My Suburban Destiny

Learning a language is all about productivity.  Paper dictionaries, are not a productive use of time.  What is best is read on line with a online dictionary close enough to allow for cut and paste.

Online Dictionaries
Dicts.info : Enter first few letters of word, does an English and Icelandic lookup at the same time.

University of Wisconsin: Enter word, even the inflected form, and UWDC will usually find it.  You can use d for ð. Doesn’t do as good a job with a “starts with” search.

Google Images.  Enter word, search. Example, Ísbjörn. Do not search for ”að keyra” “to drive” using the google image search technique.

Motivation
Being motivated about learning a language is all about real social relationships.

Meetup.com Icelandic meetups, like the DC Icelandic Meetup.  This has been the best thing for my Icelandic skills outside of BYKI vocabulary drills.

Italki, online social networking for language learners.  I personally haven’t benefited from this service, yet, but it shows promise.

Since Monday, I’ve been running summer camp for my son.  It is turning out to be a bit expensive–I’m buying him a cell phone, a Wii and most likely a large screen TV to go with the Wii.  The cheapest Blu-ray player comes with a Ps3, so I got that as well.  All of these purchases are way too complicated.  Websites like t-mobile try to hide the complexity by just not listing all 2,000 features every phone has, but to make a proper decision, you still have to read a dozen web reviews.

Meetups are slowing down, but getting better organized.  I now have split the “Scandinavian Langauge” group into 3 groups, all with upcoming events that are likely to be held.  I’m considering “Study” meetups for absolute beginners.  It has been working for Icelandic, why not for Swedish and Norwegian?  If I get a home theater sized TV and if I can figure out how to re-arrange my furniture in my infintesmal apartment, I’ll probably try to host Scandinanvian movie nights at my place.  The two foreign movie nights that have been held were very well attended.  Foreign movies are one event that both advanced and beginners can attend and get something out of it.

I got this movie, “No Such Thing,” because it has some Icelandic names and part of it was filmed in Iceland.  Unfortunately, the script writer failed to follow the dictum that actors follow– don’t over act, an instead stuffed the script full of over the top rubbish that it made it hard to watch.  And 25 minutes in, it was to hard to keep watching so I stopped.  I think the actors could have done a better job if they had a better script to work with.  The movie also gets an F for tobacco use.

Since DC banned smoking, the stinky smokers have been invading Virginia, stinking up the city and restaurants.

Get the list of Arlington restaurants that have banned smoking on their premises.

Remember, if you are asked “Smoking or non?” say, “You know, you can’t make me eat here at this stinky hole”

Tobacco smoke is as appetizing as letting a pile of cow manure’s vapors waft around the restaurant.

So far this year I’ve added the following to my diet:

Local Strawberries- PYO from Mackintosh Farm in Berryville.  I ate them all plain, about 10lbs

Local Cherries (Sweet & Pie) - PYO from Crooked Run Orchard in Purcellville.  Cherries were frozen and used in pies, about 10-15lbs of sweet & pie each.

Local Blueberries. PYO from Eagle Tree in Loudon.  For freezing, pie and eating plain, about 12lbs

On the way, plums, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, apples.

Now I just need to figure out how to buy flour, potatos, and nuts in bulk.

It has been well established in economics that in the market for commodities, foreign trade, intra-country trade and other trade is generally a good thing.  Efforts to create barriers to trade, such as trariffs and quotas have well measured costs to efficiency and at best pose a lose-lose or “win some”-”lose more” outcome for society.

So what is different about the locavore?  Aren’t they arguing in favor of discredited barriers to trade?  I think not.  There are many barriers to trade that rational people favor, such as the ban on trade in humans as chattel, euphoric drugs, assassination as a service.  If it is okay to say locavores are arguing in favor of discredited barriers to trade, maybe it is okay to say opponents to the locavore are in favor of removing all barriers to trade in all commodities.  The fact is, products differ, markets differ.  We are not dealing with idealized commodities that have only the features of quantity, price and a certain ability to provide a featureless utility.  Products in the real world have many peculiarities, such as the eurphoric drug’s ability to subvert the users ability to make rational economic decisions, or the way slavery and murder as a service undermine basic property rights.

Food has the peculiar characteristics in that we must consume it or die.  It has weight, costly to ship.  It can be stored, but virtually no food can be stored indefinately.  Production of food has its own peculiar characteristics.  Producers can choose the quanitty of inputs, but can’t predict the quanity of outputs, hence there are gluts and shortages.  The price system clears the market, but not as efficiently as in the market for toasters, where producers get 1000 toasters when they order their factory to create 1000 toasters.

The peculiarities of long distance food.  Long distance food is a product where the food itself is virtually free.  New Zealand apples can be grown for a negligible cost.  These apples combined with petroleum, creates the product of an apple in Virginia.  Since almost all of the inputs are petroleum, eating food over a long distance is about switching from the peculiarities of the food market to the peculiarities of the petroleum market. 

The petroleum market is one of a dwindling resource.  The global quanity is fixed and shrinking.  The price will go up, technology will improve and become more efficient in its use just before it finally become too expensive to use an input into any productive activity.  At that point, the use of petroleum to creat the product of an New Zealand apple in Virginia will come to an end.

That gets us back to the peculiarities of food.  As public policy, it is not wise to base the production of a product that *must* go on, on a input that *must* disappear.

The locavore is not trying to beggar the neighbor (ie. deny New Zealand money), or enrich local farmers.  The locavore is choosing a supply of an essential product from a supplier than can deliver on the promise to alway be there.

One arguement against locavores is that, well if barriers to trade with food far away is good, then ever more stringent barriers are better, say buying only products grown 10 feet away, or in one’s own house.  A rational locavore would not choose to do this because the limit of food autarchy (self sufficency), of being a subsistence farmer is a contract with a supplier who also can’t deliver on the promise to always deliver food.

Now in the DC area, it is possible to buy food from Loudon County, Pennsylvannia or New York and expect that food to still be delivered after the collapse of the petroleum economy.

The final arguement rests on the peculiarities of edge cases, such as remote locations like Alaska, where there isn’t any agricultural production.  For that, I’d point to the experience of Norwegian colonists in Greenland, who tried to farm there.  Their civilization collapsed. 

It was a cool movie, mostly because it was about life in old Scandinavia.  They did speak a little bit of Old English–it sounds a lot like Icelandic or anyone of the other modern Scandinavian languages.  Oddly, Old English didn’t sound much like English.

The actor assisted computer generate animation was on the whole in the “uncanny valley,” not fake enough to enjoy as a cartoon and not real enough to be thoroughly tricked.  Lot of moments where the actors seemed creepy.

Ancient myths completely ignore all the rules about how a story is supposed to unfold–things like the hero is not allowed to die, at least not until very late in the movie.    The movie patches up a lot of the typical gaps in a poorly recorded, re-told too many times myth.  Still, the rules of magic in the movie were inexplicable.  Magic gold horns may have passed muster in ancient England, but I think nowadays, we deserve some initial motivation for using magic.

Maryland Wine. I learned that there are about 4 wineries right next to where my Aunt & Uncle live.  I visited two of them today, Loew Vinyard and Elk Run Winery.  I learned Loew’s wines are not sold in Virginia because of the high transaction costs of dealing with the various agencies that regulate liquor.  I bought a mead/white wine, plus two more bottles.  From Elk Run I got “Maryland Merlot” (ha-ha), and another red.  Next time I visit them, I’ll have to visit the other two wineries, Black Ankles and Linganore, whose website implies they have a bunch of exotics including mead!.

Personal Inventory. My wine inventory is now up to about 14 weeks worth of wine.  I guess the advantage of having a wine inventory is that I have some options and I can defer shopping again for a long time. I suppose if one were to be scientific about it, one could calculate the optimum order quantity, given the cost of holding a bottle of wine on the shelf (about 10-30cents per year), the cost of driving out to buy wine (about $24 of gasoline, but can be neglected if you are driving out to the countryside for some other reason), etc.

After a few decades of the right running a disinformation campaign to smear the Clintons, Hillary has left the contest.  Unfortunately for the right, there are only five month left before the election.  There isn’t enough time for the right to do a proper character assassination.

Worse, the same group of people that ran the character assassination of the Clintons, also ran a character assassination against McCain.  To be logically consistent, the right has no choice but to run a “Swift boat” style character assassination against McCain and ensure an Obama victory.

And it is about time.  It is time to end the 100 year war before McCain adds 8 years to it.

Cultural Reasons. If western Civ is getting tedious, then Mongolia is quite the relief. Even the physicist Richard Feynman helped popularize throat singing in the west. Listen to the Mongolian zither, performed by local DC artist Jamiyan. Make yourself some Mongolian rice tea or milk beer. There are a surprising number of Mongolian events going on in the US and world wide. And if you are into extreme tourism, you can’t get further away from DC than Mongolia (last I checked it costs $2500 to fly to Ulaan Batar- but once you’re there there are some bargains to be found.)  *Still, don’t get too excite about finding the exotic in Mongolia, if youtube videos of Mongolian pop is any sign, it Mongolia is westernizing at a rapid rate*

Linguistic Reasons. Indo-European is so passe, it’s been done like a dozen time. In fact, most language books you find on the shelves are just more Indo-European. If you want to stretch your mind, you’ll have to get out of your comfort zone and try out something completely different, like an Altaic language. Mongolian is agglutinating, can be written in about 5+ different scripts depending on the period of history, the best looking is the one based on Uigher and is a tattoo quality font. It is spoken by several million people, so unlike some exotic languages, you could imaginably run into someone that speaks it.

Random Reasons. The Star Wars language “Ewok” was in part based on Mongolian.

And if you are in Washington, DC or there abouts, I’ve set up a Mongolian language group. If my experience with Icelandic is any indicator, it will take 6 months to get a critical mass of learners.

There is a Mongolian School in Arlington, but it appears to be aimed at Mongolian children.

“Mongolian School” opened in Arlington, VA on January 06. The school, which is open between 09.00 AM to 13.00 PM on Saturdays, offers lessons on Mongolian language, culture and history. Kids of age between 6 – 15 are happy to learn their motherland and discover many new things, said Mrs.Munkhtsetseg , Director of the school.

There is also an WaPo article about the Mongolian School.

And I’ve check Friends of Mongolia, the Mongolian Embassy, and so far nothing language related a la Alliance Française or Goethe-Institut.