Keeping one's distance

For a short month, February was awfully busy, and not just at work. Turns out my sister got engaged -- on Valentine's Day, no less. That seems corny at first, but if you think about it, that's also a convenient way to remember an important date. Clever boy. My brother got married about 18 months ago, so that just leaves ... me. Good thing I negotiated that deal where the well-adjusted, conveniently located siblings get married and do all the usual stuff while I give the family the chance to live vicariously through me.

Then there's this. Raf Czarnecki, one of my good friends from college, died not too long ago at 34 years old. I still don't know why. Raf and I met at UNO while working at the Gateway, the student newspaper, and he was one of the few people who could match me in knowledge and love of soccer. (Of course, he had an advantage, coming from European stock.) We would go back and forth for hours, both in person and in print.

One of my favorite memories was when we went on a road trip together to Chicago to watch the US men's national team play Poland. It clearly was a treat for Raf, being among the world's largest concentration of Poles outside Poland, and we both had a great time -- even if the game ended 1-1 and Raf was still nursing an almighty hangover as we left the Soldier Field parking lot for the drive back to Omaha. Before the trip we wondered whether to see US-Poland or Manchester United-Bayern Munich, which was a week earlier at the same venue, but after watching two teams of European reserves play out an uninspired 0-0 draw, we knew we'd made the right choice.

Raf was a great friend and partner in crime, and I will miss him dearly. I don't know what, or if, I could have done to help him, but I feel awful for not being around to do it. These are the things you miss when you live on the other side of the world.

Words of wisdom

I've been digging into some of the less-visited recesses of my laptop as I go about freeing up disk space. Among the forgotten gems I've found was a Notepad file of assorted quotes and clips about journalism, how to go about it and why anyone would want to do it in the first place. This was one of my favorites -- a note from someone who is considered a Big Deal by people in the know but who took time to write me while I was struggling through a dark period of my time in Hawaii. This came in response to me discussing how I feel alienated no matter where I live, a feeling that persists to this day:

I've worked in Hawaii just a little, so am aware of the tension between the native islanders and the late arrivals. You see this on other islands too, even in the old New England East. Out on Block Island, for example, anyone who wasn't born there - no matter how many years they've lived there - is referred to as a "washashore." 

I mention this only as a reminder that over the course of a career, a writer finds himself mostly on the outside of everything looking in. It's our natural state of being. And it's important to remember that we can only do what we do by being at a slight remove from the things around us. It's our way of seeing.

I think of it as having one foot in the world of other people, and one foot out in the smaller, more dispassionate realm of the artist or journalist. It's a hard way to live some times, but it's the only way to do the work. I'm this way both by training and by nature, so find it a comfortable enough way to live. But it allows me to see, I think, a clearer kind of truth when I set out to do a story.

I guess I mention all this just to remind you that our work challenges us in many ways. One of those challenges is to tell the truth at moments when others seek only peace or silence or comfort.

You did right by the truth, and that's all we have to go by.

I hope this finds you well and thriving in that beautiful place.

Best,

[Redacted in the interest of privacy]

Sheer brilliance

Science at its... finest? Zach Weinersmith presents his infantapaulting hypothesis.


This idea, the genesis of which came from Weinersmith's excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic, is a good example of the absurd lengths to which one can go with an uncritical acceptance of bad ad hoc hypotheses. Plus, it's just wicked funny.

(HT PZ Myers)

A timely reminder

Things aren't so bad here. The weather is really nice this time of year, just about any material goods one could want are available, and aside from drivers' liberal interpretations of traffic laws it's pretty safe. A person really could get to like it here.

Every so often, though, there's a reminder of where things really stand.

An Israeli international with Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem has been refused permission to attend a training camp in the United Arab Emirates, the club said on Monday.

The first team squad arrived in Abu Dhabi on Sunday but defender Dan Mori stayed behind to train with the reserves. 

Dutch politicians said the club's decision to go ahead with the visit was "cowardly", according to media reports. 

"We are playing against clubs who are banking on us coming and we want to prepare ourselves properly for the second half of the season," Vitesse spokesman Esther Bal told Dutch Radio One on Monday. 

"Organisers had (previously) assured us Mori would be allowed to enter the country," Bal added before saying that cancelling the trip was not an option. 

The Dutch FA (KNVB) said it would not be getting involved in the row. "It's a political question," a spokesman told reporters. 

Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer was also refused permission to compete in a tournament in the UAE in 2009.

No matter where you go, religion and politics are always lurking in the shadows, ready to ruin everyone's fun.

Welcome to 2014

Everyone have a good holiday season? I hope so. Things were very quiet around here, save for a nice Christmas dinner at my nearby Korean restaurant. Santa would totally nosh on bulgogi if given the chance.

Just wanted to share two last bits of holiday goodness. During a run to the grocery store across the street, I found these:

My knee-jerk response would be "as opposed to fake fresh eggs?", but these days it might not be such a good idea to ask what goes into your food. The verdict? Save for a slightly eggy aftertaste, they almost matched Vanilla Wafers for blandness.

It could've been worse, though. I leave it to Tom and Cecil of Cognitive Dissonance to give the most accurate summation of egg nog I have found thus far. (Note: the audio is ever-so-slightly NSFW.)