Plant a few RFID readers around town. Give each race participant a card and map with the reader locations. They choose the best route and, using any transportation means, strive to be first to scan their card at each of the readers. All participants meet back at the origin to celebrate. Game progress is tracked on a web site that each reader talks to.

I’m not ready for a new bike yet, but… Mark C turned me onto chainless shaft-driven bicycles today. I guess they haven’t really caught on, but I don’t see why. The only complaints I’ve heard are about the added weight of a shaft drive vs. a chain. Otherwise it seems superior. Mark pointed me to an Incline bike for $299 at webbicycles.com. 3 speed hybrid. Pretty sweet.

Uh oh. I can see myself quickly turning into a bike nut.

Did some photoshopping and bass practice today. Worked on my personal “credo statement” for tonight’s meeting at the UU church in Harvard Sq. Here’s the UUs’ demands:

THINGS YOU MIGHT INCLUDE IN YOUR CREDO STATEMENT

• beliefs about the purpose of life
• beliefs about the nature of the divine
• beliefs about the spiritual self/soul
• beliefs about love/relationships
• beliefs about community
• beliefs about Unitarian Universalism
• beliefs about justice/oppression/privilege
• beliefs about beauty/art/expression
• beliefs about death
• things you’re not sure about
• beliefs you’re still exploring/learning about
• things you don’t really care about
• beliefs about what keeps you “on the path”
• beliefs about what drives you “off the path”
• how all of the above fit together!

I wrote out a doc answering these quesions as briefly as possible (because anything more would result in a short book for each) which I need to refine more before I post here. The amount of overlap in my answers to the above questions means that I can reduce my current four pages of credo to one. My only concern with these questions is that they will encourage too-vague answers. Or are simple answers the best?

I put Boston Secrets on the back burner today, and while I’m upset that I can’t continue with it right now, I feel a little bit of pressure has been lifted and I can keep working on smaller projects for a while. And there’s no shortage of smaller projects right now…

Finally made bagels today, which was lots of fun, very tasty, and not too much of a time commitment. It takes two days of mostly waiting, but I can imagine the prep work taking only about 20 minutes if I were used to it. The prep work gives you a couple trays of bagel dough that must ferment in the fridge overnight. The next morning, you drop the cold bagels into boiling water for a couple minutes, bake them for about 10 minutes, let them cool for 15, and you’re done.

I wasn’t used to the stiffness of bagel dough, and it definitely felt like I was doing something wrong. My standing mixer actually started smoking after trying to knead the dough for a couple minutes, so I had to do it by hand. I thought I was doomed, but after kneading and letting it rest for 20 minutes, the dough had a really great consistency and was ready for shaping. Shaping just involves poking a hole in a chunk of dough and widening the circle.

I topped some of the bagels with kosher salt and shallots, but left most plain… and they were delish.

(the bagel recipe is from the excellent book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice)

I went down to the Cambridge City Hall with Karl on Monday morning to witness the first legal gay marriages in the USA. Amazing. So convenient for us to wander just down the street from and watch an historical event that is such a milestone for the gay and lesbian community, that has such an impact on my life and society at large, and that’s getting international coverage. There were probably a thousand or so supporters (I’m never good at guessing, but look at the photos), a dozen or so protesters (from the Westboro Baptist Church, which is not a church, is not Baptist, and is in Topeka), and tons of satellite trucks and camera people. The crowd was clapping and cheering, waiving flags around, blowing bubbles, throwing rice, and handing out flowers as couples came and went out of City Hall.

Walking back to Karl’s house, an older woman along the road told us, “It’s been so long since I saw that much happiness in one place. I love Cambridge!”

I finally picked up The Culture of Fear, one of the dustier books on my shelf that I couldn’t stomach when the weather was colder and there were no flowers.

But it’s springtime so I need something to keep the darkness of winter brooding in my mind. Barry Glassner’s 1999 book on why Americans are so scared will certainly do the trick. He looks behind the made-up alliterative epidemics of the 1990s: killer kids, road rage, mutant microbes. The frequencies of these things are anomolous, says Glassner: 19 violence related deaths out of 54 million children in the nation’s schools during the 1996-97 academic year. About 200 of 250,000 total roadway deaths between 1990 and 1997 were attributed to angry drivers by the AAA. And don’t even get me started on flesh-eating bacteria.

Why do we make these fears up? Glassner’s not just blaming the media, though they take a beating. And he’s not agreeing with Roosevelt here. He’s just saying that the real trouble is misplaced and overblown fears. Road rage took the focus away from drunk driving, because people were sick of talking about drunk driving in the mid-90s, but drunk driving caused 17,000 deaths in the same period from 1990 to 1997, so it’s definitely still a worthy fear. Asbestos removal from schools in the 90s cost us $10 billion and posed more health hazards by being removed than if we’d taken no action. Glassner backs his assertions up with plenty of statistics and references (I’m sorry I haven’t included references for the stats I’ve given here, but they’re all in the book).

It’s interesting to read this pre-9/11 book post-9/11. I think there’s even more fear mongering right now than in 1999. And more things to be legitimately fearful of. But Bush is really feeding on it. (Glassner: “[people reacting to fear] is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning”) It cuts across party lines and it plays out at federal, state, and local levels. I’m terrified and angry, and so should you be. Lets riot!

Here’s how I’m rioting: in a fit of rage I got rid of my TV, shut down the computer, quit my job, and got outside to see how the world is these days. I got ice cream. I went to the library and started reading some books. So far I’m pretty happy with this strategy.

(The Culture of Fear was referenced when Michael Moore interviewed Glassner in Bowling for Columbine)

now the clock is striking one
so we might as well begin it
as there’s dancing to be done
and our time is not infinite

if there’s such a thing as love
if there’s such a thing as love
I’m in it.

- from The Magnetic Fields’ new album, I, which is pretty fantastic. They’ve got my kind of melodies and lyrics. Funny and sweet, but not without a good dose of dark irony. And no synths.

I finally got my banneton proofing basket out and I made this loaf, which I’m really happy with how it looks. I haven’t sliced it open yet (still cooling).. but the exciting difference here between this and my past Italian loafs (other than the shaping) is the flour. I’m using Bob’s Red Mill organic white flour. I could tell by the feel and look as it rose that this flour is definitely a different animal from my standard King Arthur stuff. It’s also $1.25 per pound vs. $0.35 for King Arthur, so I’m probably not going to use it in the long term. I’m very interested in trying bagels with this flour next, as supposedly they are best made with the highest gluten flour available.

Feeling much better now, with my hearing back, and some new inspiration.

I saw an interesting article today in the NY Times about new and interesting ways to merge video games with real world games. The article focuses on a Pac-Man game played in real life in Manhattan, where strategists remotely track the players’ movement using GPS and assist via cell phone. This kind of thing has just started to blossom in the last year as WiFi and GPS became cheaper.

What I love is how this flip-flops the idea of virtual reality, which we tried and tried so many times. Why bother? With video games, five or so years ago we were starting from the virtual space and looking for ways to make it more physical (guns that aim at the screen, Dance Dance Revolution, steering wheels and petals). Now we have what I’ll call “real virtuality”, starting from the physical space and introducing virtual controls and feedback, a more promising approach, in my opinion. With virtual reality, we are slaves to the machine and its limitations. But real virtuality starts with our goals as active humans and allows computers to assist in whatever limited way they can. And right now, even with the limited technologies we do have for this, there’s a lot of untapped potential.