I may have already won $500k... in Spain???

I received a ridiculous-looking letter saying I won over $700,000 (quoted in Euros) in a Mega Millions lottery in Spain. My name was apparently picked by a computer on behalf of an American lottery outfit doing good for Americans in Europe (?). Just in case (how can you turn down over half a million dollar without a second look) I googled this up and found links about this specific scam.
I'm watching the CNN Republican debate and I am still predicting Romney as winner despite McCain's Florida win. I have to say I was surprised by that victory. The man sounds tired, frustrated, almost impatient. He speaks low, monotonously, and arrogantly. Despite that and his hawkish tendencies, he would have been my pick if I had to vote in the Republican primary. Huckabee is a more lively character. I just wish he wasn't for the UNfair Tax and raising hell with his gay-bashing. Ron Paul is shrill, but I wish he was given more airtime and debated head-on by the others who basically ignore him or look around wildly when he speaks, insinuating his lunacy. Paul's policies are a bit detached from reality, unfortunately. He's simply a soothing ying to the others' yang. Romney is definitely slick in the negative sense of the word - as in slick and slimy - but he is the better-spoken, less-populist, less-hawkish candidate. Still a gay basher like the rest of 'em, though...
BTW, for those of you living in Massachusetts, I just wanted to say you have a "modified closed primary', not an 'open primary' as you might think. However, as long as you are unenrolled in a party (this includes the Independent Party) you can vote in either of the major primaries. See this for more specifics about your state's crazy regulations.

Blues Busters and Birthday Bashes

We had all sorts of happenings to attend this weekend.
On Friday we went with a couple of friends from Bloomberg/London to the Fatty Crab, which is one of our favorite restaurants in the city - bold East Asian flavors, fun beers, and pretty good value to boot.
Saturday evening we were invited to a blues-bustin' party (according to experts the end of January is the most depressing time of the year). We met lots of new people and ate all sorts of good food including Thai chicken wings, chili, a spicy and savory cheesecake, and something yummy called bigos. There were all sorts of liquors, wines, and beers I've never seen before. We were even introduced to a new coffee-making contraption which I now have to find - the vacuum pot. Just before we left, our hosts cut a 10-pound bar of chocolate from Trader Joe's. This was one WILD party and we were the first ones to leave, too, so who knows what further craziness we missed.
On Sunday we met with friends to celebrate a birthday. We went to a Churrascaria in Long Island - I think this place had the best meat I've eaten in a Brazilian rodizio. The buffet and sides may have been lackluster, but the meat was tender, properly spiced, and grilled to perfection. Afterwards we all came back to our place for tea, coffee, and birthday cake. Adults took turns playing DDR, while 5 little girls ran between their feet and made a general ruckus.
Then last night (Monday) we had tickets to a private showing of Water: H2O = Life, an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Some cheese, bread, dried fruit, olives, and lots of drinks. There was the water too, of course... There was a cool spherical movie screen on which was projected (from the inside?) an Earth model, that was cool.



An eventful few days which left Connie drained, and nursing a sore throat :(

Every Tool Is A Weapon - 3 Weeks Down

The JeffTech Robotics team has moved into the building stage this week. We're cutting, drilling, polishing, soldering, and so far everyone still has all their fingers. We also did some programming, concentrating on translating the joystick's XY coordinate system to polar coordinates - a crash course reviewing trigonometry for me as I totally forgot about arc-cosine. This is needed for the type of driving control for 1 joystick required by our current design. Everyone is much happier now that we're doing something real. Somehow the design and strategy and even mock fabrication of a model does not feel as real as handling an angry, noise-making miter saw...

Punditerizing

I'm gonna make my 2008 primary race predictions now, because before you know it, it's all gonna be over and what fun will it be saying to everyone "I knew that was gonna happen. I just didn't want to say it!"

On the Democrats side we have Hillary and Obama (and I guess Edwards, but everyone outside his campaign knows he's done). I have to go on Hillary's side here. As you know I'm a big Hills fan and I even did a bit of grass-rootin' for her before she announced her run. I think she's a centrist and I like that. I think she's a realist and I like that. And I think she's a woman (she is, right?), and I like women. She's as close as I can get to the candidate I want. If she had slightly less connections that would be better, but I'm not gonna go go for Mr. Wonderful just cause of that. Obama is young, shaky on specific actionable paths towards accomplishing his platform goals, which he does not place in bright daylight either. His speeches are filled with hope and change rhetoric but I want to put my trust in someone who knows how to implement hope from day one. Yay, I sound like Hillary. Not only I am FOR Hillary, but I think she'll carry the big states, which is what's important. Obama has young people and some independents. But we know who votes - old people and the base of the party. Besides, his middle name is Hussein. How can Dems expect to win with someone like that???

On the Republicans we have a wider field with Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, and Paul. I guess I would say Paul is not really a plausible candidate - maybe as an Independent. McCain I feel is too old and has too many enemies in the Republican party machine to make it to the end. Giuliani may or may not have an upset in Florida, but even if he does I feel he would lose to Romney in the end, who is more appealing in the same way Kennedy was more appealing than Nixon back in 1960. So for me it's gotta be Romney with Huckabee as a wild card that can upset things as he's been doing in the early states. I believe if Huckabee wasn't there to win over crazies from Romney in Iowa and South Carolina, McCain would have been a foregone conclusion by now as he was back in 2000.

So, we have Clinton-Romney to look forward to in a few months. I believe this could trigger a move by Mike Bloomberg to run as an Independent. I would be happy to see this 3-way race and I would almost be OK with any of those winning. Romney is a crazy now, but he's going to be a better President than Bush. He's going to align himself on the less crazy side of conservatives when it comes to the actual presidency. To win, though, he has to act like a crazy himself and I am willing to forgive that later on if he does a good job. Anyways, he's gonna win in that 3-way race, because Bloomberg is gonna steal Hillary's votes (he'll steal mine, that's for sure) and split the Democrats more than the crazies. So, if I have to make an early (and emotionally void) prediction for the whole shebang it would have to be Romney...

By the way, for those of you who don't speak Yonglish, a "crazy" is a right-wing, religious, conservative bigot - the kind that oppose gay marriage.

Nice Day Out

Yesterday, Connie and I went to Sands Point Preserve in Port Washington. I had a craving to see some water and to stretch my car's legs some more. The drive was nice, and we had a comfortable walk along the dead woods and cliffs overlooking a small portion of the Long Island sound. It was a very clear day and extremely cold (~20 F and very windy) so we were lucky to have the wind to our back during the walk. Afterwards we drove around Port Washington just checking out tudors and other lovely homes, did some shopping (finally got that nutcracker), had a slice, and watched No Country For Old Men. That's one intense movie. See my friend's movie review blog for more info. We then stopped over for Hot Pot dinner at our friends' place in Forest Hills near home. It was delicious, overfilling, and chaotic (three little girls wreaking havoc on 5 unsuspecting adults). I can't ask for a much better day than that, really...

Economist Debate & Mediocry

I've been getting involved in the current Economist online debate as a voter and a commentator. I made my pen name "mediocry" based on the name of this blog. I'm not sure I ever explained this name formally here, but I've been thinking about it in the last few days and I just tried doing a google search for it and found loads of links which made me giggle with ironic joy. The name mediocry comes from the fact that "mediocrity" was already taken (I'm supposed to be an underachiever in his thirties, the prototype of mediocrity), and because once I thought of mediocry (pronounced me-de-yaw-cree, like mediocrity, without the tee), it sounded also like Media Cry - as in crying out for attention using this medium... Anyways, it seemed clever at the time.
Now, via google search, I see that many people have used this spelling by mistake for mediocrity or even mediocre. Talk about mediocrity... I also found out today that ever since someone encouraged me to place a link for this website in my gmail tag (thanks Mr. Beantown, you know who you are!!!) people outside of my comfort zone of viewers (there were about 3 of you) have been listening in. WHY WOULD ANYONE ELSE CARE ABOUT THE TRIFLES I SHARE HERE? I don't know... It's public so it's their prerogative! I just hope it doesn't inflate my egocentric sense of all-importance.

Davey Crockett's Hideout

Yesterday I went with a friend to browse AIGA's exhibition of best designs picked from 2007. Cool stuff, and I was happy to see designs of cans of cooked long spaghetti for Waitrose as part of an entry; brought back memories of living in Belsize Park, London. In the evening I doubled my car's mileage by driving another 15 miles to pick up Connie at Bloomberg and drive over to her parents' house, where I spent most of the evening playing Lincoln Logs with David. I'll spare you the Lincoln Log-based epic movies we created together using the Canon camera.

Worth the Wait

After an excruciating 3 months our new VW Passat is finally here. She's a beaut and has all sorts of features like rain-detecting wipers, liftgate that opens on its own and closes with one push of a button, and tiptronic controls on the steering wheel so I can pretend I'm in an F1 racing car... Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen. I needed some prodding and some rides and some more prodding, but I am finally the proud owner of a made-in-Europe car.

Working For Norhing

In order to combat the feeling of utter uselessness that being unemployed can throw at ya' now and again when you're least expecting it, I volunteered to do some freelance (and by that I just mean for free) graphics work for my friend. His website has been getting super-mega-hits because he's the bomb (or, his web domain has survived 5 years of web time-wear; we presume this is a feat the search engine overlords are impressed with). So, I used the 3ds Max software to create a glitzier logo for his front page. Here is one of the first cuts that was thrown away:

Modern Dance Dance Revolution

This weekend our friends Marissa & Scott, soon to be the McNamaras, visited us from Boston for a weekend of feasting, culture, and gaming fun. We started with late-night DDR (sorry, 11C) and Wits and Wagers, a game of guessing and betting kind of like The Price is Right meets a roulette (except about trivial world knowledge rather than trivial consumer knowledge, and no random luck involved, really - so nothing like those two!). We (barely) woke up next morning to catch a quick breakfast before a short car trip to the Joyce for an afternoon of David Parsons Dance Company - I just can't resist seeing them again for the sheer pleasure of witnessing Caught again...
We interluded ourselves into St. Marks and the Belgian Fries hole-in-the-wall place around the corner on 2nd Ave - Mango Chutney Mayo won first place sauce, followed by Roasted Eggplant Mayo. Amuse-bouche well tucked, we headed over to Artisanal for appetizers, wine and cheese - lots of cheese. Winners here were widely contested depending on the party's different tastes - I personally liked the Robiola du latte, part of the Sinful trio of cheeses on offer as a "flight."
We basically needed a lot of down time for digestion after that, so headed back home for a more reserved night of couch-vegging and game-playing.
It's always too short of a visit with these two, so Sunday was depressing at best... Connie and I had some errands to run around town. I spent a long part of the afternoon animating my robot model in a virtual arena:

Jammin' With the JeffTech Crew

Today, the Robotics team settled on a robot design that is inventive and may also be realistic in terms of construction and functionality. I worked with a small set of the students (Dillon and Ayutunde) on programming a simple LEGO robot with an NXT programmable brick, making it perform race laps. I demonstrated the difference between 3-wheel designs vs. 4-wheel designs. I also worked with the sketch artist Danny to take the design to a slightly higher level of detail. We will be working on capturing and rendering that design in Autodesk 3ds Max to wow the ConEd design panel next week. Alejandro thought about an approach to RoboCoaching, while the ROTC gals Natoya and Nicoda captured the creative juices on tape, so to speak (there were no actual juices, and they used a digital camcorder).

Roll up your sleeves, it's Robot Time!

I went down to what used to be Thomas Jefferson High School (and is now 4 different vocational-like high schools) to meet the Robotics team - JeffTech - for a discussion on strategy and tactics. We had a fairly fruitful meeting. A bit unfocused and disorganized, but we hit all the important points I wanted to talk about. Some of the students are very psyched about the competition, but some seem to be there because someone is making them. It's hard to engage those kids, but I will try my best to make a positive impact on all of them. The group decided together on a strategy for a robot that could drive around the track fast, but secure one of the huge balls as well for bonus points. Oh, and a mechanism to drop one of the balls from the top overpass onto the field. So, basically, as complex as one can get really; lots of moving parts... We'll see where tomorrow and next week take us. The kids got pretty creative with design sketches and ideas towards the end of the day, so I hope they come back with some great designs tomorrow.

Day on Museum Mile

I checked out the exhibitions at the Guggenheim and Cooper Hewitt museums today. I really enjoyed the Cooper Hewitt's exhibit on Ingo Maurer. He does lighting design. Really cool stuff. Unfortunately a simple table lamp costs ~$1000. The exhibit on Richard Prince at the Guggenheim was less interesting but I did like his Nurses series. The material was a bit raunchy in general.

C-H-A-N-G-E is a 6-letter word...

OK. Someone hold me back or "there will be blood tonight!"
First off, I want to see Change-counters on-screen for every speech a presidential candidate makes on TV. I'm so tired of this over-used rhetoric. CHANGE we can believe in, Ready for CHANGE, Stand for CHANGE... The only thing that changed tonight was the lead in the Democratic primary campaign - Clinton bagged a surprise win! Was it the underdog phenomenon? The tears? Clinton organization rigging voting machines? Who cares?!? The point is that New Hampshire put the kabash on all this CHANGE...
I hope now that Obama is not the inevitable nominee ("you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means"), the candidates can stop riding the waves of CHANGE and go back to talking issues. Because this nomination is not about CHANGE. It's about who is right for the job and who has the best platform to offer.
Remember candidates, we're watching and we're listening...

Saturday Night Fever

We re-invited some of our neighborhood friends and their children to a play date at our place. We had lots of leftover food to make from New Year's Eve. We had 3 couples, a visiting friend of one of the couples, and 2 sets of sisters between 0-4 years old. I played with the kids all night while the adults drank their bubblies and played their dancing game. I keep being advised to start a day care. I'd be great at it, according to the parents. I wish I'd get the same kind of encouragement for becoming a diplomat...

Second Time Doing FIRST

FIRST is an organization I volunteered through last year. I participated in the robotics competition helping a failing high school in East New York create a viable entry robot for the regional contest. Today was the announcement of this year's competition and I was there to mee the team and brainstorm some ideas for the coming 6 weeks. Since my schedule is light I am committed to make a bigger difference in the lives of the students this year. Today I met Ruby, Alejandro and Dillon, as well as Ayatunde whom I met last year. You can see some animation of what's expected of the robots this year. You'd be amazed...

Caucusuckers

So, Iowa voters, Yuck-Habee and Mr. Hussein? That's what you're coming back to me with? Have you all gone cookoo? If you want change so bad, why not just overthrow government and pick a Marylin Manson as our head of state? "Change" is such an overplayed theme in this campaign season. Since we have a lame duck president, ANY candidate will be a change. But the question that should be tackled is not whether the next candidate is going to preserve the status quo or be different than Dubya. It should be who will make the most change for the better!

Huckabee is basically a socially conservative Republican with a Fair Tax agenda. As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, I do not currently support the Fair Tax. It seems regressive and may spoil the current economy. As for social conservatism, I have too much to say about it so I will simply note my disdain towards the Marriage Protection agenda. I have issues with the death sentence, pro-life arguments and gun ownership rights, but with all of those there are complex issues. Marriage Protection is simple bigotry. I couldn't possibly endorse such a candidate with good conscience.

Obama's message is that he is not as much of a Washington insider as Clinton. He is different simply because his husband was not in the White House already and because he has not served in the Federal government as long. On issues, Barack and Hillary fall millimeters from each other. But importantly, Hillary comes off a realist whereas Barack seems a bit more ideological - for me, that's not a positive. Sure, you want idealists to serve your country and strive for major changes to improve the lives of all. But without a mix of realism, ideologues can really screw things up. History is filled with great examples - Hitler being the most compelling of this line of argument. I am not comparing Obama to Hitler. That would be a shameless and groundless tactic that can mess with people's good judgments. Promising unrealistic solutions is simply not appealing to me in a candidate. It makes Obama come across as naive. His campaign motif also seems disingenuous - Obama may not be a Washington insider (he's only been there a couple of years), but he was a political insider in Illinois where he served as a state legislator. His politicking there does not appear to deviate much from the vanilla politicking that goes on everywhere for better or worse. So, in summary, Obama comes off as a naive liar. Edwards, an even bigger ideologue is a no-no for the same reasons.

One of the saddest results of the Democratic Iowa Caucus is that Biden was completely ignored and the general weeding out (Dodd dropped out, too; Kucinich will get no press) will now not give a chance for other primary voters to have a say about the upper tier selection of the Democratic candidates. If the first primary/caucus is so important in narrowing the field, shouldn't it be done in a more representative state (except Florida and Texas - that would be a sin...)?

Anyways, if there is one thing you should remember from this read is that Obama is no Hitler...

Slump Update - New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's been over two months since I quit my job and started on a path to a new life. Not much has changed in those two months. I've learned to bake some. I played and beat a few Wii games with my wife. I read large tomes of American History and Government and can recite the Presidents and Constitutional Amendments from memory... But that's pretty much it! No job prospects, no self-evident future, no nothing.

I didn't even take the FSO Exam in December like I planned because at the time I had only read American History frontwards and not backwards, and did not feel confident. The next exam date is March. Meanwhile, I have registered to three more courses at NYU in their Global Affairs continuing education program. The first ones start on February 6. Until then I hope to have completed my FSO exam registration package. I am also going to volunteer with the FIRST Robotics Competition program at Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York - well, the school is now broken into like 5 different high schools, but whatever... The program starts this weekend and the regional competition happens during the first weekend of April.

Well, that's it on the personal note. But I have a word I'd like to say about the FAIR tax, since today is the Iowa Caucus and Mike Huckabee is in the lead in some polls and he is a big proponent of the tax. My first assumption when dealing with this is that we all agree we want a progressive tax - rich people pay a bigger percentage of the tax burden as a percentage of their assets (be it earnings, capital gains, rents, grease, or passive appreciation of property) than poorer people, and the poorest should not be taxed at all. I am not a communist, or even a socialist. I do not believe in special entitlements for the poor or punishment of the rich. I just think this is fair. Now if you don't agree with me on this, don't bother reading further. Anyways, the question is whether the FAIR tax is progressive. The idea is that everyone will get some kind of a minimum refund for the tax burden they would have to incur with the blanket %23-30 sales tax. This refund will make the poor come out even (no tax burden); richer people - who supposedly consume more - will come out negative with some tax burden on a linear relationship with how much they consume. The idea is that the richer you are the more you consume and the more tax burden you will have, hence his is a progressive tax. However, rich people consume smaller percentages of their assets than poorer people. That is, if I were in the middle class bracket and earned $75k a year, I probably would consume %50-90 of these earnings. If I were further up the ladder and making $175k a year, I could probably consume only %40-60 of my earnings and so my tax burden as a percentage would be lower on average than my poorer counterpart. This is not progressive. If you think Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spend more than half their assets and earnings on consumption, then wow, where do they put all their stuff?

Besides being a regressive tax, the FAIR tax also seems to be a consumption dampening force. Since the tax is applied at the till, market forces would probably lead to a higher savings rate - I say probably because we Americans seem to have consumption in our blood, and I'm not talking tuberculosis. A higher savings rate is probably a good thing in a macroeconomic and long-term perspective since it will eventually lead to a decrease in our current account deficit. But in the short term it could also send the economy further in its current downward spiral. This is not a good time to introduce such a tax into our economic system. During a peak, maybe, will help the cooling process. But during a near-recession? Come on, this is a silly populist platform from a guy who besides this crazy tax would revoke your right to choose to have a safe and sensible abortion, and take away your right to hope to marry whomever you choose, but protect the rights of psychos to get a lethal weapon whenever they so please. Iowa, if you want to do your nation proud with your crazy first primary/caucus, do the right thing and say no to Huckabee and yes to someone who really does want to protect your right to the pursuit of happiness, like Ron Paul. Or at least someone not so crazy, like Rudy.