The Eternal Gaijin

On Northwest Airlines, the movies could not get worse. 27 Dresses has almost no redeeming features. Be Kind, Rewind has a few redeeming features. Also, the service could not get much worse. Throwing around eggs, chicken and boil in a bag rice does not make oyako-don. You can't stretch your legs enough. Children should be muzzled or part of checked luggage. Your iPod batteries never last long enough. Neither do laptops batteries. Nor your Nintendo DS. Old women love to speak Japanese to you. Old women you speak Japanese to and help through American customs will give you cookies. Seven hours is enough time to exhaust all the entertainment possibilities of Detroit airport seven times over. Hamburgers are cheap and plentiful. The guy in front of you in the line has had dozens already today. Good luck getting around him no matter how wide the concourse. There is no visible source from them, but there are hoboes inside the secure area. US Customs is friend...

Saturday Saturday's commute went a bit better; I arrived and registered fairly easily, got my breakfast and sat with Friend DEG again. Michael Shermer's talk basically covered a few of the ways that thinking goes wrong especially with regards to the idea of agency in happenings. Apparently some of the work Sam Harris has been doing in neuroscience has shown that credulity is a default position for the human brain. We'll take what we hear at face value and to not believe it takes a bit more work.  Bad news for fighting the various folk beliefs in astronomy, biology, psychology, economics, politics, conspiracy theory, et cetera, that we need to. Susan Begley gave an excellent informative talk that strayed close to a depressing talk. The upshot it that in the fight against creationism and pseudo-science we can't count on the media. it would be a mistake to think that the role of the press is education, and as such it's important to know they're not our ally...

So on Friday and Saturday I attended The Amazing Meeting 6 in Las Vegas. Originally I was going to attend merely the Friday, but it turned out that my wife got bored of listening to me talk about it and sent me back for the second day so she could relax on her own. Vegas, it seems is designed intentionally to make sure you don't actually get anywhere, as this would allow you out of the casino. A few times on the way to the Flamingo this became intensely, frustratingly apparent. The Luxor with its size, floor plan, and emergency lack of tram service to the nearest monorail station seemed to be actively conspiring to keep me where I was. And let's not even try to discuss the idea of cashing a traveller's cheque with a Japanese driving license. So my Tilley adventure clothing started to come in handy, as I was going to be safari-ing my way to the TAM venue, almost a full kilometre away. Meeting up with Friend DEG (man the bridges, brave Horatius) I took my seat two-thirds ...

With the exception of the Carlin announcement I haven't been near a computer since we left last Friday. And so much has happened. All trips are different; they all begin the same way. There's little to distinguish the runaround, the last minute cramming in the suitcase, the run down the hill, the stress of catching the airport bus, that esprit-de-l'escalier making you wonder "Did I actually pack my passport..." It's the same beginning everytime. For this trip, all that took place and lead me out to Kanku (Kansai Kokusai Kuko -  and no, I'm not translitterating the long vowels.) Kanku is a new, clean airport, with little to recommend it over any other new, clean airport.  It is offers little in the way of amusement when waiting for Mrs Gaijin to show up, outside of Eikokuya or Starbucks coffee shops. Needless to say, I had a seat with a tall honjitsu no kohii and waited. When the wife arrived she and I checked in and began our own personal Trail of Te...