The neo(-conservative) economy

A steady recovery of the US economy? Or just a transient effect, since consumer spending dipped again in September?
However, the self-fulfilling positive thinking the news is generating might actually turn things around for real and start improving job hopes. The latter scenario is what the Bushites were hoping for when installing the tax cuts - remains to be seen whether it's going to work.
The Bush policies are definitely working out for Halliburton, of 'Tricky' Dick Cheney fame: according to two House representatives they're grossly overcharging the US government for gasoline that is imported from Kuwait for usage in Iraq. See now why we need $87 billion?
If you want to know where another chunk of the money goes, check out this Associated Press article, reporting on Iraq reconstruction deals for companies that used to be campaign donors for Bush.
Meanwhile, Fox News (I'm not going to link to these morons) wants to sue Matt Groening for a Simpsons episode that was a bit too much to take for Rupert 's right wing boys' taste, featuring a parody on the 'fair and balanced' Fox news show. Funny that the Simpsons are aired by Fox Broadcast - Murdoch is sort of suing himself.

Eerste regen

Ok, we hebben dus vandaag de eerste regen van het seizoen gehad in de Bay Area - de eerste regen sinds mei. En in de Sierra's krijgen ze de eerste pakken sneeuw te verwerken - net een week geleden was het daar nog volop zomer toen ik het Flume Trail aan het doen was. Het koudere weer zorgt voor een aangename afwisseling na de vijf maanden durende Californische zomer (voor mijn landgenoten: grin!) - I love the smell of cold crisp air in the morning - hoewel de korte dagen (donker om 17h) soms nogal deprimerend werken.
In het zuiden (hierbij een satellietfoto van de LA en San Diego regio eergisteren) zullen ze het ook kunnen apprecieren: door de fog en drizzle lijken de bosbranden eindelijk onder controle te komen...
Jurgen merkte gisteren overigens op dat zijn bolide, die aan zijn appartement buiten onder een afdak geparkeerd staat, onder de asse zat - dat is voorlopig het enige dat wij gemerkt hebben van de wildfires, die dit jaar voornamelijk het zuiden hebben getroffen.

Geomagnetic storm

I rode the Monster up Page Mill road and Skyline tonight around 11pm, in order to check out whether the recent massive solar flare and the resulting particle storm would generate some aurora borealis. There wasn't much of that in the sky though, just the stars and an occasional meteorite. Anyway, more astronomical pleasure can be found on this Hubble homage (thanks to Dave Biegelsen for the link).

Listening to Mahathir

Tom reacted on my post on the speech of Mahathir a while ago and pointed to this interesting article by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Krugman makes a couple of valid points but of course I don't agree with him ;). Because, as much as I loathe the Dubya administration, I'm evenly allergic to the cultural relativism of some progressive voices - and I think Krugman's reasoning is to some extent affected by this relativism. Read more...

Flume Trail

Eind vorige week was ik het even beu op het werk en heb de vrijdag dan maar vrij genomen - ben naar Tahoe gereden om daar het fabuleuze Flume Trail te doen (per mountain bike uiteraard). Had enige technische problemen (drie platte banden!), maar het was al bij al een fantastische ride - meer dan 1000 vertikale meter klimmen startend op een hoogte van ongeveer 2000m, het onwezenlijk mooie Flume Trail singletrack hoog boven een wand uitkijkend op het meer, de meedogenloos technische klim naar de Marlette peak en de high speed afdaling langs Marlette lake...

Indian summer

Terwijl de eerste sneeuw viel in Belgie, beleefden we afgelopen weekend hier in de Bay Area record-temperaturen: in Palo Alto bijvoorbeeld was het op een bepaald moment 91 graden Fahrenheit, oftwel bijna 33 graden Celsius - niet slecht voor een 26e oktober... in Zuid-Californie (SoCal voor de ingewijden) hebben ze het ondertussen nog een heel stuk warmer.
Zaterdag naar de Red Bull Flugtag in SF geweest, een hoogst amusant evenement waarbij teams zich met zelfgebouwde vehikels vanaf een soort schuifaf in de baai storten, met de bedoeling zo ver mogelijk te 'vliegen'.

Rock cemetery

Het lijstje blijft groeien... na Cash, Zevon, Palmer, is nu ook Elliot Smith richting Eeuwige Repetitiekoten getrokken... op eigen initiatief dan nog, en hij heeft het blijkbaar op nogal spektakulaire - harakiri - wijze aangepakt. Ik heb Smith ooit bezig gezien op Les Nuits Botaniques in Brussel, waar hij een zeer te pruimen optreden neerzette - mooie stem en een aantal pakkende, zij het konventionele songs.

AC Milan - Club Brugge: 0-1!

Incredibile! After Anderlecht's victory yesterday ('tegen een klein Schots ploegske', according to some), Brugge kicked AC Milan's butt today - btw, Milan won the League last year...

RSCA-Celtic Glasgow: 1-0!

A few days ago I was talking about the Champions's League games of Anderlecht; they just managed to win one! Not quite as glamorous yet as the legendary victory against Manchester United three years ago, but not bad either (given that they were 10 to 11 after half an hour)...

Soquel Demonstration Forest

Here's a picture I took of Markus jumping from one of the many stunts in the Soquel Demonstration Forest.
The Demo Forest ("many have entered it, few have left unscathed") offers some of most inspiring and fun singletrack of the Bay Area and is a well-known mountain bike playground. It also contains some of the most technical, steep and challenging stuff; take for instance the Saw Pit trail - I'm not sure whether I ever finished it without crashing (usually a rather innocent low speed scramble in front of some obstacle, but still...). And then there are the numerous log jumps and stunts that people build - highly entertaining. This sunday we (i.e. the Mountain Schweinehunde) went down the Tractor trail, which is a (very) high speed rollercoaster - we did carry some protective gear, which actually works wonderfully for the psyche: one doesn't think about stitches or the hospital all the time...

Ride to Santa Cruz

Today was Motorcycle day. First I hung out with Lars at the BMW dealer in Mountain View (October-Feste bratwurst and drinks), then I headed my dear Monster towards Santa Cruz, along the twistiest roads I could find; beginning with Stevens Canyon Road, which forks into 9. Never did this one before and although narrow at times, not too interesting. Highway 9 was beautiful as always, and there were not too many cages around. Decided to go on a detour along 236, towards Big Basin State Park. The first part of 236 (coming from Skyline) is narrow, bumpy and very twisty: great fun! Briefly checked out the park (contains some big ass redwoods) and the museum at the park headquarters. Back on the road: 236 remains a lot of fun for a while, then forks into 9 again - alas, this is the boring part of 9 (through the towns of Big Boulder, Ben Lomond etc). In Felton I got tired of the slow traffic and decided to improvise: took Felton-Empire road, which turned out to be a delightful, smooth, medium-paced climb towards the coastal mountains' ridge; it led to Empire Grade, passing along the backside of Wilder Ranch Park (of mountain bike fame), past UC Santa Cruz onto Highway 1.

Lunch in my favorite Greek restaurant in Santa Cruz, then it was time to hit the Pacific Coast Highway: sweet and scenic as we know it, but also cold, because of a stubborn cloud masking the sun. Cruised past the beaches and the kite surfers and after 30+ miles I arrived at the junction with my beloved Pescadero Road. Did a quick gas stop in the quaint small town of Pescadero, and then the road was all mine: a marvelous sequence of numerous tight turns and fast, short straights through the coastal redwood forest. It was all bliss and it felt divine, until I overcooked one turn (blind - and tightening); I was leaned into it carrying too much speed and didn't dare to brake or lean more, so of course I ended up for a brief episode in the wrong lane; no car, fortunately, but this was bad bad, I was shaken and all pissed about it - over-confidence is your worst enemy - the resulting under-confident period didn't last too long however, and soon I was enjoying the most twisty and bumpy section: the part after Pescadero Road turns into Alpine Road; it was bliss again and sooner than I wanted I found myself on the junction with Skyline Boulevard. Heading back home I did engage in some squid behaviour for which I now feel quite remorseful - sport-bike style passing at high rpm of a bunch of slow cars and Harley's - but then they went so slow. Conclusion: had an awesome ride but I have to be careful; when too comfortable I tend to want to go a bit too fast - why o why is speed so exhilarating? - therefore, I should keep confronting the sickest, bumpiest and tightest twisties I can find: a good reality check and one learns from it, plus: rides stay interesting at reasonable speed.

Sports

And now: sports. For some reason, locals seem to be all excited about a baseball game last night. Tom even called from a bar in Manhattan where he was watching it. I refuse to become interested in baseball or American football and the likes. Instead: ice hockey (acceptable), watching mountain bike freeriding or Monster tricksters (real fun), but the best: Anderlecht games in the Champions League (the ones they don't lose, which are quite rare these days, I admit).

OS blues

The real Empire of Evil, in the meantime, has struck again: yesterday I had to waste another 20 minutes in the office to install-con-reboot another 'critical update'. I'm doing half baked efforts to convince people at work to use a proper operating system, but without much luck. This is intensly depressing, because personal computing was basically invented at Parc, and in a not so distant past we used to be forerunners on this, not followers.

Satan is in Rumsfeld's ass

I was ranting about the Bush administration and religion only yesterday, and now this NBC piece of news about a certain general William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense, came out. Compared to this demented lunatic, colonel Jack Ripper out of Dr. Strangelove looks like a reasonable guy. Some of his better quotes:

"Why is this man [Bush] in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

"The enemy [of the US's war against terror] is a spiritual enemy. He's called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan."

This would make great satirical stuff for a black comedy, if it wasn't so REAL! This also makes me believe that the former times under Ronald Reagon in his Alzheimer-induced 'Empire of Evil' days were not too bad after all. And for the first time I felt a slight trace of compassion with Donald Rumsfeld, while he was speaking on the radio trying to defend his employee: "I simply can't comment on what he said" because he did not know "the full context" of Boykin's remarks.

Dark ages

Malaysia's prime minister delivered a chilling anti-semitic speech on an Islamic summit; here a couple of 'highlights':

"They [the Jews] invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must use our brains also."

Besides manifesting himself as a complete and utter moron, he does make half of a point: thinking and religion are not compatible.
More bleak religion news: some results of this poll are quite disturbing (in case the results are to be trusted). Take for instance this line:
"More than 60% of American born-again Christians, American Catholics and Korean Christians, more than 80% of Peruvian Catholics and Hindus, and over 95% of all Muslims surveyed say they will suffer negative consequences if they disobey their religion. "
Or, these particular idiots won't even dare start thinking for themselves (btw, our fearless leader, president Shrub, is a born-again Christian - not sure if he belongs to the 60%, but I think I'm up for a bet). It's like being in the Dark Ages once again and hence it's high time for a second Aufklaring: smart people all over the world should stand up and speak out agains the irrationality and insanity of religion and the army of fundamentalists it never ceases to spawn! These guys make an effort...
Finally, it would be ridiculous if it wasn't so depressingly real: see what these nutcases in Wyoming are up to.

Budget issues

The 2004 budget for NIH (National Institutes of Health) will be in the order of 27 billion (27 x 10^9) dollars; as commonly known, the proposed Iraq reconstruction budget is 87 billion; this certainly indicates where the priorities of the Bushites lie. Of the 87 billion, 66 billion is reserved for financing US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 20 billion for the actual reconstruction. A substantial amount of this 20 billion looks to be going to (at best) pretty dubious expenses. Of course, then there is the record federal budget deficit (estimate for 2003: 400 billion), not uncorrelated to Dubya's tax cuts (which the majority of the population will hardly notice). But don't worry, there is a jobless recovery going on!

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot and other observations

Blijkt dat Limbaugh (een soort Amerikaanse talkshow host versie van Filip De Winter) verslaafd is aan pain killers en dat hij zichzelf heeft laten opnemen in een ontwenningskliniek. Ik stel voor dat we Rush's eigen advies opvolgen en de hypocriete vetzak in de Mississipi jagen:
"Limbaugh routinely condemns drug abusers and said in 1995 that "too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find (them), convict them, and send them up the river." (uit het yahoo nieuws article)
Ondertussen heeft de voortreffelijke Al Franken een nieuw boek uit dat ik dringend op mijn te-lezen-lijst moet zetten...

The West is the best

It's october 10: the sky is blue and clear, the air is crisp, the sun shines and it's a comfortable 20C. No rain expected for about a month or so - o, the greatness of California! Went biking in Purisima Creek, on the gorgeous Whittemore Gulch trail (see pic), the Pacific in the backdrop. The trail, IMO one of the most enjoyable long descents in the area consists of the following sections:
-the Vista's: views from open meadowlands along side the Skyline ridge to the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains and the Pacific
-the Switchbacks: snaking singletrack with plenty of tight (and not-so-tight) switchbacks
-Roots: entering the upper part of the forest, a number of fun obstacles are posed (jumps on the way down, hops on the way up)
-the Gulch proper: high speed rollercoaster downhill, through the bowels of the forest, along fern fields and creeks
The climb up is challenging, especially given the steep, loose and rocky fire road towards the parking lot at the very end.

Sequoia trip

Went last weekend on a trip to Sequoia National Park with Tom. I rode down the Monster, Tom drove up in a rental car from LA. Plan: hike up Alta Peak and do some backcountry camping.
Somewhat of a challenge: packing all the camping gear on the bike, then stuffing all the camping gear in the backpack, then climbing over 4000 vertical feet carrying it. Did work pretty well though: report and pics...

Ah-nuld gouverneur

Ik heb gemengde gevoelens ten aanzien van de recall. Aan de ene kant was Gray Davis natuurlijk een grijs onderkruipsel en een slinkse machtspoliticus die zijn lot waarschijnlijk verdiende. Aan de andere kant was de laatste weken mijn respekt voor Ah-nuld volledig weggeebd - voornamelijk omwille van de volgende feiten:
- net als Dubya is hij een marionet van het industrieel-militair complex - die mogelijk het ongedierte van Enron 'off the hook' will halen;
- hij is geen enkel rechtstreeks debat aangegaan met zijn tegenstrevers; op een enkel 'vraaggesprek' na waar de vragen op voorhand aan de kandidaten werden voorgelegd. Wat voor een belabberd stuk Terminator is me dat!
- kampagne voerde hij door stompzinnige one-liners op te dissen in talkshows a la Oprah en konsoorten, maar hij heeft het nog niet gehad over hoe hij het budget deficit gaat oplossen - zijn 'politiek programma' bestaat uit wazig gezwets.

Mijn favoriete kandidaten waren Georgie Russell (het geek sekssymbool van Silicon Valley), die op een verkiezingsmeeting van Ah-nuld overigens (in beste Schwarzenegger traditie zo lijkt) werd aangerand - leve Georgie!, en Larry Flynt.

Recall fun

Today is California's gubernatorial recall election day. It may be the first successful recall but not the last: no matter who will win, a recall-of-the-recall is not unlikely. We propose to add another check box to the ballot: 'want a recall in case preferred candidate does not win' in order to generate an iterative loop of recalls... total recall (I think Ah-nuld was giving a pretty good performance in that flick, unlike these days).

Colder, darker

The days are getting shorter at a fast pace and the nights colder; two weeks ago we were still in the midst of an Indian summer heat wave here in the Bay Area, now winter is on our doorstep (at least, the Californian version of a winter). The ideal setting for listening to Field Songs by Mark Lanegan. Some may deem this record pretty depressing, I think it's strikingly beautiful. In a week Lanegan could be singing for Queens of the Stone Age in the Warfield in SF - should go and check it out.

Nobel Prize Literature

The Nobel Prize literature has been awarded to J.M. Coetzee. This means that Hugo Claus has yet to wait another year.
Keep hanging on there Hugo, sooner or later the Swedes will have to recognize your genius!

Down with Atkins

I'm usually not that outspoken about dietary issues, but now that even some of my friends start lauding the merits of the Atkins diet, I feel that I need to do something; because, as a matter of fact, I believe the Atkins diet is a big bunch of bullcrap. Sure, by depleting yourself from carbohydrates and entering a state of ketosis, you burn fat and lose weight; however, besides the at best dubious long term health effects, the chronic lack of glucose means you will perform like an anemic duck during sports, exercise or outdoor activity; energy release from burning fat is slow! My dietary advice: eat a little bit less of everything and work out more.