Colin Powell

Former Army general Colin Powell throws his weight behind Obama: "I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama." The Bears throw themselves under a train losing last night to Arizona State. On balance, I would take an Obama presidency over a Bears' Rose Bowl. But just.

We return from our field trip to the BM and Eitan begs for football. He is pretty motivated after I tell him this morning about Malcolm Gladwell's (motivational guru and author of the best-selling "The Tipping Point") latest book indicating that to be The Greatest requires 10,000 hours of work - this principal trumps other variables like skill and luck and according to Gladwell crosses metiers sport, music and science. Not that I am setting expectations or anything. Any hows, I take the boy to the common and we bump into two sets of neighborhood dads and their sons - an impromptu fathers vs sons results. I trash-talk relentlessly making Eitan cross and the other kids smile - they like being talked to by an adult regardless of what he is saying no doubt.

Madeleine sings at the dinner table: "Do it do it do it do. Do it do it do it do it. Do it do it do it do it." When I tell her to stop, she hums it.

Eating ice cream Eitan screams: "Brain freeze! Brain freeze!" and they crack up.

Madeleine to Eitan eating an ice cream sandwich: "Do it Eitan. stuff it in your mouth and try to scream."

Eitan leaves the table: "I feel like my bum is fat."

BM

We take it to the British Museum against the Shakespeares wishes (Eitan and Madeleine BTW would rather sit inside bored to death than go to a museum).

We make it to see the conclusion of Hadrian, on exhibition and whose wall I touched with Sonnet and her parents in '98. It was April and appropriately it snowed. Unfortunately today is sold out so I will post-pone my full review until Wednesday when I have an entrance.

As we approach the museum I ask Eitan about the Rosetta Stone, which we saw together last visit, and he snipes "yeah, the most boring stone in the whole world." Sometimes it is just plain hard being a kid ("Is there a park? Is there a park? Is there a park?" they plead). Neither deserves the museum so I take Eitan aside and await Sonnet and Madeleine who visit the mummies. Earlier he polished off a chocolate chip chocolate muffin and went bezerko - now he's crashed out and I cuddle him and say it is the sugar and not him. He is miserable but eventually snaps out of it and is back to his old tricks and me mine: "knock it off I said!"

Mission Creep

The Home Office heads towards compulsory registration of all Britain's 72 million mobile phones, more than 40 million of which are pre-paid and untraceable. Registration requires a passport or ID. Phones then can be located to within a few yards using cell site analysis, which tracks mobile users as they move from one signalling area to the next. The system then links with the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system of traffic cameras, which provides live coverage of motorways and main roads. It, in turn, is linked to the DVLA which holds the records of all reigstered vehicles in the country. By monitoring a single telephone call it would be possible to identify exactly where it user was and the registration number of the car, which could be found in seconds by ANPR cameras tracked along its journey. In other words, real-time pefect surveillance. This occurs in parellel to plans for a communications database intercepting data on the web and extracting information to be routed into computers by by MI5 and GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre in Chelteham - last year GCHQ was given £1 billion but estimated to go to £12 billion even though noboldy knows what, really, they are up to. Eventually it will be tied to medical records and credit card usage no doubt and the UK biometric ID which may be required as early as next year. Of course all this information can go against the owner: in the wrong hands it becomes a threat. And the Home Office has an abysmal track-record of keeping the most simple records, which do have a propensity to go missing. Would you trust the government on this one? Would you?


- > CCT cameras in Britain: 4.2 million (source: Camera Watch UK and Transport for London)

-- > The average Briton has 3,254 piece of personal information stored about him per week (Office of the Information Commissioner)

--- > Requests from police and other public bodies for personal communications data such as phone and email records in 2007: 519,260 (source: CSP)

(Eyeball photo from Business Week)

Clowning

Madeleine tries on her Hallowe'en costume - Silver will recognise it to be the one she made for Sonnet >30years ago. After a busy morning of the usual swimming and football, we now hang about waiting for ManU vs. who cares? which kicks off at 1730 sharp (the Bears play 7PM Pacific and I won't stay up until 4AM even if it is a Pac 10 game). Eitan begs me to turn on the TV early but I tell him to read a book instead - history repeating itself I am sure. Instead he amuses himself with the football and they listen to a Harry Potter CD because Sonnet reading Harry P to them every night for an hour not enough. Meanwhile Sonnet makes a cake and the beaters whirl from the kitchen.

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Andrew

Andrew on the school playground. He and his family live in our nearby neighborhood and he too is in private equity at an established UK firm. Andrew is also a serious runner, as is his wife, and for a while we jogged in the early morning until injuries plagued my existence. He will run the London marathon in April, he tells me.

Sonnet and I have dinner at St John's which is perhaps my favorite restaurant. Located in Clerkenwell next to Spittlefields market, which supplies London's meat, the restaurant was opened by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver in '94 in a former smokehouse which had fallen in to disrepair once ham and bacon smoking ceased in '67. St John's moto, "from nose to tail eating," kinda says it all: offal and other cuts of meat rarely seen in restaurants, often reclaiming traditional British recipes. Typical dishes are pigs' ears, ducks' hearts, trotters, pigs' tails, bone marrow and, when in season, squirrel. It is consistently ranked inside the World's Top 50 and the New Yorker Magazine profiled St John's as one of the world's most important. Aman. I took my parents BTW and they hated it. Sonnet and I indulge in lamb shanks (raw) and horseradish; calf's bone marrow+sea salt and endives; and smoked eel, bacon and mash. I finish it off with a light bordo - hanibal would be proud.

The Clash

Probably like most teen-agers of the early 1980s I became aware, and then hooked on, The Clash. I'm thinking about this as I bought their October 12, '82 Shea Stadium Live album - the band broke up two weeks later. Mick Jones, pictured with Sienna Miller, brought together the force of The Who and the humor of the New York Dolls - they played together that night in front of 50,000 fans who arrived early for the opening act. The Clash did not disappoint wearing army fatigues and playing their best: "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," "Rock The Casbah" and the song that put the capital forward: "London Calling" which begged for its relevancy during the malaise of the Cold War and nuclear over-hang. I remember a sunny April morning in '82 listening to "Straight To Hell, Boy" on the radio, jumping out of morning swim-practice then biking to school. My friend Aaron had listened to the same song post Crew and we discussed it during biology. The Clash played well at parties and perhaps the most famous that year was at the Elks Club in Berkeley where entrepreneurial hoodie Miles charged $7 for the kids to dance and booze. There were many Freshman first time drunks and we sweated our asses to Mick Jones and Joe Strummer. Magic.

Photo from metro.co.uk

Barbican

This pretty much captures the school run. As Robert Capa says: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

Sonnet and I attend a photography opening at the Barbican Centre and I am treated to Capa's original prints on loan from the ICP in New York. His most famous occurred D Day when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. I learn that Capa had two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. He took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion but a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames in total were recovered. (Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the cock up). Life magazine printed 10 of the frames in its June 19, 1944 issue, and I see the complete set last night.

The Barbican Centre BTW is worth a missive. Neighboring cool Clerkenwell and the City, It is the largest performing arts centre in Europe and home of the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Sonnet's Uncle Shelton was asked to run the thing but declined). The centre is part of the strange Barbican Estate which was built from '65 to '75 and a vision of high-rise living that would give J D Ballard a healthy boner. It even smells like the '70s somehow and reminds me of the Laurence Hall of Science: concrete everything. The 13 terrace blocks, grouped around the lake and green squares within the complex, house 4,000 people in 2,014 flats; there are three towers, the tallest 42 stories and soul destroying. I guess City guys keep a place at the Barbican since it is walking distance to the financial district yet in my 12 years of London I have never met a soul who lives there. Weird indeed.

"I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave. "
Robert Capa

My London

I head into town to do a touch of shopping and by happy coincidence arrive at Trafalgar Square in time to see the Olympics parade and Dame Kelly Holmes address the nation on our "phenomenal success" at Beijing. GB was fourth in medals and the Special Olympics team second. Visa Card is kind enough to hand out Union Jacks and the square is filled with cheering fans awaiting their heroes who begin at Monument then Fleet Street and the Strand before finally us. The spirit is everywhere: face-painted youngsters, old-codgers in tweed caps, teen-agers playing hookie and everybody British and loving the autumnal day, which is warm in the sunshine. From there, I sneak into the National Gallery to visit a few Degas, Van Goughs and Monets as well as some older stuff by Peter Paul Reubens and David Teniers de Younger, both Flemish Masters. By contrast, I pop over to the Portrait Gallery next door to catch the Annie Liebowitz exhibition - her photographs are super duper chic and I love the shocking opening portrait of Johny Depp between then naked girl friend Kate Moss's legs -pictured - it sets the tone for the show. Leibovitz had a close romantic relationship with essayist Susan Sontag and she profiles their relationship in black and white, including Sontag's cancer which ended her life early. In no other place could I take in this much in just one block. Wow.

From Lord Nelson I cross Piccadilly on my way to Carnaby Street to buy some trainers (brown and purple - I ask the cool black kid who serves them up whether "a middle-aged white guy" can get away with the things and he smirks: "they're just trainers, man.") On a nice day, London is hopping and you would never know there is a financial crisis - the FTSE 100 down 5% at this morning's opening trade. Still, thinking about those Olympic athletes, especially the heroism of the handicapped athletes, life is in perspective no doubt it is. Plus England beat Belarus.

Roooney!

Striker Wayne Rooney, until this year's arrival of non-English speaking Italian coach Fabio Capello (earning BTW £6 million per year), has been a bust for his country despite spectacular figures for Manchester United. During a four year stretch with ManU he found net 80 times in 198 appearances; for England, until Capallo, 16 caps and zero strikes. Happily for England and Eitan, Rooney is now making up lost time with five goals in the last three matches of the 2010 World Cup Finals qualifier. Not coincidentally, we are having our best start ever at 4-0 and tops in Group 6. There are still another seven qualifiers to go before the finals but England looks confident. Belarus, who we defeated 3-1 last night at Minsk, has given some good teams a fight while Croatia considered a serious threat before our 5-1 dismantling at Wembley. For now, the team has earned a break and won't regroup until April when the qualifiers continue. Let us hope the lads do not lose their momentum. Eitan goes to bed late with a smile on his face. Seriously. A big one too.

WikipediaWictionaryChambers (UK)Google imagesGoogle defineThe Free DictionaryJoin exampleWordNetGoogleUrban DictionaryAnswers.comrhymezone.comMerriam-Webster

Sonnet v Sarah

Sonnet and Sarah Palin are both from Alaska (Sonnet attended a slumber party in Wasilla once). Both competed in a beauty pageant: Sonnet runner-up to a gay guy at T-shirt contest during a Beach Boy's concert in '82 while Palin third in the '84 Miss Alaska competition (she did win the Miss Wasilla Pageant). Each is in her 40s and, like, they both went to college: Sarah to five of them in fact. While Palin the first Governor of Alaska, Sonnet the first American curator of fashion at the V&A. Both have never seen Russia from the Alaskan border though Sonnet's' dad took a Pakistani up the Dalton Highway. Each owns a US passport while Sonnet has British citizenship too. On moose: Palin shoots 'em while Silver used to worry about their menacing the vegetables or shrubbery. Sonnet would never, ever, have a gun in or near our house. On sports or fitness, I don't know Palin's work-out schedule - she's pretty damn fit - while Sonnet ran a marathon this year and jogged into work just this morning. Both women are soccer-moms. Sonnet frequently worries about her work-mum responsibilities and whether she gives enough time to her family; I imagine Palin does too and Trig admirable. Sonnet during BBC interviews like Women's Hour (reach: 2-3 million) poised and collected. Sarah Palin on Katie Couric - Titanic. So who is qualified to be VP? Unlike Todd, I would never let mine go but I suppose he is more ambitious.. . . .

"Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose."
From "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel

Woody?

Well, I am sure the ten of you are getting tired of my rants and raves about the financial crisis or Sarah Palin - It is just that Palin is so much fun. She ticks the boxes for any middle aged soccer-dad: sexy, confident, filled with with vile, conservative rhetoric and completely clueless. Did I mention she is good looking? Any ways, I take the kids to yoga this morning and we play "tag" while waiting for instructor Penny. I can no longer simply move to avoid being "it" and must apply a move or two. Luckily my Jewish basketball legacy is front-and-centre in testing moments like now - lest you laugh, Abe Saperstein (related to Guy) founded the Harlem Globetrotters back in 1926, now that Jew played ball even if he couldn't shoot hoops. The Globetrotters have enjoyed >20,000 exhibition games in 118 countries and I remember seeing them at the Oakland Coliseum when I must have been six or seven (that was also when the Golden State Warriors were good - they had all-white Rick Barry swooshing net. He was not Jewish. I don't think Bubbles Hopkins was either). Moe was a big basketball player too and rumour was he coulda been a contender back in the day when height was subservient to skill. Moe had a rim behind his house in St Louis, which I saw some years ago with him during my cousin DD's wedding.

Eitan and I prepare for tonight's World Cup Qualifier vs. Belarus. This should be a win for us but with England one never knows; adding to the uncertainty eam-captain John Terry remains injured (back) while left back Ashley Cole joins him on the bench with a hamstring pull. Come on England!

Class Rep

Eitan's teacher tells us that Eitan has been voted class-rep by his classmates (otherwise the boy has been quiet about his new honor). Once a month, he meets with the school's head-teacher, Mrs. E, and they discuss things like play and lunchtime meals. He then presents back to the class. On meals, our school is catered and the children encouraged to participate. We know Eitan takes his food seriously and accordingly he has recommended "biscuits, fruit salad, 'toad in the hole,' lasagna, spaghetti boulignase and macaroni and cheese." Cake too, he tells us, while ice cream rejected as too messy. He proudly wears his School Council pin and I know he worries about his responsibility: Sonnet and I overheard him talking in his sleep about the task (mostly he was scared to have mis-placed his badge). Bravo.

Both kids do well in their teacher review yesterday, which Sonnet and I attend. Eitan ahead of the curve while Madeleine slugs it out in the middle. We are way proud of the little pips.

"Toad in the hole" BTW is bangers and mash

By Jimmy!

Just tell any Republican who tries to blame the financial collapse on Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of '77 (and therefore on Democrats) to go review their facts (datas from the Federal Reserve Board):-

- More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions

- Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year

- Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics

-> Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006

--> The "turmoil in financial markets was triggered by a weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday

Fiscally Conservative - Democrats?

US budget deficit, pre-Jimmy Carter: $660 billion

Added during Carter's four years: $337 billion

Added during Ronald Reagan's eight years: $1.6 trillion

Added during George H. W. Bush's four years: $1.6 trillion

Added during Bill Clinton's eight years: $1.5 trillion

Added during George W. Bush's seven years, nine months: $4.5 trillion

-> Portion of the $9.5 trillion added to the national debt during the past 31 years and seven months that came during Republican presidencies: $7.7 trillion

-->Percentage of that $7.7 trillion added during George W. Bush's two terms: 58%

Image from Disney.com

PS: I saw the movie "Black Hole" at the Laurance Hall of Science as part of a weekend sci-fi package including Star Wars, 2001 Space Odyssey and Planet Of The Apes. In between films, Berkeley professors lecturee. Cool.

Taxpayer In The Middle

Katie sends me this chestnut, from her Blackberry, somewhere in Manhattan. Oh dear.

Of course baby-boomers are big investors in shares. According to the Federal Reserve, the average 50-year old has $174,000 in IRA or 401K retirement plans. But that is skewed by the mega-rich - the median is more like $60,000. This only tells a part of the story though: in fact, the Fed likes to measure "comprehensive wealth" which includes present values of salaries, pension funds, social security insurance, welfare benefits and so on. Houses and cars are thrown into the bucket. By this measure, the wealth of the average 50-year old is $900,000, of which only a quarter has anything to do with financial assets; worryingly, however, almost half of the rest comes from property and wages. The first keeps falling, and the other requires years of work.

"Whoever wins this election, Bush's impact has changed the world. This man has left us with three wars — in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror — and the legacy of the pre-emptive strike. These are legacies that will haunt his successor for years. It's good for people, before the election, to think about who they elected eight years ago and about where we are as a country right now."
Oliver Stone, promoting his film "W."