The following is a letter I wrote that appeared in the Grand Forks Herald on November 14th, 2011. The title it was given is, "Occupy Wall Street touches a nerve".

YURIHONJO, Japan — Jan Raaen tells us that in the 1960s, rioters were radical and anti-capitalistic, and that the same is true of the Occupy Wall Street movement today ("Occupy Wall Streeters choose wrong target," Page A4, Oct. 29).

Raaen misconstrues what’s happening.

In any movement, there is a fringe. This is true of the tea party, the National Rifle Association and the Democratic and Republican parties, and Occupy Wall Street is no exception.

So, when Herald readers see a picture of a rally and someone holding a silly sign, they should not assume the sign reflects what everyone in the rally believes.

Furthermore, some 70 percent of Occupy Wall Street participants are politically independent, according to a recent study, so certainly opinions will vary.

Still, some general ideas are quite clear and universal, and there’s no reason we can’t recognize them.

The biggest message behind Occupy Wall Street is that corporate greed is damaging our country, and we need to do something to stop it. The evidence is clear: Today, the richest 100 Americans have more wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans combined.

Some media sources say Occupy Wall Street has no constructive agenda, but that’s false. Given that the super-rich are getting richer, Occupy Wall Street participants want to see some of that money — our money — back in the hands of hard-working Americans.

When the recession hit, Washington found money to bail out the banks that caused it but did little for the millions of Americans who can’t make mortgage payments. This must change.

The American Dream is that if we work hard and get lucky, we can land a decent job, maybe buy a nice house and raise our families in happiness. But as the rich get richer and everyone else falls behind, that dream will fade. To get it back, we need to make some changes.

Right now, Occupy Wall Street is trying to start this process. Right now, it’s a lot of Americans standing up, telling us that things aren’t all right and describing the kind of country they think America should be.

Douglas Perkins

The following is a recipe for chestnut cake. It's an adaptation of a recipe by Chef Tallyrand at HUB-UK (2011).

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a round 25-26 cm cake tin. Roast or boil the chestnuts. If the chestnuts are roasted, simmer in the milk for 15 minutes or until soft. Puree the chestnuts in a food processor. Put the sugar and egg yolks in a large bowl and mix. Add the melted butter, and mix. Add the almonds, chocolate, lemon juice, and brandy, and mix. Then, add the chestnuts and mix. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff, and fold into the mix. Pour the mix into the cake tin and bake for 45 minutes. Let cool for an hour or more before eating.

This is a recipe for cashew cardamom balls which I found at SCO*RECIPE (2011). Using your hands, mix the cashews and cardamom. Then mix in the orange peel, followed by the dates. The dates should make everything stick together, making a big ball. Divide this big ball into 16 small balls. Chop the coconut into as small pieces as possible, and roll each ball in coconut.

My goal here is to make my laptop into a wireless access point — like a wireless router, but without buying an extra box. I'm running Debian Linux. My laptop is connected to the internet by LAN. The first challenge is to find a wireless card that can do Master mode (that is, can work as an access point). Only a few drivers supporr this (see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers). After searching, I found a USB wifi card that works — the NEC Aterm WL300NU-AG, which uses the carl9170 driver (see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/carl9170).

Two packages are needed: hostapd and udhcpd. Any DHCP server would work, and there are several alternatives to udhcpd. I haven't tested them, but dnsmasq and dhcp3-server were mentioned elsewhere.

# aptitude install -P hostapd
# aptitude install -P udhcpd

The network card can't be placed in AP mode the old way, because the drivers don't support it. When I tried, it produced an error.

# iwconfig wlan1 mode Master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

The driver for this card can do AP mode, but only using hostapd. Here's my configuration for hostapd v0.7.3. I'm not using any encryption or security at the moment — this is an open access point.

/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf:

interface=wlan1
driver=nl80211
ssid=Openwifi
channel=1
hw_mode=g
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
auth_algs=1
wpa=0
logger_syslog=-1
logger_syslog_level=2
debug=0

To make my wireless devices connect to the access point smoothly, I use udhcpd v1.18.5-1, a small DHCP server that's part of BusyBox. The below DNS addresses are for OpenDNS and Google Public DNS.

/etc/udhcpd.conf:

start 192.168.0.10
end 192.168.0.50
max_leases 30
interface wlan1
option subnet 255.255.255.0
option domain local
option lease 864000
option router 192.168.0.1
option dns 208.67.222.222
option dns 208.67.220.220
option dns 8.8.8.8
option dns 8.8.4.4

To start the services, use the following commands. These daemons log to /var/log/daemon.log.

# /etc/init.d/hostapd start
# /etc/init.d/udhcpd start
# ifconfig wlan1 inet 192.168.0.1

Check that the daemons are running without error and that the network interface is locally accessible.

# tail --lines=30 /var/log/daemon.log
# ping 192.168.0.1

To get IP masquerading (routing) working, use the following commands. Note that eth0 is the internet-facing interface. Add the following lines to /etc/rc.local to run them at boot time.

# echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
# iptables -F
# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

That's all there is — my access point is up and running. If everything is working, connect to the wireless access point using a second machine. If it doesn't appear to work, for a starting point, check the local network, the internet using IP addresses, and the internet using domain names.

# ping 192.168.0.1
# ping 8.8.8.8
# ping wikipedia.org

The following is an easy recipe for tasty rice pudding. It's from a cookbook called The New Best Recipe, by Cook's Illustrated (2004, ISBN 0936184744). Pictures by Rudi Riet — see here and here.

Boil the water in a large saucepan. Add the rice and salt. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the water is almost fully absorbed (about 15 minutes). Add milk, half and half, and sugar. Cook on high until boiling, then lower to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Reduce heat to low and cook for another 15 minutes, or until a spoon can stand up in the pudding. Stir occasionally to avoid sticking or scorching. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla, cinnamon, and raisins. Cool and eat. (Store in refrigerator, with plastic wrap pressed onto pudding. Eat within two days.)

これは「ライスプリン」のレシピです。ライスプリンはイギリスの食べ物です。

大きなソースパンに水を入れて、煮立てる。米と塩を入れる。蓋をして、水がほとんどなくなるまで（約15分間）静かに煮立てる。牛乳と生クリームと砂糖を入れる。蓋をしないで、30分くらい静かに煮立てる。弱火にして、中にスプーンを入れて立つまで（約15分間）煮る。火を止める。バニラとシナモンとレーズンを入れて、混ぜる。少し冷ましてから食べる。（冷蔵庫に入れ、二日以内に食べる。）

JavaScript based on code by Stijn Strickx at http://www.proglogic.com/code/javascript/time/worldclock.php.

Here are some pictures of Chokai Junior High School (鳥海中学校). It's located in Chōkai, which is a part of Yurihonjo City in Akita Prefecture, Japan. The lat/long is 39.181005, 140.19447. Students from 3 elementary schools come here — Jinego Elementary School, Kawauchi Elementary School, and Hitane Elementary School.

The above maps are from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA 2.0). Here's some history of Chokai Junior High School. The Japanese is taken from the school's records at http://www.city.yurihonjo.akita.jp/edu/chokai-jh/chokaichu.html, and I translated it to English.

Here is a PDF of sheet music for the school song.

Sunday was a long day, and we used the hours to deliver ridiculously many bananas to twenty-some shelters in Kesennuma. To begin with, Yui and I left at six in the morning. We met up with Jon and Jez, and headed to Yokote. Kathie was waiting for us there, and we picked her up and hopped on the expressway heading east.

There is a supermarket in Kitakami called Super Osen. They have cheap bananas. Very cheap. It seems they have cheap everything, because we got there before opening hours, and maybe 50 people were lined up outside the front door. Anyway, the doors opened, and we got our bananas. 35 boxes. Everyone was skeptical as to whether we'd be able to fit all the bananas in our cars, but we did. Then we hopped on the expressway again, and headed SE to Kesennuma.

When we got there, we met and planned out the adventure. Kathie went to help Paul with his deliveries, and Jess and Rachel, two amazing Kesennuma ALTs, helped us with ours. In the morning, we hit up Kujo Elementary School, Kesennuma High School, K-Wave, Matsuiwa Elementary School, Matsuiwa Junior High School, and the Bosai Center. K-Wave still has hundreds of residents, but several of the other shelters have decreased in numbers as people move into temporary housing or find other places to live. In the shelters with more space, people can set up tents or cardboard walls, or use several rooms, all of which help give them a modicum of privacy — far better than everyone living together on the gym floor. The food situation also seems to be improving. At several shelters, people told me they were getting canned fruit once or twice a week — and on rare occasions, fresh fruit. A month ago, in contrast, nobody said they were getting any fruit at all. Even at the shelters where people were getting fruit from time to time, they were very happy to get a few boxes of bananas. And as we were delivering, we ran into many of Jess's and Rachel's students, which was a lot of fun.

After lunch at 7-11, we headed to Hashikami Elementary School, Hashikami Junior High School, Hashikami Community Center, Niitsuki Junior High School, and Shishiori Junior High School. At this point, we were almost out of bananas, and it was almost dinner time in any case. Dinner time makes deliveries to shelters somewhat chaotic, and is best avoided. Yui and I started back, and the rest of the group headed off to a final stop at Omose Junior High School. 3 hours later, we were home, safe and very tired. I soon fell asleep and almost slept through my alarm clock the next morning.

This is the first time I've visited so many shelters in a day, and it's quite interesting to see the differences. The Bosai Center is a fire station, and part of it is now a shelter. But the other part is a functional fire station, and there are lots of fire trucks parked outside. Some of them have sharks pained on the back. K-Wave is a huge community center. We didn't get a chance to go inside, but we walked around the outside, and there was a skate park with skateboarders working on jumps and tricks. Hashikami Community Center is a 2-story building, and the shelter is on the 2nd floor. There are perhaps four large rooms, and because it's on the 2nd floor, all of the rooms have decent views. Shishiori Junior High School, our last stop of the day, was a fittingly stereotypical Japanese school. It's located at the top of a big hill connected to everything by a curvy narrow road which must surely be impossible to bicycle with any degree of safety. It being a Sunday, we were lucky enough not to encounter any cyclists with whom to test this theory. It should be noted that evacuation sites in Japan are typically used not only for immediate evacuation, but also for longer term use. As such, they need to have a safe location (a high location), a large space for people to sleep in (a gym, say), and a decent road for supply trucks. I am told this is one reason that schools are on the top of hills — they already fit two of the three criteria, and being atop a hill gives them an edge on safety. On the other hand, it may well be that when new schools are being built, people already have houses in the good low-lying areas, so the next best proximal locations are hill tops. It doesn't really matter what the reasons are, because whatever they are, we're very happy that many schools along the coast were on high ground. It's also good fitness training for the kids who have to walk up and down every day.