A Trip to New Orleans - Planning

This blog will be updated throughout the process of planning for, traveling to, visiting, and returning from New Orleans.  

The first entry in this multi-part series is all about the vacation planning.  The WikiTravel guide to New Orleans has good advice for the first time traveler:

http://wikitravel.org/en/New_Orleans

We happened to have timed this trip to coincide with the Louisiana Craft Beer Week, with events happening throughout the week at local establishments:

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/louisiana-craft-brewers-week/Content?oid=2756188

The following, incredibly thorough and helpful list, was provided by a friend of my wife's:

Where to EAT!

• Brunch-- The Ruby Slipper (Marigny)
• Brunch-- Cake Cafe & Bakery (Marigny)
• Brunch-- Booty's Street Food (Bywater)
• Brunch-- The Country Club (Bywater-- also a gay bar. Make reservations for brunch.)
• Brunch-- Suis Generis (Bywater)
• Felix's Restaurant (French Quarter. OYSTERS! Raw and char-grilled. Gets a little crowded but so good! Go a little before lunchtime or late afternoon before the dinner rush. They also have good po-boys & gumbo)
• K-Pauls Louisina Kitchen (French Quarter. Also gets crowded for lunch. Reservations recommended for dinner)
• Sylvain (French Quarter. NEED reservations! We tried this place the last time we visited and it was so good! Also Julia Stiles sat next to us, haha.)
• Yo Mama's Bar & Grill (French Quarter. Peanut butter burger. Just do it.)
• Cafe Amelie (French Quarter)
• Sukhothai (Marigny. My most favoritest Thai place ever.)
• Draggo's Seafood (Central Business District. A little bit of a tourist trap but i think it's yummy.)
• Mother's Restaurant (Central Business District. Fried Chicken. 'nuff said.)
• The Joint (Bywater. BBQ Yumminess.)
• Bacchanal (Bywater. Get a cab. Walking is too far. But it's a GREAT wine bar with great food. And you get to sit outside and they have live music. It's nothing fancy but great!)

Things to Drink:

• Erin Rose -- Frozen Irish Coffee
• Pat O'Brien's -- Hurricanes. Also a nice place to hang out and chill. Large outdoor seating and the bar inside is cute. Also the piano bar.
• Tropic Isle-- Hand grenades.... caution: Those are really sweet and give you WICKED hangovers.
• The Roosevelt Hotel -- Sazaracs (a drink that orginated in NOLA. Calls for absinthe so don't drink if you don't like licorice) at the hotel bar
• Lafiite's Blacksmith Shop -- One of the oldest bars in the country.
• Molly's on Toulouse -- This is a nothing-bar. We liked going there because it has good Dark and Stormies and it's never crowded.
  
• Other bars that aren't in the Quarter: Anything on Frenchman Street, Mimi's in the Marigny (also has good small plates), 

Live Music:

Basically any place on Frenchman Street. They ALWAYS have live music. What I did the last time was walk down the street and you can hear the music from the street. Then pick a place. Most places don't have a cover. I would skip the ones with covers.

There's also a bunch of bands playing on the streets... You'll stumble on to some when you walk around. Make sure to tip a dollar if you take any pics of them on the street. It's the etiquette :)

• d.b.a
• Three Muses
• The Spotted Cat Music Club
• Blue Nile

Other things to do/see:

• Cafe du Monde-- Tourist trap but you gotta go at least once. Gets REALLY crowded. Go either during the mornings or late night
• VooDoo Spiritual Temple (off N. Rampart Street-- Ask to see the temple in the back of the store, it's fascinating)
• French Market-- Local vendors selling a bunch of stuff. Mostly touristy things but sometimes you find something cool and unique. There's also food vendors there.
• Frenchman Art Market-- This place is fairly new but so awesome! Off of Frenchman Street, in between Royal & Charters Street. A ton of local artists selling their stuff.
• Walk the length of Royal Street. Tons of antique stores and art galleries. My favorite street.
• If you're interested in cemetery tours, I did a tour at of the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Search online for some companies to book.
• Reverend Zombie's House of VooDoo-- Tourist trap but I think it's fun. Buy yourself a voodoo doll and look around.
• Preservation Hall-- I don't know much about it but it's a famous music venue
• Walk along the river. It's nice.

Other stuff:

• Have cash. Most places don't split or they have a credit card minimum.
• Comfy shoes, duh.
• You'll be walking everywhere so be weather-prepared.
• Uber is an option instead of cabs if you plan on going somewhere farther

Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You

In the latest case of a company with a fresh idea that becomes wildly successful to become the target of attackers, Uber is now facing perhaps the biggest attack of the company's relatively short history. In a recent ruling, a judge in San Francisco has granted the lawsuit brought forth by three former Uber drivers class-action status, which will cover the mass of 15,000 current and former drivers.

The primary claim of the lawsuit is that Uber drivers function more closely to employees of the company than they do as independent contractors.  Since it started, Uber has been able to avoid some serious expenditures by maintaining that the drivers are independent contractors and are compensated based on the cost per trip and any additional tips that passengers offer.  Essentially, every Uber driver is running a personal business, they just happen to be using the Uber app to advertise.  By doing so, the company does not have to provide compensation such as gas reimbursement, health benefits and workers compensation to any of their drivers.

The potential impact of this lawsuit, should the drivers win, could require Uber not only to begin compensating the drivers for gas and other expenses, but also for Uber to back-pay all of the former drivers for uncompensated expenses they are owed.  It is likely too, that the affordable rates customers currently enjoy will have to increase to offset these additional costs.  However it would likely not be just the customers who feel the brunt of impacts.

It would not be surprising to Uber cap its drivers at 30 hours or less per week to avoid the costs of providing health benefits.  This could impact current drivers pretty severely, as they could go from working 40 hours or more per week to say, 28 hours.  In turn, Uber could then offer preferential treatment to drivers with more seniority for the hours that tend to be more lucrative and so the drivers who are just doing this for a little extra on the side to make ends meet could be forced out completely. In turn, if the rates suddenly go up, customers will not want to pay higher rates and still tip the same amount they were before - particularly if they were prone to tipping generously - so the revenue on a per trip or per hour basis for the drivers could decrease.

It is easy to look at this lawsuit on the surface and feel sympathy for the drivers, however with the economics at play here - regardless of how the lawsuit turns out - it is the company who will have the upper hand when it comes to obeying the laws set forth.  While it would definitely be a shame to see these sweeping customer-impacting changes occur if Uber loses the lawsuit, the drivers are likely to be the ones to ultimately lose out in the end.

The Dreadful Obsession of Running

I hate the physical act of running.

For as far back as I can remember, running was something I did only when I had to in school or when it was part of some other recreation.  I would run while playing football, basketball, or soccer.  I would not run for the sake of running.

I never realized my greatest objection to running until after I was diagnosed and treated for exercise-induced asthma.  Even while playing the aforementioned sports, the heavy breathing, gasping for air, and mucus-producing coughs were not enough to turn me off from playing those sports - in fact, at some level I think I fed off of those symptoms.  It was my competitive nature shining through - that despite the fact that I couldn't hardly breathe I was still out there giving it my all.  I used it as some sort of validation for not being able to keep up with the athletes due to my lack of natural athletic gifts.  I wasn't good, but I had heart.  But within the context of running for the sake of running, there was no competitive driving force to keep me out there pushing myself to my physical limits.  Running was a choice, and an easy one to avoid.

This all changed over the past few years.

At first, running became a means to an end.  I wanted to lose weight.  I entered into a competition at work to measure who could lose the most weight in the time available - roughly four months.  The competitor in me knew there were two changes I had to make to lose weight: change my diet and start exercising.  I researched all of the legitimate diets to find the one that would enable the most weight loss in the shortest amount of time (a Keto/Paleo hybrid) and decided that running would be my exercise.  For the first time, I committed to confronting my respiratory nemesis head-on.

I met my weight-loss goal of 40 pounds right on the mark.  The other goal I had set for myself was to run my first 5k - which in July of 2012, on probably the hottest day of the year, I ran and completed my first 5k.  The eye-opening part of this race was that though I had become a reasonably fit person, I was the only person hacking, coughing and gasping for air after the race.  Even the guys toting around 50% more mass were coasting into the finish well-ahead of me, or behind me, and were fine.  This was when it became clear that I had a problem.

I was tested (inconclusively) for asthma - because it only affects me when I exercise and they didn't make me exercise - but my doctor still treated me for the symptoms I described.  I could tell fairly soon after I started taking the medication that my breathing was improving, but falling out of routine in taking the medicine stunted my progress.

Fast forward a couple years, and now I have gotten to a very regular routine for taking the medicine.  This year, I decided once again that it was time to get back on the running bandwagon and try to lose some weight.  I registered for races and set goals for myself to ensure I keep up with it, but most importantly, I just ran.

As I stated in the opening of this post, I hate running - still do - but I have come to appreciate the competition of running.  Running is a mental competition between your mind and your body to see who is willing to give up first.  The major difference however, is that I have eliminated the major advantage that my body had over my mind - I can now breathe when I run.  Whereas before I would hear my body saying things like "I hurt and I can't breathe, just stop."  Now, I am able to argue back and say "I hurt, but not enough to stop" and so I go on.  That is the exhilaration that keeps me going: to do even better than I did before.  Medals and awards are nice if not surprising when they come.  But to be able to run for almost two hours straight and logging nine miles in the process, thinking the entire time that I am not even the slightest bit out of breath - that is what feeds my ambition to keep running.

At some point, the novelty of breathing may wear off, but the amazement of being able to see the progress I have made over the years never will.

Sometimes Sleep is the Best Medicine

The term "sleep it off" can be used for numerous purposes from "sleeping off a hangover" to "sleeping off a bad day".  Well, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have found one more use for the term: sleep off infection.

It turns out that the human body has natural immunizing powers that work particularly well when people are affording themselves at least seven hours of sleep a night.  The researchers tested this hypothesis by monitoring subjects and their sleep patterns in order to define their control groups. The subjects wore sleep trackers for a week to establish baseline patterns, and then after that week the scientists sprayed live cultures of the cold virus directly into the nostrils of the participants.

While of course some of the participants were infected, there was a distinct pattern amongst the subjects.  People who logged fewer than seven hours of sleep per night became sick four times more often than the people who slept for at least seven hours a night.  Going further, the numbers at fewer than six hours were actually pretty staggering: 39 percent of subjects who averaged less than six hours of sleep became infected.

Because the study was more focused on the sleep patterns and the outcomes of different sleep variables, there was no exact explanation provided for the physiology of why the participants who got more sleep became sick less often.  However, a previous study that measured the affects of fatigue in respect to the chances of becoming infected corroborated the results.  The correlation being, if you get more sleep, you will be less fatigued - and fatigue weakens the body's immune system.

Certainly other factors beyond hours of sleep will play a role in whether or not people will become infected, but if you want to at least improve your chances of not getting sick this fall and winter: get some sleep!

Link to original story: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/01/436385137/aim-for-at-least-7-hours-of-sleep-nightly-to-fend-off-a-cold

Your Tax Dollars at Work

An article in the Washington Post this morning titled, "Denali or McKinley? How a 19th century political ‘joke’ turned into a 119-year-long debate," discusses what has apparently been an ongoing issue with Congress regarding the name of the highest mountain in North America.

Mount McKinley is likely a familiar name to most.  While people may not know that it resides in Denali National Park in Alaska, or that it is the tallest mountain In both the U.S. and across the North American continent at over 20,000 feet, when it comes to names of mountains it is probably at least one that comes to mind.  I know that I have wondered previously why it was named after William McKinley, the 25th president, but not enough to actually type "Mount McKinley" into a Google search to then click on the Wikipedia article.Apparently if I had succumbed to investigating this curiosity, I would have found that the name "McKinley" is rather unsettling for a portion of our government.

Though the government officially recognized the name of the mountain as being "McKinley" nearly a century ago - making official the name that had been proposed in 1896 by a gold prospector who was a supporter of McKinley's - numerous people were unhappy with that name and thought that it should remain the name that was given by the native Alaskans: Denali.  Well, those people can finally enjoy a good-night's rest, because President Obama, in one of his more ruthless and courageous actions as President, has made an Executive Order to rename "Mount McKinley" to "Mount Denali".

That's a relief.

Clearly there is an angle to this - why else would the government use its powers to settle this issue?  Let's consider the financial affects that will cascade down from this decision:

• Every geography book published before August 31st, 2015 is now wrong
• Who wins: textbook manufacturers and book sellers who will now stand to reap windfalls as all geography books used in educational systems across the country will now have to be replaced
• Every "Mount McKinley" branded pin, magnet, collectible spoon, and other merchandise just became outdated
• Who wins: antique and historical collectors whose "Mount McKinley" collection just jumped in value
• Every tour group and tourist trap that marketed themselves as "McKinley" will have to change their names
• Who wins: tour groups that are now marketing: "be the first to scale Mount Denali"

Near as I can tell, President Obama must have a sizable collection of Mount McKinley merchandise, have ownership in some portion of the textbook industry, and/or have a travel business in and around Denali National Park, because why else would taxpayer money go towards funding the decision to settle a century-old debate that no one even knew about until today?

Here is a link to the original article from the Washington Post: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/31/denali-or-mckinley-how-a-19th-century-political-joke-turned-into-a-119-year-long-debate/

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Supermoon!

If you happened to look up at the Moon in the past couple nights as it is approaching Full Moon (which completes August 29th), you may have noticed that it seems a bit bigger than usual.  It's not just an illusion of some sort, the Moon will appear larger in the sky as it completes its next three Full Moon cycles.  These three Full Moon cycles have been given the cute term of Supermoons.

Before I explain why this occurs, let me first dispel the false information that will undoubtedly be passed around in the form of email or Facebook Spam.  The Moon will not cover half of the sky.  The Moon will not cause gravitational oscillations that will knock out the power grid or air traffic control stations.  The Moon will not cause massive tidal waves.  The Moon will not become blood red and unleash its fury on the Earth.

On September 27th though, the Moon actually will become blood red as it completes a Full Moon cycle that coincides with the largest of the three Supermoons while simultaneously having a lunar eclipse.  And during lunar eclipses the Moon does take on a blood red appearance at full eclipse - that much is true.

The reason for the enlarged appearance is due to the common property of celestial bodies in that they all have elliptical orbits, and so throughout its orbit the Moon is constantly getting either nearer or further away.  Because the orbital cycle length (27.3 days) is not in exact alignment with the lunar cycle length (29.5 days), there are variations in the distance of the moon from the earth at each of its different phases.  It just so happens that this year, there will be three cycles in a row that are termed Supermoons, which is just the name given Full Moons that occur relatively close to the Moons nearest approach to the earth, or perigee.

While the Moon will not cause any of the aforementioned disasters, one must always be on the lookout for people during Full Moons.  Though there has been no concrete scientific explanation for the affect of the Full Moon on humans, observationally people do seem to exhibit eccentric and erratic behaviors during a Full Moon.  So maybe September 27th would be a good day to just stay in for the evening and enjoy the Lunar trifecta (Supermoon, Full Moon, Lunar Eclipse) from the safety of one's backyard.

Why the News is Broken

I came to a realization this morning when searching for the subject of today's blog: the "news" as we know it is inherently broken.

Let's look at the mission of any news source.  Most big-name news agencies have altruistic BS slogans they spout off including things like: "truth in reporting"; "on your side"; "most trusted name in news"; and "fair and balanced".  They may pretend these are their motivations, however the truth is that like any business their real motivation is money.  The true mission of any news agency will fall under one or more of these points:

• Be the first to print (or post)
• Give priority to news items that appeal to the masses
• Grab the attention of the viewer or reader using overly-hyped headlines
• Report the details that sound most controversial; ignore those with real substance
• Sell advertisements

At the risk of sounding like I am about to repeat my previous post about advertising and the internet, advertising revenue is and always will be the bottom-line motivation of news agencies.  Whereas I appreciate and enjoy supporting content creators that have interesting and entertaining content to provide, I have no such sympathy for general news agencies.

I tend to use Google News to be my primary news aggregator, and what I have observed lately with Google News is that priority of how articles appear in the feed is given either to major news outlets or to the most sensational headlines (regardless of source).  Even though I have no desire to read about the most sensationalized news topic as of late (intentionally omitting reference to that topic), my entire feed across all of my chosen news themes (US, World, Sci/Tech, Science, Technology, Entertainment and Sports) has become watered down by articles working a different angle to that same news story.  This has become the most profoundly obvious evidence that the news is broken.

There is likely pressure on editors and reporters at the individual agencies to find new angles to the current news story, so reporters are massaging the details to try and stand apart.  Certainly they realize that there is nothing "new" here.  The story is the same.  The details are the same.  As a result, articles that really aren't "news" are receiving far more priority and attention because of the revenue they are generating from the masses of people who crave controversy.  Meanwhile, legitimate news stories are getting lost and forgotten.   Google as a news feed is clearly working in tandem with major outlets to entice people to read sensational articles about non-news, because that's the storyline that is getting all of the attention.

It is getting all of the attention because it is being forced down our throats and burnt into our retinas!

Amongst the major news agencies, there is no "truth in reporting" or "fair and balanced".  There is hype and controversy.  And where there is no hype or controversy, there is simulated hype and controversy.  These companies, including Google, are clearly working together to determine what is most news-worthy and deserving of attention based on what will generate the most revenue.  This is why, at least for me, the news is broken.