MTheads

The Perfect Coffee Maker

I can't remember when I didn't make coffee using one of these little guys.  Those must have been dark days.  For those who have never used a moka coffee maker, they are cheap, simple to use, and make great coffee.

The only downside is they can't be left on the stove unattended.  I have to replace the little rubber gasket inside every so many months because I'll lose track of time and cook the gasket to death.  Every now and then, I'll leave the pot on the stove for so long I destroy the entire thing. 

As you can see, this blue guy has lost some hit points through inattentiveness.  I've had him for two years -- a record.  I'd like to replace him with a stainless steel version, but it's hard for me to spend the money when this one still works.  I'm waiting for my next inattentive spell.

The Pursuit of Perfect Health Comes at a Price - Your Dignity

The NYT carried an article the other day about the negative impact of sitting for long periods.  I'll buy into the theory that being immobile for weeks at a stretch isn't great for you.  But what about intellectual work like sitting for hours on the computer researching which electric toothbrush is the best one for me?   The study said we could offset our sedentary time by interweaving it with short bursts of movement.  Maybe a Whack-a-Mole game could come standard with every computer desk. 

Studies like this one worry me because so many impressionable people living in places like NYC, Portland, and Seattle will rearrange their entire lives in order to put into action whatever infallible conclusions are printed in places like the NYT health pages.  Reading the comments, people have already begun to balance their computers on empty Kashi product boxes so they can read the Huffington Post while walking on their treadmills.  Next, the couchless living room!

There were commentators who couldn't wait to post that they were planning to eliminate all sitting from their lives.  And all from one study.  I worry about these guys and gals.  The ones who spend all day checking off everything they need to do in order to never die, like eating wild harvested organic dried blueberries, brushing with non-fluoride toothpaste, drinking the exact right amount of red wine, green tea, POM, NPR, yoga, natural fibers, blue tooth.  Is this not the greatest generation for the advertising industry?

 

 

You're Acceptable, Respectable, Presentable, a Vegetable.

David Brooks from NYT has run a series of essays about a project of Harvard's Steven Pinker.  Pinker asked experts from various fields: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?  The theories that came back are great fun to read and often enlightening.  A few examples:  John McWhorter, linguist and author, has a theory that many of us fall into a "path dependency" in thinking.  What worked before in a particular time and place is carried into the future even though such action or thinking is no longer effective.  Princeton's Daniel Kahneman has a theory that he calls the Focusing Illusion.  It's basically that "nothing is as important in life as you think it is while you are thinking about it."  All are of dust.

Read both essays for more interesting theories on how we can sharpen our thinking.  What interests me in the whole discussion of cognition and thinking is how much of what we think is genetically determined.  Perhaps logic and the ability to tweak how we think is as genetically determined as intelligence.  I happen to think it is.  Which is why it is pointless arguing with some people.  Outside of an extreme contrast to a held opinion such as that experienced by people from North Korea when exposed to the modern world or fear of ostracism from not adopting new social norms, a good number of people don't change opinions, ever.  I'm absolutely convinced of this.  Don't bother arguing with me.

Some experts and philosophers even question whether most of us bother to think at all.  Here's one.  Hanna Arendt wrote:

Thinking in its noncognitive, nonspecialized sense as a natural need of human life...is not a prerogative of the few but an ever-present faculty of everybody; by the same token, inability to think is not the "prerogative" of those many who lack brain power but the ever-present possibility for everybody - scientists, scholars, and other specialists in mental enterprises not excluded - to shun that intercourse with oneself...

And what to make of those seven seconds between brain spark and our actual conscious moment of acting out a thought?  Is it due to that crazy hip cat Quantum Mechanics, or to our complete lack of free will?  Perhaps I was genetically programmed to have this stupid blog. 

 

 

And One Bialetti To Rule Them All...

As you can see, the bialetti stove top percolators are my preferred instrument for making coffee.  They make the best coffee.  Unfortunately, they don't make a lot of it, so if I have more than one person over, I have to pull out all the little guys.  This will make coffee for 5, maybe six.   My kids get a kick out of the large one because it looks so funny next to the other guys on the stove.  You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the large bialetti is the size of an ox.

Oooh Oooh Aaah Aaah

I've been working on my Russian for months now.  I took several years of it in college.  I've worked with it.  I can read it.  And yet, I still can't speak it!  Something takes over my brain whenever I try to speak to an actual Russian.  Yesterday, a Russian woman asked me where the Polish embassy was.  Now, I understood her fine.  I had just passed the Polish embassy two blocks back.  In Russian I would only have to say "straight ahead."  I know how to say "straight ahead" in Russian.  Everything was set up for a win-win encounter.  Nope.  Instead, I pointed in the general direction of that half of the earth and made monkey sounds.  And she slowly backed away without taking her eyes off of me until safely on the other side of the street.  I felt awful.  Oh well, more studying.

Time, Friend or Foe?

I miss homeschooling.  It puts a shadow over my heart every day I see the kids off to school, especially the youngest one.  Thank God I got to teach her to read last year.  She's the last one, the end of our parenting young children.

We decided to put the kids into a private school here in Moscow for a variety of reasons, not the least being that I'm very busy here.  The school is also quite the experience in itself, one the kids are really enjoying.  And I didn't want them to miss this experience out of my own needs or out of a misguided belief that my children could only thrive in a homeschooling environment.

Also, sometimes it's good to completely shake up one's life.  Everything about the way we live now is different from what it was for the last 14 years.  And it's exciting.  Change is hard and inconvenient and risky.  But it also gives one a different perspective on the passing of time.  It's tempting to make life flow by with few snags -- everything just right, the routine smooth, the food predictable, the company comfortable.  You live by the seasons and holidays, the rhythms of the year, year in and year out, not noticing that time is puddling under your easy chair and not much is left. 

Real change is like depth perception.  Suddenly, the days aren't so much flat as spread out before you in a panorama of hills and troughs formed by memory inducing activities and sights.  I feel time more now that I no longer hold to a comfortable routine.  That's a gift.  But I still miss my children.

Dang, I hate the learning curve

I'm trying once again to start up a blog. I had to stop blogging earlier due to lacking time.  But now I'm itching to complain and nag to someone other than to my poor husband and kids.  Maybe I'll use less bad language if I have an outlet. 

I find navigating around Typepad and trying to figure out how to tweak my site to be annoying.  Oh well, otherwise, I like the service.