But Don't Take MY Word for It...

I keep harping on the fact that torture is wrong and doesn't work. But why take my word for it? I'm no expert. Guess what? Even professional interrogators say that. Here's an excerpt from a column by retired Army colonel Stuart Herrington, who "served 30 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, which included extensive experience as an interrogator in Vietnam, in Panama and during the 1991 Gulf War."

The piece is called "Two problems with torture," and you may already have guessed what those two things are: "It's wrong and it doesn't work." Go figure.

Here's more detail on how it's supposed to be done, and how it's being done now:

In interrogation centers I ran, we called prisoners "guests" and extended military courtesies, such as saluting captured officers. We strove to undermine a prisoner's belief system, which we knew instructed him that Americans are unschooled infidels who would bully him and resort to intimidation, threats and brutality. Patience was essential. We rejected the view that interrogators could merely "take off the gloves" and that information would somehow magically flow if we brutalized our "guests." This notion was uninformed and counterproductive, not to mention illegal, and we made sure our chain of command understood that bowing to such tempting theories would result in bad information.

Persuasive? I'd always thought so, and it certainly worked for us in contingency after contingency in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. But when I explained these immutable principles to an auditorium of young Army interrogators last year, one reaction puzzled me. "Sir," a young soldier queried, "that 'tender-loving-care approach' sounds all well and good, but it takes time. What do we do when the chain of command sends out a requirement and says they need the information by the end of the day, and that thousands of lives may depend upon it?"

The very question tells us that intelligence professionals have failed to educate their commanders that detainee interrogation is not like a water spigot. "Give the inquisitors the freedom to push the envelope of brutality and good information will follow" seems to have become the watchword since 9-11.

The blog post at LGM that pointed me to Herrington's article suggests that gathering intelligence isn't actually the point:

In fact, torture (in the contemporary American context) is designed to demonstrate masculinity and Will; to sort of those who are "serious" about protecting America from those who aren't.

I'm not sure I buy that entirely. Certainly there are some who use brutality as the ultimate form of bluster and swagger. But I tend to think it's more about putting up the appearance of effectiveness, in a shallow, TV melodrama sort of way. As anyone who watches TV these days can tell you, you just rough people up, they give you information, and you solve all your problems in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Never mind that this is not how the real world works: it's how a lot of people perceive the world as working. After all, the closest most of us will ever get to an interrogation is watching it portrayed on TV.

And as the self-same TV tells us, image is everything, and perception is reality.

But they are not. Turn off the TV and think a little, OK? Thank you.

Save the Sharks

No, this is not a post about ice hockey.

Went to an advance screening tonight of a really good movie called Sharkwater. Go see it. It opens across the U.S. on Friday, November 2nd. Here's the trailer.

I will have more to say about the movie and sharks and all that. I got into this screening because of a group I do some work with, the Center for Ocean Awareness, Research, and Education (COARE). COARE is working to reduce the demand for shark fin soup, because said demand is killing ungodly numbers of sharks. It is estimated that well over 90% of sharks are already gone, and nearly all are either killed as random bycatch or specifically for their fins and nothing else.

So, support groups like COARE and WildAid that are working to reduce the demand for shark fins. Don't buy shark products: no shark fin soup, no shark cartilage, no shark meat. Be wary of "fish and chips," because a lot of that "fish" is shark. They've started calling it "rock salmon" (really) or "flake" to hide its actual nature. But it's shark, and it's really bad for the environment.

Much more coming, but we aware: this is important, and improvement needs to happen fast. Public pressure has helped to save many other creatures, like whales and elephants. Sharks need our help, and we need sharks.

More Musical Geezers

I've been meaning to mention that I went to another concert last week. Yes, just eight days after seeing 60-year-old Jimmy Buffett play live, I saw 58-year-old Bruce Springsteen. Quite a contrast, that.

Now, I have to admit that I like Springsteen, but I don't consider myself a huge fan. I've enjoyed his music for years, own a number of his albums, and have now seen him live twice. In many ways, that's the key: Springsteen is legendary for his live performances. Though he's slowing down some (he no longer plays 4+ hours at a stretch), his current tour consists of well over two hours of nearly non-stop music. One song segues into the next with very little chatter. Even the obligatory guitar changes usually happen while someone is still playing, and then he counts off into the next tune.

It's really amazing. The energy level Bruce and the band maintain is beyond anything I've seen.

What's also amazing is the number of New Jerseyites (if that's the term) who pop up like prairie dogs to see "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!" play. Riding BART to the arena for the show, eight or ten of the people standing near me were comparing notes about what part of New Jersey they came from. And when Springsteen called out from the stage to greet the bay area, he also called out to folks from New Jersey, and they were almost as loud, if not as numerous. One is not normally so aware of their presence, and I'm unclear whether they just follow the band (Bruceheads?) or whether they're always here, but usually quieter.

Anyway, it was a very good show. I enjoyed it more than the first time I saw him, which was outdoors at Pacific Bell Park (or whatever it was called that week). Springsteen really connects with the smaller audience. I'm told his solo acoustic shows are even more amazing. Perhaps I'll check that out the next time he does one around here.

Here's the glowing review from the San Francisco Chronicle the next day:

...somehow, some way, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band still stand for the same things, still shine the same beacon, still stay true to the dream. They are older, wiser men - joined now by women, Soozie Tyrell and Patti Scialfa - and they are slowed by time. .... The Boss himself couldn't quite put that harsh wailing urgency into "Backstreets," but just the fact that he was playing the song again for the first time in years said everything.

On the down side, I see indications today that some radio stations are trying to suppress some of the songs from Springsteen's newest album (although how you suppress the #1 album in the country, I don't know). Bruce has always been outspoken about things, and he makes no secret of his dislike or even disdain for the current U.S. administration. But truly, I find it difficult to believe that even to corporate conglomerates that run the radio business these days would try to suppress extremely popular music if there's money in it for them. Weird. I'll keep an eye on that.

Rock on.

Street-corner Discourse

Last night, we took my mother-in-law out to dinner to celebrate her birthday. We were in Berkeley, and parked the car right down the block from People's Park. (If that name doesn't mean anything to you, you're either far too young to be reading this, or you desperately need to go read the linked history! A somewhat more objective view is here.)

As I was attempting to negotiate my way into the parking space (always a treat parallel parking on the left side of a one-way street in an unfamiliar car), I rolled down the window to see how I was doing, and the vehicle was suddenly filled with the sounds of the "discussion" among several people on the sidewalk. Perhaps "argument" is a better description. I never did discern the substance of the disagreement, but whatever it was, it sounded as if someone were playing the soundtrack from Casino out there. (The MPAA rating noted "pervasive strong language" in that; I know there are plenty of other examples, but that one stuck in my mind.)

It was, quite literally, a conversation dominated by "F-bombs." Now, sitting there in the car with my six-year-old daughter, I wondered what this must sound like to her. It's not as if she's never heard one of us use the occasional profanity, but I doubt she's ever heard a torrent of that sort. As I finished parking, the participants headed off, still yelling, in the direction of the park.

As we sat down in the restaurant a few minutes later, my mother-in-law commented that she hadn't heard anything like that in quite a while. She used to be a teacher in an urban high school, and her husband spent many years in sports administration, so she has certainly heard her share of profanity-laced tirades. Even my niece, a college student who is more frequently immersed in the current coarsened idiom, noted that this was a particularly vehement example.

We discussed for a bit the fact that while one might use profanity as an intensifier in conversation, a "conversation" that consists of little but intensifiers expresses emotion at the expense of substance. The phrase that kept coming to my mind was "...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Of course, the well-known context of that quote is "...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." And clearly, it is easy to dismiss the participants in last night's tirade as idiots with no meaning.

But the full context of the sentence in Macbeth's soliloquy upon learning of his wife's death, is not about the idiot, but about life:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

It's brilliant writing ("Duh, Chard...it's Shakespeare!"). The single line, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," is one of the greatest lines of poetry ever written. But behind all the froth and fume, what underlies it all is life.

Meanwhile, my daughter, immersed in a game of Brickbreaker on mom's Blackberry, seems to have ignored the whole event and discussion thereof. I hope that's a good thing, but I can't help wondering what portion of the soundtrack penetrated her subconscious. I know she hears everything, especially when she doesn't seem to be listening.

Slightly Better Torture News

In fairness, not all the news on torture is bad. There is one participant in the Republican side of the race who gets it on this issue: John McCain:

Senator John McCain, who is perhaps the most forceful (and one of the only) anti-torture voices in his party, has sharply rebuked Rudy in an interview for suggesting yesterday that he didn't know what waterboarding is and that extreme interrogation techniques might be defensible in some circumstances.

On the other hand, McCain is notorious for saying very reasonable things, and then voting for just the opposite. I talk to a lot of liberal and Democratic voters who seem to think McCain is very reasonable and moderate. But if you look at his voting record, he's dead solid conservative. He just talks a good "moderation," and has a good P.R. machine.

And, I should point out, that although he speaks out rather forcefully against torture and related madness, his message doesn't seem to be resonating with the voters or the other candidates. His campaign seems to be doing an imitation of David Caruso's career. And none of the other candidates seems to have caught the meme.

But at least there is someone over there saying something good. So there is hope, however slim.

Torture and Popular Culture

[Never thought I'd see, much less write, a title like that.]

Digby over at Hullabaloo has a great, long post about torture and TV and stuff. It's not pleasant. As usual, Digby says everything I would want to say, and says it much better.

Just a reminder:

Cruel and unusual punishment is banned in the constitution for a reason --- it makes barbarians of all of us.

I really want to stop writing about this.

Update:

...but I can't. It's a big topic among those running for president these days, but at least some of the candidates trivialize it. Rudy Giuliani yesterday told a group in Iowa that

...they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly. That’s silly.

No, that's torture. Anonymous Liberal, filling in for Glenn Greenwald at Salon this week, dredged up some actual descriptions of sleep deprivation being used as torture. It's grim, but it's worth reading to understand what people like Giuliani are trivializing:

Apparently, this is what it's like on the campaign trail:

Mr. Bashmilah was subjected to severe sleep deprivation and shackling in painful positions. Excruciatingly loud music was played twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. Guards deprived him of sleep, routinely waking him every half hour. Initially, the cell was pitch black, his hands were cuffed together, and his legs were shackled together, severely restricting his movement and causing him pain. Later, he was chained to a wall and the light in his cell was left on at all times, except for brief moments when the guards came to his cell ... Mr. Bashmilah's psychological torment was such that he used a piece of metal to slash his wrists in an attempt to bleed to death. He used his own blood to write "I am innocent" and "this is unjust" on the walls of his cell.

I wonder what Giuliani writes on the walls of his $4,000-a-night hotel rooms.

I'm sick of this, I tell you. Even when Giuliani says right-sounding stuff about torture, like this:

So I think America should never be for torture. America should be against torture. It violates the Geneva Convention. Certainly when we’re dealing with armed combatants, we shouldn’t get near anything like that.

That's pretty good, but his very next words were:

There is a distinction, sometimes, when you’re dealing with terrorists. You may have to use means that are a little tougher.

And later, this:

So let’s be careful on how we define this. And, sure we should be against torture. But we should not be against aggressive questioning. And the line between the two is going to require some really difficult decisions about drawing it and kind of trusting each other with the discretion for the president to make decisions about what has to be done in the interests of the American people.

This insistence that somehow it isn't torture if you're doing it in a good cause is sickening. Or that good people might sometimes torture bad people, and that's somehow all right. Sick. And sickening.

We have no business discussing the nuances of when and on whom we should be allowed to
use "aggressive questioning." A civilized society doesn't work that way, doesn't go there, doesn't even think seriously about it.

That used to be us. It can be again.

The Price of Ignorance

I stumbled onto this column by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday. I had given up reading his work a few years back because I found it too snarky (really! too snarky even for me) and rather repetitive and self-congratulatory. So I was pleasantly surprised to read this and find it serious, reasoned, and missing any gratuitous references to sexual lubricants. Maybe the guys has grown up. Or maybe this is an anomaly...who knows?

Anyway, the point of the article is that the current generation of kids is growing up horribly uneducated. And yes, you can blame TV and bad parenting and too much junk food, but the part he really stresses is that we've basically gutted the educational system.

We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.

Scary stuff, that.

This is arguably the biggest threat to our way of life. Not war, not terrorism, not health care or the economy. Those are all important topics, hard to solve and all that. But if we don't educate the populace, it is hard to see how we can address those issues, much less solve them. A generation that grows up without quality education or even a sense of the value of education is unlikely to recover from that.

The benefits of public education were spelled out by one of its early advocates, Thomas Jefferson:

"The less wealthy people,... by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:73

Perhaps the greatest benefit of an education is the appreciation of education and learning. I can't deny that the children of the wealthy and privileged will pretty much always get a decent education. But lest they find themselves isolated in a sea of ignorance, we need to ensure the education of all (or most).

My home state, California, used to rank at or near the top of national rankings of education and per-student expenditures. Now it ranks near the bottom. If the largest state in the nation, the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, can't bring itself to educate its children, what hope is there?

I'm bummed.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me

The title of this posting is the slogan my Congressional representative uses on her bumper stickers and posters (it's also the name of her campaign website). It is a sentence I have often been proud to utter, most notably as she has stood up for individual rights and against war and torture.

And today, she stood up and spoke out against one of the senators from our state, Dianne Feinstein, who promoted the nomination of an arguably racist judge to serve on a federal circuit court:

Let me also say that as a Californian and as an African American, I am incredibly disappointed that a Senator from my home state, Senator Feinstein, would not only vote for confirmation but would be the one to effectively bring this nomination to the floor by voting with the Republicans to approve the nomination in committee. It is particularly disappointing given California’s diversity and our history of leadership on issues of civil rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights and the basic commitment to equality before the law, all areas where Judge Southwick’s record is, quite frankly, sadly lacking.

Ms. Lee continues the proud tradition of her predecessor, Ron Dellums, for whom she worked for many years. Neither one is known for taking stands that are necessarily popular, but they are courageous and important. And I'm proud that they represent me.

I've been corresponding with a friend of mine about the lack of backbone in Congress of late. I believe I accused the leaders of both houses of Congress of being invertebrates yesterday. It is gratifying when my representative shows some spine (and she does this often!).

[Hat tip to Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake for pointing out this bit.]

Another Quiz

It's not my fault. Laura started it!

And I don't think I've ever scored 100% on any of these before:

Which Star Trek: the Next Generation character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Geordi LaForge You are good-natured and quick thinking. You are good at figuring out puzzels and building things. Geordi LaForge 100% Data 87% Jean Luc Picard 73% Deanna Troi 67% Worf 53% Beverly Crusher 47% William T. Riker 33%

At least none of us are Rikers....

Yet.

Music that Makes Me Happy

Last night I had the roughly annual pleasure of seeing Jimmy Buffett live. This was the second time he's played at the historic Fillmore Auditorium (They no longer have their own website, darn it, so you'll have to settle for this Wikipedia article for now.), and the second time I've seen him there.

It was a good show, but it can't live up to the Really Awesome Show he put on the first time he played there in 2005. That was a terrific experience. He was obviously thrilled to be there, and had put together several special numbers with the band that resonated with the venue, covering tunes by the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Neil Young in addition to his usual fare. Last night he managed to put in a few specials, but he mostly stuck to the set list he's been touring with.

I suppose the other "special" aspect of the first show, other than it being such a first, was that the show was a fund raiser to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans has a special place in Jimmy's heart, as he grew up on the Gulf coast, so it was pretty cool to help him try to help those folks.

Being in a smaller venue (I believe the Fillmore holds something like 1200 people) means the concert is a much more intimate experience than the ones in the big barns with 15,000 people. It makes it possible to watch the faces and interactions of the band members, which is fun. And it lets you just space off with the music. Toward the end of the show, he played the song "One Particular Harbour," which always transports me:

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within

I remember quite vividly seeing my one particular harbour on my first trip to Palau. It was our "honeymoon" (a year before the wedding), and we went past this absolutely perfect, gorgeous little spot on one of the islands. I later found out that's where one of the Palauan chiefs lives (or one of his places, anyway). Just a small, simple house with a beach, surrounded by palm trees in the tropical sun. Nice.

But I digress....

Anyway, Jimmy did some fun stuff. In place of his traditional "Why Don't We Get Drunk?" song, he commemorated the 21st birthday of one of the attendees with a serenade from Bob Dylan, which I never knew was called "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35." But the crowd all seemed to know the chorus really well. And he kicked off the second half of the show by performing "God's Own Drunk," which he rarely does any more. That's a fine old bit (originally by Lord Buckley), featuring a moonshiner, a still, and a bear. Doesn't get much better than that.

Except they followed it with a solo number by one of the long-time backup singers for the band, Nadirah Shakoor. She covered one of Buffett's older, less well-known songs, "Wonder Why We Ever Go Home," and I must say, it sounds quite a bit different when she does it. Quite nice.

Oh, and if you want to know what a professional thought of the show, here's the review from the San Jose Mercury News. See? it wasn't just me! It was a great show.

Travel Annoyance

Airport security is a weird, kabuki dance that has nothing to do with actual security, for the most part. It's mostly designed to keep passengers docile and afraid. Indeed, it has much more to do with bureaucracy than with security: You have to play by their rules; arguing has no benefit, and could have annoying (or worse) consequences. So you go along. Baaaa-aa-aaahhhh!

This rant was triggered by my reading a pilot's discussion of the stupid things they have to do, like removing their shoes. Not that they actually need to screen the shoes, but they're worried that metal in the shoes might set off the metal detector. Brilliant. So they have to take off their shoes, too.

But my favorite has to be this comment left in response to that:

Heard in a European airport, by an agonized traveler to the US speaking to a security guard: "It's not a gel, it's Camembert!"

Heh.

No, Really: Don't Call

Of course, I don't mean you, dear readers. I'm talking about the National Do Not Call Registry, a fine setup created under the Federal Trade Commission about five years ago. Basically, it's a list of phone numbers that telemarketers are not supposed to call.

Now, about that five years ago thing: it turns out that for no particularly good reason, requests to be on the list expire after five years. I say no good reason, because numbers already come off the list when they change owners, which seems fair. But it's hard to imagine that when we all signed up, five years ago, we were thinking that in five years' time, we'd be missing all those calls during dinner, so wouldn't it be nice to have people call again?

I don't get it, other than telemarketers wanted another opportunity to piss people off. Why in the world they would want to call people just because their registration had expired is beyond me. But they got that little sunset provision in there.

So if you registered back when they first started up the list, you need to re-register. It's easy and quick. And well worth it. I remember how awful it was to get all those calls, and how nice it's been lately to not get them.

Revisiting Torture

When I first started blogging, I used to write on torture a fair amount. More than I'd like to, because I don't like the topic at all. My views on the subject should be very clear to all who read this: Torture is wrong, always.

Now the subject rears its ugly head again, and brings to mind Yet Another Reason why torture is wrong: it makes people lie. When people are doing something they know is wrong, they tend to lie about it. And then when caught, they sometimes say it wasn't wrong at all. I know this. My six-year-old knows this. That "adults" somehow think we won't notice or care is stunning.

It was encouraging, once upon a time, to hear my nation's government denounce torture. It is sad to learn now that at the same time it was doing that, it was sanctioning the use of torture.

Like slavery, torture is an institution that has no place in modern civilization. Those who advocate it or try to minimize its harms have no place in high office or polite society.

Global Warming is Good for You! ...Maybe

I'm currently in the middle of reading Storm World, an interesting work about whether and how global warming and tropical hurricanes interact. It's a good read, though it might be a bit tedious for those not already interested in climate science.

But big storms aside, it appears that global warming is good for some, at least. Brain-eating amoebas are cool, in the abstract. Don't think I want to meet them in person, though.

Things to Do on a Wet Day in Seattle

Continuing on my theme of Seattle tourism, we had Sunday to play with, too. After yet another visit to the Pike Place Market (delicious breakfast goodies from the Russian bakery next to the original Starbucks, called Piroshky Piroshky...cinnamon rolls to die for!) we decided to head over to Seattle Center to maybe go up to the observation deck of the Space Needle. But being a gray, overcast day, we decided that blowing $16 each to look at rain and clouds didn't seem very attractive.

So instead, we decided to check out the Science Fiction Museum. That was a blast. Kind of a pilgrimage, since both of us are lifelong readers of SF, as well as fans of SF movies. We were pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was. We'd been expecting something a little cheesy, maybe over-the-top fandom. But it really was more of a museum, investigating the role of SF and speculative fiction in society (and vice versa). Truly, it's worthwhile, whether you're interested in the intellectual aspects, or if you just want to see the artifacts (like original tricorders and phasers from Star Trek, costumes from Star Wars, first editions of classic SF books, and so on). It was really a fun afternoon, and a great way to get out of the rain.

Did I mention that we finally got rained on in Seattle?

After several hours, we wished we had more time, but I had arranged to meet an old friend and coworker for beers and football, and my wife needed to go to a cocktail thing for the conference.

Short description: Go! It's really fun.

Playing Tourist in Seattle

My delightful spouse has to be at at conference in Seattle this week, so I joined her for the weekend. We had passed through Seattle very briefly a couple of years ago as part of our 2005 World Tour, and enjoyed it a lot. So we were looking forward to a chance to play tourist again.

Saturday morning, we wandered out from our downtown hotel toward the Pike Place Market, because we'd missed it last time, and because it has the terrific reputation. I'm told it's the model for what San Francisco's Ferry Plaza.

That comparison flatters San Francisco's entry (nice though it is) and drastically shortchanges Seattle's. The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Marketplace has a terrific farmer's market, and provides a pleasant venue for some local (and national chain) shops, it has neither the physical scope nor the democratic presence of Seattle's market.

First, the farmer's market. There are wonderful stands with produce displayed lovingly and artistically; that's a show in itself. There are fish markets that appear to be as much a floor show as a food source. And the flowers are amazingly plentiful, colorful, and reasonably priced.

Then, the market. It's crowded on the weekend, with locals mingling with tourists. There are shops upon shops upon shops, ranging from musical instruments to clothing to collectibles. There are restaurants of various stripes. It's rather daunting how much is there.

And then there is the public market, where tables are rented by the day, and people of all sorts hawk their wares. Arts, crafts, foods, clothes...you name it! It's just a wonderful, vibrant place, and different every day. We had a great time wandering around there.

In keeping with our tourist theme, we decided to walk over to Pioneer Square and do the Underground Tour. It's really more stand-up comedy routine than historical tour (or "historical satire," as they call it), but it really is interesting to visit the portions of the city that were initially built above ground, then rendered subterranean when the city decided to regrade part of itself, raising the street level 10-18 feet (and eventually also raising the sidewalks to the same level, some four years later.

It was a good insight into the history of an interesting city and some of the characters that built it.

We spent the evening with friends who were celebrating their wedding anniversary, at a terrific restaurant called Crush. Very tasty!

All in all, we find Seattle to be as we did before: easy to get around on foot, with lots of fun things to see and do. A great example is a little toy store by Pioneer Square called Magic Mouse. They have lots of wonderful stuff, all arranged rather whimsically over two floors of an old building. It was really fun to wander around.

Another Phil Frank Note

I just read this morning's column by Jon Carroll in the S.F. Chronicle. Obviously he, and a lot of others, shared my fondness for Phil Frank and especially his bears:

I think maybe we all wanted to be the bears. Farley was smart, but he was lonely. Baba was crafty but not warm. The bears were a family, eking out a living in the Northern California landscape, forever adopting hopeless causes and embracing obscure passions. If I had to live a comic strip life, that's the one I'd choose. Free food, lots of friendship and a six-month nap every year.

The bears were the best. *sigh*

I should mention that Jon Carroll, too, is a fine local institution. I've met him a few times, and he's a very nice, funny fellow. If only he didn't write so much about his cats.... (inside joke)

A Very Sad Note

I hate to get maudlin, but this makes me very sad:

Phil Frank, whose cartoons graced the pages of The Chronicle and other newspapers for more than 30 years, died Wednesday only a few days after he announced his retirement because of illness.

Phil Frank and his characters have been an important part of my life for a long time, and I will miss his work. I first became away of Frank and his character Farley back in the 1980s, when his comic strip, Travels with Farley, was nationally syndicated. I loved the way Farley could leave his regular job as a reporter to work for the summer as a ranger at Asphalt State Park. The wonderful bears he introduced at the park, always scheming ways to get food from the tourists, are among my favorite cartoon characters ever. Think Yogi Bear, but with much more complex characters.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the bears are die-hard San Francisco Giants fans, like yours truly.

Years ago, a couple of his bears were made into plush toys. I have a doll of Alphonse, wearing antlers and a t-shirt depicting one of his classic moments, standing next to a "Do Not Feed the Bears" sign in the park, holding a sign of his own that reads, "I am not a bear." My daughter still loves this joke. So do I. (And here is one such bear that recently sold on eBay.)

And no mention of Phil Frank and his work would be complete without a mention of his puns. Between the last frames of his comics, he always put some kind of appropriate pun, and many of his comics featured them, too. One of his books of collected comics, for example, was titled "Fur and Loafing in Yosemite." And once when a guest chef (a vulture from Death Valley, I believe) was coming to work at the bears' restaurant, the Fog City Dumpster, he was unable to bring his own ingredients on the plane, because of the limit of "two pieces of carrion per passenger."

I always respected Phil Frank's decision to stop drawing a syndicated comic because he wanted to be more spontaneous. He could deliver strips to the Chronicle a day before printing, rather than a couple of weeks before printing for the syndicate. This allowed him to produce very timely, local comics, even though it put him on a very tight work schedule.

Although I am deeply saddened by his passing, my life is much richer for having known the work of Phil Frank. I will miss him, but will always cherish the memories he provided.

I must also note that Mr. Frank died of a brain tumor, and chalk this up as yet another of the ways cancer has affected my life. Please, let's all take care of ourselves, and try to wipe out cancer.

This Explains a LOT

Picture taken last month at the World Famous San Diego Zoo:

All I can say is, now I know why they're going extinct!

Nerds!

Goodness. A couple of my friends have done this, so now I guess I have to, too.



So for those keeping score at home, I'm cooler than Rod, but nerdier than Laura. So proud....

Stars, Salmon, and Fruit Pies

Got back from dinner tonight before the moon rose, and the stars were just stunning. That's another of those things we tend to forget about, living in the city. There are so many beautiful stars! The other night we sat out and watched the moon come up over the mountain range, then took a walk and admired our moon shadows. Tonight we marveled as the rising moon washed so many of the stars out of view.

And we heard a bat flutter by. Very cool.

This afternoon, on our last full day in town, we biked over to the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. They had spawned the last of their adult salmon earlier in the week, so all we could see was juvenile salmon in the outdoor ponds.

It's quite a process, hatching and growing salmon. Rather daunting to see how much humans have impacted the fishes' world over the last century or two. Fish populations are way down (from an estimated 6 million salmon in 1800 and 1900 to only about 1 million in 2000), while human population has dramatically increased.

The hatchery has some really interesting and thought-provoking displays about the differences between hatched and wild salmon, and how fish raised at the hatchery are at a competitive disadvantage once they get out in the wild, and might possibly dilute the gene pool by breeding with wild salmon. On the flip side, if it weren't for hatched salmon, there might not be significant numbers of salmon in Washington at all. That's a daunting thought to those of us who love to eat salmon.

Dams, development, erosion. All bad for the fish. It's tough out there for a salmon.

They also had an excellent display commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson (who once worked for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries--now the Fish and Wildlife Service that manages the hatchery). Most people know her as the author of Silent Spring (which is still excellent, 45 years after its original publication). But she wrote about many other things, especially the relationship of humans to nature. I have one of her books on the ocean working its way to the top of my reading queue at the moment, and want to find one she wrote about the sense of wonder that we should be fostering in children (and adults).

And finally, on a lighter note, last night we finished off an excellent marionberry pie. We had gone into a local bakery looking for a berry pie, and found that. My wife always reminisces about childhood visits up here, and remembers picking berries and eating berry pies. Berry pies hold a special place in her heart.

Earlier in the day, while sharing a delicious local nectarine, we wondered as a group why we never see nectarine pies, when there are peach pies galore. Well, lo and behold, the bakery had a nectarine-blueberry pie, so we had to get that, too.

Turned out the nectarine pie wasn't so great. Didn't seem to have been cooked thoroughly, so it really wasn't all that appealing. The marionberry pie, on the other hand, was wonderful, and we thought seriously about going back for another, but there wasn't time. Alas; vacations are so fleeting. Although my wife pointed out that we can probably get tasty berry pies at home, too.

[Side note: Having lived in the District of Columbia in the 1980s, it is still a little hard for me to take seriously the fruit called the marionberry. Maybe that's just me. But the pie was really great.]

The Creek

[Details largely dictated by my daughter]

One of the nicest things about this house in the country is that it is near the end of a road, and the road ends at Icicle Creek (which flows into the Wenatchee River, which in turn flows into the Columbia River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean. Salmon use all those paths to get back here to the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, which is on Icicle Creek, up the river from here.

Nearly every day, some or all of us venture down to have adventures of one sort or another at the creek.

Before we got up here, Grandma and my daughter were spending a good portion of each day down at the creek. When we arrived, they had caught and brought home a good-sized bucket full of minnows, who seemed happy enough to be living in the living room, but the first evening we were here, we took them back to live in the creek.

At this point in the year, Icicle Creek is pretty small and quiet. You can pretty much walk across it, even if you're about 3-and-a-half feet tall, like my daughter (if you pick your route carefully). One of the joys of a low river filled with sand bars and things is the way you can poke around and dig and make channels and bays and all sorts of water works. We've had a great time digging with sticks and hands and things to make extensive works. And every day, we get to do some more.

And there are things living in the creek. On one of her trips down there this visit, my wife saw a log in the creek. Except the log started swimming. Apparently this log was actually a fish. We suppose a fish of that size in this creek must be a salmon, but we're not entirely sure. In any case, a chase ensued, with the salmon swimming into shallower and shallower parts of the creek, but the people kept digging channels for it to swim through into the deeper parts, and blocked behind it with a log and pushed with hands to make sure the salmon would make it farther along.

That evening, there was no sign of the salmon, so we hope it had continued up the creek to the hatchery via the deeper water where it could swim.

Grandma and my daughter have also fashioned pens for the minnows, using sand to create channels, walls, and pens. Water can flow in to nourish the minnows, but we hope the minnows have swum out into the creek by now.

Bees, Wasps and Hornets

Ever since we arrived here last weekend, we've seen a LOT of bees around. Actually, they are what I've always called Yellow Jackets, and it makes me curious about the distinctions among bees, wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. But since I don't have reliable access to the Internet here, I will have to wait until we get to the library again.

Meanwhile, we've had the Pump Guy help out by shooting Magic Poison from a Can into a big nest in the back yard, and Grandma has taken care of some of the critters on the porch by spraying Wasp Stuff at their known nests after they go to bed for the night. I even located a small but growing nest under one of the chairs on the porch. Man, they're everywhere!

So of course, today, after we rode our inner tubes down the Wenatchee River for a couple of hours (a very pleasant float we've done before), we were relaxing and waiting for Grandma to pick us up after taking Sugar (the very old, very sweet Samoyed) to the vet for her checkup. Sipping cold drinks and munching popcorn is very pleasant when you're still soaked with cold river water, but sitting out on a warm afternoon.

So my wife kicked off her sandals and was swinging her feet in a relaxed, summer afternoon sort of way, when she suddenly winced in pain. Well, "wince" doesn't really cover it. I'm not sure there is a word that describes someone's entire body wincing, but that's what she did. Eventually we were able to get her to speak, and tell us she thought she had been stung, and please go inside the snack bar for some ice.

I ran (as best I could in the borrowed water shoes that don't quite fit) back into the shop, asked for a cup of ice for a sting. As the young man scooped some ice into a cup for me, he said he had something to help take the pain out of the sting, and returned quickly with a little glass capsule thing. Running back, I quickly read the directions on the sting-out thing, crushed the little capsule, and gave it to my wife to help with the sting. It seemed to relieve the pain a bit, as did the ice. We then noticed that another bee (I'll just call it a bee for now) seemed to be hanging around the sandal that was still off her foot. We theorize that there's something sweet smelling on the sandal, which attracted a bee, which happened to be in an inopportune spot when a foot came swinging by.

A helpful nurse sitting on a nearby bench offered some advice about hydrocortisone and such, after receiving reassurances that none of us are terribly allergic to stings. We elected to move back indoors, however; in spite of the cool air conditioning and general noise level, we deemed it preferable to sitting out with more bees.

As we're waiting for dinner (local pizza parlor delivers out here--yay!), my wife calls the local medical facility to discuss the intense pain that keeps coming in waves. She's taken ibuprofen and antihistamine and put some salve on the toe to draw out the poison, but wonders if there's more she could or should do. The guy helpfully says no, that she should just expect it to hurt like the dickens for another 2-3 days. How very reassuring. Pretty good pizza, though.

Now it's a number of hours later. Several doses of ibuprofen and some other medications have relieved some of the pain, and I'm hoping my wife is already asleep when I join her in a few minutes.

In the mean time, I'm still wondering about whether we're talking about bees, wasps, hornets, or yellow jackets. Or whether there is a meaningful distinction among all of those. Definite research topic for our next visit to the library.

Rube Goldberg Lives in Rural America

Living in the country for a bit brings home just what a complex web of services we take for granted in the city.

For example, late Saturday night I went to turn on a faucet, and found there was no water. OK, I know we're on a well, and sometimes the pump goes out or something. We suspect maybe a breaker has gone out on the pump. Find the breaker box. Find breaker(s) loosely labeled "Pump" (as in, there is a sticker that says "Pump" somewhere near a couple of the breakers). Feel brave, bite the bullet, and flip the breakers. Reward is the click of a relay back in the pump closet. Water flows from the tap. All is well.

Until the breaker blows again in the morning (now it's Sunday). And again. And again. And (you get the idea: it's pointless).... Helpful neighbor who actually understands pumps and such comes over to help. Concludes that it's really something wrong. Better call the Pump People on Monday morning.

In the mean time, we can hook up a hose from the irrigation system to feed back into the house system; can't drink it, but it's fine for toilets and showers and such. [Rant for later on what a waste it is for the rest of us to use potable water for such things.] In the short run, we decide that running a hose from the irrigation system into the main bathroom of the house so we can refill the toilet tank is the easiest solution. Of course, that means running the irrigation system all the time we want to use any running water. But we can try it for a bit.

Come back from dinner to find a note saying the irrigation system had to be turned off because earlier in the day when the Helpful Neighbor (see above) took down a dead tree, it seems to have broken a pipe in the irrigation system, which is now pumping water into the air and flooding another neighbor's yard. Right.

Fill enough buckets to use for flushing purposes overnight. Make sure we have water for washing hands and such. Make a note to deal with the irrigation system on Monday, too.

Monday morning, the pump guy shows up bright and early (well, that is certainly something different from city life!). He's even familiar with the property, having grown up in the neighborhood; he used to mow the lawn years ago. [Future thought, on how Grandma seems to know people all over town, even though she hasn't really lived her for ~50 years.] As he heads back to the pump house, he notices a BIG nest of "meat bees" in the ground, says he has something to handle it in the truck, and he actually does, which is cool. Fewer bees is good, because there are a LOT of them around here this summer.

He determines that the problem is that there is air in the pump, mainly because we've been drawing too much water from the system. We're not used to a well/pump system, so we've been doing things like taking back-to-back showers, which really need some time to recover from. Oops!

OK, so suitably chastened, we now have water for the house. Cousin who lives in the basement has looked at the irrigation issue. Her dad was a pipe fitter, and has taught her about the irrigation system (which is good, because she lives here all the time, and needs to take care of it, which she does, very well). She is able to patch the pipe back together (not actually broken, just pulled apart at a point where she can patch it back easily), so we have a full irrigation system again, too.

Wow. Lots of action for a weekend in the country, and all for stuff we totally take for granted back home. I now have a greater appreciation for both the level of care people have to take for their own operations here, and also for the care people take for each other.

Somewhere in the course of all this, it turns out that the flush mechanism in one of the toilets is running and wasting water (which we clearly don't want, given how precious the pumped well water is!). At last! Something I actually know how to fix. Quick stop at the hardware store (run by people who live down the street, of course, and who know Grandma when she walks in...see above) gets me a set of replacement parts, and in the next day or so, my daughter and I will fix it.

Whew! That's a lot of water issues for just a couple of days. Makes me want to go back to the fair and watch the bunnies.

A Few Vacation Notes

I'm largely disconnected while off on vacation this week, but I thought I'd provide a few little slices of life here in North Central Washington.

We arrived at Pangborn Memorial Airport in Wenatchee the other day, and found that the little cafe in the airport has free wireless Internet, so we got a few last e-mails read before heading off into Rural America.

On the drive over to Leavenworth, where the family has property, we spotted several promising spots for later visits, including Tom, Dick and Harry's Fabulous Burgers (on Easy Street in Monitor), which promises "Durn Good Burgers" on the sign over the door. More on that later. And of course, the tour of the Aplets and Cotlets Factory in Cashmere.

As it turns out, we've done both of those, and we've even been to the burger place twice, because it was...well...durn good! And Boswell's Furniture across Easy Street is a really good store, too.

But mostly we've been relaxing, playing games, reading books, and riding bikes (rented from Das Rad Haus...did I mention that Leavenworth styles itself a Bavarian village?). Tonight we'll be going to see the local theater company's production of Camelot (The Sound of Music, staged outdoors at the ski hill, is sold out).

Still to come, inner tubing on the river, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten.

I'm writing this in the library, which turns out to have free wireless Internet (yay!), while the rest of the family plays in the public pool.

Nothing weighty on my mind right now. Just ready to sign off, ride home, and maybe take a nap before the show....

Oh, wait! How did I forget to mention the North Central Washington District Fair? Best. Corndogs. Ever. Actually, the Lions Club calls them Pronto Pups, but they're really, really good. They make the batter right there. And where else can you watch angora yarn being spun right off the bunny? It was a lovely, if windy, day in Waterville, WA.

And a Quick E-Voting Note

A friend pointed me to this article, in which Diebold, a leading purveyor of electronic voting systems, is sort of, almost, spinning off its elections unit. Buried in the story is this gem:

Voting technology updates were encouraged by $3.9 billion of funding for the Help America Vote Act of 2002, following the disputed presidential election in 2000 that came down to a highly scrutinized recount of punch-card ballots in Florida.

Not that I'm suggesting that anyone would rush to market a product that didn't work very well, just because there was a lot of money available for such products.... Well, yes I am. $3.9B is a lot of reasons to sell junk. Of course, there is also this:

Diebold has often defended its voting machines and its own business intentions, even after its former chairman and chief executive, Wally O'Dell, sought with little success to convince critics his Republican politics and fundraising for President Bush were not the motive for the company's involvement in elections.

Political motivations can be almost as strong as financial ones.

Theme Park Overload

I'm still recovering from a family trip to San Diego two weeks ago. It was our first attempt at doing a home exchange, and it seems to have gone well. We got to stay in a very nice house, visit friends, and go to far too many tourist attractions.

San Diego is a lovely place, with great weather and many fun things to do. We didn't even scratch the surface, but we managed to fill far too much time with stimulating activity.

We had taken our daughter to San Diego a few years ago when she was fanatical about pandas, because the San Diego Zoo had a new panda cub on display, and we thought it might be her only chance to see a live baby panda. She has since seen a newborn cub at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, so I guess it wasn't a one-time thing. And much to our surprise, the day we arrived in San Diego, the Zoo announced the birth of yet another cub, although it won't be on display for many months. So I guess we have good cub karma or something.

During our brief visit, we managed to hit Coronado Beach, get ice cream at the Hotel Del Coronado, spend a day at Legoland, another full day at the Zoo, and a very full day at SeaWorld.

Legoland was actually the key reason for this trip. The last time we'd gone, our daughter was a bit too small (i.e., too short) to do a lot of the rides and things. This time, she was just tall enough to be able to do anything in the park, at least with someone along. (The Volvo Driving School was a big hit.) So we pretty much did it all. Legoland is impressive in that it manages to be really fun for small kids, but has enough to hold the interest of adults, too. The Lego sculptures are very impressive: I love their little scale model of Washington, DC.

The last thing we did at SeaWorld was probably the most impressive, a ride called Journey to Atlantis. At the start of our visit, we agreed that each member of the party (there were six of us) would get to choose the thing they most wanted to do, and the group would do it. My daughter chose the Atlantis ride, but the first couple of times we went by, the lines were incredibly long. Later we got into the queue, but they shut down the ride for a while, and we bailed. Finally, we came back in the evening, the line wasn't too long, and we got to ride. And man, was it impressive! It is both a water-splash ride and a roller coaster, and both very good. You start out going up, then dropping down into a big splash pool, then circle around and get elevated again, and this time you go around a pretty good roller coaster. So it's like two rides for the price of standing in line once, and so much fun that we had to ride it twice in a row.

I had somewhat hoped to take in a baseball game at the new ballpark, but it didn't fit into our schedule. On Saturday evening, however, I was in a store picking up some beer, just in time to hear Barry Bonds hit his 755th home run on the radio. That was weird. (And of course, I was at the park when he hit 756 a few days later.)

All in all, a very exhausting trip. One needs to get back to work to get some rest!

Poor Little Rich Kids

I found this article from the New York Times by a link at Infoworld. The gist of the article is that a lot of the millionaires in Silicon Valley (and there are a lot of them) don't feel rich enough. Here's one of the people quoted:

“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”

Now, look. I know it's expensive to live in the Valley. But really. It's hard to get worked up about this when there are plenty of people living in (absolute or relative) poverty in the same area. The people who clean their offices and collect their trash and such have it a lot harder.

I did find some interesting discussion at Infoworld, too. It goes in a couple of different directions. On one hand there's some feeling that the attitudes of the subjects of the article are misrepresented (which is, in my experience, quite possible), and on another that a lot of these folks are supported by programmers who make nothing off their efforts (open source projects).

In a sense, those both hit the same ethic: some people work because they like to, or at least work on some projects because they like to. I certainly know a lot of programmers who program for money, but also do projects for fun, and often make those available freely. [For a discussion of that phenomenon, the best book I recall is Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy. It's a bit dated, though I see there's been an updated edition. Another terrific book that touches on the motivations of engineers is Tracy Kidder's wonderful The Soul of a New Machine.]

[Grrr. Blogger posted this before I was ready!] Update:

The point I mean to make here is that the Times article hits some nerves around here (the greater Silicon Valley). There are clearly a lot of folks who don't know what "enough" is, but there are also plenty of people who are driven by desires other than wealth (and who consequently have plenty of it). It ain't all cut and dried.

E-Voting update

My sister points out that I haven't written about the latest flurry of bad news on the electronic voting front. Good point. And yes, I know that all those links come from one source, but that's kind of the point.

Basically, we've gotten confirmation that the machines don't work (right), but we still have to use them. Terrific:

[UC Davis computer science professor Matt] Bishop, however, said he was surprised by the weakness of the security measures, both physical and electronic, protecting the voting systems. His team of hackers found ways to get into the systems not only through the high-tech equipment in election headquarters but also through the machines in the polling places.

If the testers had had more time, they would have found more flaws, he added.

BTW, Dan Rather has done a bit of investigative reporting, and his report airs tonight. Unfortunately, it's on HDnet, which my cable company (Comcast) declines to include HDnet on its systems. I imagine some or all of it will turn up online shortly.

The machine makers and the county voting officials are upset with the Secretary of State (who oversees elections, statewide), thinking she's out to get the machine makers:

During her election campaign last year, Bowen made it clear she had little confidence in the security of electronic voting machines and vowed to review their use in the state.

"Voting systems are tools of our democracy,'' she said Friday. "We want to ensure that the voting systems used in the state are secure, accurate, reliable and accessible to all. This (study result) is not a big deal to me. It's a big deal for everyone in the country.''

And that's pretty much what I've been saying all along: Voting is too important to leave it to inadequate systems.

History and Choices

History is a funny thing. I was at the ballpark Tuesday when Barry Bonds hit his 756th career home run (and again Wednesday, when he hit number 757), breaking the former record set by Hank Aaron.

On one hand, it was great to be there amongst the excited throng to see an event of that magnitude. Having been there for many of his other milestone home runs (500, 600, 660 and 661, 700, as well as most of the big ones in his record-breaking single season with 73 homers), it gives me a sense of closure to finally see him atop the career list.

On the other hand, the excitement is dulled somewhat by the controversy over whether Bonds might have enhanced his performance in ways that are neither legal nor within the rules of the game.

I don't intend to rehash the arguments here (or even present my own). That's my point: I'm tired of all the speculation and opining and pontification. It has dulled my appreciation of the most impressive sports performer I have ever seen. Whether fueled by illicit activity or not, Barry Bonds has consistently outperformed my expectations of what is possible.

And really, that's why I watch sports: I want to see people do outstanding things, often things that I can't even remotely imagine doing myself. And Bonds has done more of that, on a consistent basis, than anyone I have ever seen.

A good friend pointed me to this excellent piece from the LA Times the other day. I found this passage particularly pointed (emphasis mine):

As a society, we're way too OK with being users. Abusers even. And our multimillionaire athletes, the ones we -- perhaps foolishly -- hold up as paragons of virtue simply because they can run and throw, are they supposed to be different?

Said Hoberman on the phone the other day: "You can't have an enormous development in performance enhancement in society in general and expect the sports world to be immune to it."

It's not only about pharmacy drugs. We want to be able to bash Bonds and head to a surgeon to get a new chin and new lips, so we can fake everyone into thinking we've slowed the march of time. We want to bash Bonds and then drive to a health-food store and load up on non-prescription pills that have us feeling as if we can walk through walls.

I need to go back and reread a novel on this subject called Achilles' Choice, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. As I recall (I read it back in the mid-90s), it wasn't a particularly well-written book (especially by their standards; I generally like those guys a lot), but it deals with exactly the dilemma an athlete such as Barry Bonds faces in what is popularly being called the "steroid era": whether to artificially enhance oneself if that is the only way to be competitive. And of course, it's not just in sports. There are plenty of everyday people using chemicals or other substances to help them perform in their jobs.

All of which calls to mind a quotation my mother sent me many years ago, when she was studying at Oxford for a summer, culled from Samuel Butler's novel, The Way of All Flesh:

What, then, it may be asked, is the good of being great? The answer is that you may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it--also that you may be able to give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn.

As we evaluate the greatness and achievements of others, it would serve us well to examine them in light of our own choices and our own achievements. What lengths are we willing to go ourselves, and at what costs? And what will we tolerate in others in their/our pursuit of excellence?

The ancient Greeks honored the notion of aristos, or superiority, to the point that one who was the best at something could be forgiven shortcomings in other areas. Check out the Illiad, and consider how many characters (including the aforementioned Achilles) are described as being the best at something, yet display their shortcomings in other areas.

Instead of carping at one man's achievements, perhaps we should be having a larger discussion of virtue, how we define it, and what we're willing to tolerate in the pursuit of achievement.

A quick Beer Note

My buddy Joe and I discovered a rather refreshing beer a couple of weeks ago.

Bowing to a bad habit that has occasionally served me well in the wine world, we chose this beer because we liked the label. It's called Great White Beer, from the Lost Coast Brewery in northern California. It's quite light, but flavorful, and really nice on a warm day.

The drawing of the surfer shark on the label is cute. But what really catches the eye is this text:

A crisp beer with a hint of citrus, made with two-row malted barley, unmalted wheat, a secret blend of Humboldt herbs, crystal clear mountain water, and ale yeast.

That highlighted phrase would be code, for those of you not from the area, suggesting some illicit substances reputed to grow in the hills of Humboldt County. I'm sure that's not what's in there, but it amused us enough to buy a six pack. The beer was good enough that I'll probably buy some more.

Um...where was I?

Oh, right: blogging.

I can't believe it's been a month. Much going on. Little family trips. Little family crises. The MLB All-Star Game (which I meant to write about, darn it). Deadlines on two different jobs. Oy.

But I know, that's no excuse.

On the other hand, I am just so glad I don't have to use Windows Vista.

I'll have more to write when I get to the other side of my deadlines, my wedding anniversary, and some record-setting (I hope) baseball games.

Rhetoric and Innocence

I just finished reading this year's commencement address for the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. [Hat tip to Digby at Hullabaloo for that.] It caught my interest because, as you probably know, I graduated from that same department a number of years ago.

So it was with great fascination that I read what the address to this year's graduates would be. The tone is much more serious and somber than anything I recall from my graduation. Those were very different times. I was part of the group that planned our graduation ceremony, and consulted on inviting a commencement speaker. We chose a graduate of the department, Carrie Snow, as our speaker, and she was quite entertaining. But that was the point. She was working as a stand-up comic, and in the 1980s, there just wasn't a more appealing career.

To be honest, I don't remember a lot about Ms. Snow's address, although I do remember laughing a lot. Those were certainly more innocent times. Many in Berkeley believed that with Ronald Reagan at the helm, the country had reached a nadir. [I vividly recall the campus humor magazine cover with the caption "Reagan Wins" depicting a Berkeley "hippie" with a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head.] Little could they have anticipated how things would devolve over the next decades. We didn't want to think about the cold war or getting jobs, so inviting a comic to make us laugh seemed like a good way to end our time at Cal.

I should point out that the best tradition of the Rhetoric commencement, dating back to the time when it was the Department of Speech, is that each graduate has the opportunity to speak briefly to the assembled group. It's a pretty small department, so it doesn't add a lot of time to the ceremony, but it does bring out a lot of the personality of the department and its students in a way that I've never seen at any other graduation ceremony.

Clever TV Ad

I don't watch all that much TV, but during a baseball game today, I caught this, which I thought was both very clever in general, and very good at using the local backdrops (San Francisco).



Almost makes we want to drink a Pepsi. Almost.

Dinosaurs at a Birthday Party

Forgive a little self-indulgence. Today we had a sixth birthday party for our daughter, and the theme was once again dinosaurs. The location was the wonderful Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. At least early on, the day was sunny and nice, so the view from the cafeteria was terrific. It got gray later, which was less stunning, but it's still a great overlook.

The highlight of the party was the cake. At the fundraising auction for the school, we'd won a gift certificate from Debbie Does Cakes, so we thought we should use it on a special birthday cake. Wow! Debbie is an Artist. She worked with us to design just the right dinosaur, a fine looking triceratops, and even delivered it herself. You can get an idea of her work by looking at her website, but the little pictures don't do it justice. The cake looked phenomenal, and tasted wonderful, too (devil's food with peanut-butter cream filling and delicious butter cream frosting.

Debbie mentioned that she's going to be part of a cake-baking special on the Food Network this summer. I will definitely tune in so I can see her at work. It should be a real treat to see how she creates her art. Meanwhile, we have leftovers to eat. Yum!

Bobby Kennedy

I just read a very moving post by Christy Hardin Smith over at FireDogLake. I hadn't been aware that this was the anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's death. I was too young to understand what was going on in the summer of 1968 (although I do remember the Olympics that year); my political awakening came with Watergate and the 1972 presidential election.

Anyway, I highly, highly recommend you take the 6 minutes or so to watch the YouTube video clip she includes in that post. It's extremely moving.

Today, it's unimaginable that a candidate for high national office would make such an eloquent, yet restrained speech. Or that they would make a call for unity and calm without an appeal to partisanship. Or quote Greek poetry.

I want to vote for someone like Bobby Kennedy, but I don't see anyone like that entering politics these days. And that is sad.

The Real First Fleet!

I try to stay out of the ongoing battles between the evolutionists and the creationists. I have a firm view on one side, and frankly find the other rather silly.

But as an Australiaphile, I just had to share an item on the subject from the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money (the picture there alone is worth the visit). It in turn references a fine item from the Boston Globe. The key item involves the question of how the original pair of kangaroos got from Noah's Ark to Australia, including speculation that they floated on mats of displaced vegetation.

Clearly, this would upset the whole notion of the settlement of Australia by the so-called First Fleet. It would be a huge change in the narrative if there was an earlier fleet of kangaroos. My own interpretation is that the original 'roos must have been convicts, too, transported by the other animals for some minor transgression.

I'm a Spork!

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter (approaching 6 years old) was making her lunch for school the next day. She wasn't making much progress on her peanut butter sandwich, and I noticed she was having trouble getting the lid off the jam jar (bad design, Smuckers: the big plastic jars from Costco, while cost-effective, are prone to sticky lids, and the jars aren't solid enough to really grab and twist effectively...but I digress).

Eventually she just looks at me and says, "Dad, you're a spork." I am? "Dad, you're a spork!" Apparently she means it, whatever it means. Why do you say that? "I'm trying to do something, and you're not being useful!" [beat...laughter all around the kitchen]

Some months earlier, probably while dining at some fine dining establishment that thinks it can save money by using sporks instead of spoons and forks, I had taught her the expression, "useless as a spork." It appears the lesson was learned and remembered.

Buying an Umbrella

Now and then, you just need some art. Or as Pedro Carmichael, Peter Falk's rather bizarre character in the movie "Tune in Tomorrow" put it: "Life is a shitstorm, and when it's raining shit, the best umbrella you can buy is art."*

Luckily, my wife and I have fairly compatible taste in art, and our favorite artist is Robert Lyn Nelson. He does wonderful paintings of ocean life, and pioneered the "two worlds" style of marine art, where the picture shows both above and below the surface of the water.

We used to really enjoy visiting his gallery in Monterey, but he closed it a number of years ago. So we were quite delighted to learn that he opened an art outlet in nearby Pacific Grove this past weekend. And best of all, when we went in on Monday, the proprietor, Jim, had some spare time to take us for a tour of the warehouse, so we got to see lots of great original art. The scans online don't do justice to the real stuff.

Anyway, we ended up buying a print. Won't say which one. You'll just have to come see for yourself!

*In the book that Tune in Tomorrow was made from, "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" by Mario Vargas Llosa, the quote is "Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." Go figure. Anyway, the book is good, but the movie is very, very silly.

Welcome to the Blogosphere

Just got a note this week that another old friend, Rod Bartlett, has started blogging. This is a good thing. Rod blogs mostly on technical matters, and I've already come across useful stuff there. I've added him to my roll of blogging buddies over on the right. So check out his Bruised Fancy.

Welcome to the monkey house, Rod!

Whale Begone

Apparently the wayward humpback whales have gotten tired of hanging around in fresh/brackish water, and have returned to the ocean, or at least sneaked away to where people can't watch them incessantly.

So I'll give the last word (and picture) on the subject to cartoonist Don Asmussen, of "Bad Reporter" fame.

Rational Discussion of Torture

I just read a very good, reasonable discussion of various positions on torture, and it's well worth reading. It comes from the blog Anonymous Liberal, where the blogger (who is no longer truly anonymous, as I recall) consistently provides clear and readable analyses of complex issues (particularly legal ones).

In particular, he does a great job of debunking the "ticking time-bomb" scenarios that is most often used to justify removing policies that prohibit torture. And he does so on two grounds: 1) The scenario is completely unrealistic, and therefore inappropriate as a basis for policy, and 2) Practically speaking, no policy would apply in such a scenario:

Just because you can construct a hypothetical scenario were shooting a girl in the head is the "right" thing to do, that doesn't mean that we should do away with the legal prohibition against murder. When it comes to acts that are sufficiently bad--such as murder and torture--you need categorical rules.
...
In a true ticking bomb scenario (which I'm convinced is like saying "when you meet a real unicorn"), people will do what they think they have to do, regardless of what the law says. And in that kind of extraordinary situation, no one would be prosecuted for resorting to extreme, even illegal tactics.

But you can't let highly unlikely hypothetical scenarios dictate policy. Regardless of whether there are conceivable situations where torture could be justified, it has to remain illegal.

I recommend reading the whole piece. It's really very clear and well-reasoned. Policies on extraordinary conduct require an extraordinary amount of thought and clarity. Making emotionally-charged decisions based on irrational scenarios is a prescription for bad policy (see USA PATRIOT Act, for example).

Wonderful Human Beings

I was about to turn in for the night, but gagged on this [emphasis mine]:

During tonight’s presidential debates, candidates were asked whether they would support the use of waterboarding — a technique, defined as torture by the Justice Department, that simulates drowning and makes the subject “believe his death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage.”

Both former mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) suggested they would support using the technique. ...

The audience applauded loudly after both statements.

Ick. This is what passes for public discourse in what purports to be a civilized society: A debate over who can pander hardest to the basest motives of the voters. I am ashamed.

Torture has no place in my country. It is wrong. It is dangerous. And I'm tired of having to write that.

I almost wrote about this last week after reading this story:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq admonished his troops regarding the results of an Army survey that found that many U.S military personnel there are willing to tolerate some torture of suspects and unwilling to report abuse by comrades.

It's nice to know that someone in the military has the sense to understand that torture and other abuse of others makes our troops less safe and mocks the values they are supposedly fighting to uphold and defend.

Angry. Really angry. And frustrated. I want my civilization back.

Freshwater Whales

I know I have mentioned my fondness for whales and other marine mammals in the past. And I am eagerly anticipating my next visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see their new exhibit on otters.

But the local news is full of the latest visit from wayward whales to the Sacramento River delta. And really, the coverage is pretty good, at least until I got to this sentence:

They likely got into the north delta area by swimming up the deep and wide Sacramento River from San Pablo Bay.

Ya think?

Now, maybe you need to know a little about the environment to get this, but basically, there's only one way to get to Sacramento from the ocean if you're a whale, and that would be it. In the Golden Gate, around a couple of islands, up through San Pablo Bay, and hey, you're in the delta.

From our friends at the National Park Service:

This Pacific Coast contains the only opening to the interior of the state for nearly 1,000 miles of coastline. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers drain nearly 40% of the watersheds in California. And all of this flows out of the Golden Gate.

OK, maybe I'm being a little hard on them. After all, the reporters probably read this book. I can see where one might mistake that for a nature documentary.

Anyway, it's not the first time this has happened. Back in 1985, I was working for the congressman who represented the district the whale was swimming through, so needless to say we were paying attention, even from 3,000 miles away. At least they haven't named these whales. Yet. But I fully expect to see our current Lieutenant Governor capitalizing on rescuing these whales any minute now.