The Daily Parker

I didn't come to Russia for the food.

This is fortunate. The lunch buffet yesterday had pork filets, penne with cream sauce, white rice, salmon roulades, roasted carrots with butter. Then the dinner buffet had pork roulades, spaghetti with cream sauce, black and white rice, salmon filets, roasted carrots with butter. Same Sunday, same Saturday, though there was a minor stir when we found out the Halal meal was lamb chops, which the Muslim students eagerly devoured leaving none for the rest of us.

A Ukrainian friend asked, "This does not sound like traditional Russian food to me. What hotel are you based in?" Ah, here's where the story takes a particularly grim turn: we're in the British-owned Corinthia Nevskij Palace. British-owned. Which is odd, because our food in London was actually pretty good, especially breakfast.

Russia does, however, have tasty things to drink. But we'll leave that aside for now.

And another thing, which is keeping me in the building for the time being: It's bloody 30°C outside. Yecch. I'm hoping it cools off a bit before I head out for more photography and meeting up with my team to watch the Dutch beat Uruguay.

They started us off beautifully this term, with one class yesterday followed by four hours of free time and a tour of the city. Then they gave us the morning off today. I wish all the residencies had started so easily.

This gave me a chance to get some photos processed, starting with the train ride from Helsinki. This is near Vyborg:

Findlandski Station in St Petersburg, with very-Russian looking trains:

And from the boat tour:

More coming, of course. Even with a morning off from classes it turns out there's still a lot to do.

Does anyone else—outside of climatology or Contiental Europe, I mean—find it odd that France has had 33°C temperatures this week? I mean, the last time that happened, 14,000 people died as a result.

I love that for €54 and an hour and a half (round-trip, both numbers), you can take a boat from Finaland across the Baltic Sea and be in Estonia. The abandoned immigration and customs counters look a little forlorn to me, but have got to look completely eerie to anyone who made the trip before 2008, when Estonia entered the Schengen area.

The ferry terminal on the Estonian side is a ghastly pile of Soviet concrete too horrible for me even to photograph. To give you an example, this is directly across from the terminal, and is one of the first things you see entering Tallinn:

Fortunately, it gets better. The Soviets seem to have left Old Tallinn alone, so there is still a good-sized hunk of the city that looks like this:

Then there's this, a door you never, never wanted to enter if you were Estonian during the Cold War:

That building, at #1 Pagari, was at one point the KGB's headquarters. It seems to have been repurposed, which I deduce from my ability to photograph it repeatedly and not disappear.

Beautiful day, though. The temperature hovered around 22°C, the sun came and went, and the sea breeze off the Baltic felt great. I'm glad the weather held.

One more thing. As the return ferry approached Helsinki, I thought about the original settlers of the two cities, living a thousand years ago, rowing their longboats across. The catamaran I took cruised at 64 km/h, about ten times faster than the fastest longboat ever could have made the journey. We had about 15 minutes from the time I first sighted Finland until we were close enough to the archipelago to have waded ashore. It would have taken the Vikings three hours to cover the same distance. It's a mundane thought in the 21st century, but just the same, I thought it.

When I left home, my iPod, Kindle, computer, and GPS were all fully charged. When I got to Finalnd, my iPod and computer were still fine, but my Kindle and GPS were completely drained. I have no idea why. All of them were in the same bag, all of them were off (except the laptop, which I used in flight), and the two that were drained were completely drained, not just low. Plus they recharged just fine once I got here.

What gives?

Helsinki Cathedral:

And the Esplanden:

I just got in to Helsinki. I wrote the following on the flight:

29 June 2010, 18:33 EDT, 10,500 m over the Maine-New Hampshire border

Finnair’s A330 business class is the most comfortable experience I’ve ever had on an airplane[1]. First off, the plane is brand-new. It’s quiet, clean, and (not surprisingly) very European-looking. But this isn’t your grandfather’s Airbus. Dig it:

• Finnair has introduced new seats in business class. The left side alternate 2-1-2, the middle are all paired, and the right side—where I sat—is a staggered single column. The staggering allows them to put more seats in the cabin while also allowing the seats to fold completely flat, which is the whole point of upgrading on an overnight flight. But the arrangement also means every seat but four are aisle seats. (Seats 1A, 3A, 5A, and 7A are trapped window seats.)
• The business class seats also have universal power outlets (fits North American, British, European, and I think Russian plugs), a 5v USB connector for recharging electronics, and an RJ-45 network connection. I didn’t have an RJ-45 cable with me so I have no idea what network it connects to.
• The airplane has a freaking nose camera that the pilots turned on for the takeoff and landing rolls. It also has a belly camera that allows you to look straight down. Both are accessible in flight through the entertainment center. When the nose camera came on as we taxied into position on the departure runway, I just boggled. This was the coolest thing I had ever seen on a commercial airplane. The belly camera, while also a seriously cool feature, has less practical benefit because the field of view almost exactly the wrong scale. At 10.5 km up it shows an area probably no larger than 1km across—too big to see anything in detail but too small to see a more complete picture.
• Finnair’s in-flight navigation software is the best I’ve seen, except for one of the screens where the animators got clever. Oddly, at one of the scales it shows, it depicts shipwrecks. As we passed over New England it highlighted the wrecks of the Andrea Doria and the Thresher, which I suppose is an advertisement for the safety of air travel over sea travel, but still.
• Outboard washrooms have windows. It seems silly when you read it, but it’s actually kind of cool.
• What a yummy wine list—in 9 languages[2]. Joseph Perrier Cuvée Royale Brut 2003 to start, a white Burgundy from Rully, a lovely Douro, and a 1995 Niepoort Colheita for dessert. And, of course, Finlandia.

I’m almost disappointed I’ll be asleep for a several hours.

There is no reason I can see that American Airlines can’t do this as well. Or British Airways for that matter. Maybe the two largest carriers in the oneworld alliance are just too big. Maybe Finland just has higher standards of comfort than the U.S. and U.K. Or maybe my experience flying back to the U.S.—in coach—will change my mind.

I will ponder these things over dinner...

[2] Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, and (I think) Urdu. (I’ll confirm the last one with a classmate when I get to St. Petersburg.)

Update, 00:46 UTC, about 1,700 km southwest of Iceland:

The dinner service done, the cabin crew dimmed the lights, but so gently one might worry he was going blind. Also, because we’re so far north, the left side of the plane looks to be in a permanent sunset. The flight map shows us skimming the dark side of the terminator without ever quite diving in all the way. Plus, the local time in Helsinki is 3:50: just 30 minutes or so before sunrise. I might not get much sleep after all.

Later update, 00:51 UTC

I wrote too soon. They just killed the lights with a switch. It’s suddenly dark in the cabin. I shall therefore dim my laptop, which, because it has an ambient light sensor, is fighting me on this...

Still later update, 00:57 UTC

The almost-full moon just popped above the horizon. It’s still not completely dark out there though.

I'm right now at JFK on my way to Europe, to attend the CCMBA residency in St. Petersburg. This is just about the first moment I've had to chill in a couple of days. Thus the dearth of posts recently.

First, I want to build a copy of Scott Adams's house:

My home office is designed with a sound baffle. It's a 10-foot diagonal hallway between my office door and the main office space. It's a kill zone for sound waves, and it works like a charm. The house has no carpets, so sound carries, but none of it makes it to my desk. The master bedroom has the same feature.

... We made room for the oversized kitchen and the theater by leaving out rooms you normally find in a home. We left out the fancy foyer, formal living room, and formal dining room. Our dining table, which hasn't arrived yet, will float just off the kitchen and double as the main thoroughfare for the downstairs. That way we avoid extra walls and hallways that ruin the flow of a house.

Second, and more importantly, my friend DC got a new puppy, Rex:

He's a pure-bred German Shepherd dog, and he's just a sweetie. He's also drooling; he, like lots of puppies, gets car sick. He made it all the way to O'Hare but by then his forelimbs were covered in drool. Poor puppy. DC reports he eats a quarter of his weight in food every day, so I'm kind of glad he didn't lose it in the car.

Via Sullivan, you can add a classic blunder after "never get involved in a land war in Asia:" never get into a staring contest with a Muppet.

My last post ("Warmest May in 131 years") got some reaction on its cross-posting to Facebook:

YK: 131 years is a drop in the ocean in geological time. Why is this drop so significant? Never seen any satisfactory answers to that question except maybe some looks of intimidation about how 'obvious' the answer was. Poor communication or maybe nothing compelling to communicate?

The Daily Parker: The sharp rise in global temperatures over the past 150 years is unprecedented in the planet's history. Yes, the earth has been warmer, and it's been colder—but (a) the evidence is clear that a 2-5°C rise in this short amount of time has never happened before barring asteroid impact or supervolcano eruptions; and (b) there is a statistically significant correlation between human-caused gas emissions and the temperature rise.

YK: What science can go back 4 billion years and offer that level of precision over a 150 year period of time? Sorry, I don't buy it. Show me the evidence.

TDP: That's just it: looking at 150 years over even a few million, the spike would be vertical. There have been large rises in temperature, but over millennia. We've got ice cores going back half a million years, and geological evidence for a few hundred million before that. I think we can exclude from the argument the time when the planet was a molten rock without an atmosphere through the time it had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere capable of supporting air-breathing life. So, for the last 500 million years, there have been swings up to 9°C, but never so fast, and never (with the exception of the K-T extinction) so devastating to life. What level of evidence do you require to recognize human-caused climate change, short of palm trees in Saskatchewan?

YK: I don't claim to be an expert in climate change, because I don't believe you can gain that 'knowledge' by reading or hearing people talk about it informally. Here is an example of something I looked for and read to learn more about it. Let me know if you can point me to something as equally well researched that can refute or at least cause me to question the observations and/or conclusions in this.

TDP: OK: UNFCCC, NASA, USGS, National Academies...again, what's the threshhold for you? What level of evidence will be sufficient to convince you?

YK: Read my article. You throw your stuff my way and don't bother to reciprocate the effort. Scientists who don't agree at least look at each other's evidence, and not just promote their own. (I write [that] with confidence because I know you couldn't have read the link I posted in 8 minutes.)

TDP: In fairness, you're right I haven't read it, but I'm downloading it now. While we're digesting each others' documents, consider this: If we shift resources to combatting climate change, for example by moving away from petroleum, reducing energy consumption overall, limiting meat production, etc., we could take a 1-2% GDP hit over the next century. Maybe 3% of GDP. If the consensus is wrong, and we've spent that 3% of GDP, we'll still have better resource use, healthier people, and fewer farting cows—all of which may very well boost GDP.

But if the consensus is right, and we do nothing, then we'll lose Miami, Bangladesh, and (truly a catastrophe) Jones Beach, Long Island.

What do you think about doing a thorough, evidence-driven risk analysis and then acting on it?

YK: If it can be proven or shown as a viable theory that we're f'ing up our planet and that we could do something to improve the situation, of course I'd be all for it. I just don't believe in any 'noble lie' scenario a la Plato. Show me the evidence or a reasoned theory and I'll come to my own conclusion on the matter. But I am against 'forcing' people to act against their will 'for their own good.' I am not a statist or a totalitarian or a believer in tyranny. If the best our 'leaders' can do is point guns at the populace to 'make them do the right thing' then I'm afraid we need to re-evaluate our status as citizens in this country.

My real reaction to the warmest May is: "Man, this May was so much more pleasant than last year in Chicago. Last year's late spring/all summer was the most disappointing in my 10 year experience living here."

The debate continues.