4 Small Rivers

Green bird

2010-04-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

Da An park, on a damp spring day. A cluster of people around a scrawny tree, some with cameras. Really big cameras, not "happy-snap" cameras. The focus of attention, a mid-sized green bird. About 12 feet off the ground, where the first set of branches now leave the stem, a brilliant green bird is pecking and building a nest from the wood knot where there had been a branch before.
Some thoughts: what happens next? The nest hole looks like the next visitors are likely to be the asian squirrels that also abound in the park.

The bird, gorgeous green, seems to be the Taiwanese sub-species of the Asian black-browed barbet. Nice pictures at Wikipedia.

The music of Beitou

2008-08-24T03:59:00.000-07:00

A nice - if hot - weekend day.

A walk in the YangMingShan mountain area, followed by a visit to XinBeitou. Part 1: a nice soak in a hot springs ... temperatures up to 47C, pH as low as 2!

And then: across the road from the hot springs spa, a Buddhist group had gathered: the Dharma Drum Mountain (group). http://www.dharmadrum.org/ Rhythmic chanting, quite reminiscent of Gregorian chant - except sans the precise tonality of Gregorian chant and plus some Asian bells. A nice lady there tried to show us where, in the Chinese-language "hymnal" we were ... o well.

Leaving that, we went toward the train station, and there was a small museum of Taiwanese aboriginal cultures, free ... and in we went, just in time to hear a demonstration of (allegedly) aboriginal, Miaoli music and dance. Insofar as this was an accurate representation of anything: the Miaoli music seemed more Polynesian and Indonesian than Chinese. Bamboo and hollowed-wood drums. Some of the chanting here could have been Navajo, seriously ... or an Hopi chant.

On the road again

2008-08-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

Back to it:

It's been over a year since I wrote anything. It's been a year full of challenges and changes, and these caused me to wonder: why am I writing and publishing this? And: what should I write and publish?

As I jot this first note, I'm sitting in a hotel room in hot, hot, steamy Taipei. Life on the road getting a startup off the ground is NOT going to be the subject of this blog, but minor cultural notes, photographs, observations from the world of doing this - perhaps - will be.

Great Meadows

2006-04-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

A lovely day for a walk ... and so out to the old family stomping ground of Concord, and to the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Not a tremendously solitary experience: dozens of avid birdwatchers, lugging heavy binoculars or cameras on large tripods. (And the roar of jets from the Hanscom Field Air Base? Field?) But a beautiful day, toads croaking, redwing blackbirds making their distinctive cronk-a-dee sounds, geese honking and a few finches chirping.

Bud

2006-04-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

Spring is on its way! A warm day, and trees at Concord's Great Meadows are nearly in bud!

Two of her favorite things

2006-04-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Una at Looe. Never mind that it's quite cold, she's got two of her favourite things: ice cream and a bag from a charity shop!

At the Hurlers

2006-04-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Peter and Una enjoy a nice day out on Bodmin Moor ... to the ancient stone circle known as The Hurlers.
It's been a long, wet, cold winter. The ground is sodden, the visibility poor. Peter, now used to travels in Africa, is not all that happy with the weather. Una, on the other hand, seems not too fazed.

Boston Common

2006-04-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

February 12, 2006 ... and that's the State House dome gleaming through the trees.

Looking back at winter ... part 1

2006-04-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

The wee street where we now live. Red brick houses (and sidewalks), gaslights, and snow.

All the tea in China

2005-12-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

Picture of me mugging in front of a poster educating the mindful of all the tea (growing regions) in China. [The ever-exciting tea museum at Pinglin, Taiwan.] And, tea growing in Pinglin: both the flat area in front and the steep hillside are covered with little tea bushes.

Two temples

2005-12-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

The main temple in Dougga, viewed against a dark sky. A Tibetan stupa in an arid area, viewed from a cloudless sky.

Dougga, two words

2005-12-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

In Dougga, the bizarrely-well preserved Roman city in northwest Tunisia, near the Algerian border:
Africus ... a huge circle marked out on the paving in an old square, denoting the various winds. Africus ... the hot wind. (The arc is the horizontal line running above the word africus)
(ip)siobhon(o ... a near-word created by the Latin run-on writing in an inscribed block in Dougga.
For both ... it's hard to see these as 1,800 years old, being so clearly written and well-preserved.

Two views of Northern Taiwan

2005-12-06T09:52:00.000-08:00

Mossy growths on beach on northern most tip of Taiwan island; sulfurous fumarole (great word ... means volcanic crack in the earth's crust where steam and sulfur come out) in Taiwan's Yangmingshan national park.

Looking down (from a plane) at China

2005-12-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

Three pictures, from a plane, one shows the high Tibetan plateau; another what looks like a village perched on the edge of a nasty cliff! This is on the Szechuan-Tibet border, perhaps in an area where pandas roam.

Whining about the weather

2005-10-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

I know: no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no hurricanes. Really: we have nothing to complain about. Even so, this October: several cities in New England recorded their wettest month ever. EVER. Concord, New Hamster, got a 14.6-inch dousing; prior record was 10.7 inches, back in, o, 1937. Providence, Rhodie, luxuriated in 15.4 inches, way over its prior record of 12.7 inches, set in 1983. Manhattan, poor Dominic: 16.7 inches. (Half of that fell in three days.)

Then, before the month was out: snow.

Big sloppy wet flakes, lots of them, for several hours. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/30/snowstorm_packs_october_surprise/

Can I blame these on George Bush?
[a] Yes
[b] Sure, why not.

On Target

2005-10-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

Last week, as we all know, Rosa Parks died. I never met the woman, who defied racial hatred at its heart and, through her quiet obduracy, helped enable many more people, and not just 'blacks', to sit in far more interesting places than bus seats. I don't know if she was a saintly woman as some cartoons depicted her. I'm happy that Congress honors her by placing her casket for viewing in the Senate: I'd go.

And then this. A full page ad in today's NYT (Sunday, p11, main section, New England final).

The page is dominated with a picture of a woman on a bus. Rosa Parks

The headline: "Never has a more quiet act of courage been heard so loudly by a nation".
Below: "On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, paid her fare and sat down. Her strength in refusing to give up her seat helped spark the civil rights movement and inspired a nation to change for the better. It's a single act of courage we honor with two simple words. Thank you."

That's it, its stark, well-written simplicity as good as any eulogy. And one more thing: far away from the text, is a tiny, subtle logo; concentric rings, the familiar logo of Target. BUT NOT the name of the company, which appears nowhere on this page (and there is no text anywhere else to make the point). And for this classy recognition of heroism's importance, commerce's insignificance, these small words to Target: thank you.

An afternoon in Ypres

2005-08-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Some background: Ypres was, until the First World War, a wealthy and beautiful, medieval town, set in near-flat but rich countryside in Western Flanders. During that war, it became a symbol for stupidity in battle management … with both the German and the British Allied forces losing hundreds of thousands of men for little or no gain. Even then, it was seen as disastrous: In heavy rain and glutinous mud predominantly British troops eventually succeeded in capturing the small village of Passchendaele in the autumn of 1917, often regarded as a minor gain albeit achieved at heavy cost in casualties. In the third Ypres battle (September and October of 1917, in torrential rains) the Allies incurred some 310,000 casualties, the Germans 260,000.

At the end of the War, Ypres lay in rubble. Its fields and trees, and indeed the town itself, were nothing but mud, potholes, trenches and unspeakable carnage.

90 years after the fact … we visited Passcechendaele (now as then a small village outside Ypres), and went to the Zonnebeke museum. There, the chipper young man at the reception desk heard our accents and noted that we’d be most interested: they’d found the body of a Lancashire Fusilier (I may have misheard this) the week before. His hand still clutched his wallet. In the wallet still were identifiable documents, including something from a Santa Barbara bank. Inside the museum were artefacts and tableaux displaying the history of the war, displays of what trench warfare was like. http://www.passchendaele.be/#English At a streetside café in Ypres, a British family sat nearby. An older couple and their teenaged grandson: they’d been to battlefields in Northern France and now in Southwestern Belgium. At one of these fields, the boy had found bullets and a grenade. We visited the German trenches at Bayernwald (Bavarian Woods) http://www.wo1.be/ned/database/dbDetail.asp?subtypeID=34&typeid=15&ItemID=6150&lID=3 where you can wander in the trenches, you can understand why the British bombardments failed to break the German line (the Germans had built and hidden concrete bunkers: inside these miserable shelters, with ceilings just 45 inches from the muddy, damp, slimy, verminous and foul ground, the Germans packed and huddled, surviving much of the bombardment). In an odd touch, the signs are multilingual – English, German, Flemish/Dutch and French … but on some occasions the contents are clearly different. On one sign, Adolf Hitler is mentioned; none of the other languages mention him; I don’t read German well enough to understand what was written. Also mentioned in the German-language signs – Chinese slave labour used to build the German trenches, along with a picture of the tombstone of one of the Chinese slaves.

The medieval guildhall and Cathedral of Ypres were flattened during the war. Pictures taken of central Ypres at the end of the multiple battles show nothing left of the 14^th-Century wall, or the medieval towers at the center of town AT ALL, save – for the largest towers – a few shattered walls standing perhaps 10 meters high, ruined, pock-marked, surrounded by rubble. The major buildings in central Ypres have been reconstructed – after a fashion. They do not look like the real thing. They have the outline, but not the huge stone blocks, of gothic masonry. However, in one touching note: one of the statues on the rebuilt medieval hall in central Ypres is not an original, nor a replacement … but a statue in original, medieval style, of a WW1 soldier, in greatcoat.

Another touching note: the evening ceremony at the Menin Gate. Once a gate in the city walls; now an unlovely military arch. Through this gate toward the northeast marched many hundreds of thousands of young men to their slaughter. After the demolition of Ypres by endless bombardment, a new gate/arch was built. Here are inscribed the names of 55,000 soldiers from the British Allies who died – and who had no gravesite as of the arch’s construction in 1927. British Allies: the first names I saw were Indians … the first I saw was of one Sepoy Singh; here are the names of tens of thousands of Canadians (their troops eventually ‘took’ Passchendaele), Australians, Irish, Brits, and more. And, again: these are just the troops whose remains were not found. Nor yet is this list complete, it lists just those who died between the outbreak of war and mid-August 1917. Another 35,000 Allied soldiers lost their lives afterward, and found no known grave; their names are listed elsewhere, at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

At 8 pm each night, traffic through the Gate stops, and a bugle brigade (made up of local policemen) plays ‘the Last Post’, ‘Taps’. This ceremony has been held nearly continuously since 1927, using WW1-era bugles. During WW2, when the area was under Nazi occupation, the ceremony ceased – but the bugles were hidden, and the ceremony resumed, using the same bugles, ‘tis said, the night after the Nazi occupation ended in 1945.

2005-07-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

One of the funkier floating homes; this one on Sausalito's South Forty dock, with amazingly clear reflection.

2005-07-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

A Sausalito Marina ... these are open waters, and almost no ripples over more than 100 yards of waters.

2005-07-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

A recent evening ... ultra calm waters ... here's a view of the floating home that's been home for the past three years, seen only in reflection.

His master's voice

2005-06-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Background: The company I (co-) founded 14+ years ago is about to disappear. Part of it will be sold; another part will continue on its own, under a new name. We are about to exit the premises we first rented in June 1991 (during, one might note, a Bush war in Iraq: plus ca change ...)
The firm had and still has some pretty good IT toys. One was a great PBX; Peter, my founding partner, wangled an ungodly great deal to get a ridiculously nifty PBX. More, over the years it was upgraded until, now, when my office phone rings, a little screen pops up on my laptop -- even if I'm thousands of miles away from the PBX -- saying who's calling (and I can push the caller into voice mail from afar, as well!).
And so, behind the scenes, the voice mail messages are readable by my computer.

And so: in late May 2002, my father called me at the office to wish me happy birthday. I was absent, the call dropped to voice mail. Eight or ten weeks later, my father passed away. I never deleted the voice mail ... and also only listened to it once, three years ago. But with the company and the PBX about to be unplugged, I turned to our most-excellent IT guy to find out how to export the message from the PBX. He installed a software patch and minutes later ... my father's voice rang out, wishing me a happy birthday. This, naturally, happened on my birthday this year.

His message had his so-familiar tones; I missed him terribly when I heard him. And more so when he signed off saying, simply "I'm okay". But the careful innuendo in the tones of his voice, the pause between the "I'm" and the "okay", the descending note tell another story.

And with my ex having full control of all my family photographs and videos, this is just about the only electronic memento I have.

‘Mo Chuisle’, my darling

2005-06-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

SOME MONTHS BACK, I went to see ‘Million Dollar Baby’. It’s famous; It deservedly won several Oscars, but the only reason for me to go and see this film was because Jenny works for Clint Eastwood. The film is almost entirely a discussion of father-daughter relationships (plus a discussion of The Meaning of Life in the context of assisted suicide). There are two central characters: Clint Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn, a man hounded by guilt, writing each week to his estranged daughter, who returns the letters unopened; Hilary Swank as Maggie FitzGerald, a tough, white-trash girl, whose only respectable family member was her long-dead father.

AND so, my going to see the film added another dimension to the father-daughter dialogue, for I was going to see the work of the daughter who at present no longer acknowledges my existence.

THE first note, then, is of pride. That Jenny is (in what exact way I don’t actually know) deeply associated with a film that is so peculiarly interesting, rich in humanity. Yes, there’s blood; yes, it’s not perfect.

AND then came the point at which I burst into tears. Well before the movie’s o-so tragic and touching ending. Clint reads, in spectacularly rough Gaelic, and then again in English, the opening lines of the Lake-Isle of Innisfree.

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

I AM transported by memories. This is, no doubt, the most famous poem from modern Irish literature. It was a poem that my dad could cite, in its entirety, until his final days. I also am quite sure that it is a poem that, even late in his life, he knew also in Irish (although I believe it was originally written in English). It is a poem that speaks of a man in the City who longs for the peace of a country glade.

LATE in his life, visiting dad in London, we would some evenings read poetry. Even, I bought several poetry books, since I knew of his love of poetry and found so few poetry books in his flat at Number 30. I think not one such evening would end without this poem. I imagine also that many of his student boys at Salesians’ would have heard this poem also, heard his voice, linked the poem inexorably with that voice, as I do.

TO me, then, the poem always invokes memories of my father, his loss of Ireland’s peace in the pavements gray of London and his sometimes-wistful thinking of old Ireland. And my own wondering and loss; wondering where my own, peaceful bee-loud glade might be, and my loss with my father’s death.

AND so, I wanted to read it aloud also at dad’s funeral. Some thought it not appropriate; it is quite likely that, even tho’ it is short, I might have been full unable to read it in the church. Be that as it may, I bowed to pressure, did not read it then, and have regretted it ever since.

THE FILM, then, for me near ended with that moment. Did Jenny influence the selection of this poem? Did she remember me looking some years ago, as Clint’s character does, struggling to learn a word or two of Gaelic? Did she, even if she did not put the poem in, understand its symbolism in my relationship with my mourned dad?

AND FOR Jenny, what was it like to work on a movie entirely about the sadness of loss and estrangement in a father-daughter relationship? She, whose birth father is most noted for his complete absence: I do not know how that hurt burns here. She, whose legal father, me, gave her at best a less-than-ideal relationship. How much does she even think of her life as having more than one parable in this movie, both with her two estranged fathers, and with her own toughness and solitude carrying her forward.

Jenny: A stoirin, Tá mo chroí istigh ionat

FRANKIE DUNN, Clint’s character, has this also in common with my dad. He went to church each day. At least this much was not a parallel with my father: he would pester the priest after Mass with relatively inane questions.

2005-05-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Inside the Baroque chapel - Aram Kirche, Munich (I admit it: this picture, and the picture taken of Salzburg, have been processed a bit! The photo of Salzburg needed help ... it was taken from inside a train with very dirty windows!)

2005-05-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

Jesus of the favela: Rio's famous Corcovado, the enormous statue of Jesus, atop a mountain, and some of the city's famous mountainside slums

2005-05-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

Morning sun over Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro

2005-05-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

Entering Salzburg by train

The joys of boyhood

2005-04-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

Once upon a very long time ago indeed … my parents wanted me to be a priest. Being small, very small indeed, and a good boy, very good indeed, I somehow ended up in the swirl of ideas surrounding this … and into the very Catholic idea of a Vocation as a priest. And so, without any real idea of what it was I was getting into I was packed off to a boarding school in southern England, there to start on the road to become a Man of the Cloth, a priest. The boarding school, a junior seminary, became a quite transformative hell. I was (I believe) nine years and four months old when I was packed away on the train and left home.

Now, by continental standards, England is a small place; southern England very much so. The destination, a school on a rural road between the villages of Rotherfield and Mark Cross, is less than 40 miles from central London. For a small boy, leaving home for the first time, and at a time when England was still very poor, and personal cars were rare … I could have been going to the heart of Africa. I imagine that the combination of trains and buses needed took four hours from door to door, perhaps more.

The first train journey out to Mark Cross I remember quite well. I was alone, lonely, terrified. I knew none of the other boys on the train; they were, of course, mainly older than me, boisterous, … some fireworks were thrown, I think, into the tunnel under the tracks at one of the stations.

Where is this place?

Go to: www.streetmap.co.uk and enter Rotherfield or Mark Cross as a location. Or: enter 557630,130810 in the location bar (National Ordnance Survey locator). Then, if this works right … you’ll see, south of ‘Catt’s Hill’ … two short drives. These are the drives into the school property. If you zoom back … just one click … you can see a little pond to the SW of those two drives. This is ‘Acre Lake’.

Some pictures & info of the little villages nearby of Mark Cross and Rotherfield

http://www.rotherfield-countryside.org.uk/church_english_st_denys.html ... the Church wall here famously had a fresco of demons, a so-called Doom painting

http://www.villagenet.co.uk/esussex-iron/villages/markcross.php

http://steve.pickthall.users.btopenworld.com/ssx1867/rotherfield1867.html

http://www.rotherfield-countryside.org.uk/rotherfield_information_directory.html

I believe the school was originally built as a rural orphanage: http://steve.pickthall.users.btopenworld.com/ssx1867/mayfield1867.html Two pictures of it can be seen at http://www.roughwood.net/ChurchAlbum/EastSussex/MarkCross/MarkCrossStJoseph2004.htm But: the old school as a Madrassah? http://www.salaam.co.uk/education/index.php?file=info2.html

2005-03-29T04:04:00.000-08:00

Easter Sunday 2005 ... the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Schiavo - Bush - Stalin (2)

2005-03-22T14:21:00.000-08:00

I did the check: it was indeed Joseph Stalin, evildoer par excellence, who said "one death is a tragedy; a million deaths are just statistics".

A long time ago, the Republican party felt that Big Government was the problem; that it had become too invasive. The great theory behind the current administration is in the writings of Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian philosopher-writer, who argued that ALL government interventions in the working of a society are inherently evil. This meshed with the libertarian wing of the GOP's beliefs, and off we all went. Unravelling social security with 'personal accounts' is -- and I mean this literally, and not to be disparaging -- part of a idealistic attempt to overturn social programs that are seen as contrary to this philosophy.
Except that, somehow, the plot has been lost. Government grows bigger and bigger: the government deficit is higher now than ever, with not even half-baked attempts to rein it in. And it has become more invasive in our lives than ever before. Thus, the second layer of hypocrisy about the Schiavo tragedy is that the politicians who would pose as Schiavo's savior (& I pick that word carefully) ostensibly favor more power for individuals, talk about the sacred bond of matrimony, and say they want to devolve power from central government.
Unless, of course, the individuals don't adhere to the Republican's dogmatic script, in which case the politicians feel that THEY know best and DO need to interfere, to save us all from our little selves.

Schiavo - Bush - Stalin

2005-03-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Even without a TV to watch, I'm saddened, enthralled and disgusted with the circus surrounding the Schiavo tragedy. Enthralled because it is such a terrible drama around that one step we must all eventually take. Saddened that this poor woman's last 15 years have been so miserable, that the fight over her death so public and so vituperative. And disgusted with the posturing of self-centered politicians.
The administration, the Republican party and their lackies, g*d bless their cotton socks, say they must act to preserve the sanctity of human life. Ahh, yes. And no effort shall be spared to save this woman. Of course not.
Meanwhile, the government is lying (that's the technical term) to allow more toxins into our air. [When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff. What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion. That analysis estimated health benefits 100 as great as did the EPA, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents. This quote from Yahoonews, citing a Washington Post article.] To do this, the EPA chose to only look at mercury toxins in freshwater fish, whereas the biggest risk to humans is from sea fish. The reports show that the EPA has lied in its cover up, saying it hadn't been briefed (it had) and that the Harvard study on saltwater-path toxins hadn't been received by the deadline (it had) ... etc.
So here's our administration:

No effort shall be spared to save the life of one woman.
No effort shall be made to save the lifes of many.

I think it was Stalin who observed that one death is a tragedy; one million deaths ... that's just statistics.

2005-03-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

A view from Samuel Taylor Park, looking across western Marin toward the Pacific Ocean. (The park is most famous for the Ewok scene in the Star Wars movie, filmed in the redwoods below.) On the left, you can see a straight line of hills ... that's the San Andreas fault. I don't know the name of the pointy, conical hill.

2005-03-17T18:14:00.000-08:00

Part of a covey (is that the right word?) of California quail we spotted recently in Marin County's Tennessee Valley.

Local rescue and a far-away snowstorm

2005-03-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a very odd day. I was supposed to head out on a long, international flight, connecting in New York’s JFK. Journey was to start with a flight from SFO shortly after noon. Sweetie drove me to airport. Bright sunshine, no problems, no line for check in, good coffee at airport, life is good. I got the nearly-proctological security check (I’d expected that, given the combination of a/ first class, b/ ticket bought in the end only 24 hours ahead of take off, c/ destination city) and arrived at the gate to hear that the flight was expected to be cancelled, because of snow and wind at JFK. Unfazed, settle in to work. But, in fact the plane did take off, on time … made it nearly to the Nevada-Utah border before turning back to SFO because JFK was closing.

It was 3 pm or so when, back at SFO, it became clear that I could no longer reach my far-away destination on time, by any route and at any price. So, I headed home to Marin, where Sweetie met me at the Airporter bus and suggested that, since the weather was gorgeous and the day had been ridiculously frustrating, we should go for a short walk in the Tennessee Valley nearby, part of the gorgeous Golden Gate 'National Recreation Area'. Great idea. 10 minutes later, we’re parked and walking toward the Pacific Ocean.

Beauty around: dozen of California quail (I’ll post a picture later); mist tinges the hilltops. We’re only a few hundred yards from the Ocean, it’s glistening in the distance, I think we can hear it even, when we come across two girls-young ladies beside the trail. One is sitting on the ground, white-as-a-sheet, with her head in her hands; the other standing looking worried. It turns out that Sarah, the girl on the ground, has been bitten by an unknown bug … probably a spider … and seems to be undergoing an allergic reaction. We’re a mile or two from paved road in open space; the sun is dipping behind the hills.

I dial 911 on my mobile, hand the phone to Heather, the standing girl, and we pick Sarah up, put her arms around our shoulders, our arms around hers, and start frog-marching along the trail toward the park entrance. As it happens, we've got both bottled water and adrenaline in our car. Listening to Heather on my phone, it seems Sarah was bitten a half hour earlier; as we march on, we ask Sarah questions. I imagine they bothered Sarah but we wanted her to stay as conscious as possible. I’m glad she was slender – she'd said she weighed 128 pounds – because she became quite a dead weight, and as we climbed the one modest hill I had to put my arm behind her to push her uphill. Her lips were fading to blue; her head was lolling forward. A cyclist rode past and turned back to ask if we needed help: Sarah guzzled water from his camel pack. Thanks to you, whoever you were!

About 20 minutes into the forced-march-with-Sarah, we’re greeted with an ambulance and a fire truck and we get to hand Sarah over to professionals, and walk on. I don’t think of ourselves as having done anything heroic, just decent. However, it’s odd to ponder the odd sequence that led us to be on hand. On any normal Tuesday, I would have been at the office; instead, I went to the airport, took a flight, that was cancelled, … the frustration of a wasted day led us to take a hike … And so it was that a far-away snowstorm brought us to Sarah’s aid. I hope she's well.

2005-03-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

Thousands of cormorants on the SF Bay

2005-03-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

Picture taken this morning while kayaking on the SF Bay.

Star Bright

2005-02-18T22:27:00.000-08:00

"We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years"
"For a fraction of a second in December, a dying remnant of an exploded star let out a burst of light that outshone the Milky Way's other half-trillion stars combined, astronomers announced today." Source of all this energy: an unusual neutron star, SGR 1806-20 . Use that name as a search term and you'll get the full scientific data.

Lots of superlatives in the press, 'this is the big one', a 'once-in-a-millenium experience'. Imagine if its waves had arrived one day EARLIER on Dec 26th, the day of 'the (other) big one', the monstrous tsunami. That would have really had people wondering!

Software gripe

2005-02-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

Some months ago I stopped using Microsoft Explorer, because of all the security holes it has; switching to Mozilla hasn't been flawless -- it's a better browser UNTIL you try and use Acrobat.

MSFT software today is like U.S. cars in the 1960s. Manufacturers then wanted nothing to do with safety, resisted terribly such ideas as seat belts, engines that don't crash onto driver's legs in front-end collisions. That was because they'd designed the cars as cheap, and unsafe. Only when, first, Volvo put safety in as a design consideration from the day the car's design started did we start to get safe cars. Today, MSFT is bolting safety patches on flaws and pushing sandbags against holes. When do we get to the point where the software is designed prima facie as secure?

"Microsoft Windows is like an expensive car parked in a bad part of town with the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. The only thing lacking is the owner's signature on the title showing the transfer of ownership. Where Microsoft comes in is that it is not completely the owners fault: the car locks don't work all the time and the key is welded in place."

So, you wanna be a Supreme Court Justice? (part 1)

2005-02-15T20:33:00.000-08:00

Suppose that you’re a brilliant lawyer. What’s the most important credential to be taken seriously by the Bush administration and offered a judicial post? The answer is not a litmus test on, for example, Roe v. Wade. Nor is it approval by your peers, other attorneys, as being the best in your class. Nope: It’s paid-up membership in The Federalist Society. This is not a country club for Madison scholars; nor is it a think tank; nor yet again is it a debating society. It’s a right-wing legal force. Under Bush, TFS: a/ maintains the pool of judicial candidates for Bush; b/ does the official, government-approved vetting (no longer does the American Bar Association do that); c/ its members in Congress vote to confirm judicial appointees and d/ its members in the Administration carry out Bush’s legal goals.

TFS introduces itself thus: Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

The Society seeks both to promote an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities. This entails reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law. It also requires restoring the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, and law professors.

In working to achieve these goals, the Society has created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community.

Let’s deal with the introduction first; more later. “The legal profession is dominated by a … ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.” Funny, I missed that. Where is it? The Supreme Court is dominated by Republicans (7 out of 9). Congress is dominated by Republicans, and has been for quite a while, so it can’t be the laws they’re passing. There are prominent lawyers who argue for individuals’ rights, but where are the powerful lawyers (not in France, now) who argue for a ‘centralized and uniform society’? TFS doesn’t identify any. Indeed, TFS cites plaudits from the heads of such no-name legal backwater schools as Stanford, Harvard, NYU, Northwestern, … on its own website (http://www.fed-soc.org/whatpeoplearesaying.htm ). Yet, this is the central tenet at the outset of TFS’s self-description.

Now, on its own, this is no matter. It’s like the nonsense of Lush Rimbaugh’s ranting about the power of the liberal media: he is (or was, until he tried puncturing his own balloon) one of the most powerful voices in all of media, not liberal. Hmmm.

But, whereas, at its heart, Lush Rimbaugh’s show is pure entertainment, albeit a hate-mongering form of entertainment, we’re supposed to be able to take TFS seriously. To see what they really think, shall we dispense with the artifice of linguistic niceties? Let’s rephrase the first sentence of TFS’s self-description: “The fundamental legal ideology in the U.S. is a socialist view of centralized government and uniform populace.” There, doesn’t that feel better? At least it’s more clearly nonsensical. Brought to you by the nice folks in Washington, where up is down, and peace is war.

What is love?

2005-02-14T21:03:00.000-08:00

Y It’s Valentine’s day, the day of the year when Hallmark Cards and the flower industry, restaurants and chocolate makers – and de Beers – hope we get out our credit cards and do some serious damage to our bank accounts. Why? Y

Y It all, lest we forget, began nearly 2,000 years ago. Roman emperors, like the Greeks (the Spartans, particularly) before and others since, liked their soldiers to be bloodthirsty, tireless, brave. They concluded that one good way to achieve this was to have a steady supply of frustrated, family-less young men. Rising against this was Valentinus. He urged marriage. Against the rulings of Emperor Claudius, who tried outlawing marriage (!), Valentinus secretly married the youngsters. For this, he was killed, probably in one of those spectacularly cruel ways the Romans delighted in. http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/valentine/?page=history

But, as always, there’s another story: Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. Implication, then, that the Christians tried to replace a festival of fertility (naughtiness!) with one focused on marriage? Y

Y As a young ‘un, in England, Valentine’s day was a/ St. Valentine’s day, and b/ focused only on lovers and wannabes. An especially important idea was the delivery of an anonymous Valentine … a message, delivered as a card, or a teddy bear or … but with no identification of the sender. I still find mystifying the idea of sending Valentines to one’s kids. Y

Y Good commentary, on today’s NPR, on the day. Yes, let’s carve time out of our too-busy-to-stop-and-smell-the-roses lives to celebrate this important idea: LOVE. “Valentine's Day is essentially a day focused on the exciting beginnings of love. But philosopher Alain de Botton argues that Valentine's Day for grown-ups could be seen as a striving to be more worthy of love.”

http://www.alaindebotton.com http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4498778 He argues that there’s too much focus on the beginning of love. That love stories typically focus on the coming together of two young lovers; they face obstacles, persevere, reunite and then ‘they live happily ever after’. Awww.

But wait. This may have been the end of the cute stuff of movies, the end of the Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare plays don’t deal as much with the humdrum challenges of daily life in the ‘ever after’: the taming of the shrew doesn’t count. But real life, real love, is so much less dramatic, and so much more interesting. Y

Paint-by-numbers ... made cool again

2005-01-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

Ahh, when I was a wee lad, I had the paint-by-numbers kit. Oil paints, too, if memory serves. Probably some chocolate-box scenery. Alps, trees, meadows.

And now: we took some software (crayon-by-number) and used it to process some non-chocolate-box images, and put them on our website. So now you or your kids can enjoy recreating Warhol paintings, some of the more colorful works of Van Gogh or Derain or Vlaminck … or some rather more weird - but still family-friendly, etc. - images.
Click on the LINK below. Have fun!

Social Security ... can we get serious?

2005-01-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

If the question du jour is the wisdom of privatizing some or much of the U.S. social security system, how does one parse it into manageable, discernable chunks? How, as a secondary question, can one move this issue from an irrational squabble? (The Right: social programs are Evil, this one must go. The Left: social programs are Good, this one is sacred.)

So, here are some questions. Let’s see if the politicians, economists and pundits even touch them, come close to giving us some honest analysis, based on facts. Or, will they simply impose the template answers from their own dogma?

Question 1: What does it mean to say ‘Social Security’ is in trouble? (Form of answer: SS runs deficits of $B/year starting in 20xx?)
Question 2: If we accept that definition … when does Social Security run into trouble? (Form of answer: SS starts to run into trouble in 20xx?)
Question 3: What do solutions have to do? (Form of answer: Inject $x billion a year from 20xx …? Increase age of retirement eligibility from 65 in 2005 to 70 in 2015? Change benefits calculation? Put some of the SS contributions into non-government trusts? Combinations of these? For example: make amount of annual benefits dependent upon age of retirement – thus if someone retires at 70, they’d get more/year than if they’d retired at 65?)
Question 4: What are the probably ‘unintended consequences’ of these?

From my own perch – theoretical year of retirement eligibility a short 15 years away – I don’t even see a credible coherent answer to my question #1, or its corollary, #2. I have heard no coherent discussion of what the range of alternatives is, #3. And the discussion of the unintended consequences both falls along party lines, for the most part, and is not particularly relevant until we’ve thought through the precedent questions.

One unintended consequence may be this: if much of SS funds is diverted to the stock markets, it could cause significant volatility. In the early years (baby boomers comme moi still earning, saving) the prices of stocks would rise – based as much as anything on supply and demand. Then, later, with many – many millions, actually – of the boomer generation selling their stocks to fund something or other in their retirement, the outflows would soar. Who would be around to buy? Answer, not as many people – that’s a demographic fact. The possibility of monstrous stock crash looms. This is made significant because baby boomers diverting cash flows have macroeconomic effects.

It’s an often-cited creed that governments act as a damper on investment spending. It’s politically savory to note that this dampens the upside. It’s out of favor to note that it can dampen the downside.

Seeing stars

2005-01-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

Funding is being cut for the Hubble telescope. No repairs will be made. Shortly, it will fall to earth. The White House has been instrumental in this, according to reports. One wonders why?

Dark-sinister conspiracy time (and no, I don't even have pictures of Bush family members making two-fingers-as-horns Satanic signs to back me up here). One of the more awkward aspects of astronomy for Biblical literalists is the size of the darned universe. Even our little local galaxy, the Milky Way, is 'some 30,000 light years across' (encyclopedia.com, reference below). And therefore, even if the farthest rims are travelling AT the speed of light, away from us, their light would have had to be emitted 15,000 years ago. Which is awkward, really, if you want to believe the universe was created about 5,000 years ago.

It's one thing to scoff at dinosaur bones, and imagine that these fossils were put there as part of some G*d's great scenery. It's quite another to imagine a universe entirely set up as a Potemkin village, whose vital machinery is there to maintain an erroneous appearance. (Perhaps the warning in our cars' wing mirrors is from divine inspiration: things are closer than they appear.)

With religious fanatics ascendant, it makes sense to shoo away something that persistently puts in front of the public beautiful images that come labelled with their distance as measured in light years. (210,000 light years in the example cited below, for example)

Sad, sad. Sad (1): that we'll miss Hubble's beautiful imagery. Sad (2): that so many people refuse to see the beauty of the universe in which we live.

[ www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/MilkyWay_SizeandShapeoftheMilkyWay.asp ;
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2005/04/image/a ]

World. United.

2005-01-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

My young brother was flying into Kathmandu last week. The Nepalese man sitting beside him on the plane observed that George W has succeeded in creating world harmony ... and unity, against the U.S.
Of course, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had united the world with the U.S.

And, in 'Baghdad Burning', the Iraqi (I assume) writer says: "We were never a threat to America...
Congratulations Bush- we are a threat now." http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

A monopoly on virtue

2005-01-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't know how the woman does it. I listen -- as one does -- to Terry Gross, NPR's Fresh Air interviewer par excellence last night as she interviewed two gentlemen, in sequence, on the subject of religion in the administration. And, throughout, although she did seem to struggle a bit at times, she kept her composure.

On my right, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (basically: the religion's lobby group). He notes that 'he and President Bush share the same evangelical faith.'
And, on my not-quite as right (stay with me here), Rev. Jim Wallis -- founder of Sojourners, 'a Christian group advocating a style of peace and justice', plugging his book, btw: God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Land argues with angry conviction that the debate on values is over, he/they won. And in so doing he repeatedly executes a mean feat of rhetorical legerdemain (legerdemain = 'sleight of hand' for those who still dislike the Frenchies). The trick is buried in his logic, which runs as:
1. Moral values are on the ascendance, more important in consideration in the election, etc.
2. Therefore, Christians have won.
Did you see it? The trick, y'see, is the assumption that only Christians (and perhaps only his flavor of Christians) understand moral precepts. Other religions? Pshaw! The godless? Never! (Shall we set aside here, for a moment, the historical note that white, church-going, G*d-fearin' Southern Baptists played lead roles in the abominations of Southern slavery and the lynchings that ensued?) And thus, the right defines right. It's them.

Rev. Wallis, softspoken and humble compared to Land's stentorian self-assuredness and pride, spoke next.

An equal-opportunity scold, he argues (surely correctly) that none of us is without flaw. He wondered about the hijacking of a religion, to the point where the holy name of Jesus is used to prop up ... tax cuts? For the rich? Somehow, I don't think he got invited the fancy balls in Washington last night. See, he doesn't get it about moral values, does he?

Listen and gasp at http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=01-20-2005

I (name here) do solemnly swear ...

2005-01-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

... to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

One has to wonder if W had his fingers crossed when he said that? Let us consider the great wisdom of the early amendments to the Constitution ... and W's record on them. In a touching essay -- a picture speaking a thousand words -- Juan Cole (don't know him, he's a blogger comme moi) has put in juxtaposition the text of seven of the first eight amendments with images representing the Bush adminstration's flagrant violation thereof.

http://www.juancole.com/

Pictures from Aceh

2005-01-19T21:03:00.000-08:00

I am, still – and always will be – grateful to the West Sumatrans who saved my life in Maninjau in 2004. I hope that none of them were harmed by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Aceh province, far to the North.

The extent of the devastation defies description … but a friend-of-a-friend (someone ML knew through Hackers) is in Aceh and has posted his photographs here:

http://projects.mindtel.com/2005/0115.tzone/t1/05-bandaaceh.html The terrifying thing is … just how many photographs there are, and how endless the devastation is.

My paintings: shameless plug

2005-01-17T21:15:00.000-08:00

Several of my paintings are now visible at joeinc.tv ... Click on the LINK below.

The painting of the Minang house (Minangkabau are the people in the West Sumatran highlands) has been repainted significantly since, both to bring out the colors more and because the painting as shown is incomplete: each traditional Minang house has two sets of 'buffalo horns' ... for a total of 4, not the three shown here. It's one of a set of four paintings of Minang houses -- three are nearly complete; the fourth not started. Each are 1-foot square. (Acrylic on canvas)

The painting of the farmer in the rice field is based on a drawing I did in Bali in 2003. There are several other paintings from Bali -- mainly farmworkers. (Acrylic on treated paper; 24" x 12")

Politics -- and this is competence?

2004-12-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

So, soldiers in Kuwait, preparing for deployment into Iraq have to dig around in landfills to pull together ad hoc armor. Nice to see a soldier talking back to Rumsfeld. Apparently, he asked for questions, said he was prepared for the tough ones … shockingly, some of these young men thought he meant it.

BUT … (quoting here from Angry Bear: http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2004/12/inside-army-on-humvee-protective.html ) let’s think about what this tells us. Hmmm. We know that Bush-Rumsfeld were planning to invade Iraq BEFORE the 2000 election. Soon after 9/11 (late 2001, remember) this was a public discussion. In March, 2003, Bush warned Hussein that the US would invade “at a time of our choosing”.

So: funding for add-on armor for the humvees was NOT in the bills that funded the war in Iraq. When was the supplemental spending on humvee armor requested? August, 2004.

"Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he was responsible for the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners. And today President Bush said the abuse was cruel and disgraceful and an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency. And then he told Rumsfeld that he was doing a superb job. Then Rumsfeld said, 'What the hell do I gotta do to get fired?'" —Jay Leno

The Terrible Math of War

2004-11-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

A recent report noted that Iraqi casualties now were over 100,000. How many US military are casualties? We all know the raw statistic: now over 1,000 soldiers killed. The Pentagon has admitted to 7,000 wounded. HOWEVER ... there are indications that this is far from the full list. Another count adds 17,000.
This count is from a journalist who, instead of relying on the Pentagon list ...
investigated, wondered why he saw more people injured ... and then found that the records of soldiers evacuated by helicopter for medical reasons ... and there were far more.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/10/1537224

Insofar as this is true, then the net casualties, dead and wounded, from Iraq (1,000 + 7,000 + 17,000) = 25,000.

There are about 125,000 US troops in Iraq ... perhaps the rotations have meant that the total US troop count through Iraq in this war has totalled 250,000.
That, then, is a 10% casualty rate.