dispatch is from Boston, and many of the Bostonions had come out... and people from boston are generally a bunch of asshats. (not all, but most).

The show was great though. Dispatch played a few songs, then took a break to show a vignette video about Zimbabwe (filmed when they visited 2 months ago). They were good, encouraging, and wasted on most of these annoying little teens. They brought out some people from Zimbabwe to do some drumming and singing for a few songs, and even played an acoustic set sitting atop their beloved tour van, which drove into the center of the arena. They have 4 albums with maybe 45 total songs. They played virtually ALL of the "hits" and a few new ones, but we were worrying towards the end that they were running out of songs to play, and how much longer could this last?

Meanwhile, we were sitting in the front row of one of the levels, so people were freely walkng in front of us for food, bathroom, whatever. Halfway in, the nincompoops started all getting up and doing a bizarre conga line, jumping around, and, oddly, slapping hi five with anyone who would raise their hand. This was annoying since a virtual endless line of stupid little kids who probably dressed up for halloween last october continually came by and held up their hands like they were in a marathon or otherwise deserved a hi five. Well, they deserved to get out of my line of sight to the stage.

But it was a good night. We hit up the Gingerman afterwards (where NONE of those kids would have gotten into) and hung out w all the old Hillel hopkins crowd.

Later we hit up a 7-11 which, in China, was as common as Starbucks here. In China, the 7-elevens all smell horrendous bc they all sell an odd meatball-like fish thing - basically 3 tubs of grease with lots of small meatball things, behind the counter -- you eat (definitely NOT me) with ketchup. Luckily this 7-eleven didnt serve that shit, but instead was all decked out as a KWIK-E-Mart for the upcoming Simpsons film! They had a lot of funny decorations, donut signs, slurpee machine signs, and even the guys behind the counter were forced to take part with purple simpsons t-shirts.

Good Stuff.

craigslist

wow, i put up an ad on craigslist last night. basically i'm trying to sell off a bunch of crap from my apartment: clothing that doesnt fit, electronics, furniture, etc. mostly good quality stuff, just not stuff i use anymore. the ad is here: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/gms/371212666.html . but i was very OCD with this and listed out EACH item including condition, price, category, size, and brand. i also took photos of each item and put them online at: http://public.fotki.com/jeffnovich/craigslist-for-sale . what's cool is that this photo link actually keeps track of the number of hits, so i can see how many ppl have viewed the picture site. it's at about 850 sofar since last night, about 65 just for today. already i got a few ppl interested in various stuff, so things look good. it seems the hottest items are the chinese/japanese art pieces (the last few pictures on the site), that maddy told me (just now) NOT to sell. oh well.

we'll see how this turns out, but it looks promising.

weekend in the hamptons

i went to southhampton this weekend to visit my cousin who has a house out there. we went biking, jogging, chilled on the beach, and dinner w my relatives (his brother and his parents all have condos in the same complex, so it turned into a little reunion with everyone!).

the hamptons is a whack place where you kinda need to own a german car or a lamborgini and be comfortable spending $20 for a bagel and $24 for a generic glass of wine. it is beautiful, yes, and very much like cape cod with the beaches and scenic roads, but it's a bizarro world filled with botox women and their dress-like-sluts 12 year old daughters all mingling at a night club at 11pm where dinner entres cost $80+. the town seems to restrict entry of any car under $100k and, uh, black people.

but it is the life if you don't worry about cost. only 2 hrs from nyc, it's a relaxing place and a perfect vacation spot.

hanging w my cousin was a lot of fun. i explained why we need to be concerned about global warming, how hybrid cars work, the value of raising fuel efficiency standards, and how carbon dioxide heats up the earth. my cousin is about to start as a top executive at a major investment bank so i see it as my responsibility to get him to think about the enviro side of things since he stands to make real differences in the way he decides to invest and focus resources. he said at the end that i made him think a lot more about this stuff and now he understands the issues a little better. score for the environment!

back in the NYC

I've been back in NYC for a little over 2 weeks now, and it is GREAT to be back. I didn't quite realize I lived in the greatest city on earth until I visited a LOT of other nasty cities. I feel like I kind of know something about the world now and can confidently say that NYC is really the best.

I've been to:

China - Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong
Philippines
Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ko Samui
Australia - Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Kangaroo Island, Fraser Island
Spain - Madrid Barcelona
France - briefly Paris
Israel - Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat
Germany - Berlin, Munich
Prague
Vienna, Austria
Montreal, Toronto
Puerto Rico
Budapest
US - Chicago, San Fran, East coast, LA


That's a substantial list... Europe is OK, Asia is horrendous, and the US just always wins out.

Anyway, some news:
1) Zak moved out, Paula moved out. I switched to Zak's big room where Maddy will be joining me in about 6 weeks (she's still in China). My little sister moved into my old room. Steve (the subletter) moved into Paula's room. Both of them wil move out the end of the summer and Maddy and I will get to hike up rent a LOT and find 2 new craigslist roommates who will make our rent the cheapest it will ever be.

2) Upon returning from China, i felt 2 things. 1) everyone i saw (IE, non-chinese people, all over the place) all looked familiar, like an old high school aquaintance. very odd. 2) I felt like a movie star, living the most luxurious life, as we went to a nice dinner and a regular downtown bar -- these are things you simply cannot get in China and returning to them made me realize how lucky we are to be living like this. Several dozen episodes of Entourage which i had watched on the flight back helped solidify that concept - i literally felt like those guys, even though going to a regular dinner and having drinks at a nice bar is fairly typical here, it truly felt like I was living like a millionaire.

3) The flight left HK at 12:45pm. (Before then, i woke up at 6am, got to the ferry with maddy and made it with only about an hour til the flight left). 13.5 hrs later, we got to chicago. The flight to NYC was delayed by 1.5 hrs bc of lighting, but it was ok because i was on american soil and thanking god i wasn't in china any more (as if i had just been freed from a POW camp ala rambo or john mccain). It helped to be sharing the flight with 2 movie stars: Maggie Gyllenhaal and her husband Peter Sarsgaard, who was wearing one of those baby backpacks that go in the front... that was pretty funny. I finally got back ot the apartment at 10pm with zak helping me and the big luggage I had bought had literally torn apart at the seams by the time I got up the steps. The entire thing was breaking apart before my eyes from the beginning when the rolling handle broke off of the main luggage just steps BEFORE we even got to the ferry. Chinese shit really sucks. I went to sleep at 3am after doing a lot of unpacking and cleaning, thinking I would sleep 15 hours since I had been up over 30 hours at this point. Instead, i woke up WIDE AWAKE at 7:30am, barely 4 hours of sleep. Made it thru the whole day cheerfully and passed out at 10pm. I got up at 6:30am, and there my new improved sleep schedule began. I've still been sleeping fairly early and waking up way earlier than normal.

4) I started running again, thank god. Jogging at 7am before it gets hot is really good, and exercise helps relieve the jet lag, which i basically avoided entirely. I'm up to 6 miles again, so that's good.

5) Benny's bachelor party was in Puerto Rico this past weekend. It was nice to see everyone, good to be on the beach, plus i won $250 at the casino playing blackjack, which was entirely unexpected since I'm too scared to lose money so I never gamble. THere was a minor problem with scheduling of the flight, as I was stupid and accidentally scheduled a saturday flight on jetblue rather than friday, and had to spend quite a few hours between going to JFK and trying to get on standby (nope) and calling at 12:01am Saturday to get a same-day ticket change which worked out. Still 30 hours in Puerto Rico was pretty nice and I didnt feel like I needed much more time than that.

8 more movie reviews

Movie	Rating		Review
the squid and the whale	3		this was a pretty good movie, à la the Royal Tannenbaums. It had a lot of great moments as well a lot of really awkward, bizarre moments, but altogether had a good script some great acting, and was pretty interesting to watch.
Haven	4		cool movie about the Cayman Islands. At first it was kind of a complicated plot line, with several stories trying to weave together from different perspectives, but in the end, I was pretty satisfied.
blood and chocolate	1		this was a terrible movie about a bunch of werewolves, basically a really stupid incredibly poorly acted version of underworld, done by the same director, I think.
goal	1		a mindnumbing movie about a stupid kid who plays soccer and his lifelong dream is to play professionally, and of course he gets his chance, and of course he scores the game-winning goal or something stupid like that. It's like Bend it like Beckham except better, and with Mexican guy instead of Indian chick.
Hollywood homicide	1		I don't know how Harrison Ford could be in a movie this bad, but I guess the money was good. It's just a really boring detective movie with the twist that the two detectives have side jobs in LA, one is an actor going on auditions, and Harrison Ford is a real estate guy trying to sell a house he just bought. All this while trying to solve a homicide. It was so bad, we fast forwarded through most of it.
the man	1		typical Samuel L. Jackson and garbage, and Eugene Levy being a typical slapstick retard.
children of men	1		the concept sounded kind of cool, and the imagery was pretty interesting and the actors were quality, but the story was so badly executed that I really had no idea what was going on, nor did I care.
the breakup	2		I love watching Vince Vaughn be Vince Vaughn, but this was a pretty dull story that was actually a pretty big downer at the end. No, they don't get back together after they break up.

I like buying clothing... in China

last weekend, Maddy and I went to get some custom made clothing at a tailor on the other side of town. This turned out to be one of the coolest experiences I've had in China, just about tied with buying all the DVDs.

basically, the place is a huge five floor building where each floor has literally hundreds of of little shops selling everything from electronics, DVDs, women's clothing, purses, accessories, knockoffs (mostly knockoffs), and men's suits. The top floor basically consists of 50 or 60 little booths that sell fabric, and then another few dozen booths, each with a teller inside who is ready and willing to make you a suit or any other clothing you want for a few bucks.

Last week, after Maddy had poured over dozens of huge glossy women's clothing magazines and located all the different dresses and garments she wanted custom-made (basically copied from the picture), we headed over to John Chi, the tailor who was recommended to us by a friend.

we each got measured, I chose fabric for my custom-made suit, and different fabric from a whole bunch of sample books for six button-down shirts. The suit cost about $170, and each shirt cost about $20. Maddy painstakingly described exactly what she wanted and ordered five garments.

we came back this past weekend for a fitting and the results were astounding. I personally haven't really anticipated quite how useful "make my own clothing for really cheap" thing could be. Turns out, good old John Chi could pretty much make anything Maddy or I threw at him, including jeans, dress pants, corduroy jacket, shorts, cargo pants, dress shirts, basically anything. So we spent a few hours going through the shops to find good material. The way it basically works is you find a pattern and material that you like, and you buy it by the meter. So, for example, I found some cool striped linen that I wanted to be made into pants, and got 2.4 m of it for about two dollars per meter. Maddy did her thing as well, and we came over to John with a whole bunch of bags filled with fabric.

the cost of making clothing breaks down into two costs: the cost of the material, and the cost of labor. Previously, we picked out material that the tailor himself was providing, but this time, we bought it ourselves for cheaper and with a lot more selection. So now, the only cost is the labor in creating clothing out of what we give him.

In the end, I ordered 10 pairs of pants (two corduroy, one loose-fitting corduroy cargo, two jeans, two dress slacks, two linens, and one black khaki), each will cost about $12 for labor, and the cost the material was about four or five dollars each. I also got a corduroy jacket, which costs about $70.

Maddy was there for several hours after I had left and she ordered about a billion other things too.

We have decided to basically overhaul our entire wardrobes with custom-made stuff from the tailor, and then buy a few really large suitcases when we head back to New York. For me this is pretty easy because I barely own any clothing as it is.

also, this tailor is so cool that he said he's going to keep our measurements on file and once we're back in New York, we can actually e-mail him stuff that we want made and he'll make it and FedEx it to us.

Custom-made clothing for cheap. Hell yeah!