Author: Ivan Kreilkamp

You can contact me at ivan812 AT gmail.com

Watching the Olympics with Celie and Iris

Ivan KreilkampLeave a comment

So far Celie and Iris seem to consider the kayaking to have been the high point of the Olympics. I think they only watched it for a few minutes at some point when we were out of the room. Ever since then they bring it up occasionally, always saying, “Daddy, if the kayaking is on, TRUST ME, watch it! They go SO fast,” and variants of that sentiment, always including the phrase, “trust me,” which I don’t recall ever hearing from them before. They also liked the BMX biking and kept asking me if the bikers who fell over had died. And the gymnastics, of course. Their main insight while watching the men’s rings was that it would be really easy to tickle them under their arms while they did that.

After 15 minutes or so of watching they generally start their own Olympicking, as they call it, doing various stunts on the mattress, generally with some loose connection to whatever sport we’ve been watching. The problem is that we’re expected to offer amazed, appreciative Bob Costas-like color commentary on every move or tumble. The other night they were doing some kind of jogging race around the mattress with their dresses pulled up on top of their heads and I had to issue a series of penalties and points-off for bottom-revealing (which is strictly prohibited in international play).

Hoosiers, Craveables, & Riblets

Ivan Kreilkamp1 Comment

Two recent news stories. First, Report ranks Indiana 11th fattest among states:

Indiana is still getting fatter, just not as much as some other states.

In an annual report released Tuesday by the Trust for America’s Health, obesity in Indiana continued to climb as a percentage of adults but once again dropped in its ranking among all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The new report found 27.5 percent of Hoosier adults are obese, up from 26.8 percent in last year’s report. The Indiana rates were 26.2 percent in the 2006 report and 25.2 percent in 2005.

Indiana was one of 37 states that showed a higher rate of obesity in the past year — no state saw a decrease — but Indiana’s ranking improved from a tie for ninth-worst to a tie for 11th.

Yes, Indiana is getting even fatter, but some other states are getting even fatter even faster. This is the sort of depressing/pathetic part:

“There is reason to have some encouragement here,” Monroe said. “There’s a little bit of portions of a percentage change, but we’ve really kind of plateaued the curve that we were on. Our ranking improved because we held the line better than other states.

“For the first time, we’re not in the top 10, which I’m very excited about,” she said….

But it won’t be a quick fix, she said.

“The national experts believe it will take time to turn it,” Monroe said. “It’s like turning a barge. That’s why I’m excited we have plateaued … because the first thing you have to do is stop it, and then you begin to turn it.”

Basically, the big cause for celebration here is that Arkansas and Oklahoma increased their obesity rate this year more than we did. Somehow that image about trying to turn a giant barge seems like the wrong note to strike in this context.

Anyway, I thought of that story when I read this one about the new chief executive of Applebee’s:

In her business, people use phrases like “drink equity” and “healthy indulgence rebranding.” Everyone is on the hunt for the next “craveable,” an item like a whole deep-fried onion, a potato skin stuffed with bacon or, in Applebee’s case, the riblet [the riblet is the meaty piece with flat bones left over when racks of ribs are trimmed into uniform rectangles. It is a classic menu item at Applebee’s Grill and Bar.]…

You don’t come up with a quesadilla burger by catering to dieters. Applebee’s flags some menu items that have been approved by Weight Watchers, but the company is not exactly cutting a path through the calorie jungle.

That’s because what people say they want and what they eat are often different, she said as she sat in a booth at the IHOP. Nearby, a family of four was pouring different flavors of syrup over stacks of pancakes. “That’s what people want,” she said.

Among the dozen dishes on her table that day was the Georgia praline peach streusel pancake, a dish so sweet it made a Butterfinger bar seem like a refreshing palate cleanser. …

“We can’t seem to make things sweet enough for people,” said Patrick Lenow, the director of public relations for the company.

So, what’s the next craveable? A deep-fried riblet stuffed with bacon and drenched with strawberry syrup? A whole deep-fried streusel pancake? Any ideas?

Professors Gone Wild

Ivan Kreilkamp2 Comments

Impressive to realize how low the bar can be set for professional behavior by university professors.

An argument between two debate coaches escalates into a war of words, each showering the other with a string of obscenities before an audience of seemingly unfazed students. Before long, one coach has mooned the other, and the video — posted to YouTube — continues recording the spectacle of two communication professors stomping their feet, flailing their arms and shouting at the top of their lungs.

Explanation of the affair. There’s something compelling/absurd about the set-up, which has the feel of some sort of exaggerated, out of date culture-wars face-off between the hip young African-American female professor and the gray-ponytail-flailing 60s hippie in shorts and bare feet.

Freedom (from the internet)

Ivan Kreilkamp4 Comments

Via my sister-in-law Miranda via Boing Boing via Lifehacker, I just learned about an application that I’ve been specifically looking for:

Freedom serves a simple purpose: It disables all wireless and Ethernet networking on your Mac for up to six hours at a time. After the time you specify is up, Freedom re-enables your network adapters and display a confirmation.

The genius part of it is, once you set it up to disable your connection for a certain amount, you cannot restore it without rebooting your computer. So, you decide you want to work without distractions for 2 1/2 hours until lunchtime, and set Freedom to 150 minutes; an hour later you develop an irresistible urge to check email; tough luck, unless you want to go to the trouble of rebooting.

I felt slightly humiliated to find this comment on the Lifehacker site: “Someone who needs this has much larger problems in their life.” I definitely need it. There was a point this spring when I was trying to work at home and my email/web compulsivity got so bad that I hit upon the solution of going down to the basement and turning off the DSL modem. Unfortunately, it turned out that we get DSL from a neighbor, so this didn’t really work. (Btw, starting Moonraking was conceptually related to this web compulsivity issue: I had been thinking of starting a blog, but worried that doing so would be fueling the fire; I eventually decided that blogging would be more constructive than the random emailing and surfing I’d been doing. Maybe that was the false logic of an addict, not sure.)

Seriously, I’m excited about this. It’s true that there may be occasions when I actually do need to check something quickly online, but overall I think it will be really helpful for me to cut myself off semi- irrevocably. Thanks Miranda!

Economic Terror

Ivan KreilkampLeave a comment

I thought this was amusing. #4 on CBS News’s “7 Worrisome Signs for Obama“:

Bad times could be good for McCain. If anger helps Democrats, fear advantages Republicans. A growing number of Democratic strategists worry that some swing state voters may opt for McCain if the economy veers from merely awful to downright terrifying.

Wow. So if Heath Ledger as the Joker threatens to blow up all of the nation’s banks, McCain wins.

Always nice to realize that the possibility of our economy becoming “downright terrifying” is highly plausible.

Maine: Reading

Ivan Kreilkamp1 Comment

My pleasure reading in Maine was mostly occupied by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, the James Woods translation. I’d never read it, and I like to read a long thick novel in Maine — although the situation is prety different now as a parent of young kids, so I don’t have the endless uninterrupted hours that I used to read War and Peace and Middlemarch in high school. And the Mother West Wind and Freddy the Pig books when younger.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot and made my way through it off and on, and then a few nights before we left, I put it down on the front porch with 50 or so pages to go and went off on an outing. While we were away, it rained, and the book got soaked. I tried to dry it in the sun and made some progress, but it was still fairly damp when we left. Finally last night on getting back to Cambridge I used a combination of the microwave and a hair dryer on it. On Matt’s suggestion I tore off the last 75 pages of the book and concentrated on that piece, managing to dry it pretty well.

It’s a good holiday reading book, in a way: sort of about an endless vacation, unbroken leisure to the point of maddening tedium. At this point what may stick most in my mind is the scene where Hans Castorp (why is he always referred to by his full name?) goes skiing and gets lost in a snowstorm. Also his rival in love the amazing Mynheer Peepercorn. And the takings of one’s temperature several times a day and wrapping oneself up in a camel’s-hair sleeping bag for afternoon rest.  And the philosophical musings on time.  It is a strange book and often pretty hilarious. I’d like to read some criticism on the novel — I suppose it must be an allegory of pre-WWI Europe to some degree.

Also have read 2/3 or Orhan Pamuk’s Snow. Turned my attention to that as I waited for Thomas Mann to dry out. Also a strange and funny book with memorable snow as Ka the poet wanders around Kors during a military coup. I also want to read Pamuk’s nonfiction book about Istanbul.

Drive East/ Judy’s Motel/ Bedford Coffee Pot

Ivan Kreilkamp3 Comments

I have a DSL connection so thought I’d sneak another post in about our looong drive East. Actually it was a bit shorter than usual as instead of driving to Cambridge we went first to Oyster Bay on Long Island, so it was more like 13 hours as opposed to the 16 or 17 to Boston.

We pulled off the highway in Washington PA, which turned out to be the college town of Washington and Jefferson — Sarah did some excellent chowhounding and sniffed out a surprisingly excellent casual-Italian dinner at an inauspicious-looking downtown grill. Then back on the road until Bedford PA where we avoided the cluster of chain hotels and found a cute little place called Judy’s Motel. I believe this was our actual room, Guest Room #2:

The girls were so excited about being at a hotel and sleeping in the same room with us that they were up until about 10:30. Judy’s (btw “Judy” was a middle-aged man in shorts; I have the sense that Judy lived in the motel’s early days in the 1950s, a couple generations of owners ago) had wireless so we sat on the little bench in front of our room and researched local food and tourism. Sarah discovered Bedford’s Coffee Pot House, which we visited the next morning after breakfast:

We actually have some good shots of us in front of it, but we don’t have our technology in order right now. The only disappointment was that one cannot actually enter the pot.

The girls are pretty good travelers. They tend to settle into the drive and entertain themselves, to some degree. There was one odd moment where they decided they wanted us to stop talking — “don’t say ANYTHING!” — and preferably stop moving as well; Sarah had to insist that in order to drive she needed to move her arms.

Eye of the Tiger/ Blog hiatus

Ivan Kreilkamp1 Comment

A highlight of Persepolis (which is really good)

Actually, the clip is funnier in the context of the movie, where it signals her emergence from a deep post-breakup depression. Fun Wikipedia fact: “In 1984, singer/comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic wrote & recorded a parody of Eye of the Tiger called: The Rye or the Kaiser (Theme From Rocky XIII).” I’ll have to check that one out. Love Weird Al.

A note to my literally dozens of regular blog readers: I am soon traveling to a place without DSL connection (in Maine), so the blog will probably be on semi-hiatus for July.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Ivan Kreilkamp1 Comment

Most-emailed article on the Time Magazine site (as of a few days ago):

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

As a longtime imsomniac who is always trying to get more sleep, I am a bit skeptical of these claims:

Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.

Just to state the obvious, maybe the healthy long-life people just need less sleep to begin with. It would seem that there is no way to know if the 7 hours of sleeping a night were a cause or an effect of the good health.

I have weird sleep issues. My insomnia began in graduate school. I walk and talk and do odd things in my sleep. When I was trying to revise my dissertation I would sometimes get up convinced that someone was stealing my laptop, and several times in the middle of the night I arose to hide it in my sock drawer. I quite often run downstairs and check doors and windows, and check (this is a recent favorite) to see if anyone has stolen my bike. In my half-dreaming state I seem to be in some fairy-tale reality full of thieves and “robbers” (a word I believe I’ve used in my sleep-talking) and dangerously permeable borders to a hostile outside world. Recently I’ve sort of been coming to terms with the painful insight that even my late-morning coffee may be affecting my evening sleep. Now I try to avoid any caffeine after about 10:30 a.m. — maybe a decaf at lunch. And a lot of peppermint tea which seems to have some kind of habitual placebo effect.

Leftist Buzzwords

Ivan KreilkampLeave a comment

Report Assails Political Hiring in Justice Dept.

Justice Department officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesda.

This is the funniest/most outrageous detail:

Investigators reviewed e-mail messages from Ms. McDonald in which she indicated that “leftist commentary” or “buzz words like ‘environmental justice’ and ‘social justice’ ” were grounds for rejecting applicants.

Other possible leftist buzzwords, grounds for rejection:

  • Habeas corpus
  • Rights
  • Organic
  • Global warming
  • Sustainability
  • Rational; Reason
  • Integrity
  • Fair
  • Impartial
  • Facts
  • Prius