Cuba kicks out some foreign companies

In a further sign of economic retrenchment, Cuban officials have closed scores of foreign businesses that were welcomed here a decade ago to bail out the nation's faltering economy. Some of Europe's largest companies formed joint ventures or other arrangements with Cuba's state-run enterprises, including Swiss food giant Nestle, cigarette producer British American Tobacco and Spanish hotel-management giant Sol Melia. Sherritt International of Canada also has invested heavily in boosting Cuba's oil, nickel and energy production.

But many smaller companies also took advantage of the economic opening in the 1990s, importing everything from toys to spark plugs to hospital equipment to sell in Cuba. Diplomats and business executives say it is primarily these small and medium operators who have been asked to leave Cuba as Fidel Castro and other officials express confidence the island's economy has recovered sufficiently to withstand the companies' departure.

[...]

Rather than reaching out to European companies, Castro is strengthening economic ties with Venezuela, an important ally now providing Cuba 90,000 barrels of discounted oil daily. Cuban officials also are counting on an economic lift from China, which has promised to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to boost nickel production, a key Cuban export.

[...]

But some diplomats and business officials do not share Castro's optimism about Cuba's economic future. Local manufacturing and other activities remain severely hampered by a dearth of investment and an unmotivated workforce. Cuba also does not have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to repair its deteriorating electrical grid, water system and other infrastructure. By pushing foreign investors out, Cuba risks permanently damaging its international reputation even though it may need those investors should the island suffer another economic collapse.

I hope the Cuban government throws out all foreign companies, so that everyone involved in propping up the regime loses their shirts.

I hate it when newspapers try to do math for me...

...and get it wrong!

Since convenience stores make a profit of only 2 to 3 cents per gallon of gas pumped, owners say they have to sell an extra 3,000 gallons to make up for every sport-utility vehicle that takes off with a $30 tank of gas.

If they make 2 to 3 cents a gallon, wouldn't it take 1000 to 1500 gallons to make $30? Wouldn't 3000 gallons make them $60 to $90?

Happy Birthday to me

I just learned that Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico has the exact same birthdate as me.

Nerd God

Ebay

I was bidding on a book on Ebay, and somebody sniped and outbid me in the last few seconds of the auction. I just learned the word "snipe", although the tactical benefits of bidding on an item at the last second had already occurred to me on my own. Now, I'm not a veteran ebayer, but even I know not to bid the price of a book beyond what the book can be had for at Amazon. D'OH!

Looking for a new dry cleaner

In Cuba, they have this saying: "Hay que estar con cuatro ojos." You have to go around with four eyes, meaning you have to keep an extremely careful eye on everybody because everyone is trying to pull one over on you.

The dry cleaner in the lobby of my building recently raised his prices, so the last time I went to pick up my cleaning, it was a lot more than I was expecting it to be. Once I had gotten home, I realized that the extra charge was a lot more than could be accounted for simply by the higher prices. Unfortunately, by that time I had discarded my receipt as well as taken all the clothes out of the plastic so I wasn't even sure how many items I had picked up.

So this time, I made a conscious effort to double check everything when I went to pick it up. I was expecting it to come out to $16.95. The owner tells me $17.95. I told him, "I'm sorry. I was expecting $16.95. Are you sure?" I was taken aback by his reaction; he actually raised his voice to me, "Not $16.95; $17.95." Perhaps he thought if he was "adamant" enough, I would drop my objection. "Well, please check. I get $16.95." He pulls out two receipts, "There. Seven shirts, $7.70. And five shirts and one pair of trousers, $10.25." He pulls out a calculator and adds the two numbers, "$17.95." He was practically shouting at me by this point. I was a bit confused for a moment and was wondering if maybe I had in fact mis-added. Then I realized that if five shirts were $5.50 and the pants were $3.75 that only added up to $9.25. I pointed this out, so again he pulls out the calculator and FINALLY reluctantly hands me another dollar in change and apologizes for the error.

I don't believe for one micro-second that this was an error. But even if I'm wrong and it actually was an innocent error, the rude way he decided to approach it guarantees that I will never be back. Idiot. I dropped $440 at his establishment over the last year. Now I'm going to spend it somewhere else.

DON'T PANIC!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy coming to a theater near you April 29.

Sal Grosso

My wife and I went to Churrascaria Sal Grosso for lunch. This is one of those Brazilian steak places that have become so popular in the last few years. Dinner is prohibitively expensive ($39), but lunch is slightly more manageable. The format is all you can eat, with the waiters coming to your table with skewers of meat. We had

• Picanha (Rump Roast)
• Filet Mignon
• Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon
• Alcatra (Top Sirloin)
• Fraldinha (Flap Steak)
• Costela de Boi (Beef Ribs)
• Chicken Breast wrapped in bacon
• Marinated chicken wings
• Lamb Chops
• Leg of Lamb
• Pork Loin
• Pork Ribs

To round out our meal, we had a nice Brazilian wine (Miolo Cabernet Sauvignon) and carolinas (a dessert made consisting of puff pastries filled with vanilla ice cream and covered in chocolate sauce) for dessert. An excellent experience. Everyone should do this once in a while.

Greenhouse Grill

My wife and I went out to dinner at the Greenhouse Grill (in the Hyatt Regency in Marietta). We were not impressed.

• Ambiance was adequate but hardly outstanding. The view was non-existent. Noise from the bar and (even more so) from the ballrooms was overwhelming at times.
• Service was downright poor. It was slow (particularly when you consider that only four tables were occupied), and they made a $6 error on our bill.
• The menu on their website boasted sizzling sea bass and orange beef tenderloin medallions, neither of which existed on the menu when we got there.
• The food was the only redeeming quality, and even in that regard, all I can say is that the food was prepared well. It was hardly memorable, and the portions were not particularly generous.

My wife had salmon with tomato lemon jelly ($22), and I had chicken ($17). Neither plate really warranted the price.

Saigon Cafe

Had lunch there with some co-workers. I was thoroughly unimpressed. I order the pho (noodle soup) with shrimp. It was passable, but not great. I've had better. A friend ordered the pad thai (despite the name, the restaurant had a number of Thai dishes in addition to Vietnamese), and that looked like it would have been a much better than the pho.

However, what really got to me was the bad service. It was slow, really slow. And they forgot one of our entrees altogether. After bringing out the missing entree, they had still not brought out our appetizers. When we asked about them, the waitress got snotty, really snotty. "You didn't have any appetizers. I asked you if you wanted rolls, and you said no." And the tone with which she said it, as if she were lecturing to unruly children. Yeah, the seven of us are all mis-remembering. Thanks for setting us straight.

More pictures of Cuba

This picture looks like it was taken in a war zone. I've seen pictures of buildings in the middle of post-DDay fighting in France that looked better.

Cuba

La Habana, 1958 (the year before Castro took power)





La Habana, 2004


This is not a rural road; this is Calle 35 between A and B in Vedado, La Habana. (In the very heart of the city, this was once one of its poshest neighborhoods.)


Melba Gordue cleans up debris after a building collapsed in front of her house in Havana on June 26, 2003. (And, YES, she will continue living there afterwards.)


A hotel for foreigners


A hotel for Cubans


National Factory of Mirrors (insert punchline here)


"The revolution marches well. To fight, to work, to advance. Go forward!"


La Habana's transportation system


The ration book. (Sugar is rationed.)

William Safire's Last Column

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/opinion/24safire2.html?ex=1107493200&en=f4c74710a0c4c97e&ei=5070&incamp=article_popular_2

The Butlerian Jihad

Just finished reading Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson, the first book of their most recent trilogy set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe. The book presumes to tell the story repeatedly aluded to in the Dune series, about humans overthrowing their "thinking machine" masters 10,000 years before.

The book is somewhat better than the authors' House trilogy. I think having freed themselves of the restraints of the original Dune universe, they were able to give free rein to their imaginations and put out a better product. However, the bad prose that characterized the House trilogy remains. It seems like the authors at some point in their lives took a really bad creative writing class where they were told to use lots of flowery prose with tons of unnecessary (and ridiculous sounding) adjectives. For example, Norma never runs, she is carried by her legs. And they are never just legs, they are short legs. And it's diminutive Norma (they reuse the same adjectives over and over again ad nauseaum). So "Norma ran" becomes "Norma's short legs carried her diminutive body." Rinse, blather and repeat for 675 pages. As just one more example, on page 593, a ship doesn't enter and exit Jupiter's gravity well. Instead we are treated to the following monuments to absurd prose: "the gas giant reached out to them, beckoning with a siren song of physics" and "breaking free of the elastic threads of gravity."

Even though the prose is no better, the story is. They did a relatively good job crafting the plot, and depicting the psychology of the struggle. Iblis Ginjo, Vorian Atreides, Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen are depicted realistically - if somewhat one-dimensionally. Other characters, e.g. Agamemnon, are less believable. Could he truly believe that "the barbarians didn't understand freedom or free will" even as they were revolting against the machines' rule? It is unlikely that he could be that oblivious to reality. (As an aside, the whole "brain in a jar" concept is pretty 1930s. No wonder the "philsophical" "deep-thinking" 2000-year-old cogitors are so unrealistically oblivious to the consequences of their actions. They're idiots. Only an idiot would have his brain transfered to a glass jar.) The Titans as a whole are very poorly motivated. Let's say Omnius succeeds in its goal of exterminating humans and the Titans succeed in their goal of regaining power from Omnius. What exactly would they be the rulers of? Absurd.

On the other hand, the parallel between the cymeks and the human rulers of Poritrin (whose motivations do seem more plausible than the cymeks) is quite enlightening. It goes along the lines of the "good guys vs. bad guys" theme which I explored in my review of House Corrino. In that review I pointed out that the authors took a simplistic view of good vs. evil and did not consider valuable avenues of exploration in their writing. The fact that they do so here shows considerable growth in their writing. I look forward to reading The Machine Crusade and The Battle of Corrin (the latter only when it comes out in paperback, the books are nowhere near good enough to merit plunking down $20 for).

The authors' complete ignorance of science is blatantly obvious in almost every chapter. The absence of even a hint of the science and mathematics behind the "inventions" of Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva, despite "discussing" them at great length, is quite odd. The authors mention "arithmetic"; what meaningful science involves only arithmetic? What calculations could their solvers work on after only the most basic training? At one point, one of the solvers sabotages a result by "moving a decimal point" and claiming nobody would notice. If the authors knew ANYTHING about mathematics, they would understand that moving a decimal point is the mistake MOST LIKELY to be noticed. If I'm expecting an answer of 10, and you give me 5 or 20 I might not notice. But if you give me 1 or 100 I will definitely notice. Duh! The science-related quotes that start many chapters are meaningless as well.

Despite the derivativeness of the robot Erasmus, they nevertheless managed to make him interesting in a macabre sort of way. What is unrealistic is that he would be so completely clueless about human behavior. Think Dr. Mengele meets the Terminator. If intelligence means the ability to learn, then Erasmus must not be particularly intelligent. (After all his "study", how could he not predict the reaction to the murder he commits?) The relationship between machines and humans at large is somehow odd. Things like robots serving as drivers of a horse-drawn carriage for a human are not realistic in light of the master-slave relationship. The resources dedicated to keeping the humans alive for slave labor are inconsistent with Omnius's oft-mentioned desire for efficiency. What do humans provide for the machines that they could not more quickly provide for themselves while consuming fewer resources? Surely a machine of some sort could do any required work faster than slave labor (which has long been known to lead to low-quality results). The final chapters of the revolt and the surprise experienced by Erasmus and Omnius on the other hand could form a fascinating study in "AI psychology" if such a thing existed.

There are several gaps in the plot, a fact which I would be remiss in not mentioning. Without providing any spoilers, I can provide one example. The flaw in the defensive measures the humans used at Salusa Secundus and Giedi Prime was glaringly obvious. That the machines did not take advantage of it in their raid on Salusa Secundus AND that no human noticed the flaw either in the original design or when Xavier Harkonnen visited Giedi Prime for the specific purpose of evaluating their defenses simply defies belief.

One last disappointment in the book is that the authors clumsy attempts at foreshadowing gave me what I believe is conclusive proof of where they are headed in "Dune 7." On page 224 it says, "By the time humans expanded into those distant star systems, Omnius would already be there. Waiting." And in House Corrino, we were already treated to "ancient enemy ... future enemy" (when Navigator D'murr Pilru goes off course because of the amal). Other brief comments in House Corrino (regarding the unnamed planet that Tleilaxu Master Ajidica was setting up to take his BG axlotl tank) made me hopeful that they might head off in another direction. But now I have no doubt, the Honored Maitres and others returning from the scattering are fleeing thinking machines. This bothers me, as I am fairly certain that is NOT the path that Frank Herbert would have taken had he been alive to write Dune 7 himself.

My last thought, which really encompasses everything mentioned above, is that the story is not bad (you really want to keep reading to see what happens next), but the writing is bad, bad, bad. These guys need a good editor like nobody's business.

I live among bigots!!

Last year, I attended my homeowners association meeting for the first time. Our state senator, who was running for a seat in the U.S. House, was a guest speaker. In response to a question about illegal Mexican laborers in our neighborhood, he made a comment about a building that was being refurbished next to his office and him not hearing anything but Spanish the whole time. A couple of minutes later he made a comment about "Mexicans picking peaches in south Georgia." Now, this guy knew what he was doing. He spoke for over an hour without actually saying anything. These comments were delivered in what I considered a disparaging tone, but nothing he said could be construed as offensive (since they didn't have any actual content). But he was playing his audience; he knew the anti-immigrant feelings of his audience and he played to them like a master. After his speech, I approached him and told him I didn't appreciate his comments and that some people could have found them offensive. He told me nobody could consider him a racist because he (a) supported George Bush's proposal of amnesty to illegal immigrants, (b) favored giving Georgia Hope college scholarships to illegal immigrants, (c) was opposed to a proposal before the state legislature to deputize police officers as INS agents when they stopped suspects on other grounds within the scope of their usual duties, (d) favored giving illegal immigrants driver licenses, and (e) supported the expenditure of Medicaid funds and other public assistance on illegal aliens. Well, guess what? I have the diametrically opposite position on each and every one of these items. But, hey, I was Hispanic, so I must favor these things. Another question that occurred to me was why didn't he mention these things during his speech? Well, that question had an easy answer. Because they would have run him out of town. I made it my life's work to make sure he was defeated in his bid for the U.S. House. I'm glad to report he didn't even make it into the primary runoff. Good riddance.

At this year's meeting, I had an even more annoying experience. After the meeting, one of the homeowners was ranting and raving. She wasn't intelligent enough to form a coherent thought, so I'm not sure what was up her butt, but she was talking about how our city council members must be taking money to allow "this Mexican trash..." I don't know the rest of her sentence, because I walked away. But the thought that in the year 2005 somebody doesn't know better than to utter a phrase like that boggles my mind. The fact that this person is actually my neighbor pisses me off beyond belief.

Battlestar Galactica

I'm watching the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, which I missed on Friday. I'm a little lost because I missed the mini-series leading up to it, but still I think they've done a very good job with it. Where the original series was somewhat campy (in an enjoyable sort of way), this series is a lot darker (and just as enjoyable anyway). Of particular note, I think the treatment of Balthar is excellent. In the original series, the relationship between the Cylons and Balthar was unlikely (to say the least); in this series, I find him fascinating from a psychological point of view. The interaction between Cmdr. Adama and Pres. Roslin is also quite interesting to watch. The fact that humans created the Cylons is slightly disappointing in that the "man vs his creation the machine" story had been done to death. (I guess it doesn't help that I'm currently reading The Butlerian Jihad.)

And of course, there's always an idiot willing to write a moronic review about the show, but I hope I did at least a little better than this guy. ("Galactica was originally an allegory for Western Civilization being bullied and burned in the same way we have bullied and burned other nations for centuries.")

Happy New Year!

May you have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2005!

A couple of quick restaurant recommendations

Marietta Diner, Cobb Parkway (just north of South Marietta Drive)

All their food is excellent, but of particular note are

• Seafood bisque - it has won awards, not to be missed! Fortunately soup comes with all dinner specials. I don't even know what the other choices are. Listen to me when I say Get the bisque! Out of this world!
• Desserts - they are all fabulous. And HUGE! My wife and I always split one ... and often have leftovers anyway. Today we had the Baklava Cheesecake. Baklava. Cheescake. What's not to like? Sounds great, right? Well, it's even better than that!

Cuban Sandwich Shop, Johnson Ferry Road (just south of Roswell Road)

Not bad. I had the traditional Cuban sandwich; my wife experimented with the Super Special, which came with pastrami (never had pastrami in Cuba) - the sandwich wasn't bad but there were too many conflicting flavors fighting for attention.

As far as sides, the sweet plantains were excellent - as good as I've had in any restaurant. The black bean soup, we could have left. Still, the place can be recommended. We plan to go back. I think that next time we'll try the plain pork sandwich, though.

Merry Christmas

Happy Festivus!