Things Yuri likes

One sunny day, Timur and I were waiting for this or that appointment. I knew it could take quite some time so I took a pencil and a notebook with me. This is what we wrote.

Things that Yuri likes

• British panel shows
• Chess
• Discworld
• Undertale
• 2-D animation
• Critical analysis
• Game Grumps and their 2 bands
• Comics
• Walking on his own
• Coming up with ideas for comics, movies, games, etc.
• Oranges
• Coffee with milk and sugar
• Chocolate ice cream
• Meat (also, to cook it)
• Dark comedy
• Sherlock Holmes (various implementations)
• Blues
• Cowboy-related stuff
• His black cap

Las cosas que le gustan a Yuri

• Programas de concursos británicos
• Ajedrez
• Mundodisco
• Undertale
• Animación 2-D
• Análisis crítico
• Game Grumps y sus 2 bandas
• Historietas
• Caminar por su cuenta
• Encontrar ideas para cómics, películas, juegos, etc.
• Naranjas
• Café con leche y azúcar
• Helado de chocolate
• La carne (también cocinarla)
• El humor negro
• Sherlock Holmes (varias realizaciones)
• Blues
• Cosas vaqueras
• Su gorra negra

Юра любит...

• Британские телеигры
• Шахматы
• Плоский мир
• Undertale
• Рисованную мультипликацию
• Критический анализ
• Game Grumps и их 2 группы
• Комиксы
• Прогулки в одиночестве
• Придумывать идеи для комиксов, фильмов, игр и т.д.
• Апельсины
• Кофе с молоком и сахаром
• Шоколадное мороженое
• Мясо (также, готовить)
• Чёрный юмор
• Шерлока Холмса (различные реализации)
• Блюз
• Вещи, связанные с ковбоями
• Свою чёрную шапку

The Undercover Economist

by Tim Harford

As the author himself wrote in the introduction to his book,

I would like to thank you for buying this book, but if you’re anything like me you haven’t bought it at all.

Sure I haven’t. Normally I don’t buy the paperback editions that shout at me from their covers “OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD”. (My reasoning being, that’s enough already, the author won’t die of hunger.) Apparently, the landlady of the house that we rent did buy this book. I thought I’ll give it a try.

The book was first published in 2006. Next year, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression began. In hindsight, it is too easy to kick the author in the pants for his rather naïve faith in free-market capitalism, but hey, I don’t always look for things that are not easy. So let’s kick him. Then again, what’s the point doing it eight years later? I’m sure he learned by now at least some of his lessons.

There are many things I disagree with, but I have enjoyed the book anyway. Or maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed it so much? It is well-written, occasionally funny, and makes you think, be skeptical, and go and research those numbers for yourself. And if it is so, Tim Harford should be proud that he made you think and even save some money. (For example, by going for the cheapest of the cappuccinos in Starbucks, or by not buying The Undercover Economist.) Last but not least, he knows Three Men in a Boat (or at least its first chapter), and that counts for something in my book.

Love and Death

a film by Woody Allen

I don’t sweeten my tea or coffee, but I enjoy reading what is written on Spanish sugar sachets. Our last day on Fuerteventura, we had coffee in our favourite pasteleria in Antigua. One of the sachets had this Woody Allen joke on it:

El sexo sin amor es una experiencia vacía. Pero como experiencia vacía es una de las mejores.

Now that we have two teenagers in the house, I thought it is appropriate to watch the source of the above quote with them. They watched and loved Sleeper and Zelig, but I was a bit afraid that the humour of Love and Death would be lost on them (blissfully ignorant of Tolstoyevsky etc.) I really shouldn’t have. The movie was a roaring success. Now they are going to annoy me randomly quoting it. Because every single line is a classic.

Elementary

by Robert Doherty

After watching the first episode of Elementary, I thought it was vastly inferior to Sherlock. Where British make three episodes per season, Americans make 24. Surely they can’t be all as good?

Well I was right here: they aren’t. Some of them are weak, and the very last one of the season is just plain silly. And there are some quite good too.

Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes is as arrogant and annoying as Cumberbatch’s character in Sherlock — or, indeed, as Moriarty in Sherlock. But there’s more to this particular Holmes than genius and arrogance. Eventually, I grew to like him. Maybe because of his vulnerability. Mainly because of his vulnerability. Lucy Liu makes a very decent Dr. Watson: intelligent, reserved and trustworthy. Also, while learning from Holmes, she teaches him a thing or three. Little wonder Holmes, now “clean” ex-addict, becomes so dependent on her. Elementary offers something that was missing from other recent interpretations of Conan Doyle classic stories: development of friendship between Holmes and Watson. On the other hand, Moriarty, aka Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer), is a complete disaster.

Brunus Rosé, Portal de Montsant DO 2009

Things are positively improving here. After finishing our kilo of Maragogipe and half-way through a kilo bag of Lavazza (bought via Amazon!), I was relieved to find that now we have the source of quality coffee beans in Corralejo. They could be found in the Marumba store in C.C. El Campanario. During our last visit there (yesterday, to be precise), I bought a bag of Costa Rican beans and a bottle of this delicious rosé from Catalonia. Try it if you can find it.

More photos of rosé wine @ Shutterstock.

Maragogipe coffee

William H. Ukers wrote in his book All About Coffee:

Maragogipe. This is a variety of Coffea arabica first observed growing near the town of Maragogipe on All Saints Bay, county of Maragogipe, Bahia, Brazil, where it is called Coffea indigena. The green bean is of huge size, and varies in color from green to dingy brown. It is the largest of all coffee beans, and makes an elephantine roast, free from quakers, but woody and generally disagreeable in the cup. However, Dr. P.J.S. Cramer of the Netherlands government’s experimental garden in Bangelan, Java, regards it very highly, referring to it as “the finest coffee known”, and as having “a highly developed, splendid flavor”. This coffee is now found in practically all the producing countries, and shows the characteristics of the other coffees produced in the same soil.

I don’t really know what Ukers meant under “elephantine roast”. Maybe it was a joke of some sort: Maragogipe (also spelled Maragogype) is sometimes referred to as the “elephant bean”, but this is due to the size of the bean, not its taste. (I never tried a roasted elephant though, so I may be wrong.) I discovered Maragogipe coffee a few years ago, thanks to Chisnall’s Delicatessen in Saffron Walden. It quickly became my favorite variety. I bought a kilo of beans from Chisnall’s just before I went to Fuerteventura. This packet should last for a while, hopefully until I find a source of good coffee beans here.

More photos of coffee @ Shutterstock.

Counting Sheep

by Paul Martin

The puritans and dull, workaholic sleep-deniers of this world would have us believe that sleep squanders our precious time that should instead be spent in fruitful labour. This misguided perspective has a long and inglorious pedigree. Many annoying aphorisms, proverbs and sayings have been coined with the naked intention of making us feel guilty about sleeping. ‘Up, sluggards, and waste no life; in the grave will be sleeping enough’, roared Benjamin Franklin. ‘Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty’, says the Bible. ‘A little more Sleep, and a little more Slumber, thus he wastes half his Days, and his Hours without Number’, preached Isaac Watts in his sanctimonious Divine Songs for Children.

Now this is a book that I won’t hesitate to call a “must read”. Sleep lovers like me will enjoy it, but for those who habitually dismiss sleep as a waste of time it can be a life-saver. I am not joking.

It may be a science book but the titles of the chapters and sections are sheer poetry: “Brother caffeine”, “Sister alcohol”, “Exercise is bunk, isn’t it?”, “Give sleep a chance”, “In praise of horizontalism” and so on. Peppered with numerous amusing literary quotes (sounds dumb, but it seems that I’ve never read that much Shakespeare in one book) and historical anecdotes, Counting Sheep will both keep you entertained and induce healthy, guilt-free sleep. Read it, and share it with your sleeping partner. Good night. Sweet dreams.

The lesson here from nature may be that intelligent machines should be explicitly designed to undergo the computer equivalent of sleep, in which information and memories are processed and consolidated off-line in ways that are not possible or efficient during the conventional ‘waking’ state, when the machine is being bombarded with new information about the outside world. Intelligent machines might even be able to enhance their creativity by spending an hour or two dreaming every night (though goodness knows what the computer equivalent of a nocturnal erection would entail).