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But you're not using the stairs? That means you aren't listening to Nanny Bloomberg.

Jim P. at July 19, 2013 10:51 PM

Tell Miami I found their weather and sent it back.

MarkD at July 20, 2013 4:47 AM

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/07/sometimes-we-ta.html#comment-3810516">comment from MarkD

I went outside briefly several times in order to forage for food, and last night, a few of us went in the hot tub, but other than that, I've avoided the weather.

Amy Alkon at July 20, 2013 4:59 AM

So, basically, you're not in Miami - you're in a building. It could be anywhere.

Though Miami obviously isn't the false-color kaleidoscope shown in the zooming montages of CSI:Miami, it's everything you're not seeing. Cubans. The sanitary suburbs, the beach condos of the jet-setters and paparazzi, the Miami River... There's tour boats - or, there used to be - to show you what a truly expensive house looks like. California doesn't have the monopoly on those. The port. The airport, where a surprising number of foreign fliers appear daily (not the terminal, the airport).
There is the divide, as in LA, I imagine - feet from beautiful architecture, bums sleep on an abandoned loading dock among the waste attending the service industries found in any city. The weather hardly ever challenges their sleep.
Miami even has a semi-independent music scene.

And then - the entire reason the city itself is still inhabitable - there are the seas of grass and swamp cleaning the air as the trades waft into town. I wouldn't trade the view in the picture for one of a thunderstorm in the distance over the Everglades.

The word, "Miami" once meant "clean water" - referring to that Miami River.

Not today. There are buildings on it. Great job, people.

Radwaste at July 20, 2013 7:46 AM

So, basically, you're not in Miami - you're in a building. It could be anywhere. -- Radwaste at July 20, 2013 7:46 AM

Who pissed in your Wheaties® today? :-|

Jim P. at July 20, 2013 8:31 AM

Gee, Jim - what's the point of being somewhere else if it looks just like where you came from?

If you never leave the airport, have you really been to Vegas?

Miami has a buncha stuff to do.

And not all of it depends on concrete.

Radwaste at July 20, 2013 8:42 AM

Oh, yeah. Forget the tour boats - forgot the motion sickness thing.

But if you don't get out - how will you find out who lives there?

Radwaste at July 20, 2013 8:44 AM

Gee, Jim - what's the point of being somewhere else if it looks just like where you came from?

Business

If you never leave the airport, have you really been to Vegas?

Yep, otherwise the airport wouldnt have been in Vegas. Isnt that kind of like asking 'If you havent heard Beethoven himself play, have really heard Beethoven?'

lujlp at July 20, 2013 9:53 AM

But if you don't get out - how will you find out who lives there? -- Radwaste at July 20, 2013 8:44 AM

Is this what you're trying to say?

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you're lucky then the god's a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

One town's very like another
When your head's down over your pieces, brother

Jim P. at July 20, 2013 12:20 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/07/sometimes-we-ta.html#comment-3810946">comment from Radwaste

I'm here for a reason: To suck up as much as I can from this conference as humanly possible, to meet new researchers doing interesting work, to hear about new work from researchers I know, and to go out for nerdgatherings with more of all of that with researchers old and new.

Because that's not the way many of you or even most of you would spend your time, well, I'm not you and you're not me.

I was in Miami with Gregg, who knows it well from researching it for Elmore Leonard's books like LaBrava. We also hung out in Palm Beach with Elmore.

Yes, there's a time to get around, see the sights, etc.

I'm extremely driven in what I do. I just stayed home for pretty much three months straight, and when I say "stayed home," I was working day and night on my next book, trying to put as much time as humanly possible into it to make it as great as possible.

You spend your time in ways that have meaning for you, but best not to expect what has meaning for you is important for me.

Catherine Salmon, Barry X. Kuhle, Diana S. Fleischman (a vegan with a sense of humor), and I did hang out last night in the hot tub if that makes you all feel any better!

Amy Alkon at July 20, 2013 1:01 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/07/sometimes-we-ta.html#comment-3810959">comment from Radwaste

There is the divide, as in LA, I imagine - feet from beautiful architecture, bums sleep on an abandoned loading dock among the waste attending the service industries found in any city.

There's a homeless guy living on my block now. I'm most interested to talking to people I meet from Cuba -- both the bartender last night at the conference's BBQ, in between finally meeting and hanging out with anthropologist John Marshall Townsend, and anthropologist AJ Figueredo, one of my favorite, favorite people.

AJ looks a bit like he's about to go to jail in this shot, but he is super-fun and has an incredible brain. I think of it as the anthropological version of the computer system that powers NASA. His page at his university: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ajf/

AJ studies life history theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory

Townsend I've referenced in my column a number of times. He does very interesting work on sexual regret by women, even when they think they want a one-night stand:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/mt4/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=3&search=townsend

I've also been hanging out with the always-fascinating and fun Wayne State law prof and evolutionary psychologist Kingsley Browne, who's authored two terrific books, Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars and Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality (Rutgers Series on Human Evolution).

Blog items on Kingsley's work:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/mt4/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=kingsley+browne

PS And never post this many links in a comment. I'm doing it through my software. For everyone else, one per comment is the limit! Post as many comments as you like to post as many links as you need.

Amy Alkon at July 20, 2013 1:13 PM

Nicely done, lady, and point well taken. I know the intellectual exercise is fascinating there!

Radwaste at July 20, 2013 8:12 PM

"I'm here for a reason: To suck up as much as I can from this conference as humanly possible,"

Hey, at least you get to go to Miami. I get to go to Syracuse.

(Actually, Syracuse is a pretty nice place these days. Shame about the weather.)

When I lived in south Florida in the early '80s, a lot of the Cubans were still first- and second-generation. Many of them had come other either in the Mariel boat lift or through some other means of escape. One of my co-workers told about her uncle buying an old airplane and flying it to Cuba with the transponder off. He managed to land it on an old road near the beach and pick up some relatives. On the way back, near Key West, the engine quit. They ditched the plane just off the coast and swam to shore.

Cousin Dave at July 23, 2013 11:22 AM

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