Bumper stickers

One thing that USians seem very big on is bumper stickers. They love to plaster their opinions all across the back of their car to let everyone know which tribe they associate themselves with. It doesn't seem to be restricted to any sort of demographic - in the last couple of days, I've noticed everything from a bumper plastered with all sorts of band names (Radiohead, etc) through those proudly declaring their support for Obama, to those expressing their right to be a gun-totting believer in Jesus and Romney. Not that I'm  implying that support for guns necessarily correlates with religion or support for Republicans, but I've not yet seen a car that has both Democrat and NRA (National Rifle Association) stickers on it. Here's an example, taken from our local shopping mall:

I guess if you combine the facts that USians are somewhat outspoken, and in love with their cars, then you get the bumper sticker phenomenon. It's quite striking just how prevalent it is though, in stark contrast to Europe. And the bumper stickers are not just political or religious - you see everything from "Proud parent of student from High School X" through to support for football teams or declaring that the driver is an alumni of whatever Ivy League college they happen to be proud of. Actually, some states give out a learner's permit as young as 15 so it's not uncommon to see stickers saying "honours student at high school X", which is pretty weird. Surely 15 or 16 is too young to drive a car? I know I was a dick-head at that age..!

Maybe we should get some bumper stickers for our bikes? "My other bike is a cannondale" or "At least I'm not killing the planet, you SUV-driving arsehole"? Maybe not then.

Moon-lighting

Hello. Just a quickie today as I've been moonlighting and writing for a friend's blog where I've been writing on my usual theme of food, talking about what irks me about the paleo diet.

Recently, we experienced something that highlights a subtle difference between the US and the UK. Dom and I bought a digital piano, something we've always wanted, at a music store about 1.5 miles from our house. As we'd gone out grocery shopping and also refuse to own a car here, we were ill-prepared for this spur-of-the-moment shopping trip, and found ourselves having to carry a very large, heavy box back home. Fair enough, as our friend Ian has been using CrossFit to make us mightier over the last few months, so moving a big object was a good work-out.

Twice on our journey home though, we were pleasantly surprised by warmth of human kindness. The first time was when we had to get our piano down a big flight of steps on the way home: a car drove past as we were resting at the top of the stairs. The car stopped suddenly, reversed back and illegally parked near us. A random guy jumped out and told Dom that there was no way he'd let her struggle with the weight, so helped me down the stairs with the box and then went on his merry way.

A little bit further, an SUV drove past us, double-backed and a lovely lady insisted that she drove us and the piano the rest of the way home. Having two random strangers giving that kind of assistance highlights the more positive aspects of the USian psyche.

I'm fairly sure that wouldn't have happened back in the UK. Not because people are less kind or warm, but probably due to hesitation due to social anxiety of having to talk to a stranger / worrying about being patronising by offering to help / worrying that the people you're offering help to think you're trying to mug them / etc, etc. It's a social anxiety that I've often had myself ("if I offer help to this random woman, will she think I'm being creepy..?") and I don't consider myself to be particularly reserved.

Americans generally are a bit more socially confident: I've seen guys asking girls on a date without getting blind-drunk first!!! While this forwardness can be quite disconcerting at first ("Why is this person talking to me? We're on the metro! Don't they know the rules!?!?"), it eventually stops feeling weird or even unpleasant...

Weathering the weather

As you know, I'm a Scot with one red-haired allele (thanks, mum), so my melanocortin-1 receptors function poorly compared to wildtypes (biology-speak for normal people). This means that going out in the sun comes with a moderate risk of exploding into flames - I think the official term for us half-gingers is Daywalkers. Dom hails from Eastern Canada and inherited pasty Irish skin from her mother, so perhaps moving to a city known for really hot, humid summers was bad planning.

Still, we knew to expect this before we moved out here so are content to spend our summers scurrying from shadow to shadow, desperately seeking out somewhere that sells factor 250 sunblock. I did have visions of spending the summer lounging around in the sun, having barbeques and drinking fine USian beers. This was the case for April & May, but the daytime temperatures are now regularly hitting 35C and above - it got to 40C yesterday, setting a record for the warmest weather I've ever experienced.

One thing that is quite striking about weather forecasts in the US is that they tend towards the hysterical, so we tend to get warnings about tornados, wild fires, torrential flooding, snowmageddon, baking sun and rains-of-frogs on pretty much a daily basis. A consequence of this is that one begins to ignore the weather warnings and have a little smug giggle about how much more hysterical the US media is than back home (unless you read the Daily Mail or any of the Murdoch rags, of course...)

So, we took yesterday's weather warning about the incoming storm with the usual pinch of salt. Then the storm came - I've never seen so much lightning before: there were a few flashes every 1 or 2 seconds, and this went on for a few hours. I tried standing outside when the storm first hit, but with all the bits of trees flying around at face-height and the driving rain soaking me to the skin, I decided that it was best to retreat indoors lest I turn my wife into a widow.

It was breath-taking to be out in though, truly exciting to witness such an impressive weather phenomenon first-hand. Although it was easy to enjoy it with the privilege of having an nice, dry house and air-conditioning to retreat too. I can't even imagine how much it would suck to be homeless in that storm. For us, it seemed pretty impressive and our electricity went down for about an hour but then came back, so we didn't think the storm was that bad.

And then we had a walk around our neighbourhood this morning. As I'm not the most articulate fella in the world, I'll give you some photos to give an idea of the carnage that was around. Click on the photos for the full-sized images.

Most of the houses on our street (actually, I think all of them except for our block) are still without power, as is most of the local neighbourhood. Our local pub was on of the few places open, so we were able to grab a lunch, a pint and Wimbledon before giving up on our shopping tasks for today. According to the Washington Post, 1.3 million homes are still without power, and regional "cooling centres" have been opened so that people without power, and therefore air conditioning, can go somewhere to hide from the heat. Today was a bit milder, at a mere 36C. More storms are forecast for tonight, so I might take the weather warning a little bit more seriously this time.

I'll leave you with a wee ditty that I learned at primary school:

Whether the weather be fine,

Or whether the weather be not.

Whether the weather be cold,

Or whether the weather be hot.

We'll weather the weather,

Whatever the weather, 

Whether we like it or not!

A letter to the Home Secretary

Hey folks, this post will be in a slightly different style to my usual ramblings, because I have something to moan about that does not revolve around food, too many cars on the road or people spelling words like "colour" badly. In fact, my post has nothing directly to do with the US, other than to highlight one area where the US fares much better than the path currently being chosen by the UK Coalition government.

For those who haven't heard, Theresa May (the Home Secretary) would like to limit immigration to satisfy the xenophobic leaning of many on the right of her party and to try and stop Tory voters from drifting to UKIP*. The majority of UK immigration comes from the EU, but obviously the Home Secretary cannot do anything about that. So her latest plan, as detailed by the Guardian on Friday is to prevent UK citizens from bringing their foreign born wife to the UK if the UK citizen earns below £25700 (with no children) and up to £46000 or more if they have children.

While Dom and I are obviously not impoverished, if these rules were enacted then they would prevent us from coming back to the UK in a few years if we happen to pop a sprog or two while we're over here. So, as you can imagine, I believe this proposal to be somewhat stupid, given how much the UK taxpayer has invested in training Dom and I. As much as I'm enjoying living in the US at the moment, I'd rather not have the Tories turn me from a legal nonresident alien into a nomadic alien, exiled to the frozen wastelands of Canada for all time. Or at least, I'd like to choose to head to the frozen wastelands of Canada instead of being driven there by badly thought-out immigration laws.

One thing that the US does very well is that it welcomes (for a few years anyway) those of a foreign persuasion who want to work here, as long as they know they are expected to leave eventually. Which is fair enough - I'm grateful that US taxpayers are paying me to do my hobby, although I suppose they get a good deal out of it as well.

Anyway, when someone from my country gets pissed off, we don't riot in the streets like the French, or aggressively have a cup of tea like the English. In Scotland, we either hit the person who annoyed us, get outrageously drunk, or write an angry letter. I chose the latter option so below is a letter I wrote to Theresa May explaining why I think her immigration plans are a bit daft.

As an aside, I would like to say that, were Scotland independent, we would head down a different path and welcome immigrants with open arms. But Alex Salmond is being rather coy in explaining what independence would actually mean and my sources on the ground say that the natives are starting to get rather restless. So come on Alex, man-up and spell it out, we might say even say yes... (well, not me personally as Theresa May won't let me bring my wife back home!)

* To my non-UK readers, UKIP is a right-wing party in the UK who want, along with the usual  conservative agenda, to remove the UK from the EU. UKIP is basically a home for the rabid right of the Tory party who consider themselves too respectable / not racist enough to support the BNP.
 
-----------------------------

Dear Ms May,

I have been reading in the media about plans that you have to limit immigration such that UK nationals who marry non-EU partners will need to demonstrate a substantial income (more than £27,000 with no children) if they would like to bring their partner back to the UK. I am writing to let you know that I believe this  plan to be deeply short-sighted and detrimental to the UK as a whole.

I am a neuroscientist, having finished my doctorate at the University of Oxford last year. Whilst studying at Oxford, I met and married the woman who is now my wife, a Canadian microbiologist who also completed her masters & doctorate at Oxford. We are currently working in the US, where we have both obtained postdoctoral fellowships at fairly prestigious institutions. I'm not sure if you are aware, but early-career academic researchers earn a relatively low salary, especially compared to other professionals such as lawyers, medical doctors and Members of Parliament.

The general career path for a researcher (in the life sciences, at least) is to spend at least 5 or 6 years in junior research positions at different institutions before trying to obtain an academic position such as a lectureship. Given the reproductive window of our species, our early research careers also come at a time when we would be starting a family, so it is not unlikely that we will have 1 or 2 children within the next few years. As well as starting a family, we will also need to decide which country to settle in, which would either be Canada, where my wife is from, or the UK.

If you proceed with your seriously ill-conceived plans to limit immigration, it is likely that the rules would prevent me being able to return to the UK with my wife. As well as grossly abusing my rights to family as a UK and EU citizen (my wife and I have both paid not insignificant sums to the exchequer whilst living in the UK), you would also be ensuring that the investment made by the UK taxpayer in educating both myself and my wife would be well and truly wasted. Although that cost may be insignificant compared to, say, mothballing an aircraft carrier before it enters service, it is still squandering taxpayers' money, which I suspect is not why we elected you.

Kind regards,
Dr Michael T. Craig

Gie us a break!

Hello, regular readers*, and sorry for the long silence. I've been busy with work, which seems rather appropriate given what I'm going to talk about today: it turns out that having a grown-up job can be somewhat time-consuming. But that's fine because the American dream is that you can get anything you want as long as you work hard enough. Unless, of course, the thing that you want happens to be time off work.

It's pretty well known around the world that holiday time in the US is fairly abysmal, so I won't dwell too much on that other than to say that 10 days plus public holidays is, quite frankly, appalling. I'm used to 5 weeks, and the UK does less well than its continental neighbours. Although the European economy is crumbling at the moment, I'm sure it's nothing to do with holiday time. Not even in Greece. It's mostly because we gave all our money to the banks so they could, dunno, make confetti with it or something. Sorry, getting side-tracked. Back to holidays.

People generally argue that the US has more public holidays than the UK, so it balances out. Well, there are 10 Federal holidays (plus inauguration day, which comes round every 4 years when a new president gets sworn in). That's only 2 more than England & Wales and 1 more than us Scots and the (Northern) Irish (us Scots need 2 days to recover from New Year and you couldn't pay me enough to make any comment about the Battle of Boyne). Plus any extra days given whenever the institutional parasites royal family has something to celebrate and lets the serfs doff their collective caps in appreciation shares with the nation.

Maybe USians are harder working than their cousins across the Atlantic. Perhaps Europeans work more effectively in their shorter working year? Who knows. I'm not going to get into that. I won't moan about holiday time because we knew what it was like before we came. What I didn't know about, though, was what happens when you need to take non-holiday leave.

There is no legal requirement in the US, at the Federal level, for employers to give employees any paid time off for illness, no matter how serious it is. Four states (well, three because DC isn't a state) have passed local laws mandating some form of sick leave. The only legal protection for most workers is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The FMLA states that any company that employs more than 50 people has to give their employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family or medical reasons. In these 12 weeks, the employer cannot fire the employee or cut off health insurance.

This law was only passed in 1993 and is all good and well, if you can afford to take unpaid leave. I guess if you're working a minimum wage job with crap (if any) health insurance, you're pretty screwed. And I don't want to think what happens if you have a long-term (and expensive) illness once those 12 weeks are up and your employer no longer has to pay health insurance. Yikes.

Of course, many employers have their own provisions. My wife's contract officially allows her to take 15 days per year combined sick and holiday time. So if she has a flu, she has to drag her sorry arse to work and infect all her colleagues if we want a summer vacation. And this is her with an academic job! Larger employers, including Federal employers, sometimes allow workers to donate unused holiday time to colleagues who are seriously ill. Which is heart-warming, if surprising that people actually have unused leave from those 10 to 15 days. Of course, me being a European socialist, I would think that a basic duty of employers would be to provide some sort of cover for their employees and that the government's job should be to legislate for that. But hey, what do I know!?

Another, even more surprising bit of information concerns maternity (or parental) leave. Yes, when you get to my age, you start to consider these things. The USA is one of only four countries in the whole world that has no statutory maternity leave, with the other members of this exclusive club being Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. Compare this to the UK's LEGAL MINIMUM six weeks at full pay plus another 33 at £128.73 per week, or to Norway's 56 weeks at 80% pay or 46 weeks at 100% pay, to be split between both parents.

Of course, while the US is almost medieval in its legal provision for parental leave, many employers are much more progressive. We can, after all, take up to 12 weeks unpaid leave under FMLA. I think most women take around 4 weeks off, at which point they have to pass their newborn baby on to a stranger to raise for them. That seems very weird to me. And, given the cost of child care, if you had twins it's not worth working because one salary would go entirely to those costs. Yikes. Give me European socialism any day of the week.

Since I usually have photos on the blog these days which are loosely thematic, have a picture of us on a frantic three-day holiday in Canada last week:

(*) According to Google, I do have regular readers. I assume it's only friends who actually know Dom and I so... who is in Belize!?

Reason Rally

I am an atheist. Just four little words that, back home in Europe, are not that big a deal. Things are quite different in the USA - atheists are mistrusted more here than any other "minority' group, including muslims, lesbian/gay/bisexuals or recent immigrants, according to a 2006 study from the Univeristy of Minnesota (see here for a summary of the data or read on Wikipedia). Indeed, given the choice for president, the US would choose to elect a gay Muslim communist over an atheist.

Atheism in the US is almost like voting Tory in Scotland - something that people only admit to in the privacy of their own homes. I hadn't really noticed though: a figure often quoted is that 90% of scientists working in research are atheists, so most people I encounter are generally left-leaning secularists. But I was aware that most USians take their God rather seriously, which means that if Dom and I ever visit the bible belt, I'm not allowed to even open my mouth without permission from my wife.

But today was something different. Today, in the US, atheists and agnostics decided to come out as a movement, and I have to say that they did it in style. For those who don't know, the Mall is the big grassy bit in the middle of DC where Congress, the museums and all the monuments live. It's also the place where all the big political rallies are held, so it was a good venue for the Reason Rally today.

We arrived just as Tim Minchin was doing his thing, including this song, the Pope song. Watching shocked parents desperately trying to cover the ears of their children was particularly hilarious: I'd be surprised if the Mall has ever heard the words "mother fucker" spoken so many times at such a high density - respect to the women doing sign language on the side of the stage!

Other highlights were Nate Phelps, son of the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, a bunch of absolute mentalists who do lots of nasty things including picketing funerals with placards. If you've never heard of these nutters, check out the Wikipedia page. Given that the URL of their website is "www.godhatesfags.com", you can imagine what kind of unpleasant people they are. Anyway, I'll stop giving them more publicity and go back to the Reason Rally.

Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers both gave pretty good talks and Eddie Izzard was simply hilarious. Dawkins pulled what was probably the biggest crowd of the day which was a surprise, but I guess Eddie Izzard probably isn't so big on this side of the Atlantic. The main aim of today was to try and get "social and legislative equality" for atheists. It was a good outing and I was glad to see that it didn't turn into just an excuse to bash religion, which would only ever be counterproductive and also miss the point.

A few religious types did turn up to explain to all us godless atheists that we were scum and due to burn in hell for all eternity (see above photo). I would have felt sorry for them, but they seemed to be quite happy. They were all concentrated in one area but mingling with the heathens, and people were queuing up to get a chance to debate with them. Think Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park on a Sunday, but with the American tendency to not hold back and you're half-way there. I've stick more photos on this page because some of the banners were truly hilarious.

Overall, I think the Rally got its point across. It included a video address from Representative Pete Stark, the first congressman to officially come out as atheist, and another video message from Senator Tom Harkin who, whilst a believer himself, was happy to see a group that represents around 15% of USians finally make their voice heard. Such a contrast to the UK, where we had Alistair Campbell stop Tony Blair from discussing faith with his now famous words "We don't do God".

One thing that we can learn from our cousins across the Atlantic is activism and personal involvement in politics. Back home, the political class have sort of budded off from reality and most people are apathetic. Here in the US, it's a lot more grassroots and a lot more people get involved in the full range of the political spectrum from campaigning on local single issues to being involved in caucuses and selecting the presidential candidate. That's something that has to be admired, even if it means that entities like the Tea Party can come to prominence. But I'll save talking about politics for another day.

Eatin' oot!

Regular readers of this blog (I know they exist, Google told me so) may be forgiven for believing that I think everything in the US is terrible, apart from their beer. I suppose this is because I'm a grumpy old man who likes to rant, and the things that I think the US does badly (healthcare, driving, bread, etc) are far more striking than the things which the US does well. Apart from the beer, which I noticed very quickly. Another thing that regular readers will notice about this blog is that many of my ramblings are focused on food and drink. Being a fatty takes effort, so food and drink are a big part of my life. From a culinary perspective, my wife and I are basically hobbits. So, this is another blog post about food.

One striking difference between the US and the UK is that the standard of restaurant food is generally quite a bit higher here. There are bad places here too, but the baseline is somewhat higher, which goes part of the way towards explaining why USians complain when they get to the UK. One thing I like is that most places will give you a couple of different types of veg on the side, and even pub-grub comes with crispy, steamed veg and not stuff that has come out of a freezer and been boiled to death. So, well done to the USA.

There are a few differences, though. Although pub-grub and restaurants tend to be better here in the US when compared to the UK, USian fast food is that bit saltier, fattier and generally nastier than its UK equivalent, even when coming from the same multinational. Dominos pizza in the UK isn't great, but much better than from Dominos in the US: we phoned in a Dominos when we first arrived here, and we were left feeling dehydrated all of the next day, presumably because EVERYTHING is much saltier here. Everywhere. I got a Subway a couple of weeks ago and even if left me feeling parched for quite a while.

Mexican-style fast food is becoming quite popular in the south east of England. The Mission burrito place in Oxford is a blatant rip-off of the USian company Chipotle (right down to the colour scheme and fonts on their menu!), but the Mission does the burrito so much better. And I've still not come across anything in the US that rivals Chilango, another burrito place which we only discovered in London the month before we left. I'm talking about fast-food Mexican though, we've been to one or two cracking Mexican restaurants here which have been pretty damned good.

Anyway, back to the positive. Restaurants are generally better and we've found a new Favourite Place. Well, we were taken there back in September by a couple of good friends, and we've spent a lot of time there in the last week or so. It's called Silver Diner, and there are a few of them dotted around Maryland and Virginia. They're laid out like a classical 60s diner (complete with matching music, dodgy colour scheme and silly juke boxes), but all of the food is locally-sourced, often organic and just bloody delicious. Mmmmm, bison. The photos in the this post were taken there in the last week or so, with Alyssa poisoning herself with milkshake (she's a lactard) and myself, below, enjoying a nice local craft beer. Mmmm, IPA.

There are a few things about the restaurant experience which are a little bit different from the UK, some of which are good, some of which are bad. The friendly customer service is good, but odd, and mostly because the waiting staff are paid less than minimum wage so need tips in order to eat. Which leads me on to the bad thing: the price in the menu is not what you get charged. You need to add on sales tax and a tip of around 20% (or you're a bad person, apparently), so this was confusing to begin with.

If you happen to clear your plate during the meal, it'll be quickly taken away even if other people in your party are still eating. This was really annoying to begin with, and seemed very rude, but it just seems to be how things are done in this country. Quite often, as soon as you say "no" to dessert, the bill will be brought to you unless you explicitly say "don't bring the cheque, we haven't finished drinking yet." Again, this seemed rude at first but most USians are busy and active, so I guess they like a fast turn-around at meal-time. One more thing: the portions are epic, truly epic. Even as an accomplished fatty, I often struggle to finish. But that's standard here and most places will offer you a doggy bag unprompted.

For a country where one fifth of all meals are eaten in a car, the quality of restaurant food in this country is pretty spectacular. The only thing missing is great Indian food. You can get decent stuff here, but it's not a patch on that to be found in Glasgow / Manchester / Birmingham / London. In fact, we're heading to Edinburgh on Sunday just to get a curry from Kismot, which is easily the best Indian restaurant we've been to. Mmmmm, curry....