How Berkeley can you be?

We've heard of East meets West, North and South but only in Berkeley can you find the epicenter of East meets South. I was in the People's Republic of Berkeley yesterday looking for a particular kind of LED for my project. Heading west on University Avenue at McGee I nearly drove into the parked cars. The sign said "Halal Burritos". So if you are of that persuasion but just love a good burrito there's a place for you, in the place that has everyplace, our beloved Berkeley. (Yelp lists 15 Ethiopian restaurants in that fair town).

Since I got what my project needed I'll throw in a plug for Al Lasher's electronics. On University avenue it's been there forever and remains one of the few good old kind of places that will have what you need. They staff know their stuff and the prices are reasonable, especially when you compare to ordering on line with shipping and all. I had melted the one unit I had and was desperate for another one. Simple phone call and I was on my way. My one complaint about that store is parking. The meters give 4 minutes for a dime. Not hardly enough time to exchange pleasantries and pay. No comrade, I'm not complaining, just looking for a better way to praise the glory of the proletariat paradise.

Aid and Corruption

Last month the U.S. and Great Britain both cut off education aid to Kenya. The U.S. had promised $7 milllion and the U.K. about $15 million. Why? Because an audit showed that $1 million per month was disappearing from the Kenyan education ministry. Who suffers from this action? The students and the teachers who are trying to learn and teach.

Unfortunately this sort of dilemma is not unusual for countries that contribute aid to the developing world. On the one hand there is a desperate need and on the other hand one can't just keep supplying money to be stolen by corrupt officials. In the Kenyan case the corruption reaches into the highest levels of the government. You can make a good argument that no money should be sent to Kenya at all, no matter how good the cause.

The whole affair is just too sad. Kenya amongst its poorer neighbors has every opportunity to be a thriving economy. Sure they've had troubles with drought but to read the CIA factbook account of the economy will just make you cry. The U.S. ambassador has been unusually outspoken on these issues, suggesting that the corrupt officials not just be sacked, the usual treatment if any, but "put behind bars". Not likely to happen.

In these cases, it's rarely a single individual who is pocketing the money. More usually there is a network of criminal officials all taking their part. The "successful" corrupt minister will make sure all his underlings get some so that he can take the bulk of the cash and everyone is happy and quiet. In an emergency a couple junior officials can be thrown to the wolves if investigators get too close. The students are left to slog along with inadequate schools as best they can. And the ministers kids are probably in boarding schools in England.

Not your fathers...

I mean like 30 plus years ago I went into the Peace Corps with a few simple things. My Dad had made me a kind of big box that turned out to be just the right thing. In Ghana where I ended up, the schools were mostly boys boarding schools and the boys all came with a box very similar to mine. They were known as chop boxes. Mine was a little larger so when I arrived I was already famous for the largest chop box. On the bus coming over I didn't really understand any of this, just that people were making jokes about my box which I of course didn't really understand. But I guess if we were all laughing then that's fine with me.

Now my daughter is going off on a similar mission but in a bit of a different way. She's off to Africa with an iPod, Blackberry and a net book. It's true that the world has changed and there is cell coverage in a lot of places that you wouldn't expect. For example, as of a couple of years ago Namibia had excellent coverage on all the roads and towns. But the Peace Corps is really about sending off some young Americans and letting the world enjoy their youth and enthusiasm. If they do some good then that's great too. JFK created the Peace Corps and fired it with his joy of sending American kids off to the world.

The village I was sent to had phones. The oil mill was phone number 1, the school was number 2, and the headmaster's house was number 3.

I wish her well, but part of me hopes that the ipod and the blackberry will get dumped into the river and the netbook will be thrown down the hill into the swamp. Then she will learn a thing or two about how the world works.

Today's I-idiot

Getting on the elevator today at the 5th and Mission garage I thought to myself "5th floor, back side". So I pushed the button labeled "5". Next to me the latest in hipster idiots was looking on his i-phone for the picture he had taken of the floor number when he parked his car. He showed it to his friend, "See 4th floor, B".

I suppose since his brain has lost the ability to think or remember anything except what Steve Jobs wore at last year's MacWorld there was a need for a crutch. $400 ought to do it, a device to remember where you parked your car. BTW, Steve Jobs always wears the same thing at these events and Apple is no longer associated with MacWorld. Maybe those facts will eventually sink into our dude on the town's smallish cranium. In the meantime you can pay 99 cents to get an even more absurd way to find your car. G-Park.

In related news, the Winter Olympics has started in Vancouver. This time even though the events are being held in my time zone I will have little chance to see anything live. Only condensed consumerized advertising lead ins featuring U.S. athletes no matter how far down the standings they are as long as NBC has a touching story all fabricated and ready to show. In a breathtaking example of modern executive speak Dick Ebersol admits that the network will lose money, "but it's not because of the ad sales". So Dick, the fact that the crap you are producing doesn't sell ads, because it doesn't interest viewers, has nothing to do with it? NBC claims we actually prefer "prime time" replays.

You will be happy to know that Manchester United sold their 500 million pound bond issue so they can juggle their finances and stay afloat until the next crisis. They don't have any more Renaldos to sell and Giggs just broke his arm so there's likely trouble ahead on the field. Don't worry though, Fergie says he will clamp down as usual. What a nice guy.

Customer service

My turn to rant about the collapse of civilization as evidenced by Amazon customer service. I had some money ($20) in my Amazon account that I wanted out, transferred to my bank account. I'd done this before, no problem, fill in a couple fields and hit go. This time the page had changed, the new default for transferring money was to buy an Amazon gift card. I don't know why anyone would want a gift card, they just seem to me to be a way for a store to get your money and force you it spending it with them. In fact that is exactly what an Amazon gift card is, a way to lock you into spending with them.

When I realized my mistake, I sent them a request to back out the transaction using the feedback form and called them on the phone too. Amazing how hard it is to find a phone number of these sites isn't it. I actually found it in someones blog who had had a dispute with Amazon and posted the number in case others couldn't find it. I spoke to a nice lady in India who assured my that this was no problem and it would be taken care of right away. Fine, I slept happy that night.

The next morning I received an email from Amazon saying flat no. Can't be done, too bad. So I sent another message and called too. Got hung up on 3 times while waiting to talk to a supervisor. The last time I told the rep that she should stand up in her cubicle and shout and wave her hands and get a supervisor to come over and I wasn't going to be put on hold again. That sort of worked, I talked to someone else who had me talk to someone else who assured me that there is no phone number to the payments folks and that all he could do was send them a message which he did.

The next day I got a call from someone in Seattle. He was a bit vague but assured me that he would look into this. And indeed there is no number for payments so all he could do was send them a message on my behalf. I wasn't too pleased by this time.

The next day, I got an email apology from Amazon. It seems that page where the transfers are made had been changed so that the default was to buy a gift card. I wonder how many other people got caught by this? The page has been redesigned and my money was refunded. I immediately transferred it to my bank.

I suppose it's just another tale of our times and should surprise no one. But come on people, why does everything have to be so hard? Did you know that the arrow in the Amazon logo that points from A to Z represents complete customer satisfaction? I feel better already.

The Way

I just finished reading The Way of a Ship, Alan Villiers. Originally published in 1953 the book chronicles the peak of the age of sail, the big square rigged "Cape horners", and then their demise as steam powered ships took over. Also in the mix is a fair dose of technical details of how these ships are operated, how the economics worked, the men (and a couple of woman) who sailed them. Villiers had a long career as a sailor, owner, author, and photographer starting during WW1 when he went to sea in Australia.

Villiers bought part ownership of the Parma (model pictured) in 1931, at that time the largest sailing ship in the world. Despite the bad economy at the time, Parma made money carrying wheat from Australia to Europe. This was one of the last runs where sail competed successfully with steam, the other being the nitrate trade between Chile and Europe. The grain trade evolved into a kind of race with the first ship of the season that arrived in England commanding a higher price for her cargo. This trade was in some ways similar to the tea trade of the 1860's where the first ship from China carrying the seasons tea harvest was well rewarded.

One theme that runs through the book is the changing of an era. Villiers faces head on the fact that steamships were driving his beloved ships off the ocean, but that doesn't stop him from feeling they will be missed and the world a lesser place without them. The sailors lived a healthy life of fresh air and exercise, not confined to the stinking 'tween decks of a coal burning monster. The sailing captains, or more properly masters, were a unique breed of technician, businessman and strict disciplinarian, not like the slothful steamship captain whose main duty involved dining with the passengers. Even today, there are some full rigged training ships that operate on the presumption that even though sailors will never need to brace a yard in their actual career they will be better off because they've done it.

I guess technological changes always bring out this fondness for the past and the belief that people were better off back then. Witness the computer veteran who will regale you with stories of how "real men" punched cards and hung tapes, not like the current crop of sissies who don't understand that java is something you drink.

The reality is that the fresh air the sailors enjoyed could be a freezing gale around Cape Horn and they did occasionally fall off the topgallant yard into the boiling ocean and were never seen again. But they were real men, not the babies who today touch a button to navigate their container ship through the warm waters of the Panama canal.

Football finance

Even you non sports fans have heard of Manchester United. Supposedly the most valuable franchise in professional sports anwhere. At least it was, word is out now that the team has more than 700 million pounds of debt. ( no pound symbol on this keyboard). For fiscal 2009 they paid 41M in interest on that debt. Good thing they sold Christiano Renaldo for 80M otherwise they would have had a big loss.

You see football works a little differently than sports you may be used to. The teams own the players and can buy and sell or loan them out as they see fit. It's like slavery, at least that's the term that was used by the FIFA boss, Sepp Blatter. Don't worry though, Mr. Renaldo gets some cash too.

ManU did just what all those repossessed homeowners in Riverside did, took out a huge loan to buy the house not worrying about payments because everything goes up all the time anyway, right? But ManU's got better bankers that the poor sod in the "Inland Empire". They've got a plan to sell bonds to get everything straightened out. Pardon my ignorance but if you are in dept up to your eyeballs and then take on more dept in terms of bonds then you're better off how? Hopefully you're better off because the bond interest rates will be lower than the exhorbitant rates that the mob, ah, hedge funds are changing now.

How the heck did some Americans end up owning the pride of England anyway? It's OK that a Russian owns Chelsea, cause you know Russians are the mob, and some Arabs own some other team I can't remember because they never get to go out on Saturday so if they own a team then it'll be OK to have what little fun they are allowed. Malcolm Glazer, the American owner of ManU also owns the Tampa Bay NFL team. They are just horrible but the town built them a stadium so they can now pay with taxes and tickets to see this disaster on the field. Manchester has got a good stadium for now so that's covered, I have to wonder if the town would put up some cash to buy another good player or two and regain their glory. Probably not, but then the Brits are often happy supporting a lame team with a lot of past glory so they can just get along like that.

World news roundup

English soccer team captain John Terry (not the picture) is in the news after a steamy affair with a teamates ex-girlfriend was revealed. It is not true that Terry complained that with his $300,000 a week salary it was "hard to find something to do". And this after recently being named "Dad of the Year" by a ketchup company.

The CAF (Confederation African Football or something) announced that Togo will be banned from the next two cup of nations tournaments. Togo had the bad luck to have it's team buses attacked while traveling in Angola last month for this tournament. No players were injured but three people were killed and Togo pulled out of the games. Not everyone thought this was a reasonable decision, Emmanuel Adebayor (picture) the Togo captain didn't. Also CAF fined TOGO $50,000. That will teach them to get attacked.

In news from the kitchen, the contest winner for the best recipe for snails has been chosen. We're talking about the huge ones commonly seen in West African markets. Although often likened to eatiing pencil erasers the winning entry proves that doesn't have to be the case. Quoting here: "Boil them for about 4 hours and then throw them away."