Zeno's paradox

One of the more famous Greek puzzles is called "Zeno's paradox," named after the philosopher who conceived it. The problem goes something like this:

"Achilles, the great warrior, was to compete in a footrace with a tortoise. Because Achilles is so much faster, the tortoise was given a large head start. Supposing that Achilles started 100 meters behind, and is ten times faster than the tortoise--well, he should run 100 meters, but in that time the tortoise has moved 10. So Achilles runs another 10 meters, but in that time, the tortoise has pulled ahead by 1. So he runs 1 meter, but in that time, the tortoise has stayed ahead by a tenth of a meter. As he runs a tenth, the tortoise holds his lead by a hundredth. Achilles must cover an infinite number of such smaller distances; and since no mortal can complete an infinite number of things, surely it is impossible for him to catch the tortoise!"

It's an interesting paradox. The thing that's so interesting about it, however, is that it also has quite a simple solution. To begin, this paradox tells a lie: "No mortal can complete an infinite number of things." But if the infinite number of things is ever smaller and smaller, then sometimes we mortals can do precisely that. Suppose I try to solve this problem first:

"I wish to sum up all of the distances which Achilles will travel: First the hundred meters, then then 10, then the 1, then the tenth, then the hundredth, and so on, forever. How large a number shall I have when I am done?"

Well, the answer will look very much like this:

111.11111111111111...

except of course that the string of ones shall go on forever. But this number is not infinite. In fact, consider the decimal representation of 111 and 1/9 (one-hundred-eleven and one-ninth). If you do the long division, you will soon realize that it is 111 followed by an endless string of 1's after the decimal point. Thus, the sum of the earlier infinite series is precisely 111 and 1/9 meters, which is the point in the race where Achilles will pass the tortoise.

And there you go: How to answer Zeno's paradox. I hope I said it clearly enough.

Debating Health Care (Poorly)

I've been hearing a lot about the state of health care in the United States. Since I have some strong opinions in this area, I present you with my own rant on the topic.

Before digging in, I wish to start with a little bit of Chinese history. Fifty years ago, Mao Zedong started introducing a series of agricultural reforms to the new agricultural communes in China. These reforms were unscientific and had not been tested; grain production dropped by nearly a quarter over the next three years. To avoid government anger, officials would exaggerate their productivity in their official reports, which in turn led the government to requisition too much grain for state projects. This cycle of deception led to the deaths of tens of millions of people by starvation--comparable to the entire body count of World War 2.

Much of the grain taken by the state was being routed to work crews building massive infrastructure--dams, canals, and so forth. Unfortunately, many of these were so poorly designed and constructed that they turned out worthless. Many trained engineers had been disqualified from the work because Mao Zedong had ideological problems with them.

Mao's successor in the communist party was named Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping abandoned many of the communist economic theories and moved China toward a comparatively capitalist system. Defending this, he said "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat so long as it catches mice." He had been forced out of power during Mao's lifetime due to his willingness to apply market economics to China's problems. After Mao's death, he returned to prominence, and is the architect of much of modern China's prosperity. Deng Xiaoping advocated seeking truth from facts. And this is what I feel is often missing from health care debates: People make emotional or ideological arguments, with no reference to actual facts about health care.

A handful have claimed there is no need for reform. Sen. Shelby (R-Ala) claimed that Obama would destroy "the best health care system the world has ever known." Of course, he is already on government health care, so I'm not sure how to interpret that. Still, what does he mean that it's the best health care in the world? How do you even measure that? The two most obvious measures that come to mind are:

1. What is our life expectancy?
2. What is our infant mortality rate?

The problem is that the United States does badly on both of these measures. And it's not just a problem of having a large population: Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France are crushing us soundly, and all have 50+ million populations.

While some of the difference is probably the poor American diet and activity levels, how do you explain the infant mortality rate? Infants all weigh pretty nearly the same amount. Besides, the problems with our health care can be measured in a host of other ways (error rate, amount of preventive care, etc.), and we fare poorly on these measures as well. There's an article linked at the end if you want some actual numbers.

There's been a lot of ideological name-calling. Claiming that health care reform is evil because it is "socialist" is an attempt to evoke the ideological red scare of yesteryear. The fact is, most of the health care systems that are destroying us on efficiency, outcomes, and access to care are socialized systems. Is it okay for more of us to die or get sick so that politicians can score points? Or do you believe that America will implement socialized health care more poorly than other countries which have done it? Why do you believe we are less competent than they are?

Some believe that government always performs poorly compared to the private market. What is this argument based on? Do you believe private mercenaries would do better than our army? Do you believe a network of private toll roads would be preferable to the Interstate system? Do you believe that the heavy government price regulation of our water, sewage, and electrical systems has resulted in poor delivery of these services? The truth is that government does certain things better than private industry, and this is a well studied issue in economics. Further, health care run fully by the government has been tried and tested dozens of times in dozens of places, and many of them are healthier than we are. It's not an automatic failure.

I think there's a hidden issue behind this hatred of government programs. American social programs are usually directed at the poor. The middle class gets taxed to pay for these things, but we don't see the benefit. I agree that this is genuinely unfair. We don't resent roads because we all see the benefit from roads. We don't resent national parks because we can all visit them. We don't resent the military because the military defends everybody. I think that a basic level of health care should also be available to everybody, however that is accomplished. I think that there'll be a fair amount of bellyaching tell it gets passed, but as long as the benefits hit everyone, we'll shortly be wondering how we lived without it.

Finally, I refer you to someone who's done a lot more research than I have. This article is much longer than this post, but is backed by a great deal more research. You may not like its conclusions, but if you wish to contradict them, do so with actual facts. Please don't fight back using pure ideology. Because if there's one point I hope I made at the beginning of this post, it's that the cost of clinging to ideology in spite of reality is measured in human lives.

We ran out of candy

It's a little late, but are some random snippets about the Halloween party.

Nearly everyone showed up late. Most of the food did, eventually, get eaten (and the barbecue turned out amazingly well), but it was more a trickle through the evening rather than a big munchfest.

Seriously, the barbecue was great. I still need to figure out a safe way to use a charcoal grill on my balcony. I put a tarp down just in case, and it ended up with small holes burnt in it. Scary. I used a sauce called "Soy Vey" for the marinade (this is what happens when Jewish people marry Chinese people), and it was really good. Just wow. I think you need to grill over hot charcoal to get the full effect, though.

A few people dressed up as rock stars. I wore solid black (I wanted some depressing jewelry, but couldn't find anything I liked). Kim probably wins best costume, though Ismail also made a good shot at it. Curt & Shana showed up nicely costumed, though they didn't go for the rock star thing. Mary gets an honorable mention :).

We played quite a lot of Rock Band. This was the point of the party, and it was entertaining. Thanks to Ismail for bringing the Beatles edition. It was good variety!

Apple crisp with cream on top is delicious. I should purchase some method of whipping cream.

I had a veritable horde of children descend upon my home. This is a refreshing change from the last few years up in Orem, when I didn't see a single child. Nathan and I knew we'd probably get more trick-or-treaters this year, so we purchased four large bags of candy. Ismail also donated a bag of Mexican candies, so there really was a lot. No matter -- the doorbell rang every few minutes for an hour or so, and we were completely out of candy by seven o'clock. It was kind of embarrassing, though no one played any tricks (that I know of...). Next year, we shall buy TEN pounds of candy. Crazy kids and their insane sugar requirements!

Congratulations on the mission call!

124th post!

Wow, 124 posts! And as you know, 124 is a really nice round number, so this is usually when you stop and talk about how much you've posted, right?

The prime factors of 124 are 31, 2, and another 2, you know. And it's the model number of some Russian airplane. And it's ... yeah, there's nothing special about this number. Unless, that is, you are counting in base 31, in which case this number is '4,0' but in that case you are out of your mind, you crazy people. However, I forgot to say anything on my 100th post, and it's getting embarrassing. Not that this helped.

The best thing that happened today was a decently good veggie burrito at Bajio's for dinner. It has caramelized onion and corn and sour cream and stuff in it, and it's one of my favorite things there. Of course it tastes much better chimi-style (deep fried and crispy), but it's a lot less healthy that way. I *do* try to be healthy sometimes.

It's a pity that the reason I was at Bajio's is because I was putting out fires at work and way too stressed to do anything leisurely for dinner. It would've been more fun to be going there because I felt like a veggie burrito. But be the reasons whate'er they will, it was a good burrito.

The fires are mostly out, by the way, but not completely out. One small consolation is that they are no longer my problem.

Feeling Vaguely Important

Last week was not my first time giving job interviews. I've given a few job interviews, occasionally to people that we hired. However, last week was my first time giving a job interview to someone significantly older than me. I'm aware that by the time you reach adulthood, age matters a great deal less in determining positions of authority, but it was still pretty strange.

I still hadn't had a chance to run out and grab cheese by mentoring time, so we ran by a grocery store on the way to my place and had him pick a cheese flavor. He went for sharp cheddar. I couldn't stand sharp cheddar when I was 10, but it tasted good and he enjoyed it, so no complaints.

At a certain sister's suggestion, I'm holding a Halloween party this weekend. If you actually know me then you're invited (I don't know how many random internet denizens I have reading my blog, but you guys are totally getting left out in the cold here). We'll be playing Rock Band and (maybe) Dance Dance Revolution. If you want to dress up, dress like a rock star (this requirement restricts you in no way, given what I've seen of rock stars; think of it more as an inspiration). It's also way past time I had a barbecue, so the food will be grilled deliciousness. If you are vegetarian and wish to attend, warn me and I will try to have something filling that doesn't contain animal products.

Toasted Cheese Sandwiches

It's funny. I'm always tired in the mornings, so why am I never tired enough to fall asleep at night? It's one of the great mysteries of the universe.

I'm hanging out with Camren the protégé after sleep and work (I'd say "tomorrow," but that's not strictly...). I'm planning on making toasted cheese sandwiches. I have good bread, but the only cheeses in the fridge are a delicious old world swiss and parmesan. I may have to go and buy some cheddar. I had the swiss with potatoes and veggies yesterday and it was awesome, but kids tend to have uncomplicated palates.

Work has been really interesting lately, but also pretty stressful. I'm working on some genuinely hard problems. I imagine many of my readers can relate -- the actual work can be very hard, very tiring, and very frustrating, but the immense satisfaction you get when it all comes together makes it all worth it. I suppose a lot of good things in life are like that.

One of my current pet projects* is to build some videos that explain what our software does and how it works. One of the big problems with working for a company that develops 3-d modeling plug-ins that provide a new formulation of curved surfaces (with associated modeling tools) within existing CAD/CAM packages is that I don't really have a comprehensible answer to "what do you do for work?"** Hopefully, a video that explains what I do will be a slightly better answer than "here, look at some pretty pictures of jewelry! Also, electric guitars!" which is how I currently explain it.

OK, time to attempt sleep.

* Yargh, I have multiple pet projects.

** That was a joke. Laugh.

What I did for General Conference

I listened to General Conference, of course, but I also visited my sister and her kids in distant northern Utah. The kids are very cute, but since this is a public blog, I shall not prove it to you. You shall just have to trust me.

While we were driving around, I ended up sitting in the back seat where my nephew usually sits. His favorite CD was playing, which included this song, the which is now thoroughly stuck in my head. Please visit that link and share my excruciating, yet catchy pain. Then, if you wish to escape that song, feel free to replace it with this one, which still qualifies as (A) the catchiest song in the history of the universe, the video for which is (B) the strangest thing I have ever watched. There is no way to escape from that song, by the way.

While up north, I bought a lot of swiss cheese. I was not previously aware that swiss cheese could taste so darn good. I already liked swiss cheese, mind you, but this was unusually good swiss cheese. Alas, there is no way to attach flavors to blogs, so I cannot share with you. You shall have to visit me and ask very, very politely if you want to see what I mean.

Happy Independence Day

For Independence day, the BBC posted a list of ten good things that America has brought the world. I'll quote one of them:

Item Number Four is aviation. America did invent the aeroplane but it was rather a dull device at first and spent its early years being flown short distances in wobbly straight lines by plucky pioneers.

Before long though, America had invented barnstorming, and intrepid entertainers were performing the Charleston on the wings of bi-planes as they were flown under low bridges. A pointless but brilliant feat.

I put it down to the manner in which the Declaration of Independence promises the right to the pursuit of happiness.

The list includes such other classics as ice cubes and American cheese. You can read the article here.

The more things stay the same

I was reading an article about the Berlin airlift and shortly after an article about Russia allowing use of its airspace for United States planes transporting weapons into Afghanistan. The two events are almost exactly sixty years apart, and are a great illustration of just how fast some things change.

World War II had just ended then. It's difficult now, I think, to imagine just how angry the world was with Germany. The four major powers (the Soviet Union, England, France, and the United States) had a fairly simple plan: They would destroy all of Germany's industry, and rebuild it as a mostly agricultural society. That way, Germany could never again build up the enormous military and industry that it had during World War II. That ended up being unworkable, and a new set of problems quickly emerged.

Germany was divided into four sub-countries, one for each power, and the capital city of Berlin was also divided into four districts. Since Berlin was in the Soviet sector of the country, the Soviets hoped to eventually make the whole of it communist, and after a few years they cut off all supplies to non-Soviet Berlin to try and force them to acquiesce to Soviet control. This resulted in the Allies mounting a very difficult and very large operation to supply the entire city by air. There had been no written agreement with the Soviets about land rights to the city (the Allies were relying on Soviet goodwill), but they did have clear written agreements on air passage rights. The Soviets couldn't stop the airlift without being dishonorable.

One of my favorite stories from the airlift was when the French agreed to build a new, larger airport for the supplies. There were two towers owned by the Russian army blocking the flight path. Since there was no chance the Russians would agree to their removal, the French simply blew them up during the night-time. The next day, the furious Russian commander approached the French commander and asked "How could you blow up those towers!?" Apparently, the Frenchman replied, "we used dynamite."

Nowadays, the Soviet Union is gone, and Russians and westerners can visit each other relatively easily. We've got a completely new set of insurmountable obstacles nowadays. So next time you're wandering if the Palestinians and the Israelis will ever forgive each other, or if it's possible to truly dismantle terrorism, or if it's really possible to feed Africa -- perhaps it just takes time.

Link has some competition

I have no idea what the game's going to be like, but for the Legend of Zelda fans out here, you should probably see the trailer for The Last Guardian. That link claims mature content, but there is no bad language, no nudity, and the violence is bloodless and cartoonish. There aren't even any swords. Curiously, the main character looks like an Asian, albeit a superhumanly athletic one, whereas last generation's games stuck strictly by the everyone-looks-European convention.

I took apart my iPhone on Sunday. The goal was to get the home button working. The case will never quite be the same, but we got it apart and back together in working order, which was quite a feat (it took about 2 hours). The only thing we couldn't get working was ... well, the home button. It worked while it was apart and we were testing it, but it quit again as soon as it was back together. It is to laugh.

The 3G phone has now dropped to $99.00. I am officially tempted, in spite of the extra $10.00 a month that they get you for on the plan (it comes with faster Internet). I'm trying to decide if the new line of phones is worth the extra cash.

Whose brilliant idea was red and white stripes?

I have some beautiful shirts. They have red and white stripes on them. When I was first given them (they were gifts), the stripes were a gorgeous, snowy white, and the red was as bright as cherries.

After a single washing, this is no longer the case. How could it possibly be? Everyone knows that red bleeds like mad in the wash, and unfortunately this appears to be true even when I leave the water on the coldest setting the machine provides. So my shirts are now faintly pink with red stripes.

Whose brilliant idea was it to put red and white on the same article of clothing? I really don't know how to avoid this one.

I can actually get these shirts more-or-less acceptable if I wash them by themselves in a large load. This is very wasteful of water, but by having such a high water-to-dissolved-dye ratio, the white ends up mostly white. It still fails utterly to be a crisp, snowy white, unfortunately (already ruined that). It has occurred to me that carefully painting the stripes with bleach would probably fix things, but one tiny mistake and the shirt will look like I was playing with bleach.

I have ordered a new home button and case opening tool for my iPhone. And lo, there shall be a great voiding of the warranty soon. Hopefully this will also make the phone usable for taking pictures again, which might even result in my blog being a little more colorful.

Revival?

I've run out of news reader stuff to read, I don't feel like playing games, and it's a decent hour to be sleeping. My brain hasn't quite shut down yet, so here I am -- blogging, my Absolute Last Resort Of Boredom.

Cav's trying to get me to learn Esperanto, I've started on it before, and already know a few words and structures, so what the heck -- going through flash cards for a few hours ought to get me up to a vaguely conversational level, and the roots are super easy to remember (I know a Slavic, a Germanic, and a Romance language, and all Esperanto roots are drawn from those three categories, so I recognize most of them). I will try to resist the temptation to blog in Esperanto, however.

I've been invited to speak at some kind of high school teacher's convention in Salt Lake City. I'll be talking about demos and multimedia and stuff. It should be a lot of fun. I really need to work on my presentation, but the deadline's still a month away, so my usual get-things-done panic hasn't properly kicked in yet. I have 100 minutes to fill, how hard can it possibly be? :P

Bulgarian Musaka recipes

Most of this post was not written by me. I miss Bulgarian food occasionally, and Google has been great for finding recipes. I've found it's a lot more successful, of course, if I search in Bulgarian. Lately, I've been trying to find good recipes for Moussaka. These attempts usually result in dozens and dozens of recipes which have very little in common -- Bulgarians make moussaka with eggplant, sauerkraut, pumpkin, leeks, spinach, rice, carrots, and any number of other things. I found a forum thread that gave a recipe rather similar to the one I remember and love, and went ahead and translated it. This is the thread just as it was written, but translated to English; dashes separate posts, and square brackets give my translation notes. I'm leaving this here partly to have the recipe posted somewhere that I won't lose it, and partially so that people will nag me to try it (you know you want to!).

----------------
Biskvita:
This is the so-called "cafeteria" stew, from a book of recipes for occasions when you're eating with company.

For four portions:
350 g. minced meat (mixed -- pork with beef or whatever you like)
600 g. potatoes
100 g. onion
300 g. tomatoes (fresh or preserved)
50 g. oil
30 g. flour
130 ml. fresh milk [i.e. not yogurt]
2 eggs
50 g. kashkaval cheese [mozzarella or mild cheddar are very similar]
1 tsp. butter
Red and black pepper, parsley [Red pepper is paprika, not particularly spicy]

Peel the potatoes and cut them into thin little slices. Then half-fry them in the fat (in the original recipe it says to "blanch" them). Grease a pan of appropriate size, and layer: chopped tomatoes, half the potatoes, the slightly-rinsed minced meat [maybe it just means 'add a little water'?], the remaining potatoes, and slices of tomato. Add boiling hot [beef] bouillon to cover everything, then bake in a heated oven until it looks cooked. After this, pour on a bechamel sauce: The flour is fried with the butter and then you stir in the milk. After it thickens (while stirring continuously), pull it off the heat and add beaten eggs. Pour this mixture on the musaka, sprinkle grated cheese on the top, and then cook it until the crust browns.

My changes -- I cut the potatoes into cubes and I don't fry them, but just add them raw. I add carrot, I add the tomatoes later, and I use less meat. For spices, I add savory and just a little bit of basil (homegrown -- it has nothing in common with the stuff they sell in packets).

----------------
Raza:
And my changes to your changes B-)
They're the same as yours. We also really like the musaka with the potatoes cut into cubes (It's not particularly aesthetically pleasing, but it's really good, eh? :-D) However, I use yogurt and eggs for the topping. If I have some pumpkin [squash] on hand, I chop that too into cubes and add it to the potatoes. It comes out softer and lighter. I also make musaka with just pumpkin and blue [unripe?] tomatoes. And I've made it a few times with sour cabbage [sauerkraut I think]. Once I was too lazy to roll the surmi [dolmades] and so my sly plan was to try them in the form of a musaka :-D. I was worried [my heart was curling up?] that someone was going to make fun of it :-D.

----------------
Veshtitsa:
Hehe, yeah, Raza ;-)

I add pumpkins and a [sweet] pepper, it makes it really delicious! And because my husband doesn't eat meat, ordinarily I make it with soy minced meat, steamed beforehand with onion and carrots and lots of spices: savory, dill, cumin, and black pepper. My son even thinks that it tastes better with the soy mince than with the meaty variety. I don't do a topping, my family doesn't like it :-D.

An unintended cultural insight

Google has an interesting feature where it tries to guess what you're going to type. So if you type part of a word or phrase, it shows you a list of common ways to complete that phrase from its search history. It seems to censor certain words, but for the most part, you get a clear view of what people are searching for.

One of the curious side effects of this is that it reflects the mood of our times. Try typing in "overcoming," and see the most common results. Now try "mormon," then "lds," for an interesting view of both sides of the coin (Mormons refer to themselves as LDS far more often, thus searches for 'lds' will find mostly things that Mormons are typing in, while searching for 'mormon' will find what others are asking about them).

If this kind of stuff interests you, Google also keeps a site where they show what the most common searches are over time. Look at www.google.com/trends.

Mentoring seems like it will be fun

So, I finally met the kid that I'm going to be mentoring. His name is not Cameron, but if you call him that, he probably won't notice. If anyone feels like going and doing some fun thing that would entertain and preferably educate a nine-year-old (almost ten?), having random interesting people come along is a good idea on occasion.

Also, I need to come up with one entertaining/preferably educational thing that will keep a nine-year-old occupied approximately once a week. I could *really* use suggestions, dearest readers.

Today (sigh, yesterday) was the T-Splines board meeting. There was lots of talk about software and sales and marketing and then we talked about what we really want to do with the company. So we're going to have a big old debate about what kind of company we really want to be, since "a surviving one" seems like it's probably a given by now.

Foods I want to make

I have some Chorizo in the freezer. It tastes like taco meat and is shaped like a sausage. I'm not sure what to do with it.

I'd like to try making proper sushi. I talked about that one already. I still haven't bought the deep freezer.

I want to make orange chicken. Brother-in-law Steve has the best recipe that I've had, so I should nag him about that.

I've been making a lot of roast vegetables lately. The method's really simple -- you cut the vegetables up thinly enough so that they'll cook through (about 1/2" thick). I do one potato, one carrot, and an onion. Mix about 1 tsp beef bouillon powder, 2 tbsp olive oil, and about 2 tsp rosemary together into a goop. Add any other spices you feel like. Dump the chopped veggies in a big bowl, pour the paste over the top, and stir the raw vegetables until they're coated. Stick them in the oven at 425-ish for about 25-35 minutes, until they're brown (the onion often goes a little black). They're really good ^_^. You can tweak the amount of oil to try and be low-fat, but if you underdo it they'll get too dry.

I haven't made rice pudding in a while.

I want to figure out how to properly grill tomatoes. I've tried a broiler but they still don't brown at all -- too wet. I think a charcoal grill might do it. Grilled tomato halves with dill, feta cheese, and paprika on top is really good, by the way.

I have a lot of old curry powder that needs using. I should make curry, obviously.

I used to have the ultimate recipe for baked pancakes. They're either German pancakes or Swedish pancakes (the difference between those two was very subtle). I don't know where it went. Same goes for my ultimate brownie recipe. Actually, I think that one's in my mission journal somewhere, if I don't mind putting up with 100 pages of a missionary journal to find it.

But seriously, folks, what are you supposed to do with Chorizo?

Fuselages!

A customer posted that they intend to use my software to help design fuselages. Actually, it'll probably be pretty good for that, but there's something vaguely terrifying about "if you did it wrong, maybe people will die." In fairness to me, that's not my problem -- a heck of a lot of analysis and adjustment happens long after it has exited our program, but there's still that vague anxiety of "are our surfaces mathematically correct? Do we meet all of our physical properties?"

I bet lots of people worry about stuff like that, and virtually nobody worries about exactly that.

Today was Valentine's day. Not my favorite day of the year. I tried a new Thai restaurant and bought a paper shredder. Tonight, I shall shred things. Nothing melodramatic, unfortunately -- just old bills and so forth.

Newly embiggened E3

I wrote an angry letter to my old apartment complex today. They jilted me on my security deposit. I'm curious how they'll respond -- it's a fairly small amount, but I still resent it when large companies pull these kinds of stunts.

And the real reason that I'm posting on my blog: A games web-site recently posted an article referring to the newly embiggened E3 to take place in 2009. For background, the (deliberate!) downsizing of the E3 convention has been a complete disaster for them, and most of the major players pulled out as it collapsed. Therefore, they recently decided to enlarge it again, which is what the article was about.

The article has since been corrected, but not before a lot of Simpsons quotes made it into the comments. Life imitates art, and American culture imitates The Simpsons.

Zeers and refrigeration

Time for my annual blog post! Yeah, I know, I hardly ever post any more :P. Recently, I've been reading up on fridges and freezers -- I've been thinking of getting a deep freezer. While I was doing that, I read about a really simple invention, called a "zeer." In northern Africa, the weather is hot, and there isn't much refrigeration, so vegetables often go rotten within 2 or 3 days. A few years ago, a schoolteacher came up with the idea of taking a clay pot, and putting a smaller clay pot inside of it. You then fill the space between the two pots with sand, and then run water over the sand. Last of all, you put a wet piece of cloth over the top. Thanks to evaporative cooling, you get no-power-required refrigeration! It's very simple, but it makes vegetables last many times longer, and makes the markets both more hygienic and the produce nicer. Here's an article about it.

Deep freezers have a bunch of advantages, but the one that actually got me thinking about it was discovering that sushi-grade fish is (surprise!) always frozen before being thawed out for serving. In fact, it legally must be frozen to an extremely cold temperature, since such freezing destroys parasites in the fish. Now, shipping fresh fish is kind of impossible, but frozen fish? That can be done! But unless I use it within a few hours of delivery, I'd need to keep it frozen, and that means a heavy-duty, extremely cold freezer.

Unfortunately, I can't find any realistic specifications on chest freezers. It looks like some of them can go as low as -20 °F, which is cold enough, but I can never find a temperature range and a particular model listed in the same place. It looks like the dials on the sides of most deep freezers are labeled "1" through "6," rather than anything useful.

I've heard quite a few horror stories about the hazards of homemade sushi, mind you, so I'm trying to be Very Sure.

Vesela Koleda!

The title of the post means "Merry Christmas" in Bulgarian. It's a little difficult to come up with a good blog post for Christmas. I think it's probably traditional to talk about giving Christmas presents to homeless children or something of that sort, so in line with tradition, I'll talk about something else. You should still give presents to homeless children, mind you.

Christmas in Bulgaria has the curious distinction of being a less commercial holiday with a stronger religious focus. While I believe this is fading from year to year, there is a rather curious reason for this, and it has to do with Communism.

The Communists were ideologically atheist, and as often happens when one group assumes their ideology is superior, they went to great lengths to weaken the influence of religion in their countries. Religious freedom in Bulgaria was heavily curtailed, with Eastern Orthodox churches sometimes raided by the police on Easter and Christmas and the attendees arrested. Even so much as attending church became an act of bravery and political defiance, and possession of Bibles in the home was outlawed.

As part of this campaign of religious eradication, the Communists wanted to stop the Christmas holiday. Christmas traditions, however, were and are as popular in Bulgaria as anywhere, and attempting to wipe them out directly would have met with strong resistance and popular disgust. Rather than tackle this head on, they simply moved most of the major traditions to New Year's day. Bulgarians would set up trees, put up lights, and have presents delivered by a man who wears white and red named "Grandpa Frost," all for New Years day.

The curious side effect of this is that Christmas was left with only its religious aspects -- it was a day to remember the birth of Jesus, and nothing else. Of course, once the Communist yoke was lifted, the Bulgarians were free to celebrate Christmas the western way if they wished, and the traditions have been drifting a few days backward ever since.

So remember today the priceless gift of freedom to worship God "according to the dictates of our own conscience." Merry Christmas everyone.