America the Great

These days the news media has become terribly boring, more so than usual. For a while, I was riveted, following the crisis in Wall Street. There were some interesting articles, and a lot of questions. That quickly gave way to a dialog in the media over whether we were witnessing the demise of the American Empire. Were these the last days of Rome? What would America do with a financial sector in crisis? The New York Times’s lead writers, Dowd and Friedman, wrote, as they always do, silly articles explaining exactly what was happening, so that their silly readers could make silly sense of things. Dowd’s piece was entitled Are We Rome? Tu Betchus!. For those of you who haven’t been bombarded: “Tu Betchus” is a Latinized version of “You betcha”, which Sarah Palin famously overuses. Haha.

Yes, we are constantly bombarded with Obama, McCain, Palin, and the Empire. I’m tired of it. I’ve had enough politics for the next 10 years. Thank God the elections are soon. And the whole Empire thing got old as soon as it was born. A friend at work sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal that explained that, no, these are not the last days of Rome. It was well written and well reasoned. A relief amid the hysteria.
The article also held that “America will continue to be number one”. What an uninteresting statement. There are lots of people in this country who keep saying, loudly, “America is the best country in the world”. I suspect they have no idea why.

Yawn.

I thought I’d write a post on why I decided to come to this country. It’s a personal account, and there are no grandiose adjectives in it.

My idea of coming to America became solidly formed around the time I was 22. I was in my fourth year (out of six) of Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica in Madrid, and was very unhappy with my university experience. I hated my school, and thought I had made a terrible mistake by not studying Mathematics. At the end of my third year, I had gone to the school of Mathematics, to tell them I wanted to get a second major there, and to ask which subjects they would waive.
You have to understand that in Spain, this is a big deal. Academic departments are entirely independent of each other, so that if you’re at the school of Electrical Engineering at the Politécnica, and want to take classes at the school of Mechanical Engineering, also at the Politécnica, you still have to go through the whole admissions process in that school. Changing your major is in general a bad idea. The school of Mathematics, even though it was next door to Electrical Engineering, belonged to a different university – the Complutense.
Back to waiving: after a long deliberation, they determined that they would waive my Calculus and my Linear Algebra, and since they were nice guys, they would also throw in Multivariate Calculus. They would not waive Differential Equations, Complex Analysis, and Probability. The reason for that was that at their school, for those classes, they offered five hours a week of lectures. My school had offered only four hours a week.
I was furious. This clearly told me that things would not be any different in that school. I sat on some of the classes, and found them dry and boring. This place might kill my interest in Math. I decided it was best to learn on my own.
By the first months of my fourth year at the Politécnica I was so unhappy that, for a brief period, I was about to drop out. My idea was that I would get an undergraduate degree in Math at an American university. They seemed to be the best, and I envied the flexibility of their study plans. In the end, I continued with my Electrical Engineering studies.

Up to that point, I had admired America for its many top universities, and for the many textbooks they produced. I had rebelled against my teachers, and had learned many classes from American textbooks, instead of from class notes, as they wanted. The books were fine – not outstanding, but much better than notes from boring classes. There were a few American books that I had read in those years that had had a much greater impact on me. One was the classic Calculus by Michael Spivak. That book was alive, full of wit, personality, and deep ideas. I loved it. I had also devoured The Bell Curve, a thick technical study of the role of intelligence in America. There was a polemic around it, which I thought was a sanctimonious one. The Bell Curve impressed me, not so much because of the results of the research it described, but because of how well written it was; how reasoned, and scholarly, and critical and clear. The central idea was that in America, the single factor that best predicts a person’s success is intelligence, above gender and race and social class. That this single theme was developed so richly into a hefty tome, and that it didn’t get repetitious, was astounding to me.

Then something great happened: the explosion of the World Wide Web, and the arrival of Amazon.com. At home we had been craving good access to books, and Amazon gave us the best possible.
In the final months of my fourth year of studies, I decided to teach myself programming, and I started looking around for good books. Programming was interesting, but there was something more to it that I was not getting, something mysterious, I was sure of that. One happy day, the Expert Editors at Amazon (it’s a shame they disappeared) put together a list of the best books on Computer Science. I was particularly interested in one of them, and ordered it. I started reading as soon as it arrived. Within five pages, I knew this book would change everything for me. Computer Science and Math were siblings! This book was deep, exciting, fun, difficult. I was obsessed, and I ignored everything else. The book’s name was Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and it was written by two MIT professors, Gerald Sussman and Harold Abelson. They have put the book online (here).

About half way through reading, and doing every single exercise, I came to what I saw as a logical contradiction in the book. I wrote an email to Abelson and Sussman telling them about it. Within 24 hours, I had a reply from Sussman, who copied Abelson and two other people. It was a very detailed response. Sussman had gone over my email, paragraph by paragraph, elaborating on each. Finally, he explained how I was wrong. I noted with pride that the key idea to show this was not present in the book.
I was astonished by the quality and promptness of Sussman’s reply. I sent him an email thanking him, and again, within a day, he replied hoping I enjoyed the rest of the book.

If there was any doubt about American university, this had dispelled it. I finished my courses and graduated. I continued to learn Computer Science on my own. I held a job for two years in the telecommunications industry. I loved my team, and it was a good job, but still I dreamed of coming to America for graduate school. By the time the big crisis came to the telecommunications sector, I had already started looking for fellowships, and researching American schools. In 2003, I got my first admission letter, from the University of Indiana, and I decided to take a one-month backpacking trip across New Zealand – an old dream of mine. Two more universities admitted me while I was traveling, and then, at the last minute, when I was almost sure I’d go to Boston for school, Columbia University sent me an acceptance letter. New York it would be.

I was impressed that I was accepted to a good graduate school in Comp. Sci. when I had no formal, accredited education in the subject. I was even more impressed that I wasn’t asked to take any catch-up type of class. Only one subject, Algorithms, required negotiation. I went to talk to the professor, Cliff Stein, who had co-authored a legendary book in the field. We chatted about my background, and he decided I was ready to take his class. I enjoyed his teaching and ended up getting an A.
My best friend from the Comp. Sci. department, Ryan, had studied History as an undergraduate. I admired the flexibility of this system. I had done the right thing coming here.
I loved my time at Columbia. I admired the quality and openness of the professors, the seriousness of the home-works, the ambition of the students. It was not perfect, but this was a real university experience, nothing like those six bitter years that I mostly wasted.

There has been much more in my time in America. There has been friendship, adventure, disappointment, loss, anger, happiness. There has been a lot of life going on, and I have learned and grown. I have worked myself to the bone, and I have been rewarded.

I have a lot of respect for this country, but no patience for idiots waving flags.

How I shave

Following last week’s post on yogurt, here is another one about a minority craft.
Shaving has become an enjoyable task for me, in the last few years. It wasn’t always one.

I was the first boy in my class to shave. Mom, ever obsessed with cleanliness, told me, when I was twelve, that I had a shade in the mustache area, and needed to start shaving. After the first few times, the novelty and the excitement of growing up had passed, and had given way to razor burn. At one point I had a large red mark above my lip for a week. I hated shaving, and started doing it less and less.

Then, for my thirteenth birthday, mom bought me a mug of Old Spice shaving soap, and a brush. The idea was retro, and appealed to me. Happily, the soap and brush helped my sensitive skin, and life was better. I still had trouble areas, and in particular, a facility for ingrown hairs and razor burn in my neck.

Over the years I got a bit better at shaving, and changed razors, from several models of Wilkinson Sword, to Gillette Mach 3. I still had sensitive skin, and problems in the neck. I couldn’t shave more frequently than every other day, or it became painful.

Throughout, I kept using shaving soap and a brush. When I moved to the US, it was difficult to find soap. Part of it was not knowing my way around, but in this country, shaving soap is a specialty-store item. At some point, I don’t remember how, while browsing the net for places to buy shaving gear, I stumbled on an article about shaving with an old style, double-edged, aka safety, razor, like the ones in old films. I was intrigued, and kept looking for more information. It made sense to me that a single blade, held lightly on the skin, would do a better job of cutting hair than a multi-blade cartridge.

I bought a safety razor, and found a forum for people shaving with vintage razors. There I got pointers on technique, as well as references of good stores in New York. After a couple of weeks, I was extremely happy with my shaving routine. I’ve been using the double-edged razor for over two years, and in that time I’ve had no razor burn, no ingrown hairs in my neck, an very few nicks.

I’ve gotten some people to try this too. I helped my running team-mate Liz put a shaving kit together for her husband, who used to have irritations, and he really enjoyed the improved experience. Anthony recently converted to brush, soap, and double-edged, and is delighted.
I’ve made a new page on shaving resources on this blog, as a guide for people who want to try all this.

So here’s my routine: I splash warm water on my beard and neck. I soak my brush in hot water, and then I swirl it on the soap until it starts to make lather. At that point, I apply the lather to my skin. I don’t need a thick layer, like they show you in commercials for foam. I just need enough to make my skin slick, and my hairs wet. Then, holding the razor gently, with the ends of my fingers, I start my first pass, cutting in the direction of the hairs (with the grain). I don’t need to apply almost any pressure – the weight of the razor does the work for me. I can hear the pleasant crinkling of my stubble getting cut.
After I finish the first pass, I apply a new layer of lather, and start cutting across the grain. This is good enough most days. Sometimes, for an extra good finish, I make a third pass, against the grain. Then I splash some cold water to get the soap off my skin, dry with a towel, and apply a few drops of after-shave.

This is a pleasant ritual for me. Lathering my beard with warm water is relaxing. The crinkling sound of the razor has its charm. The whole process cannot be hurried – when you hurry you get a poor shave, or a cut. Yes, it takes more time than using a multi-blade razor, but not much more. It’s all very Zen.

I’ve recently bought a straight-edge razor, and I’m learning to use it just for the sport. I think it had something to do with watching, many years ago, an episode of Brideshead Revisited, in which Jeremy Irons shaved his beard off with a straight-edge. It seemed effortless, and in a few passes he was clean shaven. I’ve grown a beard on a few occasions. Shaving a beard with a Mach 3 is painful and tedious. With my safety razor, it is no longer painful, but it still is tedious. I think this is the last area of shaving where I want to improve. So far, though, I much prefer the safety razor to the straight-edge.

Paul Krugman wins Economics Nobel

He’s almost the only reason I keep reading the New York Times. I find their other lead writers, like Friedman and Dowd, both sanctimonious and unimaginative. There is another writer I like, Dan Schnur, who worked for McCain’s campaign in the previous election. Schnur, like Krugman, is willing to speak clearly, and ruffle feathers inside his own newspaper and readership.

I’ve bought five of Krugman’s books, including his textbook on microeconomics (which I haven’t yet read). He’s a whistle blower, warning of America’s economic and social maladies even at times when others say everything is Great. His last, The Conscience of a Liberal, was scathing.
I’m happy he won; I consider him my personal economist.

A couple of articles:
Krugman on the “old” Paulson rescue plan
Krugman on home ownership
Schnur on Deomcratic smugness

Fun with milk

[Note: if you want instructions on making yogurt, without the story, go here]

I’m about to begin a discussion of the parameters in yogurt making, and get into technicalities. You may want to skip down to the paragraphs that surround the photo, unless you enjoy food geekery.

The basic process of making yogurt is pretty simple:

1. Boil the milk (this is optional, as I will discuss further down)
2. Let it cool to room temperature
3. Add the starter cultures
4. Let it incubate at a warm temperature

Here is a detailed guide on making yogurt.

There are four parameters you can control when making plain yogurt:

• The milk
• Cultures (starter)
• Incubation temperature
• Incubation time

Incubation temperature
I am not able to play easily with the incubation temperature. The incubation temperature is important because the lactobacilli that ferment the milk, grow best in a certain range of temperature – 38 to 43 Celsius, or 100 to 110 Fahrenheit. According to Harold McGee’s encyclopedic On Food and Cooking, this temperature produces rapid gelling of the yogurt but also gives it a coarser texture, whereas cooler incubation temperatures, say 30 degrees centigrade, produce a very slow fermentation, but a finer texture.
In any case, my yogurt maker doesn’t give me the option of adjusting the temperature, and I’m not curious enough to set up a lab in the kitchen.

Incubation time
The incubation time varies widely depending on where you read from. Usually you’ll read it’s about 6 to 8 hours. Elaine Gottschal’s book (see my previous post) specifies an incubation time of 24 hours, to ensure that all the lactose has been consumed by the lactobacilli. I follow this, though I have also experimented with 12 hours of incubation. The longer incubation period makes the yogurt slightly tarter and firmer, and has positive impact overall, in my opinion.

Starter
The starter can be either a spoonful of commercial yogurt, or freeze-dried starter cultures. Commercial yogurts, and starter cultures, contain several strains of bacteria: at least Thermophilus and Bulgaricus, often Acidophilus and Bifidus. Gottschal’s book warns against bifidus, and several people in the online communities that follow her diet (again, see previous post) say that they’ve had intestinal trouble when they’ve eaten yogurt with bifidus repeatedly.
This means that I always read yogurt labels to find exactly what cultures they use. A few times in Union Square’s Farmers Market, I asked producers of yogurts what cultures they were using. Invariably, they did not know. It is not difficult to find yogurt without bifidus. It is however, very difficult to find natural yogurt. Almost all commercial brands contain some sort of sweetener or gelling agent. Tartnes is impopular.

I’ve tried using several yogurts as starters, and I found the flavor of the yogurt I got was mediocre. I have much better luck with starter cultures, so that’s what I use; generally, Yogourmet, which you can buy at Whole Foods.

Milk
The most important factor in yogurt is the milk. There are several questions here: whole or skim? pasteurized or raw? homogenized or not?

I refuse to buy skim milk, so I’ve never made skim yogurt. In fact, extra cream won’t hurt either, and will make the yogurt milder and creamier, as one would expect. I’ve made yogurt out of half-and-half, and it had a thick, creamy consistency, and a sweeter flavor than whole milk yogurt. Similar to Petit Suisse, if you’ve had those.

I should also point out that you can use the same tools and process of yogurt making to make fermented cream (which the French call creme Bulgare). It gives the cream a nice extra flavor. This is not the same thing as creme fraiche. Creme fraiche uses different bacteria strains, and incubates at cooler temperatures. But as with yogurt, you can make creme fraiche by addind a spoonful of existing creme fraiche to your cream, then letting it ferment at room temperature for a day.

The pasteurization question is a big one. In most states in this country, raw milk is illegal for public consumption, but there is a counterculture of people and books that say that pasteurization ruins the nutritional value of milk, and renders it unsafe. I’ve tried to err on the side of less pasteurization, just because now I tend to err on the side of less processing.

One thing about the process of making yogurt kept annoying me. Most books and articles say the milk needs to be boiled, to kill some bacteria that would interfere with the fermentation. But isn’t pasteurization supposed to do that already? I experimented with not boiling the milk, and the result was runny yogurt that leaked whey. The whey gave it a taste that I did not like, so I settled on heating the milk gently for 12 minutes. Still, I didn’t believe the part about boiling killed bacteria that interfere with fermentation. In my view, it had to be that the boiling was eliminating some water. According to Harold McGee, the heating denatures the milk protein in such a way that it forms grids that lock the whey.

At the same time, mom had started making her on yogurt, and did not need to boil the milk in order to get good texture. We made tests, and found that this effect was not due to the different cultures we used. We were using very similar yogurt makers, and were incubating for the same amount of time. It had to be something in the milk. In my last holiday in Madrid, I tested several milk brands, and with all, the yogurt came out fine without boiling the milk.
Hmm, that was puzzling. Perhaps the milk in Madrid has less water content, I speculated.

When I moved to Seattle, I was happy that I could buy raw milk – it is legal in this state. I tried to make raw milk yogurt, and again found it runny and leaking whey, and again I started boiling the milk. One day I noticed the supermarket carried ultra-pasteurized Organic Valley milk. That is a brand I like. I had generally avoided ultra-pasteurization, since I err on the side of less processing, but I gave it a try, and, bingo, the yogurt came out fine, without heating the milk.
In fact, the yogurt is better this way than when I heat the milk. Heating the milk at home means heating in a pot, on the stove top. Even stirring all the time, it is inevitable that the heating of the milk is uneven, and some parts get scalded. When I heated the milk, I would get a curdled texture for my yogurt. With ultra-pasteurized milk, I get a smooth, even, custard-like texture. I think those milk factories do a better job of heating the milk than I do.

This also may explain why the milk in Madrid needed no heating. Pasteurization is a standard enforced in each country or state, and it’s possible that pasteurization in Spain is more intense than in the US. But of course, that’s just speculation.

The final factor is homogenized versus non-homogenized. Homogenized milk has been shot at high pressure through a grid, in order to break up the fat molecules. In non-homogenized milk, the fat molecules tend to float to the top and form a layer, which is why it usually says in the bottle to shake well before serving. Homogenization takes care of that, breaking the fat into tiny globules that are distributed evenly in the fluid. Interestingly, goat milk’s fat molecules are very small compared, to cow’s, so goat milk is never homogenized.
Again, I used to err on the side of less processing and used non-homogenized, but I have to say, I think homogenized milk gives a nicer, smoother yogurt. The 24 hour incubation period means that when using non-homogenized milk, you end up with all the cream in one place, and for some reason, it’s sort of dry.

So, hip-hip for modern times. At least when it comes to yogurt, they made milk much better.

The Fun Part
The yogurt I make at home is much better than most available in stores. Generally, I make plain yogurt, but when I get good raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries or other berries, I often throw them into the yogurt. It is especially effective to make them into a puree with a blender, because that allows you to throw in more quantity, and give the yogurt a stronger berry flavor. By the way, the berries, or berry puree, are added to the yogurt after fermentation. I haven’t tried to add them before, but I don’t see the point. In the worst of cases, the lactobacilli may digest the fructose in the berries and make them tarter, or proper fermentation of the milk may be prevented. In the best of cases, the flavor will be unchanged from adding the berries after fermentation. All the sources I’ve read recommend adding the fruit, or the honey, after fermentation.

I’m pretty happy with the yogurt I make, but it’s not the best I’ve had. That merit belongs to White Cow Dairy, which has a level of refinement I cannot reach. I contacted the owner once, and he told me his secret was to start out with great milk, and then do as little as possible to it. I have no clue what he meant.

In the New York area there were several farms that would make their own natural, artisanal yogurt, like Evans Creamery, Ronnybrook, Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, or the aforementioned White Cow Dairy. I have found local yogurts here, but not artisanal yogurts. There is a French family in San Francisco that apparently makes fantastic stuff. I’ll have to check them out next time I visit. In Seattle, however, my home made yogurt is the best game.

My yogurt, my diet

Today I wanted to write an article about making yogurt. When I started to write it, I realized I wanted to tell the story of how I came to make my own yogurt. It’s not a pretty story, be warned, but it’s been important for me, and it may be useful for people who are led to this post by search engines.
I’ve put the gory story in this post. The next one will deal with yogurt making exclusively.

I started making my own yogurt over a year and a half ago. I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease over a year before that, and though I was lucky to have a mild case, I would still get short episodes of pain, and often had cramps. At the time, I was under terrible pressure at work, and that started to push me downhill. Eventually I started having problems swallowing food, and my gastroenterologist, doctor Kim, told me I had GERD, aka acid reflux.

That was it. I don’t like being sick. Taking medicines for Crohn’s, pills for the GERD (only for a month), plus the probiotics Dr. Kim recommended was making me feel like an invalid. More than anything, I had no idea how to control my disease. Time for action and research.

I decided to start experimenting with nutrition. I reasoned that since Crohn’s and GERD affect the intestine, they have to be correlated to food. My colleague at Bear Stearns, Annie, had developed an allergy to lactose and gluten in her twenties. Perhaps I had developed an intolerance to some food, and that was triggering my problems. I started by eliminating milk, and giving soy milk, and nut milks, a try. I didn’t feel a big difference, and after I did some research on soy, I decided to drop the soy milk too, and soy in general. Then I tried eliminating pasta, and seemed to feel well. One day I decided to try eliminating bread too. That was a tremendous difference. After three days on this elimination diet, I felt much better.

I was happy and hopeful with the bread-and-pasta elimination diet. I investigated, and this seemed to point to gluten intolerance, which seemed to point to Celiac disease; not a nice prospect. I read books and books on Celiac, gluten intolerance, Crohn’s, and nutrition in general. One thing was clear: many people have trouble digesting grains, especially wheat. Another thing was clear: for any food there is, many people have trouble digesting it. Some of the books called for the elimination of many of the foods I love, and I quickly disregarded those books.

I went to Dr. Kim to get tested on Celiac or gluten intolerance, and it came negative. That was a relief. It did however, contradict my theory. I continued to read more books, and didn’t arrive to much other than thinking that nutrition is a very underdeveloped science. There is disagreement even on the basics.

Then, thanks to the magic of Amazon’s customer pattern matching, I was recommended one book: Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschal. It was a fun, convincing, optimistic little book. It had terrific ratings and reviews (now including my own) at Amazon, and seemed to have been a salvation for many.

The book explains that for people with a number of intestinal conditions, and even autism, digesting complex sugars (di- and poly-saccharides) is problematic and leads to reduced absorption. The reduced absorption is bad in itself, but it also means that there are undigested complex sugars in your gut. Those complex sugars serve to feed many bacteria that line your intestine, and those bacteria grow and multiply. Some of them produce toxins that negatively impact your intestine, or other parts of your body.

The cure is to avoid disaccharides and polysaccharides. These are found in milk and sugar (lactose and sucrose are disaccharides), bread and pasta, corn and its derivatives, potatoes, rice and other foods containing starches (which are polysaccharides).
The only acceptable carbohydrates are those found in fruits, nuts, honey and vegetables.

I decided to give this a try. By then, the only starch that I was eating consistently was rice, so I gave it up, and also made sure to avoid granola and bread. The effect was immediate. I had a bit of an itch in the gut, and pain, for a couple of days, and then started feeling better than I had in a very long time. Within a couple of weeks, the pangs of pain, the gas and cramps, were gone. And I felt different inside; I could tell I was better.

With my new knowledge, a lot of things made sense. Periods of stress had been so bad for me, not only for draining me, but equally importantly, because they led me to to eat worse food. I would get home tired, and would reach for the processed foods and the sugars. In the office I would go for sweets.

Since I started following the diet, I haven’t had a perfect record. Sometimes I’ll eat bread, sometimes I feel obliged to accept an offer of pizza, or decide to have a sugary dessert at a restaurant so I can share, or reach for a can of soda in the office. As long as I don’t do it repeatedly, I stay well.
Even when I do follow the diet, I sometimes have bouts of Crohn, but it happens rarely these days, and more mildly than it used to. At last, I feel in control, more or less.

Needless to say, I worship Elaine Gottschal’s little book, which by the way, has a following online. These are two sites devoted to her diet: Pecanbread and breakingtheviciouscycle.

I take the lady’s word very seriously, so when she recommended to eat home-made yogurt, I bought a yogurt maker, stopped buying the probiotics I had been taking (VSL #3), and started to cultivate an appreciation for fermentation.

And so ends this post, and so begins the next one.

Parental visit, time management

Mom and dad were here last week; their first visit to Seattle, or the West Coast in general. Parental visits are the time I usually take things a bit easier. Luckily, a period of extreme busyness at work had just come to an end, so I was able to relax this time around too.

Most of the time I feel I should be doing something more. I should be learning a new subject, trying to meet more people, tidying my papers, cleaning the house, or any number of things that I tend to postpone. I’m often frustrated in this respect.

Visits give my time a new purpose. My objective during visits is to get out of work as early as I can, and enjoy the company. My parents are not in the least interested in doing tourism, so I don’t have to make an effort. One evening we drove to my office from Seattle, because it’s a nice drive over lake Washington, and another evening we went to Discovery Park. The rest of the time they explored on their own while I was at work. And that was that.

Now I’m again racing against time. Autumn is the one season of the year where I tend to win this race.

Volunteers Park, near home:

In Discovery Park

Home: