Rich and Strange Aeons

There's a new restaurant in Central Square, at 25 Central Square Cambridge. It replaced a previous Mideast restaurant the name of which Google has forgotten. It's very new: opened in the past three days (I didn't go out Wed or Thurs.) Pure takeout -- no seating, though there's a ledge if you really wanted to wolf your food there. Prices in the $9 range.

I was given two small falafel for free; I thought they weren't as good as Falafel King's, but decent. I ordered a lamb kafta pita with hummus and fava beans. The guy kept asking if I wanted the ground lamb and not the beef shawarma, which seemed odd; maybe he has no faith in Americans knowing what they want. It rang up oddly: $8.99 turn into $10-something with tax, then back down to $9.60 with cash discount. I thought total sales tax was 7% here, meaning $9.62.

The actual food? Pretty tasty. It was a stuffed pita, not a wrap; the pita looked small, but came out to a decent amount of food; I could probably have made 2 small meals out of it. Tasty and juicy: I was foresighted enough to eat over a plate, the tinfoil covering would not have saved my clothes if eating over my lap.

There are breakfast specials at $6.49, though all vegetarian.

Mount Auburn cemetery is famous. I'd seen it once before in 2011, though not for long -- on bike, and was told bikes aren't allowed. That pissed me off a lot; *cars* are allowed.

I finally went back today, though first going to the Belmont cemetery I'd noticed on a recent ride. That one: pretty boring. Lots of slabs, lots of American flags, just not that much there.

Then over to Mount Auburn, to park my bike and walk around. At least I got the order of cemeteries right -- it really is awesome! Huge, lots of fancy old sculptures, great landscaping. Near the end I looked at an interactive kiosk, which talked about both. The cemetery pre-dates public art museums by a few decades, so early on it served as an open air sculpture museum, which it kind of still is. And, the kiosk talked about the landscaping being deliberately chaotic, or irregular, or using what's naturally there rather than some imposed order. So at first it looks ordinary enough, though full of trees, but then a surprise fountain! And an even more surprising dell that looks really wild! And three other ponds.

I kind of got lost, actually; after the dell I thought I was still going south, until I made my Survival roll and noticed the sun on my left hand. By which point T-Mobile had given up on me, so I had a map of the cemetery but not my location in it.

Very quiet and restful in the right spots.

Until black flies come and buzz around my face. I'm guessing they wanted my sweat, especially as they went away after I sprayed myself a lot. I love that $6 sprayer from Ace Hardware.

Photo set.

Also on the way home, I passed a Mirkwood squirrel. Or at least, a really really dark furred, basically black, squirrel.

New to me, anyway.

Thursday, my D&D group was going to order pizza. From Domino's, because it's cheap and fast. Despite some people saying they felt oogy after eating it. I suggested we try something else -- Just Crust Pizza, say, which I've heard of as a worker-owned successor to the Upper Crust which stole wages (PDF). People were amenable. People were put off by the prices. People were reassured by a large being 18", when Domino's X-Large is 16". We ordered, sausage&onion (caramelized!) for the carnivores, margherita for the vegetarians. It was pronounced good, though we also noted it's very thin crust pizza, so the price per food quantity may be high after all. But good!

Tonight I went to Grendel's a bit late, and so had everyone else. I didn't feel like squeezing into a corner -- there wasn't even a nearby chair -- or dealing with the noise, so I bugged out for a while. Across the alleyway, some dance club has been replaced by Shake Shack, whose menu had vaguely intrigued me, and I went there. I had a double Shackburger, basically a fast food cheeseburger, but tasty and juicy and didn't leave me feeling gross. $7.92 with tax. I'd call it better than Tasty Burger, not sure if better than Flat Patties.

Municipal elections in Massachusetts today. I live in Cambridge, which uses STV (Single Transferable Vote), a form of PR (Proportional Representation.) You rank the candidates in order, and black magic -- performed these days by Accu-Vote machines and computers -- computes a set of winners. 9 out of 18 candidates for city council, 6 out of 11 for school committee. I accidentally put two numbers for the same council candidate and had to try again. Non-partisan elections, so gauging the proportionality isn't as simple as matching up parties in the populace and council. I don't know much about the candidates, but I did find a trove of somewhat detailed candidate statements, so made my best guesses. There was a lot of similarity; even the one Republican (there's no party on the ballots) sounded pretty liberal. Occasionally things stood out as distinctive, though. Anyway, I did my bit for participating in diligently last-minute semi-informed democracy.

I think my preference for open party-list over STV went up a bit. Ranking 29 candidates via pen and scantron, nnng. Party-list could potentially have hundreds of candidates, but you have only one vote to cast.


We can try other evaluations than party: the current council shown here http://www.cambridgema.gov/ccouncil.aspx is 3/9 women, 1/9 black (the dark woman is Asian), 2/9 Asian, and 0/9 Hispanic as far as I can tell. Wikipedia says Cambridge is about 12% each for African-American and Asian, 7% Hispanic, and 51% female. So the blacks are spot on but the women are lacking. Of course, it's also pretty middle-aged. One candidate said he'd be the only tenant on the Council if elected, and I'm sure there's more than 1/9 renters in town. Sortition (random selection) as used by ancient Athens (they thought elections were too oligarchic, except where needed for generals [experienced] and treasurers [rich enough to not steal]) would be much more generally representative.

The school committee is http://www.cpsd.us/schcomm/committee_members.cfm is 3/6 male and 5/6 white, 1/6 black, not counting the Mayor, who is elected by the Council from among its own members and automatically head of both Council and Committee. Not to be confused with the City Manager, who is hired by the Council -- in the incumbent's base, for like the past 30 years. Apparently to good effect; Cambridge finances seem to have weathered the recession quite well.


Icon is particularly appropriate, being of a character who is a conduit for an Imperial Mandate of Heaven, who advocated (in a snarky aside) democracy as an alternative to said mandate.


"Cambridge is also the birthplace of Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), who is the world's longest reigning monarch at age 82 (2010), as well as the longest reigning monarch in Thai history. He is also the first king of a foreign country to be born in the United States." Also, I'm currently a "Cantabridgian". O_o