Link
December 11, 2005
Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft?
By STEVE LOHR
Redmond, Wash.
THINK back to Round 1 of the Internet, when things really got rolling in 1995. The computing landscape was shifting, and a cool, fast-growing young company symbolized the new order: Netscape. At the time, Microsoft looked to be a lumbering old war horse, trapped in the yesteryear of desktop personal computer software, word processors, spreadsheets and operating systems. It seemed, in other words, so 1980's.
But, of course, Microsoft emerged a winner. It embraced the Internet and vanquished the Netscape threat with hard work, ingenuity and strong-arm tactics that a federal court ruled violated the nation's antitrust laws. Microsoft's shares soared to a record high at the end of 1999.
The Internet, Round 2, is now under way. Again, the computing terrain is changing remarkably, helped along by free software like Linux and the spread of high-speed Internet access. Today, all kinds of computing experiences can be delivered as services over the Internet, often free and supported by advertising. Clever Internet software can now turn flat, view-and-read Web pages into snappy services that look and respond to a user's keystrokes much like the big software applications that reside on a PC hard drive. New companies are even sprouting up to offer Web-based word processors and spreadsheets, products long regarded as mature - and long dominated by Microsoft's desktop programs.
Champions of the Internet services model range from I.B.M. to start-ups. But the totemic company in this next big evolutionary step in computing is Google, the Internet search power whose ambitions appear to be growing as fast as its profits.
And Microsoft? It once more finds itself surrounded by doubt and dismissed as a laggard. Some of its own senior engineers have defected to Google and elsewhere, and its stock price has barely budged in three years, despite solid earnings growth, because others appear to be winning the race for the future.
The familiar pattern of a decade ago begs the question that Bill Gates was asked when he met last month with a group of executives and journalists from The New York Times: Will you do to Google what you did to Netscape?
Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chairman, paused, looked down at his folded hands and smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Nah," he replied, "we'll do something different."
The man whom Mr. Gates is counting on to make a difference is Ray Ozzie, a soft-spoken 50-year-old who joined the company just eight months ago. He has the daunting task of galvanizing the troops to address the Internet services challenge, shaking things up and quickening the corporate pulse.
The forces arrayed against Microsoft, analysts say, may well prove more formidable than ever. "The problem Microsoft faces today is that there is a totally different model emerging for how software is created, distributed, used and paid for," said George F. Colony, the chairman of Forrester Research, a technology consultant. "That's why it's going to be so difficult for Microsoft this time."
Yet there are optimists. Big industry shifts, they say, create opportunity. Inevitably, they note, Internet computing erodes Microsoft's power to set technology standards, but the company can still benefit as the overall market expands. That's what happened in the 1990's. They say that if Microsoft shrewdly devises, for example, online versions of its Office products, supported by advertising or subscription fees, it may be a big winner in Internet Round 2.
"There's a tremendous opportunity for Microsoft to expand its business," said Richard Sherlund, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who has a buy recommendation on the company. "But Microsoft had better be sure it is the one that capitalizes before others cannibalize their business."
AT first blush, Mr. Ozzie, whose title is chief technical officer, seems an unlikely person to meet the threat of Google and its brethren. He has only a small staff and no direct control over Microsoft's vast product groups. "It's soft power," Mr. Ozzie said in an interview here last week, referring to the foreign-policy concept that influence need not be measured in bombs and battleships.
And few doubt Mr. Ozzie's influence. "Ray Ozzie is someone with a tremendous technical reputation and an outsider, who Bill Gates trusts, and he's come in and said things have to change," said Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Ozzie is a software wizard whose geek gene was evident early. Growing up in suburban Chicago, he had a passion for Heathkits, which were do-it-yourself projects for electronics hobbyists. He was constantly building radios, tape players and other electronics gear, recalled Jack Ozzie, his younger brother. "There was always a smell of solder in the back bedroom," said Jack, who is a software engineer.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1970's, Mr. Ozzie wandered into the building that housed Plato, a computer system with terminals linked to a mainframe in a network that, remarkably for its time, had instant messaging, e-mail and online discussions. Mr. Ozzie became a senior programmer on the Plato system.
Mr. Ozzie recalled that he was "forever changed" by his experience with Plato. It gave him, he said, "a peek at what the Internet would ultimately become. It was a microcosm, an online community in an era when there weren't online communities."
In the 1980's, Mr. Ozzie applied that perspective to the new technology of the day: personal computers. At the time, PC's were mainly stand-alone machines for word processing, spreadsheet calculations and desktop publishing. Mr. Ozzie recognized that PC's could also be powerful tools for communications and collaboration. He led the team that created Lotus Notes, an early program for corporate e-mail and sharing information in digital workspaces, anticipating the kind of computing that would become commonplace only later with the rise of the Internet and the Web. In 1995, I.B.M. paid $3.5 billion for Lotus Development Corporation and the prize was Lotus Notes.
In 1997, Mr. Ozzie founded Groove Networks to make advanced collaboration software using Internet peer-to-peer technology, well before the arrival of Napster and peer-to-peer networks for sharing music. Groove was a technological triumph, but not a big commercial success. Microsoft bought Groove this year to pick up its technology - and Mr. Ozzie.
Years ago, when Mr. Ozzie was a Microsoft competitor, Mr. Gates called him one of the world's great programmers. So, in Microsoft's engineering culture, Mr. Ozzie brings a lot of clout to his job.
He hit the ground quickly after he arrived in April. At first, he said, some executives told him that it was a big company and that he should get to know it for a year or so before deciding what to focus on. "That lasted about two weeks," he said.
In meetings of senior executives, the subject of how to cope with the Internet services shift in computing, how to turn it into an opportunity for Microsoft, was a constant theme - and one that deeply interested Mr. Ozzie. "Within a month, Ray was putting his thoughts on software-as-services on paper," noted Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, which includes the Office products and corporate software.
Mr. Ozzie then spent the next few months meeting with people across the company to see what work was being done in product groups. Simultaneously, he was devising a plan to help Microsoft capitalize on Internet services by blending the new technology - and economic models - with Microsoft's traditional software business.
In late October, Mr. Ozzie presented his ideas in a seven-page, 5,000-word memo, "The Internet Services Disruption." At first, it was e-mailed to fewer than 100 senior managers and engineers at Microsoft. But they passed it along to colleagues, and by early November it had leaked out to the press; copies are now posted on the Web. Microsoft has used such memos over the years to educate its corporate troops and to stir them up to combat major competitive challenges.
In a two-page note that accompanied the Ozzie memo, Mr. Gates compared it to one he wrote in 1995, "The Internet Tidal Wave," which assessed the Internet challenge of a decade ago. Microsoft, he wrote in the introduction to the Ozzie memo, was at similar crossroads. "This coming 'services wave' will be very disruptive," Mr. Gates wrote, and later emphasized, "The next sea change is upon us."
The Ozzie memo analyzes the Internet services trend, the competition and Microsoft's strengths and shortcomings, and it suggests how the company must change. The document is also a call to action: "It's clear that if we fail to do so, our business as we know it is at risk," Mr. Ozzie wrote. "We must respond quickly and decisively."
The memo is peppered with technical acronyms, and rivals are named. While Microsoft is progressing on several fronts, Mr. Ozzie wrote, "a set of very strong and determined competitors is laser-focused on Internet services and service-enabled software."
"Google is obviously the most visible here," he added.
There is an implicit critique of Microsoft's software-building practice of relying so much on product cycles measured in years. The last major release of Windows - XP - was in 2001, while the next one, Vista, has been scheduled for next year after repeated delays. The memo chastises no product by name, but it extols the virtues of speed and simplicity in software design.
"Complexity kills," Mr. Ozzie wrote. "It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."
HIS comments all but echo those of some estranged engineers who have left Microsoft recently. Mark Lucovsky, a former senior engineer at Microsoft who joined Google, wrote in his blog earlier this year, "Microsoft used to know how to ship software, but the world has changed." The companies to watch, Mr. Lucovsky wrote, have "embraced the network, deeply understand the concept of 'software as a service' and know how to deliver incredible value to their customers efficiently and quickly."
Mr. Ozzie is understandably careful in what he writes and says; his role at Microsoft is mainly to lead and encourage rather than to criticize. He emphasizes the importance of Microsoft's big desktop products like Windows and Office, and he says that Internet services should be seen primarily as a way to continually update and improve its offerings. Those updates and improvements, he said, should make Microsoft software teams happier by moving their work into the marketplace faster.
"People like to have fun doing what they're doing, and people who build software have fun by having people use their stuff," Mr. Ozzie said in the interview.
Yet Microsoft will also selectively offer Web services that do over the Internet some of what Office and Windows do on the desktop. The company took measured steps in that direction last month, when it introduced Windows Live and Office Live. Windows Live lets consumers manage their e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, photos and podcasts in one site. Office Live enables small businesses to set up Web sites and e-mail systems, and to provide collaboration sites for teams. Both will be supported by advertising and perhaps some subscription fees.
In the future, Mr. Ozzie suggests, Microsoft will go further, offering parts of Office - like Word, Excel or PowerPoint - as Web services. "I think there are potentially different or enhanced ways that we can take things that have traditionally been done with the Office suite and offer that to customers," Mr. Ozzie said. "That's absolutely what we're focused on."
The new approach, it seems, is a striking departure from Microsoft's longtime practice of bundling more and more software features into its big integrated products. The bundling has not been merely a design preference, but also a business strategy. With more than 90 percent of the desktop PC market for operating systems and office productivity applications, Microsoft has bundled outstanding programs with mediocre ones, and all of them typically became the industry standards.
But Internet services represent a more open, competitive model. "Software itself is going to be free, and you get paid for services that are supported either by ads or by subscription charges," said Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development who is president of the Open Source Applications Foundation, which develops free software for personal information like calendars and contacts. "For Microsoft, this is a bigger challenge than the rise of the Internet itself in 1995."
RECENT innovations have enabled Web-based software to look and respond more like desktop applications. Offering Internet alternatives to traditional PC programs are a new breed of start-ups, including Writely.com, for word processing; NumSum, for spreadsheets; and Zimbra and Scalix, both e-mail. I.B.M. has Web-based software called WorkPlace that is used by millions of workers. And Salesforce.com has built a fast-growing business by supplying customer relationship management software as an Internet service.
"No piece of software will replace Microsoft's Outlook, Word or Excel, but Web services will eat away at core areas of its Office suite over the next couple of years," said Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com.
If that happens, Microsoft's business could be battered. Mr. Colony of Forrester Research predicts that Microsoft's profit margins, under pressure from Internet services, could fall by 40 percent or so over the next four years. A wild card is the hand that Google will play beyond search and how successful it may be. Mr. Colony, for example, says he thinks that Google will make a big difference. "I believe Google will revolutionize the software business," he wrote in a recent report.
Google has desktop search software and a Web-based e-mail service, two offerings aimed at parts of Microsoft's stronghold. How much further it plans to go in providing alternatives to Microsoft's software is uncertain, though it certainly looks interested.
Google was among the companies that attended a meeting last month at I.B.M.'s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., of the Open Document Foundation, a group formed to agree on freely available formats for word processing, spreadsheets and other office documents; the idea is to come up with alternatives to Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. And for the last few months, Google has talked with Wyse Technology, a maker of so-called thin-client computers (without hard drives).
The discussions are focused on a $200 Google-branded machine that would likely be marketed in cooperation with telecommunications companies in markets like China and India, where home PC's are less common, said John Kish, chief executive of Wyse. "Google is on a path to developing a stack of software in competition with the Microsoft desktop, and one that is much more network-centric, more an Internet service," Mr. Kish said. "And this fits right into that."
For his part, Mr. Ozzie is curious about the plans at Google but is by no means obsessed by it. Google, he said, is "obviously a very strong technology company, and we'll see what they do with that."
Yet Mr. Ozzie's view is that Microsoft's fate is in its own hands. If it charts its technology and business plans wisely, harnessing the talents of its army of smart people, he said, it should grow and prosper in this next wave of Internet computing. He speaks of a thriving "ecosystem" of open competition in which developers and customers have many choices and in which Microsoft's future is not in crushing rivals but in becoming an attractive choice.
In the past, Microsoft executives have decried free software, with its collaborative open-source development style, as akin to communism, if not downright evil. Not Mr. Ozzie. "I consider open-source software to be part of the environment, like the Internet," he said. "It's not the enemy and it's not going to go away. It's great for developers.
"And if we don't keep continually updating our offerings and develop better offerings," Mr. Ozzie added, "then shame on us."
The Microsoft strategy, he said, has to be to develop tools and technology that make it easier to build software for the Internet-services era and easier for users to have more productive and enjoyable computing experiences. In a sense, it's a reinvention of old Windows vision of computing, but in a very different competitive context from the desktop world that Microsoft ruled.
The new game plan, Mr. Ozzie said, is "obviously not an altruistic thing, but it doesn't even resemble the environment of old."
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
Non-mainstream places to ski
Link
December 2, 2005
Snow? Yes. Crowds? No.
By BILL PENNINGTON
IT was the last Saturday in January, and the top of every car driving on Route 4 in snowy central Vermont was laden with skis or snowboards, a convoy lengthening by the mile. At moments like these, you realize your plan to sneak up to the mountains for an idyllic getaway weekend has snuck up on no one.
Get away, indeed.
But in the midst of just such a procession to the Killington Resort last winter, a funny thing happened: At the entrance to the milelong access road to the Big K, the Beast of the East, every car from both directions on Route 4 turned in. I did not, the only vehicle to pass by.
I continued two miles down the road to Pico Mountain, Killington's unsung sister, where I had a choice of dozens of parking spots within 50 yards of the base lodge. In minutes, I was headed up the central lift. The snow was abundant, the terrain varied and the trails uncrowded.
A day later, my wife, three children and I went to the Suicide Six ski area, 20 miles to the east. The next day we headed to the Ascutney Resort, 18 miles southeast. Our base of operations was the quintessential picture-perfect Vermont village of Woodstock, about a 25-minute drive from each ski area.
In three full days of resplendent skiing, we waited, in total, about 15 minutes in lift lines. We parked next to base lodges, skied for long periods alone. The snow was great. It was the skiing prime of the season. There was almost no one around, at least by the standards of a major resort in Eastern ski country.
Why?
Because the majority of skiers and snowboarders are big-mountain snobs. They flock to the major players in the industry, influenced by mass marketing, their own egos and the sense that a mountain can't be worth visiting unless your friends back home have heard of it.
What this attitude obscures is the hidden gems in our midst - Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney are three examples. These are places right under our noses. From the top of Ascutney, you can see Okemo, Stratton and Killington. Those mountains are fine choices offering larger trail networks and a greater selection of restaurants and nightlife. But at what cost?
Robert Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
At times like these, go with the longtime New Englanders, like Frost, for skiing advice. And remember that the road less traveled does not mean a lesser destination. Pico Mountain, one of the oldest ski areas in Vermont, is bigger than 80 percent of the ski mountains in New England.
Its 1,967 vertical feet and 50 trails shaped the careers of many racers, including Andrea Mead Lawrence, an Olympic gold medalist, and Suzy Chaffee. The lower part of the mountain is gentler and more family oriented, but the delights of the place are the trails at the top, reached by the Pico Summit-Express Quad.
This is some of the best all-purpose terrain in the state - glades, bumps and cruisers - all with a spectacular view and almost always uncongested. Fortunately, Pico spent the last off-season replacing the lift drive for the quad; breakdowns had been frequent in the past.
But what people seem to like most about Pico is the small-hill atmosphere at a big mountain. All the trails, for instance, funnel toward the same base lodge, something parents appreciate when they let their children go tackle the mountain by themselves. It's a rite of passage for the kids, not to mention a chance for the adults to relax on the sun deck.
One of the things I like best about Pico is that it's across Route 4 from the Inn at Long Trail and McGrath's Irish Pub, which is built into a huge rock outcropping. The stone sprouts into the bar and dining room, forming irregular retaining walls, but it's not an intrusion. It's Yankee ingenuity at work. The owners have thrown a few cushions on the boulders. These become couches guaranteed to rock during the pub's live music on weekends.
If Day 1 of our trip was about finding a gem around the bend from the Beast of the East, then Day 2was about finding another jewel at the heart of skiing's historic soul. Suicide Six is just out of the village of Woodstock, and not scary, as the name implies.
Homey and cozy, Suicide Six is the site of what is called the first ski tow in America. In the winter of 1934, a Ford Model T engine was hooked up to a pulley at the base of the hill. Chair lifts take you to the same piste now, but the descent still has the old-time New England ski feel to it. The 23 trails follow nature's contours, not those wrought by bulldozer.
That means you are either on a flowing, graceful run or on a narrow chute cut through the trees. In the morning, with my 6-year-old son, there were enough moderate, winding trails to keep him calm and interested.
In the afternoon, shooting down the sheer face that has been the cynosure of Suicide Six since the 1930's, there were enough drops and turn-now-or-tumble moments to keep my teenage daughters exhilarated and interested.
In between, lunch in the lodge had an appropriately traditional feel - chili and burgers - eaten on long, wide tables in front of a giant picture window looking up at the slopes. The walls are lined with photos dating to the 1930's and draped with old skis and mementos of the hundreds of skiing weekends Suicide Six has seen. The lodge is small, and you might be shoulder-to-shoulder as you finish your French fries, but crowded together next to a stone fireplace burning massive five-foot-long logs somehow seemed a perfect complement to a day of serene, hassle-free skiing. The two-minute walk back to the car wasn't bad either.
Owned by the nearby Woodstock Inn, Suicide Six has a way of lulling you into a sense of carefree tranquillity. A walk along the picturesque streets and shops next to the Woodstock village green will enhance the mood. Don't miss Vermont's oldest general store, F. H. Gillingham & Sons, opened in 1866, where you can buy everything from snowshoes to banjos - with cheese and a chardonnay in between. The village is also a good place to find a book to read by the giant hearth in the lobby of the Woodstock Inn. Some people, especially those concluding two days packed full of skiing because there were no lift lines, will fall asleep at the hearth before they reach Page 20 of a newly purchased book.
The resort at Ascutney Mountain has been just off Route 91 near the New Hampshire border for 60 years, a sleeper that people pass on the way to better-known Vermont resorts to the north and west. From 1991 to 1993, you had no choice but to pass Ascutney because it was bankrupt and closed. To be sure, it always had some shortcomings. Its nearby village, Brownsville, is not as quaint as others in the region and its lodging and dining options more limited than those at the reigning snow-sports hotspots.
But under new owners, Steven and Susan Plausteiner, who salvaged the ski resort and reopened it 12 years ago, Ascutney has expanded and softened some rough edges. The key was the addition of the North Peak Express Quad, which increased Ascutney's trail count to 56, including some true double-black diamond runs, and upped the vertical drop to 1,800 feet. Ascutney has also shrewdly chased the family market, bolstering up its children's ski school with four ability and age levels. They also placed a cabin just for young people alongside the Wonder Carpet surface lift. The Moose House Lodge serves as an on-slope warming hut and an excuse to get hot chocolate.
There are also abundant cross-country and snowshoeing trails; a movie theater that shows family films; snow tubing; an outdoor skating rink; and a sports and fitness center with pools, sauna, tennis, racquetball and basketball courts.
Why pass all this up? Get off a few exits early on your next trip, and for a change of pace, see how the family likes Ascutney's all-inclusive nature. Ascutney may be less fashionable than some of its competitors - on-mountain lodging is going through necessary renovations and the base lodge is small and utilitarian - but the staff members there will look you in the eye, smile and help you to the wide-open and less-traveled trails on the map. On a weekday last January, there were exactly 14 cars in the parking lot, and the mountain was like a theme park just before the gates opened. From top to bottom you could happily set your own pace.
Which seems to be the point of seeking out the less-discovered ski areas. Skiing and snowboarding are sports designed to bring out the adventurer's soul, or at least that's my theory. We are exploring our surroundings - skis or a snowboard are merely the props to get us where we want to go. But we can't explore if there are thousands of others charging across our path.
It doesn't have to be that way.
There are more than enough overlooked mountains and ski areas waiting for the opportunity to help us expand our perspective. They are everywhere, sometimes small but underappreciated, sometimes big but surprisingly underused. All you have to do is look. You may have to go somewhere your friends never heard of - that could be the definition of a hidden gem.
Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney are three good places to start, but there are others. New York, for example, has 50 ski areas, more than any other state in the country. There are 18 in Michigan and more than a dozen in Montana. The population of Montana is only about 925,000, so those mountains can't be crowded. It's worth checking out.
You don't have to take my word for it. Robert Frost also wrote:
"There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush."
•
The village of Woodstock, Vt., a good base for skiing Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney, is about a five-hour drive from New York City and two and a half hours from Boston. From Interstate 91 take Exit 10N in Vermont onto I-89 north. Get off at Exit 1 and turn left onto Route 4 west. It's 10 miles to the Woodstock village green. The municipal airport in Lebanon, N.H., 19 miles east, serves the Woodstock area.
For more than 200 years, there has been an inn or a tavern on the site of the current Woodstock Inn & Resort (802-457-1100, 14 the Green; www.woodstockinn.com). The current structure was built in 1969 under the direction of the owner, Laurance S. Rockefeller. The inn strives for country sophistication, and it succeeds with 142 rooms and suites that are $149 to $664 a night. There is a fitness center a mile from the inn that is free to guests. Spa services are also available.
It would be a terrible mistake to miss the Sunday brunch at the Woodstock Inn. The setting is elegant, the food abundant and the quality refined. Offerings include lump-crabmeat eggs Benedict, blintzes, bananas Foster, specialty salads, fruits, crudités, pastries, baked salmon, duck breast, omelets and prime rib. The cost per person is $24.95.
The Jackson House Inn & Restaurant (802-457-2065, 114-3 Senior Lane; www.jacksonhouse.com) is in an 1890 mansion with 15 rooms furnished with period antiques. Rates are $195 to $380. Quail, lamb and sea bass, among other American dishes, are served under the vaulted ceiling of the dining room. There is a $55 three-course prix fixe menu and a $95 nine-course tasting menu.
Bentleys Restaurant (802-457-3232, 3 Elm Street; www.bentleysrestaurant.com) is in the heart of Woodstock. There's an eclectic mix of seating and tables, with Victorian sofas, antique lamps and oriental rugs. The menu is also eclectic, and grilled flatbreads are a specialty. There is an extensive selection of microbrews as well as wines by the glass. But you come to Bentleys, especially at lunch, for the atmosphere - a natural, enjoyable gathering spot. Sandwiches are $7 to $9.
December 2, 2005
Snow? Yes. Crowds? No.
By BILL PENNINGTON
IT was the last Saturday in January, and the top of every car driving on Route 4 in snowy central Vermont was laden with skis or snowboards, a convoy lengthening by the mile. At moments like these, you realize your plan to sneak up to the mountains for an idyllic getaway weekend has snuck up on no one.
Get away, indeed.
But in the midst of just such a procession to the Killington Resort last winter, a funny thing happened: At the entrance to the milelong access road to the Big K, the Beast of the East, every car from both directions on Route 4 turned in. I did not, the only vehicle to pass by.
I continued two miles down the road to Pico Mountain, Killington's unsung sister, where I had a choice of dozens of parking spots within 50 yards of the base lodge. In minutes, I was headed up the central lift. The snow was abundant, the terrain varied and the trails uncrowded.
A day later, my wife, three children and I went to the Suicide Six ski area, 20 miles to the east. The next day we headed to the Ascutney Resort, 18 miles southeast. Our base of operations was the quintessential picture-perfect Vermont village of Woodstock, about a 25-minute drive from each ski area.
In three full days of resplendent skiing, we waited, in total, about 15 minutes in lift lines. We parked next to base lodges, skied for long periods alone. The snow was great. It was the skiing prime of the season. There was almost no one around, at least by the standards of a major resort in Eastern ski country.
Why?
Because the majority of skiers and snowboarders are big-mountain snobs. They flock to the major players in the industry, influenced by mass marketing, their own egos and the sense that a mountain can't be worth visiting unless your friends back home have heard of it.
What this attitude obscures is the hidden gems in our midst - Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney are three examples. These are places right under our noses. From the top of Ascutney, you can see Okemo, Stratton and Killington. Those mountains are fine choices offering larger trail networks and a greater selection of restaurants and nightlife. But at what cost?
Robert Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
At times like these, go with the longtime New Englanders, like Frost, for skiing advice. And remember that the road less traveled does not mean a lesser destination. Pico Mountain, one of the oldest ski areas in Vermont, is bigger than 80 percent of the ski mountains in New England.
Its 1,967 vertical feet and 50 trails shaped the careers of many racers, including Andrea Mead Lawrence, an Olympic gold medalist, and Suzy Chaffee. The lower part of the mountain is gentler and more family oriented, but the delights of the place are the trails at the top, reached by the Pico Summit-Express Quad.
This is some of the best all-purpose terrain in the state - glades, bumps and cruisers - all with a spectacular view and almost always uncongested. Fortunately, Pico spent the last off-season replacing the lift drive for the quad; breakdowns had been frequent in the past.
But what people seem to like most about Pico is the small-hill atmosphere at a big mountain. All the trails, for instance, funnel toward the same base lodge, something parents appreciate when they let their children go tackle the mountain by themselves. It's a rite of passage for the kids, not to mention a chance for the adults to relax on the sun deck.
One of the things I like best about Pico is that it's across Route 4 from the Inn at Long Trail and McGrath's Irish Pub, which is built into a huge rock outcropping. The stone sprouts into the bar and dining room, forming irregular retaining walls, but it's not an intrusion. It's Yankee ingenuity at work. The owners have thrown a few cushions on the boulders. These become couches guaranteed to rock during the pub's live music on weekends.
If Day 1 of our trip was about finding a gem around the bend from the Beast of the East, then Day 2was about finding another jewel at the heart of skiing's historic soul. Suicide Six is just out of the village of Woodstock, and not scary, as the name implies.
Homey and cozy, Suicide Six is the site of what is called the first ski tow in America. In the winter of 1934, a Ford Model T engine was hooked up to a pulley at the base of the hill. Chair lifts take you to the same piste now, but the descent still has the old-time New England ski feel to it. The 23 trails follow nature's contours, not those wrought by bulldozer.
That means you are either on a flowing, graceful run or on a narrow chute cut through the trees. In the morning, with my 6-year-old son, there were enough moderate, winding trails to keep him calm and interested.
In the afternoon, shooting down the sheer face that has been the cynosure of Suicide Six since the 1930's, there were enough drops and turn-now-or-tumble moments to keep my teenage daughters exhilarated and interested.
In between, lunch in the lodge had an appropriately traditional feel - chili and burgers - eaten on long, wide tables in front of a giant picture window looking up at the slopes. The walls are lined with photos dating to the 1930's and draped with old skis and mementos of the hundreds of skiing weekends Suicide Six has seen. The lodge is small, and you might be shoulder-to-shoulder as you finish your French fries, but crowded together next to a stone fireplace burning massive five-foot-long logs somehow seemed a perfect complement to a day of serene, hassle-free skiing. The two-minute walk back to the car wasn't bad either.
Owned by the nearby Woodstock Inn, Suicide Six has a way of lulling you into a sense of carefree tranquillity. A walk along the picturesque streets and shops next to the Woodstock village green will enhance the mood. Don't miss Vermont's oldest general store, F. H. Gillingham & Sons, opened in 1866, where you can buy everything from snowshoes to banjos - with cheese and a chardonnay in between. The village is also a good place to find a book to read by the giant hearth in the lobby of the Woodstock Inn. Some people, especially those concluding two days packed full of skiing because there were no lift lines, will fall asleep at the hearth before they reach Page 20 of a newly purchased book.
The resort at Ascutney Mountain has been just off Route 91 near the New Hampshire border for 60 years, a sleeper that people pass on the way to better-known Vermont resorts to the north and west. From 1991 to 1993, you had no choice but to pass Ascutney because it was bankrupt and closed. To be sure, it always had some shortcomings. Its nearby village, Brownsville, is not as quaint as others in the region and its lodging and dining options more limited than those at the reigning snow-sports hotspots.
But under new owners, Steven and Susan Plausteiner, who salvaged the ski resort and reopened it 12 years ago, Ascutney has expanded and softened some rough edges. The key was the addition of the North Peak Express Quad, which increased Ascutney's trail count to 56, including some true double-black diamond runs, and upped the vertical drop to 1,800 feet. Ascutney has also shrewdly chased the family market, bolstering up its children's ski school with four ability and age levels. They also placed a cabin just for young people alongside the Wonder Carpet surface lift. The Moose House Lodge serves as an on-slope warming hut and an excuse to get hot chocolate.
There are also abundant cross-country and snowshoeing trails; a movie theater that shows family films; snow tubing; an outdoor skating rink; and a sports and fitness center with pools, sauna, tennis, racquetball and basketball courts.
Why pass all this up? Get off a few exits early on your next trip, and for a change of pace, see how the family likes Ascutney's all-inclusive nature. Ascutney may be less fashionable than some of its competitors - on-mountain lodging is going through necessary renovations and the base lodge is small and utilitarian - but the staff members there will look you in the eye, smile and help you to the wide-open and less-traveled trails on the map. On a weekday last January, there were exactly 14 cars in the parking lot, and the mountain was like a theme park just before the gates opened. From top to bottom you could happily set your own pace.
Which seems to be the point of seeking out the less-discovered ski areas. Skiing and snowboarding are sports designed to bring out the adventurer's soul, or at least that's my theory. We are exploring our surroundings - skis or a snowboard are merely the props to get us where we want to go. But we can't explore if there are thousands of others charging across our path.
It doesn't have to be that way.
There are more than enough overlooked mountains and ski areas waiting for the opportunity to help us expand our perspective. They are everywhere, sometimes small but underappreciated, sometimes big but surprisingly underused. All you have to do is look. You may have to go somewhere your friends never heard of - that could be the definition of a hidden gem.
Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney are three good places to start, but there are others. New York, for example, has 50 ski areas, more than any other state in the country. There are 18 in Michigan and more than a dozen in Montana. The population of Montana is only about 925,000, so those mountains can't be crowded. It's worth checking out.
You don't have to take my word for it. Robert Frost also wrote:
"There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush."
•
The village of Woodstock, Vt., a good base for skiing Pico, Suicide Six and Ascutney, is about a five-hour drive from New York City and two and a half hours from Boston. From Interstate 91 take Exit 10N in Vermont onto I-89 north. Get off at Exit 1 and turn left onto Route 4 west. It's 10 miles to the Woodstock village green. The municipal airport in Lebanon, N.H., 19 miles east, serves the Woodstock area.
For more than 200 years, there has been an inn or a tavern on the site of the current Woodstock Inn & Resort (802-457-1100, 14 the Green; www.woodstockinn.com). The current structure was built in 1969 under the direction of the owner, Laurance S. Rockefeller. The inn strives for country sophistication, and it succeeds with 142 rooms and suites that are $149 to $664 a night. There is a fitness center a mile from the inn that is free to guests. Spa services are also available.
It would be a terrible mistake to miss the Sunday brunch at the Woodstock Inn. The setting is elegant, the food abundant and the quality refined. Offerings include lump-crabmeat eggs Benedict, blintzes, bananas Foster, specialty salads, fruits, crudités, pastries, baked salmon, duck breast, omelets and prime rib. The cost per person is $24.95.
The Jackson House Inn & Restaurant (802-457-2065, 114-3 Senior Lane; www.jacksonhouse.com) is in an 1890 mansion with 15 rooms furnished with period antiques. Rates are $195 to $380. Quail, lamb and sea bass, among other American dishes, are served under the vaulted ceiling of the dining room. There is a $55 three-course prix fixe menu and a $95 nine-course tasting menu.
Bentleys Restaurant (802-457-3232, 3 Elm Street; www.bentleysrestaurant.com) is in the heart of Woodstock. There's an eclectic mix of seating and tables, with Victorian sofas, antique lamps and oriental rugs. The menu is also eclectic, and grilled flatbreads are a specialty. There is an extensive selection of microbrews as well as wines by the glass. But you come to Bentleys, especially at lunch, for the atmosphere - a natural, enjoyable gathering spot. Sandwiches are $7 to $9.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Why geeks and nerds are worth it
In the wide world of dating, there are many options. Do you go for the flashy guy with the smooth smile, or the dude in the corner typing away on his laptop? The following are reasons why I think my fellow females should pay more attention to the quiet geeks and nerds, and less attention to the flashy boys.
1.) While geeks and nerds may be awkward, they’re well-meaning 9 out of 10 times. That smooth dude with the sly grin and the spider hands? Wonder what HIS intentions are... plus, I’ve never had a geek guy not call me when he said he would. Score major points THERE.
2.) They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything else that plugs into a wall behave itself.
3.) They’re more romantic than they’re given credit for. Ok true, their idea of romance might be to make up a spiffy web-page with all the reasons why they love you, with links to pics of you and sonnets and such... but hey. It lasts longer than flowers, plus you can show your friends.
4.) Due to their neglected status, there are plenty to choose from. You like ‘em tall and slender? There are plenty of geeks/nerds who are. You like ‘em smaller with more meat on their bones? Got that too.
5.) They’ve got brains. Come on now, how can intelligence be a bad thing?
6.) Most are quite good at remembering dates. Like birthdates and such, especially if they know it’ll make you happy. Due again to their neglected status, they’re more attentive than guys who “have more options”. Plus, with all that down time without a steady girlfriend, they’ll likely have mental lists of all the things they’d love to do once they GOT a girlfriend.
7.) Sex. Yep. Sex. I’m not really familiar with this myself, but I’ve friends who’ve been intimate with geek guys and it’s raves all around. They say a virgin wrote the Kama Sutra... all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, (they are male after all) coupled with a desire to make you happy? Use your imagination.
8.) They’re relatively low-maintenance. Most can be fueled on pizza, Twinkies and Mt Dew. No complicated dinners needed here, so if you’re not the best cook, eh. Can you order a pizza?
9.) Most frequent bars as often as slugs frequent salt mines. You won’t have to worry much about your geek guy getting his “groove” on with club hotties because, frankly, he’ll be too busy rooting around under his computer wondering where that spare cable went. You won’t have to worry about him flirting with other women because, 9 out of 10 times, he’ll zip right by them in a perfect b-line towards the nearest electronics store. I’ve seen this happen.
Me: “Eww. Victoria Secret’s Models... They’re so skinny. How is that feminine? You can see her ribs!”
Geek Guy: “ooooooo...”
Me: “Hey!” *notices he is staring lustfully towards the computer store*
Geek Guy: “What?”
Me: “Never mind...”
10.) Although he may not want to go to every outing with you, you can arrange swaps, as in, you’ll go to his Gamer Con dressed as an elf princess if he’ll take you to the ballet. Plus, if he doesn’t want to go someplace with you, you won’t have to worry much about what he’s up to. You’ll probably come home to find him asleep on his keyboard in a sea of Mt. Dew cans with code blinking from the screen. It’s ok. He’s used to this. Just toss a blanket over him and turn out the light.
11.) His friends aren’t jerks. I can’t stress this enough. You’ll more likely get “Omg! A GIRL!! Can I see?!” than “Hey hot stuff back that ass up here and let me get some grub on...” They’re awkward geeks too and will, 9 times out of 10, treat you with the utmost respect and, more than likely, a note of awe. A cute girl picked one of their clan to date? It could happen to them! Hope! Drag some of your single girlfriends over, open up a pack of Mt. Dew, crack open the DnD set and get working. Nothing impresses geek guys more than a girl who can hack-n-slash (well ok maybe if she can code... a geek can dream).
12.) They’re rarely if ever possessive. They trust you, so you can be yourself around them. You like to walk around the house in a ratty t-shirt for comfort? He won’t care. He does too! They won’t get pissy if you don’t wear make-up or don’t want to bother primping your hair. If you gain a few pounds, they won’t try their best to make you feel like crap.
13.) They’re usually very well educated. Physics majors and the like. See #5. You won’t have to listen to him blathering on about his car (ok maybe a little), he’ll have loads of other interesting things to talk about. Politics, world events, how much the chicken burgers down at the local place rock, so long as you douse them in hot sauce...
14.) You’ll almost never have to hear, “Yaw dawg whazzap!!” plop out of their mouths. Unless it’s in jest. They spell properly, use correct punctuation, and are able to tell the difference between the toilet and the floor. They almost never get “wasted”, so you won’t have to worry about coming home to find him and his friends passed out on the floor amidst a pile of beer bottles. Mt. Dew cans, perhaps...
15.) And the final reason why geeks and nerds make great boyfriends: They actually give a damn about you. Not how you look (though that’s a plus), not how skinny you are, not how much make-up you primp yourself up with, but they like you for you. That kind of thing lasts longer than “DaMN baby you got a fine ass!!!” Believe me.
1.) While geeks and nerds may be awkward, they’re well-meaning 9 out of 10 times. That smooth dude with the sly grin and the spider hands? Wonder what HIS intentions are... plus, I’ve never had a geek guy not call me when he said he would. Score major points THERE.
2.) They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything else that plugs into a wall behave itself.
3.) They’re more romantic than they’re given credit for. Ok true, their idea of romance might be to make up a spiffy web-page with all the reasons why they love you, with links to pics of you and sonnets and such... but hey. It lasts longer than flowers, plus you can show your friends.
4.) Due to their neglected status, there are plenty to choose from. You like ‘em tall and slender? There are plenty of geeks/nerds who are. You like ‘em smaller with more meat on their bones? Got that too.
5.) They’ve got brains. Come on now, how can intelligence be a bad thing?
6.) Most are quite good at remembering dates. Like birthdates and such, especially if they know it’ll make you happy. Due again to their neglected status, they’re more attentive than guys who “have more options”. Plus, with all that down time without a steady girlfriend, they’ll likely have mental lists of all the things they’d love to do once they GOT a girlfriend.
7.) Sex. Yep. Sex. I’m not really familiar with this myself, but I’ve friends who’ve been intimate with geek guys and it’s raves all around. They say a virgin wrote the Kama Sutra... all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, (they are male after all) coupled with a desire to make you happy? Use your imagination.
8.) They’re relatively low-maintenance. Most can be fueled on pizza, Twinkies and Mt Dew. No complicated dinners needed here, so if you’re not the best cook, eh. Can you order a pizza?
9.) Most frequent bars as often as slugs frequent salt mines. You won’t have to worry much about your geek guy getting his “groove” on with club hotties because, frankly, he’ll be too busy rooting around under his computer wondering where that spare cable went. You won’t have to worry about him flirting with other women because, 9 out of 10 times, he’ll zip right by them in a perfect b-line towards the nearest electronics store. I’ve seen this happen.
Me: “Eww. Victoria Secret’s Models... They’re so skinny. How is that feminine? You can see her ribs!”
Geek Guy: “ooooooo...”
Me: “Hey!” *notices he is staring lustfully towards the computer store*
Geek Guy: “What?”
Me: “Never mind...”
10.) Although he may not want to go to every outing with you, you can arrange swaps, as in, you’ll go to his Gamer Con dressed as an elf princess if he’ll take you to the ballet. Plus, if he doesn’t want to go someplace with you, you won’t have to worry much about what he’s up to. You’ll probably come home to find him asleep on his keyboard in a sea of Mt. Dew cans with code blinking from the screen. It’s ok. He’s used to this. Just toss a blanket over him and turn out the light.
11.) His friends aren’t jerks. I can’t stress this enough. You’ll more likely get “Omg! A GIRL!! Can I see?!” than “Hey hot stuff back that ass up here and let me get some grub on...” They’re awkward geeks too and will, 9 times out of 10, treat you with the utmost respect and, more than likely, a note of awe. A cute girl picked one of their clan to date? It could happen to them! Hope! Drag some of your single girlfriends over, open up a pack of Mt. Dew, crack open the DnD set and get working. Nothing impresses geek guys more than a girl who can hack-n-slash (well ok maybe if she can code... a geek can dream).
12.) They’re rarely if ever possessive. They trust you, so you can be yourself around them. You like to walk around the house in a ratty t-shirt for comfort? He won’t care. He does too! They won’t get pissy if you don’t wear make-up or don’t want to bother primping your hair. If you gain a few pounds, they won’t try their best to make you feel like crap.
13.) They’re usually very well educated. Physics majors and the like. See #5. You won’t have to listen to him blathering on about his car (ok maybe a little), he’ll have loads of other interesting things to talk about. Politics, world events, how much the chicken burgers down at the local place rock, so long as you douse them in hot sauce...
14.) You’ll almost never have to hear, “Yaw dawg whazzap!!” plop out of their mouths. Unless it’s in jest. They spell properly, use correct punctuation, and are able to tell the difference between the toilet and the floor. They almost never get “wasted”, so you won’t have to worry about coming home to find him and his friends passed out on the floor amidst a pile of beer bottles. Mt. Dew cans, perhaps...
15.) And the final reason why geeks and nerds make great boyfriends: They actually give a damn about you. Not how you look (though that’s a plus), not how skinny you are, not how much make-up you primp yourself up with, but they like you for you. That kind of thing lasts longer than “DaMN baby you got a fine ass!!!” Believe me.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Monday, October 31, 2005
A story from HS
The summer after graduating high school, my friend Matt and I flew out to California to spend 6 weeks coaching at the Stanford National Forensics Institute, basically a debate camp. He specialized in "policy debate", and I was a multiple-time state-winner in Lincoln-Douglas debate and in competitive speech.
So they put us in a dorm at Stanford, and we were really only busy from like 9am to 2 each day. After that, we were free to fuck around as much as we wanted. As a new high school grad, 18.5 years old, I had already decided that this summer I was going to get drunk and do things to girls that I hadn't managed to do at that juncture. Probably, coaching at a debate camp was not the best way to attain that goal, but I digress.
Before moving to Michigan my parents were on the faculty at Stanford so I kind of knew some kids in the area still. At our age couldn't get into any of the nice bars in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, but there was a slightly seedier establishment a little off the main strip in Menlo Park where a california friend's ex-con older brother was bartending. We were quietly served alcohol with no hassles, so long as I kept buying pot from the guy after-hours.
So one afternoon at like 2:30 we're in there getting drunk, just because we can, and it just so happens that I was sitting next to a fairly cute girl up at the bar. I screwed up all my courage, and actually started to talk to her. Turns out she's a local high-school kid, maybe 17 (I guess this place was real popular with the local underage crowd too), and her name is Jen.
The cool part is that she's (GASP!) actually being friendly to me and not blowing me off. In fact, she's being downright flirty, which is making me feel funny down below, especially when her hand comes to rest on my leg.
So I chat with her, and I eventually say "hey well listen, I'm free like every afternoon, we should totally hang out." to which responded quite agreeably, even gesturing to my buddy Matt and saying that she will invite her friend along when we hang out (does this mean Matt gets laid too? awesome). So I get the girl's number (on a napkin, I didn't have a cell phone back then) and she has me write mine on her hand (YAY I AM GONNA GET SOME).
This is where things go from "stomach queasy from the prospect of sticking something of mine into something of hers" to "stomach queasy from feeling...um kinda sick". You see, at this point Jen's friend shows up...pushing a wheelchair.
She then picks Jen up off the barstool, and puts her in the wheelchair.
At that moment, for the FIRST TIME, drunk-ass, dumb-ass Haseeb realizes that Jen has no legs.
The horror. I have drunkenly flirted with this torso for nigh on 27 minutes. I've made plans. Numbers have been exchanged. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. fuckity fuck. Can I lose my virginity to a legless wonder? Is this going to forever brand me as a "loser"? My pride, combined with alcohol, is kicking my ass right now.
So Jen and friend (don't remember the bitch's name but all of a sudden I wished I was being set up with the chubby friend) leave the bar ("I'll call you tomorrow!" she says), and Matt turns to start making insane fun of me. drug dealer barkeep joins in. I just bury my face in a beer and say the word "fuck" a lot. Thinking back, this may have been when and and where I started smoking cigarettes.
So Matt basically tells me that I'm a total piece of shit if I don't at least go hang out with this girl, and I reluctantly agree. "30 minutes, Matt. We go, we hang out with this girl for THIRTY MINUTES, and then we're fucking out of there. And you have to come, don't fucking ditch me." Matt agrees.
Next day, Jen calls, and says how to get to her parents' house, so Matt and I strap on the ol' rollerblades and go over there. Jen's parents greet us briefly, but the girls are already pretty much out the door so it's like smile, wave, have fun kids and we're outta there heading down the street.
The girls take us to a nearby park and when we get there Jen (the amazing, legless, but also fairly cool Jen) whips out not one but TWO bottles of vodka, and my 30 minutes just got slightly less hellish. I had never done vodka straight before that day, but I'm hanging out with a legless bitch who wants a piece of my cock'n'balls, so I was pretty much just glugging it down. Matt is trying not to laugh, as he and chubby friend girl take the other bottle and head off for some privacy. He catches my eye and smirks as he's leaving. I hate that fucker.
So Jen and I are talking...actually, Jen's talking and I'm just kind of staring at my dixie-cup. Anyway after a while Jen decides she's uncomfortable on the chair and wants to know if we can move to a bench in a secluded spot. We do so. Next thing I know, her hands are...um...massaging me in spots that all of a sudden I DO NOT MIND BEING MASSAGED IN. I guess the vodka is kicking in. What's that, Jen? You want to sit in my lap? Sure, what's the harm in that? Nice flowy skirt you've got on by the way...really detracts from your lack of lower extremities, but hey at least it allows me easy access to...well whatever. You get the point, Arsians.
Whether it was vodka, or the hormones of an 18 year old kid, or a bit of both, suffice it to say we end up in a position where she's "straddling" me (if you can straddle without legs), and um...demonstrating her upper body strength, with the assistance of a conveniently low-hanging tree branch. (Gee, you think she knew about this spot ahead of time?) Yes, ladies and gents, the girl is doing pull-ups on my monkey bar.
So there you have it. I lost my virginity in a public park to a drunk high school chick with no legs. It was 37 seconds of intense pleasure, followed up by wave upon wave of ridiculous nauseating shame and self-hate.
Anyway, after some awkward after-fuck cuddling (yes I cuddled a torso), Matt and chubbygirl show back up. Matt had a bit too much vodka and had vomited, thus preventing him from reaching any further than 2nd base. So Matt is walking, I put my blades back on, and we're heading back to Jen's house. Matt splits off for the dorm (for more vomiting), chubby girl goes to her own house, and it's just me and Jen arriving back at her home, still very drunk.
I'm ready to just see her to the door and get the fuck out of dodge, but of course her friggin' parents corner me and insist I come in. So I try my best to get my composure, take a quick bathroom break, and then go sit on the couch and stare at the TV until the dad walks in.
Just so you get a good idea of what's going on here: I'm 18. I'm drunk as shit. I just fucked a legless girl, and now I'm alone in the living room with the legless girl's dad. Yeah. NOT GOOD.
Anyway, the dad starts asking me about me, where I'm going to college, how am I liking my job, how am I liking Palo Alto, etc. I'm trying my best to just keep my answers short and trying not to slur my speech. Eventually he tires of the chit chat and moves on to the topic of his daughter, but rather than be pissy or threatening he seems really friendly and super-nice. "Listen, Omar, Jen's mom and I are really happy she met you. It's so nice of you to hang out with her. I mean, she's a wonderful girl but obviously you know how judgmental kids can be", to which I respond "oh sure Mr. such-and-such, no problem, yeah she's really fun."
Mr. Such-and-such takes a pause, and thinks before speaking again. "Anyway, thanks for taking the time, and thanks for walking her back home, it was really good of you...
...most guys just leave her hangin'. "
So they put us in a dorm at Stanford, and we were really only busy from like 9am to 2 each day. After that, we were free to fuck around as much as we wanted. As a new high school grad, 18.5 years old, I had already decided that this summer I was going to get drunk and do things to girls that I hadn't managed to do at that juncture. Probably, coaching at a debate camp was not the best way to attain that goal, but I digress.
Before moving to Michigan my parents were on the faculty at Stanford so I kind of knew some kids in the area still. At our age couldn't get into any of the nice bars in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, but there was a slightly seedier establishment a little off the main strip in Menlo Park where a california friend's ex-con older brother was bartending. We were quietly served alcohol with no hassles, so long as I kept buying pot from the guy after-hours.
So one afternoon at like 2:30 we're in there getting drunk, just because we can, and it just so happens that I was sitting next to a fairly cute girl up at the bar. I screwed up all my courage, and actually started to talk to her. Turns out she's a local high-school kid, maybe 17 (I guess this place was real popular with the local underage crowd too), and her name is Jen.
The cool part is that she's (GASP!) actually being friendly to me and not blowing me off. In fact, she's being downright flirty, which is making me feel funny down below, especially when her hand comes to rest on my leg.
So I chat with her, and I eventually say "hey well listen, I'm free like every afternoon, we should totally hang out." to which responded quite agreeably, even gesturing to my buddy Matt and saying that she will invite her friend along when we hang out (does this mean Matt gets laid too? awesome). So I get the girl's number (on a napkin, I didn't have a cell phone back then) and she has me write mine on her hand (YAY I AM GONNA GET SOME).
This is where things go from "stomach queasy from the prospect of sticking something of mine into something of hers" to "stomach queasy from feeling...um kinda sick". You see, at this point Jen's friend shows up...pushing a wheelchair.
She then picks Jen up off the barstool, and puts her in the wheelchair.
At that moment, for the FIRST TIME, drunk-ass, dumb-ass Haseeb realizes that Jen has no legs.
The horror. I have drunkenly flirted with this torso for nigh on 27 minutes. I've made plans. Numbers have been exchanged. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. fuckity fuck. Can I lose my virginity to a legless wonder? Is this going to forever brand me as a "loser"? My pride, combined with alcohol, is kicking my ass right now.
So Jen and friend (don't remember the bitch's name but all of a sudden I wished I was being set up with the chubby friend) leave the bar ("I'll call you tomorrow!" she says), and Matt turns to start making insane fun of me. drug dealer barkeep joins in. I just bury my face in a beer and say the word "fuck" a lot. Thinking back, this may have been when and and where I started smoking cigarettes.
So Matt basically tells me that I'm a total piece of shit if I don't at least go hang out with this girl, and I reluctantly agree. "30 minutes, Matt. We go, we hang out with this girl for THIRTY MINUTES, and then we're fucking out of there. And you have to come, don't fucking ditch me." Matt agrees.
Next day, Jen calls, and says how to get to her parents' house, so Matt and I strap on the ol' rollerblades and go over there. Jen's parents greet us briefly, but the girls are already pretty much out the door so it's like smile, wave, have fun kids and we're outta there heading down the street.
The girls take us to a nearby park and when we get there Jen (the amazing, legless, but also fairly cool Jen) whips out not one but TWO bottles of vodka, and my 30 minutes just got slightly less hellish. I had never done vodka straight before that day, but I'm hanging out with a legless bitch who wants a piece of my cock'n'balls, so I was pretty much just glugging it down. Matt is trying not to laugh, as he and chubby friend girl take the other bottle and head off for some privacy. He catches my eye and smirks as he's leaving. I hate that fucker.
So Jen and I are talking...actually, Jen's talking and I'm just kind of staring at my dixie-cup. Anyway after a while Jen decides she's uncomfortable on the chair and wants to know if we can move to a bench in a secluded spot. We do so. Next thing I know, her hands are...um...massaging me in spots that all of a sudden I DO NOT MIND BEING MASSAGED IN. I guess the vodka is kicking in. What's that, Jen? You want to sit in my lap? Sure, what's the harm in that? Nice flowy skirt you've got on by the way...really detracts from your lack of lower extremities, but hey at least it allows me easy access to...well whatever. You get the point, Arsians.
Whether it was vodka, or the hormones of an 18 year old kid, or a bit of both, suffice it to say we end up in a position where she's "straddling" me (if you can straddle without legs), and um...demonstrating her upper body strength, with the assistance of a conveniently low-hanging tree branch. (Gee, you think she knew about this spot ahead of time?) Yes, ladies and gents, the girl is doing pull-ups on my monkey bar.
So there you have it. I lost my virginity in a public park to a drunk high school chick with no legs. It was 37 seconds of intense pleasure, followed up by wave upon wave of ridiculous nauseating shame and self-hate.
Anyway, after some awkward after-fuck cuddling (yes I cuddled a torso), Matt and chubbygirl show back up. Matt had a bit too much vodka and had vomited, thus preventing him from reaching any further than 2nd base. So Matt is walking, I put my blades back on, and we're heading back to Jen's house. Matt splits off for the dorm (for more vomiting), chubby girl goes to her own house, and it's just me and Jen arriving back at her home, still very drunk.
I'm ready to just see her to the door and get the fuck out of dodge, but of course her friggin' parents corner me and insist I come in. So I try my best to get my composure, take a quick bathroom break, and then go sit on the couch and stare at the TV until the dad walks in.
Just so you get a good idea of what's going on here: I'm 18. I'm drunk as shit. I just fucked a legless girl, and now I'm alone in the living room with the legless girl's dad. Yeah. NOT GOOD.
Anyway, the dad starts asking me about me, where I'm going to college, how am I liking my job, how am I liking Palo Alto, etc. I'm trying my best to just keep my answers short and trying not to slur my speech. Eventually he tires of the chit chat and moves on to the topic of his daughter, but rather than be pissy or threatening he seems really friendly and super-nice. "Listen, Omar, Jen's mom and I are really happy she met you. It's so nice of you to hang out with her. I mean, she's a wonderful girl but obviously you know how judgmental kids can be", to which I respond "oh sure Mr. such-and-such, no problem, yeah she's really fun."
Mr. Such-and-such takes a pause, and thinks before speaking again. "Anyway, thanks for taking the time, and thanks for walking her back home, it was really good of you...
...most guys just leave her hangin'. "
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Punk Walrus's Halloween Story
I make goody bags. We're the best on the block.
For safety, we buy a pack of glow-bracelets, the ones that you snap and shake, and they glow for 8 hours. You seem at concerts and stuff. I can buy 4doz for $40. Every kid gets one (wee ones, I ask parental permission, because even though the goo is non-toxic, better safe than sorry).
Each plastic boo-ghost bag has:
- 1 full-sized Snickers
- Full sized Reece's PB Cup
- A small GID rubber duck
- A small silver bead maze
- A set of vampire fangs with whistle
- GID spider ring (see below)
Why? My parents were cheap. My father was one of those Grinches who had this speech about how hard he worked and didn't owe brats a damn cent, and for years, I was the one who had to scrub the damn egg from the cars and house, or pull TP out of the trees every Nov 1st.
After few years of this, and my mother relented and gave kids a stick of chewing gum. Cheap, yes, but we didn't get TP'd or egged that year. Later, my mother somehow got like a gross of cheap plastic spider rings because she didn't like the idea of kids rotting their teeth with candy. We didn't get egged or TP'd, but I was "the house that gave out crummy spider rings every year."
All this time, I was not allowed to go trick-or-treating.
In high school, a bunch of friends who spent their childhood overseas (military brats, state department brats) commiserated they didn't get to go ToT'ing either. So one year, even though we were 14-ish, we dressed up, and went out. No one said a thing. So we did it for the next 3 years, and noticed some people gave out FULL size bars (one guy gave out 1lb bags of M&Ms), and how awesome they were.
So that's why. I love Halloween, and it's my money, and sure there are some ungrateful brats, but I don't do it for them. Parents are pretty cool, too, and we deck out our yard with gravestones and haunted accessories.
Oh, and the ring is a tribute to my late mother. The one who had the clue.
Link
For safety, we buy a pack of glow-bracelets, the ones that you snap and shake, and they glow for 8 hours. You seem at concerts and stuff. I can buy 4doz for $40. Every kid gets one (wee ones, I ask parental permission, because even though the goo is non-toxic, better safe than sorry).
Each plastic boo-ghost bag has:
- 1 full-sized Snickers
- Full sized Reece's PB Cup
- A small GID rubber duck
- A small silver bead maze
- A set of vampire fangs with whistle
- GID spider ring (see below)
Why? My parents were cheap. My father was one of those Grinches who had this speech about how hard he worked and didn't owe brats a damn cent, and for years, I was the one who had to scrub the damn egg from the cars and house, or pull TP out of the trees every Nov 1st.
After few years of this, and my mother relented and gave kids a stick of chewing gum. Cheap, yes, but we didn't get TP'd or egged that year. Later, my mother somehow got like a gross of cheap plastic spider rings because she didn't like the idea of kids rotting their teeth with candy. We didn't get egged or TP'd, but I was "the house that gave out crummy spider rings every year."
All this time, I was not allowed to go trick-or-treating.
In high school, a bunch of friends who spent their childhood overseas (military brats, state department brats) commiserated they didn't get to go ToT'ing either. So one year, even though we were 14-ish, we dressed up, and went out. No one said a thing. So we did it for the next 3 years, and noticed some people gave out FULL size bars (one guy gave out 1lb bags of M&Ms), and how awesome they were.
So that's why. I love Halloween, and it's my money, and sure there are some ungrateful brats, but I don't do it for them. Parents are pretty cool, too, and we deck out our yard with gravestones and haunted accessories.
Oh, and the ring is a tribute to my late mother. The one who had the clue.
Link
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Happiness instead of wealth for measuring national prosperity
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/science/04happ.html
October 4, 2005
A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.
Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.
But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.
In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.
Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.
Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.
Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.
The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.
The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. "The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people," Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from "the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you're at Disneyland."
Mr. Saul was one of about 400 people from more than a dozen countries who gathered recently to consider new ways to define and assess prosperity.
The meeting, held at St. Francis Xavier University in northern Nova Scotia, was a mix of soft ideals and hard-nosed number crunching. Many participants insisted that the focus on commerce and consumption that dominated the 20th century need not be the norm in the 21st century.
Among the attendees were three dozen representatives from Bhutan - teachers, monks, government officials and others - who came to promote what the Switzerland-size country has learned about building a fulfilled, contented society.
While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.
"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."
It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naïve idealism.
Indeed, America's brief flirtation with a similar concept, encapsulated in E. F. Schumacher's 1973 bestseller "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," ended abruptly with the huge and continuing burst of consumer-driven economic growth that exploded first in industrialized countries and has been spreading in fast-growing developing countries like China.
Yet many experts say it was this very explosion of affluence that eventually led social scientists to realize that economic growth is not always synonymous with progress.
In the early stages of a climb out of poverty, for a household or a country, incomes and contentment grow in lockstep. But various studies show that beyond certain thresholds, roughly as annual per capita income passes $10,000 or $20,000, happiness does not keep up.
And some countries, studies found, were happier than they should be. In the World Values Survey, a project under way since 1995, Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found that Latin American countries, for example, registered far more subjective happiness than their economic status would suggest.
In contrast, countries that had experienced communist rule were unhappier than noncommunist countries with similar household incomes - even long after communism had collapsed.
"Some types of societies clearly do a much better job of enhancing their people's sense of happiness and well-being than other ones even apart from the somewhat obvious fact that it's better to be rich than to be poor," Dr. Inglehart said.
Even more striking, beyond a certain threshold of wealth people appear to redefine happiness, studies suggest, focusing on their relative position in society instead of their material status.
Nothing defines this shift better than a 1998 survey of 257 students, faculty and staff members at the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the study, the researchers, Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, gave the subjects a choice of earning $50,000 a year in a world where the average salary was $25,000 or $100,000 a year where the average was $200,000.
About 50 percent of the participants, the researchers found, chose the first option, preferring to be half as prosperous but richer than their neighbors.
Such findings have contributed to the new effort to broaden the way countries and individuals gauge the quality of life - the subject of the Nova Scotia conference.
But researchers have been hard pressed to develop measuring techniques that can capture this broader concept of well-being.
One approach is to study how individuals perceive the daily flow of their lives, having them keep diary-like charts reflecting how various activities, from paying bills to playing softball, make them feel.
A research team at Princeton is working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to incorporate this kind of charting into its new "time use" survey, which began last year and is given to 4,000 Americans each month.
"The idea is to start with life as we experience it and then try to understand what helps people feel fulfilled and create conditions that generate that," said Dr. Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist working on the survey.
For example, he said, subjecting students to more testing in order to make them more competitive may equip them to succeed in the American quest for ever more income. But that benefit would have to be balanced against the problems that come with the increased stress imposed by additional testing.
"We should not be hoping to construct a utopia," Professor Krueger said. "What we should be talking about is piecemeal movement in the direction of things that make for a better life."
Another strategy is to track trends that can affect a community's well-being by mining existing statistics from censuses, surveys and government agencies that track health, the environment, the economy and other societal barometers.
The resulting scores can be charted in parallel to see how various indicators either complement or impede each other.
In March, Britain said it would begin developing such an "index of well-being," taking into account not only income but mental illness, civility, access to parks and crime rates.
In June, British officials released their first effort along those lines, a summary of "sustainable development indicators" intended to be a snapshot of social and environmental indicators like crime, traffic, pollution and recycling levels.
"What we do in one area of our lives can have an impact on many others, so joined-up thinking and action across central and local government is crucial," said Elliot Morley, Britain's environment minister.
In Canada, Hans Messinger, the director of industry measures and analysis for Statistics Canada, has been working informally with about 20 other economists and social scientists to develop that country's first national index of well-being.
Mr. Messinger is the person who, every month, takes the pulse of his country's economy, sifting streams of data about cash flow to generate the figure called gross domestic product. But for nearly a decade, he has been searching for a better way of measuring the quality of life.
"A sound economy is not an end to itself, but should serve a purpose, to improve society," Mr. Messinger said.
The new well-being index, Mr. Messinger said, will never replace the G.D.P. For one thing, economic activity, affected by weather, labor strikes and other factors, changes far more rapidly than other indicators of happiness.
But understanding what fosters well-being, he said, can help policy makers decide how to shape legislation or regulations.
Later this year, the Canadian group plans to release a first attempt at an index - an assessment of community health, living standards and people's division of time among work, family, voluntarism and other activities. Over the next several years, the team plans to integrate those findings with measurements of education, environmental quality, "community vitality" and the responsiveness of government. Similar initiatives are under way in Australia and New Zealand.
Ronald Colman, a political scientist and the research director for Canada's well-being index, said one challenge was to decide how much weight to give different indicators.
For example, Dr. Colman said, the amount of time devoted to volunteer activities in Canada has dropped more than 12 percent in the last decade.
"That's a real decline in community well-being, but that loss counts for nothing in our current measure of progress," he said.
But shifts in volunteer activity also cannot be easily assessed against cash-based activities, he said.
"Money has nothing to do with why volunteers do what they do," Dr. Colman said. "So how, in a way that's transparent and methodologically decent, do you come up with composite numbers that are meaningful?"
In the end, Canada's index could eventually take the form of a report card rather than a single G.D.P.-like number.
In the United States there have been a few experiments, like the Princeton plan to add a happiness component to labor surveys. But the focus remains on economics. The Census Bureau, for instance, still concentrates on collecting information about people's financial circumstances and possessions, not their perceptions or feelings, said Kurt J. Bauman, a demographer there.
But he added that there was growing interest in moving away from simply tracking indicators of poverty, for example, to looking more comprehensively at social conditions.
"Measuring whether poverty is going up or down is different than measuring changes in the ability of a family to feed itself," he said. "There definitely is a growing perception out there that if you focus too narrowly, you're missing a lot of the picture."
That shift was evident at the conference on Bhutan, organized by Dr. Colman, who is from Nova Scotia. Participants focused on an array of approaches to the happiness puzzle, from practical to radical.
John de Graaf, a Seattle filmmaker and campaigner trying to cut the amount of time people devote to work, wore a T-shirt that said, "Medieval peasants worked less than you do."
In an open discussion, Marc van Bogaert from Belgium described his path to happiness: "I want to live in a world without money."
Al Chaddock, a painter from Nova Scotia, immediately offered a suggestion: "Become an artist."
Other attendees insisted that old-fashioned capitalism could persist even with a shift to goals broader than just making money.
Ray C. Anderson, the founder of Interface Inc., an Atlanta-based carpet company with nearly $1 billion in annual sales, described his company's 11-year-old program to cut pollution and switch to renewable materials.
Mr. Anderson said he was "a radical industrialist, but as competitive as anyone you know and as profit-minded."
Some experts who attended the weeklong conference questioned whether national well-being could really be defined. Just the act of trying to quantify happiness could threaten it, said Frank Bracho, a Venezuelan economist and former ambassador to India. After all, he said, "The most important things in life are not prone to measurement - like love."
But Mr. Messinger argued that the weaknesses of the established model, dominated by economics, demanded the effort.
Other economists pointed out that happiness itself can be illusory.
"Even in a very miserable condition you can be very happy if you are grateful for small mercies," said Siddiqur Osmani, a professor of applied economics from the University of Ulster in Ireland. "If someone is starving and hungry and given two scraps of food a day, he can be very happy."
Bhutanese officials at the meeting described a variety of initiatives aimed at creating the conditions that are most likely to improve the quality of life in the most equitable way.
Bhutan, which had no public education system in 1960, now has schools at all levels around the country and rotates teachers from urban to rural regions to be sure there is equal access to the best teachers, officials said.
Another goal, they said, is to sustain traditions while advancing. People entering hospitals with nonacute health problems can choose Western or traditional medicine.
The more that various effects of a policy are considered, and not simply the economic return, the more likely a country is to achieve a good balance, said Sangay Wangchuk, the head of Bhutan's national parks agency, citing agricultural policies as an example.
Bhutan's effort, in part, is aimed at avoiding the pattern seen in the study at Harvard, in which relative wealth becomes more important than the quality of life.
"The goal of life should not be limited to production, consumption, more production and more consumption," said Thakur S. Powdyel, a senior official in the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. "There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession and the level of well-being."
Mr. Saul, the Canadian political philosopher, said that Bhutan's shift in language from "product" to "happiness" was a profound move in and of itself.
Mechanisms for achieving and tracking happiness can be devised, he said, but only if the goal is articulated clearly from the start.
"It's ideas which determine the directions in which civilizations go," Mr. Saul said. "If you don't get your ideas right, it doesn't matter what policies you try to put in place."
Still, Bhutan's model may not work for larger countries. And even in Bhutan, not everyone is happy. Members of the country's delegation admitted their experiment was very much a work in progress, and they acknowledged that poverty and alcoholism remained serious problems.
The pressures of modernization are also increasing. Bhutan linked itself to the global cultural pipelines of television and the Internet in 1999, and there have been increasing reports in its nascent media of violence and disaffection, particularly among young people.
Some attendees, while welcoming Bhutan's goal, gently criticized the Bhutanese officials for dealing with a Nepali-speaking minority mainly by driving tens of thousands of them out of the country in recent decades, saying that was not a way to foster happiness.
"Bhutan is not a pure Shangri-La, so idyllic and away from all those flaws and foibles," conceded Karma Pedey, a Bhutanese educator dressed in a short dragon-covered jacket and a floor-length rainbow-striped traditional skirt.
But, looking around a packed auditorium, she added: "At same time, I'm very, very happy we have made a global impact."
October 4, 2005
A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.
Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.
But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.
In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.
Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.
Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.
Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.
The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.
The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. "The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people," Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from "the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you're at Disneyland."
Mr. Saul was one of about 400 people from more than a dozen countries who gathered recently to consider new ways to define and assess prosperity.
The meeting, held at St. Francis Xavier University in northern Nova Scotia, was a mix of soft ideals and hard-nosed number crunching. Many participants insisted that the focus on commerce and consumption that dominated the 20th century need not be the norm in the 21st century.
Among the attendees were three dozen representatives from Bhutan - teachers, monks, government officials and others - who came to promote what the Switzerland-size country has learned about building a fulfilled, contented society.
While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.
"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."
It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naïve idealism.
Indeed, America's brief flirtation with a similar concept, encapsulated in E. F. Schumacher's 1973 bestseller "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," ended abruptly with the huge and continuing burst of consumer-driven economic growth that exploded first in industrialized countries and has been spreading in fast-growing developing countries like China.
Yet many experts say it was this very explosion of affluence that eventually led social scientists to realize that economic growth is not always synonymous with progress.
In the early stages of a climb out of poverty, for a household or a country, incomes and contentment grow in lockstep. But various studies show that beyond certain thresholds, roughly as annual per capita income passes $10,000 or $20,000, happiness does not keep up.
And some countries, studies found, were happier than they should be. In the World Values Survey, a project under way since 1995, Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found that Latin American countries, for example, registered far more subjective happiness than their economic status would suggest.
In contrast, countries that had experienced communist rule were unhappier than noncommunist countries with similar household incomes - even long after communism had collapsed.
"Some types of societies clearly do a much better job of enhancing their people's sense of happiness and well-being than other ones even apart from the somewhat obvious fact that it's better to be rich than to be poor," Dr. Inglehart said.
Even more striking, beyond a certain threshold of wealth people appear to redefine happiness, studies suggest, focusing on their relative position in society instead of their material status.
Nothing defines this shift better than a 1998 survey of 257 students, faculty and staff members at the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the study, the researchers, Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, gave the subjects a choice of earning $50,000 a year in a world where the average salary was $25,000 or $100,000 a year where the average was $200,000.
About 50 percent of the participants, the researchers found, chose the first option, preferring to be half as prosperous but richer than their neighbors.
Such findings have contributed to the new effort to broaden the way countries and individuals gauge the quality of life - the subject of the Nova Scotia conference.
But researchers have been hard pressed to develop measuring techniques that can capture this broader concept of well-being.
One approach is to study how individuals perceive the daily flow of their lives, having them keep diary-like charts reflecting how various activities, from paying bills to playing softball, make them feel.
A research team at Princeton is working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to incorporate this kind of charting into its new "time use" survey, which began last year and is given to 4,000 Americans each month.
"The idea is to start with life as we experience it and then try to understand what helps people feel fulfilled and create conditions that generate that," said Dr. Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist working on the survey.
For example, he said, subjecting students to more testing in order to make them more competitive may equip them to succeed in the American quest for ever more income. But that benefit would have to be balanced against the problems that come with the increased stress imposed by additional testing.
"We should not be hoping to construct a utopia," Professor Krueger said. "What we should be talking about is piecemeal movement in the direction of things that make for a better life."
Another strategy is to track trends that can affect a community's well-being by mining existing statistics from censuses, surveys and government agencies that track health, the environment, the economy and other societal barometers.
The resulting scores can be charted in parallel to see how various indicators either complement or impede each other.
In March, Britain said it would begin developing such an "index of well-being," taking into account not only income but mental illness, civility, access to parks and crime rates.
In June, British officials released their first effort along those lines, a summary of "sustainable development indicators" intended to be a snapshot of social and environmental indicators like crime, traffic, pollution and recycling levels.
"What we do in one area of our lives can have an impact on many others, so joined-up thinking and action across central and local government is crucial," said Elliot Morley, Britain's environment minister.
In Canada, Hans Messinger, the director of industry measures and analysis for Statistics Canada, has been working informally with about 20 other economists and social scientists to develop that country's first national index of well-being.
Mr. Messinger is the person who, every month, takes the pulse of his country's economy, sifting streams of data about cash flow to generate the figure called gross domestic product. But for nearly a decade, he has been searching for a better way of measuring the quality of life.
"A sound economy is not an end to itself, but should serve a purpose, to improve society," Mr. Messinger said.
The new well-being index, Mr. Messinger said, will never replace the G.D.P. For one thing, economic activity, affected by weather, labor strikes and other factors, changes far more rapidly than other indicators of happiness.
But understanding what fosters well-being, he said, can help policy makers decide how to shape legislation or regulations.
Later this year, the Canadian group plans to release a first attempt at an index - an assessment of community health, living standards and people's division of time among work, family, voluntarism and other activities. Over the next several years, the team plans to integrate those findings with measurements of education, environmental quality, "community vitality" and the responsiveness of government. Similar initiatives are under way in Australia and New Zealand.
Ronald Colman, a political scientist and the research director for Canada's well-being index, said one challenge was to decide how much weight to give different indicators.
For example, Dr. Colman said, the amount of time devoted to volunteer activities in Canada has dropped more than 12 percent in the last decade.
"That's a real decline in community well-being, but that loss counts for nothing in our current measure of progress," he said.
But shifts in volunteer activity also cannot be easily assessed against cash-based activities, he said.
"Money has nothing to do with why volunteers do what they do," Dr. Colman said. "So how, in a way that's transparent and methodologically decent, do you come up with composite numbers that are meaningful?"
In the end, Canada's index could eventually take the form of a report card rather than a single G.D.P.-like number.
In the United States there have been a few experiments, like the Princeton plan to add a happiness component to labor surveys. But the focus remains on economics. The Census Bureau, for instance, still concentrates on collecting information about people's financial circumstances and possessions, not their perceptions or feelings, said Kurt J. Bauman, a demographer there.
But he added that there was growing interest in moving away from simply tracking indicators of poverty, for example, to looking more comprehensively at social conditions.
"Measuring whether poverty is going up or down is different than measuring changes in the ability of a family to feed itself," he said. "There definitely is a growing perception out there that if you focus too narrowly, you're missing a lot of the picture."
That shift was evident at the conference on Bhutan, organized by Dr. Colman, who is from Nova Scotia. Participants focused on an array of approaches to the happiness puzzle, from practical to radical.
John de Graaf, a Seattle filmmaker and campaigner trying to cut the amount of time people devote to work, wore a T-shirt that said, "Medieval peasants worked less than you do."
In an open discussion, Marc van Bogaert from Belgium described his path to happiness: "I want to live in a world without money."
Al Chaddock, a painter from Nova Scotia, immediately offered a suggestion: "Become an artist."
Other attendees insisted that old-fashioned capitalism could persist even with a shift to goals broader than just making money.
Ray C. Anderson, the founder of Interface Inc., an Atlanta-based carpet company with nearly $1 billion in annual sales, described his company's 11-year-old program to cut pollution and switch to renewable materials.
Mr. Anderson said he was "a radical industrialist, but as competitive as anyone you know and as profit-minded."
Some experts who attended the weeklong conference questioned whether national well-being could really be defined. Just the act of trying to quantify happiness could threaten it, said Frank Bracho, a Venezuelan economist and former ambassador to India. After all, he said, "The most important things in life are not prone to measurement - like love."
But Mr. Messinger argued that the weaknesses of the established model, dominated by economics, demanded the effort.
Other economists pointed out that happiness itself can be illusory.
"Even in a very miserable condition you can be very happy if you are grateful for small mercies," said Siddiqur Osmani, a professor of applied economics from the University of Ulster in Ireland. "If someone is starving and hungry and given two scraps of food a day, he can be very happy."
Bhutanese officials at the meeting described a variety of initiatives aimed at creating the conditions that are most likely to improve the quality of life in the most equitable way.
Bhutan, which had no public education system in 1960, now has schools at all levels around the country and rotates teachers from urban to rural regions to be sure there is equal access to the best teachers, officials said.
Another goal, they said, is to sustain traditions while advancing. People entering hospitals with nonacute health problems can choose Western or traditional medicine.
The more that various effects of a policy are considered, and not simply the economic return, the more likely a country is to achieve a good balance, said Sangay Wangchuk, the head of Bhutan's national parks agency, citing agricultural policies as an example.
Bhutan's effort, in part, is aimed at avoiding the pattern seen in the study at Harvard, in which relative wealth becomes more important than the quality of life.
"The goal of life should not be limited to production, consumption, more production and more consumption," said Thakur S. Powdyel, a senior official in the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. "There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession and the level of well-being."
Mr. Saul, the Canadian political philosopher, said that Bhutan's shift in language from "product" to "happiness" was a profound move in and of itself.
Mechanisms for achieving and tracking happiness can be devised, he said, but only if the goal is articulated clearly from the start.
"It's ideas which determine the directions in which civilizations go," Mr. Saul said. "If you don't get your ideas right, it doesn't matter what policies you try to put in place."
Still, Bhutan's model may not work for larger countries. And even in Bhutan, not everyone is happy. Members of the country's delegation admitted their experiment was very much a work in progress, and they acknowledged that poverty and alcoholism remained serious problems.
The pressures of modernization are also increasing. Bhutan linked itself to the global cultural pipelines of television and the Internet in 1999, and there have been increasing reports in its nascent media of violence and disaffection, particularly among young people.
Some attendees, while welcoming Bhutan's goal, gently criticized the Bhutanese officials for dealing with a Nepali-speaking minority mainly by driving tens of thousands of them out of the country in recent decades, saying that was not a way to foster happiness.
"Bhutan is not a pure Shangri-La, so idyllic and away from all those flaws and foibles," conceded Karma Pedey, a Bhutanese educator dressed in a short dragon-covered jacket and a floor-length rainbow-striped traditional skirt.
But, looking around a packed auditorium, she added: "At same time, I'm very, very happy we have made a global impact."
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Ars Technica reviews the iPod Nano
Link to the excellent review, which included an awesome sequence in which they destroyed the Nano.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
That stuff about black people "looting" vs. white people "finding" in New Orleans
Urban Legends page
From the guy who did the "finding" caption:
Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."
Regarding the AFP/Getty "finding" photo by [photographer Chris] Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, "This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we're being careful with how we credit these photos." Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn't witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn't say they were looting.
From the guy who did the "finding" caption:
Jeasus, I don't belive how much crap I'm getting from this. First of all, I hope you excuse me, but I'm completely at the end of my rope. You have no Idea how stressful this whole disaster is, espically since I have not seen my wife in 5 days, and my parents and grand parents HAVE LOST THIER HOMES. As of right now, we have almost NOTHING.
Please stop emailing me on this one.
I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water - we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow. I wouldn't have taken in, because I wouldn't eat anything that's been in that water. But I'm not homeless. (well, technically I am right now.)
I'm not trying to be politically correct. I'm don't care if you are white or black. I spent 4 hours on a boat in my parent's neighborhood shooting, and rescuing people, both black and white, dog and cat. I am a journalist, and a human being - and I see all as such. If you don't belive me, you can look on Getty today and see the images I shot of real looting today, and you will see white and black people, and they were DEFINATELY looting. And I put that in the caption.
Please, please don't argue symantics over this one. This is EXTREMELY serious, and I can't even begin to convey to those not here what it is like. Please, please, be more concerned on how this affects all of us (watch gas prices) and please, please help out if you can.
This is my home, I will hopefully always be here. I know that my friends in this business across the gulf south are going through the exact same thing - and I am with them, and will do whatever I can to help. But please, please don't email me any more about this caption issue.
And please, don't yell at me about spelling and grammar. Im eating my first real meal (a sandwich) right now in 3 days.
When this calms down, I will be more than willing to answer any questions, just ask.
Thank you all -
-Chris Graythen
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