An International Moment

Today at work, I am...

- signing up for Spanish classes
- listening to Italian and French operas
- and translating a Dutch document into English.

What fun!

Greased Lightning

The newest contender on the auto manufacturing scene promises much for the future, and if all the cars they make are as sexy as their first model, then the future bodes well for them.





Tesla Motors, headed by the big guys from PayPal, Google, and eBay, and featuring the latest in battery technology, has pre-sold over 550 of their first model, the Tesla Roadster. A lovely looking beast with a body designed by Lotus, this car goes far beyond any reasonable hopes for the electric car.
• 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 3.9 seconds (faster than the Porsche 911).
• Top speed of 130 mph.
• Only 3 hours for a full battery charge.
• Capable of traveling 250 EPA highway miles on a single charge.
• Recyclable battery pack weighing half as much as all previous auto Li-ion battery designs.
The Roadster, previously codenamed “BlackStar”, is hoped to make a fashion and status impact during its primary release. At $100,000, the car will be driven by the rich and famous, and thus will first garner the attention of the masses from a distance and identify Tesla as a legitimate and reliable car company (as opposed to other electric car promotion strategies, when the cars were made immediately available to a wide range before their reputations were established).
The sales of the Roadster will help to finance Tesla’s next project, codenamed “WhiteStar”, a more affordable sports sedan comparable to the BMW 5 series, which will sell at around $60,000, and which will be unveiled in 2009 and released in 2010. Still further in the future Tesla plans to release “BlueStar”, the model I am desperately hoping will come to the market - a smaller model with a cost of $30,000 and more improvements than its older siblings. If only my little Honda can hold out until 2012!
Check out Tesla's website and the Wikipedia entry for more pictures and data.

Do You Hear a Ringing?

Sweet, sweet silence. There’s nothing like it, especially when you’ve spent your entire weekend being unjustly punished with a shrill, piercing alarm.
When I got home from work on Friday, the building was filled with a cicada-like ringing emanating from the service closet. I shed my purse and grocery bags and went back to the closet, where I was assaulted by a rapid beeping emanating from our building’s alarm system. I’m still not sure what happened, but apparently the phone lines connecting our fire alarm to our alarm management company were disconnected, and the alarm box was panicking (quite unnecessarily, in my mind). I tried multiple ways of reconnecting the line, including inspecting and jiggling the phone lines and resetting the breaker, but nothing doing. I called my landlady, reported the problem to her answering machine, and hoped that the noise would soon stop.
Unfortunately, my landlady must have been on vacation, because the alarm continued to sound all through the weekend. While most of the residents could probably block out the noise in their apartments, I was not so lucky, since the alarm box hangs on the opposite side of a wall in my apartment. I actually became edgy – the ringing began to penetrate my subconscious, and by Monday morning I was starting to hear the ringing when I was miles away from my apartment.
After work on Monday, I entered my building and stood still for a few seconds. Something was missing. It was noise. Our maintenance man had been there, and had somehow placated the beeping box. As I stood there, I felt as though a boulder that had been sitting on my shoulders had suddenly rolled off. Oh, lovely silence.

Baking Temperatures and Theology

I’ve been downloading various manuals while at work, looking at different formats and gleaning some good (and bad) ideas from all of them. For a portion of the day today, I read manuals on ovens, cameras, and vacuums. Occasionally, when reading instruction manuals, you come across something that strikes you – something odd or out of place. This afternoon, while perusing the last few pages of the GE Trivection Oven manual, I found one of those unexpected statements in the warranty section:

What GE will not cover:
• Damage to the product caused by accident, fire, floods, or acts of God.

I found this fascinating. I’ve never heard of God smiting household appliances before, but apparently this has come up at some point, or it would not be in the manual. But then, by making this assertion, does GE open itself up to theological debates? I mean, what if some customer’s oven is possessed by demons? Should GE be required to exorcize the spirits, since such occurrences are not acts of God?

I can see it now – two Jesuit priests standing in a dark kitchen lit only by candles, facing a dual-door convection oven with menacing red light and smoke pouring from its hellish maw, chucking holy water at it, and shouting “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!” And all the while, there’s a GE business rep crouching in the corner, simultaneously documenting the service costs and wetting himself in terror.

I feel like writing GE and asking what prompted the inclusion of this exception.

Godiva, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?" -- "But I would die," said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul;
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;
"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!" -- "Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd
The Gateway, there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame; her palfrey's foot-fall shot
Light horrors thro' her pulses; the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field,
Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity;
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep'd -- but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivel'd into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gain'd
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.

By the way, Lady Godiva's husband was one of the powerful earls that made life difficult for Edward the Confessor during his reign in England.

Longing

Autumn. I love autumn. I miss autumn. I wish it was here. It’s that time of year when humanity comes to its senses. Summer is the season for frivolity, skin overexposure, and all-around unthinking hedonism. You walk down the road in the height of summer and see people in swimsuits spooning on the front lawn, setting fire to explosive incendiaries, guzzling cheap beer, and making a mess of themselves in undignified ways. These are not the activities of sane people. Summer does this to a person – it wrests your senses from you, and before you know it you’re standing by a pool with a margarita the size of a bowling ball in your hand and your arm wrapped around a scantily clad person who is not your spouse. Summer is not a healthy or sane time of year.

But autumn… Autumn is the time when everybody collectively puts on the brakes, thinks to themselves “Dear heavens, what have I been doing with myself?”, and settles down into calm, rational existence. It awakens primitive urges to go out and buy school supplies and sensible shoes. People slow down, become more aware of their surroundings in autumn.

It is the season of maturity, the harvest, when the cycle of Nature finally gets down to business. Golden wheat, plump members of the gourd family, cornstalks, ripening cheese, and apples so sweet that you get lightheaded when you smell them – that’s what autumn is. Autumn is when the wine is made, when nighttime fires begin to glow, when the earth feels ripe, round, and full.

Gosh, I wish autumn was here.