International Urbanization Seminar (China)

This is the poster for a course I am co-teaching with Deland Chan in the spring (URBANST145 / EARTHSYS138). Find out more at www.internationalurbanization.org

Turn of the Century

There are moments when I wonder if I'd be better off living a hundred years ago. Time to think, to write, to read. Where crafting a thoughtful letter is considered a good day's work. Where you can take the evening to play a string sextet, and people don't think you're being "inefficient." Where cooking is allowed, and conversation welcome. I am a digital native, but sometimes in the bioware mishmash of blood and transistors, bile and circuits, I think I have an analog soul.

Lend me your (pasta) ears!

I went to a cooking class last night where they taught us how to make pasta by hand. What fun! We rolled out the dough into thin sheets, cut it into a variety of shapes and sizes, and even filled and sealed tortelloni (large-sized are tortelloni, the small-sized ones are tortellini).

One of the recipes was for something called orecchiette, an ear-shaped pasta. You roll the dough (2 parts semolina, 2 parts all-purpose flour, water, lots of kneading to get elasticity) into smallish cylindrical rolls, and then slice it into "coins." You then use your finger to press each coin into an ear shape. This can be done against the counter top, but if you do it on something textured (we used a gnocchi board) it adds cool-looking grooves on the pasta surface. After cooking, it comes out looking like this:

Cooked orecchiette (top) and finished with kale (bottom). I have to say that our pasta was particularly toothsome, with the right amount of springiness in each bite.

It reminded me of the 貓耳朵 or "cat ear" pasta (noodles?) that my friend from Shandong says his family makes, and how I'd imagine them to be. I have a distinct memory of the pinching motion he made with his thumb and forefinger (followed by a toss into boiling water) when he described the dish to me. I searched online for images of 貓耳朵, gathering some photos and recipes and found them to be just like orecchiette!

"How to Make Cat Ear Pasta" A basic recipe for 貓耳朵

"Cat Ear Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms" The procedure and the product in this blog entry on how to make "肉絲炒貓耳朵" by bonnie8nz was virtually the same as our orecchiette!

Rights to these three images belong to bonnie8nz

With egg and tomato http://bit.ly/19oVkEZ

With curry sauce http://www.meishij.net/zuofa/galimaoerduo.html
They use a sushi roller for texture!

Thus, one might be able to jokingly say that when we make the Chinese variant of this pasta, instead of calling it "orecchiette" we might actually call it "ore-kitty."

Which nation?

The Tufts alumni magazine has an intriguing feature that splits North America up into various "nations" that have distinct cultural beliefs. The author observes these to be the "dominant culture", reminding us that "it isn’t that residents of one or another nation all think the same, but rather that they are all embedded within a cultural framework of deep-seated preferences and attitudes—each of which a person may like or hate, but has to deal with nonetheless.

This conception of nations (plural) isn't that far-fetched. "Albion's Seed" makes a great anthropological study of four different colonial cultures (Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, Scotch-Irish) that give rise to enduring regional difference even in modern-day America.

Funny enough, I'm currently reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, wherein the main characters contend that while there may be geographical proximity (on the continental scale), the variegated parts of the U.S. are actually different countries:

"San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York, or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis." 

"Is that so?" said Shadow, mildly. 

"Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s."

Ring around the Rosy, Pocketful of ...

Does anyone else notice an uncanny resemblance between the Apple "Spaceship" Headquarters that has been proposed, and the GCHQ's (i.e. the British NSA's) building in the UK?

One happens to be surrounded by trees, whereas the other one is ringed by parking lots. Hopefully Apple's intention is more benign: producing consumer products instead of spying on the public.

[Images from: The San Jose Mercury News, Gensler and The Guardian]

Bonus: The dragon-shaped stadium from Kaohsiung, Taiwan that is completely solar-powerd.

Ceaselessly into the Past

Part of the reason we like books is that they are timeless: temporal transportation at your fingertips. One can always return to a beloved chapter from the past and relive beautiful moments again.

It doesn't matter what the present or the future holds. You can still go back and re-experience the joy in the moment, and it is no less real -- the visceral emotion, the plaintiveness, the sorrow, the bliss. In each case, the sense of possibility exists, and exists again. Every journey, every return, holds the promise of different endings made possible again. Because these works are written, there is a mutability about the story. Even if you've read the ending a thousand times, in the moment it occurs, the tale is yet to be written. The characters may yet gain that ending where happiness awaits. Oh such belief! Belief held so closely that we might call it faith.

In this turning and returning, of pages, of times, of lives, there resides immense hope. Dangerous, narcotic, heart-shattering hope -- but lovely nonetheless.

Dancing Monsters!

Via Facebook Stickers. I'm parking this graphic here to embed it elsewhere.

Once

There was once
Good night, and good luck
I'll find you again, dear morning
Sheer nighttime
Slate gray
A day, a day, a day

Time now only for light & love

The moon is a massive mirror hanging in the sky. I wonder if anyone ever tells the earth to look at its own reflection in that mirror.

If you placed the moon in your pocket, it wouldn't emit any silvery beams because it's not a source of luminescence.

When in darkness, ask for stars. They may be small, but they burn with their own light.

Moonlight is like lace, arcing through darkened tree branches.

Heard this evening: "the moon the day after Mid-Autumn -- the 2nd day -- is actually the roundest and brightest." Just like brunch the next day, lazy day, after a night of revelry and festivities. This moon has no pressing matters to attend to: it can lounge in its chair with a book of short stories and a tray of celestial mimosas. Hours drift past, an open horizon. This moon tilts its head with a contented expression. This moon arches its back. This moon rolls over and yawns. It spreads across the sky.

-- Random #中秋節 thoughts.

Mid-Autumn Again

The world still spins round and round, orbiting that bright star. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, 中秋節快樂!

The light from the moon bathes fields and terraces,
filters through groves and glades.
It washes onto cobblestones
and wanders country lanes.
Echoes of her shining compass:
bright crests, radiant irrigation.
Watch the transfer of quicksilver
carrying all the hopes in the world.

Future Tense

Bwa ha ha. From Matt Walsh:

I always love the older folks who lecture about how THEIR kids weren’t as “attached to electronics” as kids are nowadays. That’s probably true, but mainly because, well, YOU DIDN’T HAVE ELECTRONICS. You had a toaster and a black and white TV with 2 channels, both of which were pretty easy to regulate. But, sure, congratulations for not letting your kids use things that didn’t exist.

On that note, I have a strict “no time machines or hover-boards” policy in my home. It is stringently enforced. I’m thinking of writing a parenting book: “How to Stop Your Child From Becoming Dependent Upon Technology That Isn’t Invented Yet”

the streetlamps were like a string of silver arrowheads

Red Rose, White Rose, and all the goddamn tragedy of sunken, misfitting lives. Eileen Chang, how can you do this? From wondrous fragments of beauty—absolutely luminous!—to ruined shabbiness flat-lining in the grey corner of a grey city.

Wheels spinning, the gears are grinding down and flaking apart in the hollow spaces. Household domesticity: outward serenity, with the suffocating walls of respectability folding in. The firm press, the resolute pressure of bourgeois life, built brick by brick. To what end?

It's a soundless scream: he's choking on a noose with a silken slipknot. A glint of metal, blade, edge: potential rescue. Imagined? Please; please save him! Such delicate observation.

To no avail, he does not save himself.

The Next Wave

How amazing would it be if for California's next act, we showed the world how to build advanced, high-performing, environmentally-sound infrastructure? It would be wonderful if our state became the showcase for the future of transportation technologies integrated into comfortable cities and living communities.

It's how our state will move beyond "Silicon Valley", Internet bubbles and app-building. We've got the electric vehicles, the self-driving cars, and now the hyperloop ...

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_23854572/mercury-news-editorial-elon-musks-hyperloop-is-hypercool

Islands

I'm cleaning this computer, which must go back to the university, and found a note from May 30:

The island of lost happiness. What might have been, lost moments that ended too soon. There, these dreams are still alive, and you can live in joy with your loved one, forever.

It is the place where memories gather: lives cut short, alternate histories not written, roads not taken, paths untrodden, doors unopened, hearts unbroken. This is where those dreams reside.

With Fondness

I was searching through old notes, and I saw that I jotted this in July 2012, a full five months after Opening's last performance. It seems like it takes me a while to get over the things I'm emotionally committed to:

"I used to think that Viennese Ball was right around the corner -- that we would reunite and things would be wonderful again. Now, I recognize that we will never recapture those emotions, never gather that group together, never be in association with each other again. And so anticipation fades, and Viennese Opening Committee moves into the past, into the realm of memory and of pleasant recall, nothing more than shades and sepia photographs and laughter long forgotten. Oh, there is still a pleasant glow about the idea of it, but it is decidedly in the past tense. It is inexorably, unchangeably over, and it won't return. I know that now, so I can say goodbye."

Named at Birth

The next pair of pandas shipped out from China should be called 「自由」 and 「平等」。If they have a cub we'll call it 「民主」。

下一對運出的大熊貓應該叫「自由」 與「平等」，如果有新生的幼仔，叫它「民主」。

* 自由 = liberty, freedom;  平等 = equality; 民主 = democracy

Aloft

I had a dream last night where I was in Roble Dance Studio. The object of the lesson was to practice grace and musicality. In groups of three or four, we traveled across the floor with a tapered object in hand, music playing in the background. Some carried swords; others rods, boughs, branches. The object I balanced aloft was my cello bow. The exercise was to interpret and flow with the music. We moved at different heights: in the air, low to the ground; in smooth arcs and sharp gestures. Playing expressively, sculpting motion.

Fade

Already you seem a memory:

a distant voice, a faint melody, a faded photograph.

The sensation of far away, a dream;

no more corporeal form, something imagined.

Dear ghost: who am I?

To have seen you and loved you

But to be nowhere near.

Avatar: The Last Dancebender Logo

Technology, Democracy, MOOC

At the Tech4Dem conference today organized by the National Democratic Institute, exploring trajectories for democracy and how new technologies will influence it, one of the panels featured former VP Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Both were in the cabinet during the Clinton Administration, and as they discussed US leadership, the role of technology, and its influence on democracy around the world, I had a serious flashback to the positive energy of the 1990s. There was so much hope back then -- a belief in the possibility for human betterment, and an understanding of the need for the US to lead and engage with the world.

Albright had a quote back then, calling the US "the indispensable nation" in international affairs, meaning that American leadership was critical to getting things done. This was echoed in Gore's remarks today: that no other nation is able to substitute for American leadership in matters of vital global concern, including climate change. (Whenever climate and environmental issues came up during his talk, he became much more animated -- thunderous even. Major props.)

However, as Albright noted today, "indispensable does not mean alone." The United States has a key role in marshaling the rest of the world to act in concert to address these issues, whether it's human rights or sustainable development or gender equality.

I grew up in that era, and these are the folks in government who inspired us as we became politically aware. So here's to hoping we reclaim that can-do spirit of the 1990s: technology powering possibility, guided by principle and ethical commitment; and caring for the world, including human beings and the many species that share the planet with us.

P.S. I laughed out loud during a panel on Internet technologies, when the moderator said, "The United States invented most of these technologies!" and then looked significantly at Al Gore.

P.P.S. The formal conference name is "Governing Democratically in a Tech-Empowered World"