"Compare/Contrast," or "Why Ronald McDonald Hates Freedom"

Ok, there's a lot going on in this post, so you'll have to pay attention. I probably should have split the post.

First a couple pictures from Amsterdam, including a crappy night photo:




Now, I decided to take some shots looking out the front and the back of the apartment where I was staying. Here is the view out the front:


The following two pictures are the view out back. I direct the reader to this link to compare the view out back in Amsterdam and the one I had in Georgia. Interesting. This post is all about compare/contrast. It is our lesson for the day. Keep on reading.



And this is what I look like in Amsterdam (pretty much the same as how I look in America, no duplicity here (I can't say the same for Ronald McDonald)):


Before leaving Amsterdam, I decided to do a little comparison shopping, so I went to the McDonalds in the airport and ordered a "Big Tasty McMenu" which is basically a Big n' Tasty value meal made up of fries, a "Big n' Tasty" burger, and a soda. I recalled that in Tbilisi the McDonalds was actually much better than it is in the US, and I wanted to see if our friend Ronald McDonald really was a janus-faced traitor. He is. Again, I was impressed by the freshness and size of the sandwich. I could not even finish the meal. My only complaint was the chemically taste of the cheese on the sandwich and the mysterious mayonaise-based sauce. Here are some notable points of departure from the American counterpart:

1. Size (about as big around as a Whopper),
2. Meat was thicker,
3. Comes with bacon and 1-2-3 slices of cheese (no cheese OR bacon on the American version),
4. Made to order,
5. No pickles or ketchup, praise Prophet Smith,
6. Unlike in America, where the Quarter Pounder is the largest single-patty burger on the McDonalds menu, in Holland the Big n' Tasty is the largest single-patty burger,
7. The meal was 6.65 euro (about $9.87).

Just to make sure I was not romanticizing European McDonalds, I stopped at a McDonalds in Albany, IN on my way back from Celina to have an American Big n' Tasty meal. It was terrible. I've decided to include pictures to accompany this post, but I don't think the difference in size shows up well. You just have to take the fry container as your reference point.

Dutch Version:





American Version:


Grammar: "I'm Lovin' It!"



Let's get a closer look at that



Today I headed back from Celina, OH where I stayed last night after getting in to Columbus from Amsterdam. A real bed was nice. I had been up for 25 hours by the time I went to sleep. The flight back was uneventful. The woman sitting next to me for 8 hours and 45 minutes (Amsterdam to New Jersey) was a thirty-something school teacher named Marie N. She wore hip glasses, which she put on after removing her contacts, and tights. She uttered not a word the entire flight, choosing to focus on writing report cards. It was a boring flight; however, I did get to watch the movie "Elf," and episode of "House," and some terrible movie starring Catherine Zeta Jones in which she played the executive chef of a fine dining restaurant. I arrived in Newark, rushed through customs, and broke a sweat to find that my flight to Columbus was delayed 1 hour and 45 minutes, which left me with way too much free time (about 5 hours). I spent an hour walking around the food court deciding which slop-hole would win the die toss and get my patronage. The "Wok-n-Roll" won. I then went to the Mexican place to take the edge off with some Coronas. Little did I know they were nearly 6 bucks a piece. The flight to Columbus was equally uneventful.

A little update on the job market. UConn has made their calls for interviews and I am not on their list apparently (UConn never calls anymore).

Returning Home

Tomorrow I leave Amsterdam at 1:25 p.m. and head back to the US. It has been a productive trip. I've met lots of cool people and made some good professional connections. With regard to the latter, I spent an evening in Tilburg with the philosophy of science group, and while it looks like they are not going to offer me a job, the department head said that the search committee was very impressed with my work. Consequently, they would like to sponsor me in an application for an NWO grant (Dutch science foundation) so that I can be there for an entire year. This grant, if awarded, would make me eligible for another grant that provides 3 years of funding. 4 years of research and no teaching...nice. In the meantime, they are happy to support me for 3 months in the spring (feb-april) while I finish my dissertation. The psychometricians want me back too and they are going to try to help me make arrangements so that I can return in January (since I didn't get the funding intended to support such a trip).

My power adapter for my Mac died several days ago when I stumbled in late and plugged it in upside down (also causing a power outage in the apartment). Luckily the adapter was not plugged into the computer. That will be an 80 dollar replacement. I was going to get a new adapter here but at the Mac store they were 90 euro (roughly 10,000 dollars, if my estimation of the exchange rate is correct).

Last night I had the best meal of my trip when I went to a traditional Dutch place. Meatballs and mashed potatoes have never tasted so good. Best of all it was very cheap. My wonderful host, Harald, suggested the place and I packed my belly for the first time since I arrived. I've been living off one meal per day and about 4-5 hours of sleep per night. Mostly what I've been eating is stuff I grab at a convenience store at about 9pm on my way home from psychmetrophilosophizing. The exception, of course, is the Japanese pancakes I had the first night, but that did not leave me sated, even if it was wonderfully tasty. It is probably the calories from that first meal that have kept me from collapsing all week.

I'll post a couple pictures once my computer is back up and running.

Hold on, Basty, I'm coming home.

Planes, trains, and bikes

I'm now in Amsterdam. Sebastian is serving 10 days. I love it here. I work so much I have to force myself away from the office long enough to eat. The weather is dreary, but I love even that. Today I walked to work (15 min.) in the rain and didn't bitch to myself one bit.

The plane trip was nice. My flight was delayed in Ohio, but that just made for a shorter layover in New Jersey. When I got on the flight, I was sat next to a very hip looking young lady, but I pretty much kept to myself for the first hour. I was next to the alcove where the flight attendants hang out. What a gossipy bunch! I had no idea that they were real people. I always figured them to be robots like your humble narrator. Finally, I remarked that they were a chatty bunch and 6 hours of conversation began. Turns out Dawn is a tour manager for a band, lives in Jersey, and is contemplating a move to CA. She has good taste in music (i.e., likes skinny puppy and old industrial) and was a loquacious, but extremely pleasant flight companion. Her band is on a european tour right now. Anyway, we took probably 10 pictures, but she only approved one of them (the other she took of my orange juice, and didn't undergo peer review). I've posted them below. When we landed and people stood up, a meaty man in front of us mumbled "$500 for a ticket and they couldn't shut up." I guess you're not allowed to talk on flights that cost more than a certain threshold. He was probably just pissed because he was sitting next to a tight-lipped Dutch lady and because of his awful Syracuse University sweatshirt (though I doubt he was ever a student there). It seems that most of the times I fly I get very unlucky in spinning the wheel of freaks and land an elderly woman with too much perfume, or a business man with too much cologne, or a person of considerable size who helps himself to the inner sanctuary of my personal bubble, or I get a whole row to myself (which is not that bad). I don't usually lament not having anyone to talk to, but I had a good time on the trip.

I'm going to try to remember to take more pictures while I am here.

Do not pass 'go', do not collect $200

Basty, you stand accused of the following crimes:

1. having breath that smells like something that should not be
2. several acute neuroses including, but not limited to,
a. fear of hot air balloons
b. fear of the oven door
c. fear of the vaccum cleaner
d. generalized paranoia
e. some strange perversion that requires that you sniff every stranger's crotch
f. severe aversion to cleanliness
g. coprophagia (esp. as pertains to bunnies)
3. being extremely unportable.
4. 3 counts of walking into my room when you hear my alarm go off in morning, farting, and then leaving the bedroom (it isn't funny anymore).

For these and other crimes I am sentencing you to 10 days in jail beginning November 17 and ending November 27. Conveniently the execution of this sentence coincides perfectly with the time I will be in Amsterdam doing research. I've spoken to Jeff, the warden at Hacker's Creek Penitentiary, and he'll see to it you get your meds and whatnot. I will pick you up after you have served your sentence. Please do not join any gangs, get any tattoos, or get killed. Watch your back especially when in the shower. Keep your head down and your thoughts to yourself, and you should be safe. Reflect on your life and the things you've done.

Ok, now let's go for a walk.

Also,

I'm quite curious who the person from Poland is who keeps reading my blog. Do I know someone in Poland? I can't imagine this blog appealing to anyone much less a person I don't know from Poland.

In the interest of keeping my foot free of bullet holes, I am deleting this post about the punctuality of certain folks.

Typo Update

Praise Moroni! I sent an urgent email to the secretary about the unfortunate typo mentioned in my previous post and she was able to retrieve the application from the outgoing mail. This is one time when her leisurely way of doing things has actually been beneficial. This means I don't have to overnight a new cover letter to the search committee that otherwise would have received the defective letter. This victory is made all the more sweet by the knowledge that a very prominent faculty member in my department (someone with whom I actually have little contact) recently put in a plug for me with the head of the search committee at that very school. I found this out today as I was signing the revised cover letter.

Think psychometrics is hard? Try doing it in a well.

Another typo recently came to my attention after the application went out. This cover letter was to a university that wanted someone who seriously engages with the relevant science.

Version 1: In order to do this research in an intellectually responsible manner, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

I didn't like this version since it might have made my work seem more controversial than I'd like for it to seem.

Version 2 (intended): In order to do this research well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Carelessly, I did not delete all the words necessary to make the revision.

Version 2 (actual): In order to do this research in an well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Message conveyed by Version 2 (actual): Either this guy wishes never to work with others in the field (he prefers the isolation that one might find in a well), or this guy surely can't write philosophy if he can't even write a simple cover letter.

In other news, I added UC Davis, Carleton College, and UCLA to my list of schools.

t.A.T.u., Ya tebya lyublyu

Dear t.A.T.u.,

I just wanted to write an open letter to the both of you expressing my gratitude for writing such wonderful songs. Among my favorites are "Robot," without which I would have never learned to roll my 'r's and would not have learned about artificial love and artificial honey (?) and artificial ice; "Bylo i Proshlo" which makes wonderful use of the lately underused vocodor; and "Ya tvoya ne pervaya" (I am not your first) in which you lament a one-sided relationship. Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, I don't care that you are not really lesbians. It was a great marketing gimic (credited to your producer Ivan Shapovalov) at the beginning of your burgeoning career to pretend to be lesbians masquerading as two girls who just really love each other a lot. The only thing cooler than Russian lesbians is faux Russian lesbians, because that means that all hope is not lost that I might one day wed Yulia (or Lena, if Yulia is taken). Your ruse on the world was something out of perhaps a latter day incarnation of Bret Easton Ellis' _American Psycho_. It was a clever expose of the early aught's fixation on a transgressive fantasy. It was a brilliant trick, and when you came out as heterosexual on the video "Anatomy of t.A.T.u" in December of 2003 and further corroborated the fact when Yulia had a child with Pavel Sidorov in September of 2004, I'll bet that you alienated that segement of your fanbase consisting of 50 year old single men living in their mother's basements, but those were not your true fans. Those of us to whom this makes not matter appreciate your artistry and don't need a gimic to sell us your music (great music has neither sexual orientation nor statutory rape clause). Though as I stated, that you had such a gimic, as such, makes me love you only more. It was a device for facilitating social self-consciousness. We learned a bit about ourselves as a culture when you kissed on Mtv and we cheered and purchased your albums because of the spectacle only to find it was all a charade. It took me a while to see the genius in your work and by the time I came around, the lesbian facade was dropped. Once we were ready to be truthful with each other, we were ready to love each other.




-Brian

Thesis Statement: Awesome

It looks like several applications have gone out with a typo in the first line of the cover letter. I'm a champion.

More about jobs

Here's what little news there is:

I've decided to apply for a position at Virginia Tech.
I've decided to apply for a position at the University of New Mexico.

The majority of the schools to which I applied had Nov. 1 deadlines. So, I expect to hear nothing very soon.

Like most application processes, once the application is sent, there is little one can do. For this reason, I don't have much commentary on the process. Like last year, I'm not terribly stressed about it. Now, if December rolls around and I don't have an interview, I might start getting a little anxious. However, worrying at this point is premature and achieves nothing. There are lots of annoying things about the process, but it is just part of it; you can accept it and work with it, or you can rant about it and imbitter yourself. Of course, were it not for the modicum of support I get from my department, I'd probably be singing a much different tune. I'm lucky that my department charges me only $2 to send out my dossier (even to programs overseas), and that the secretary prints off my cover letters on letterhead for me and stuffs my envelopes. From what I understand, that is more than a lot of places do for their graduate students, and if I had to pay $5 bucks per application (as some do) and do my own envelope stuffing (as some do), I'd probably be as bitter as this guy is.