I love this photo, which I copied from Al Jazeera. The look on her face, the phalanx of photographers – all, but the woman photographer, wearing variations of formal wear – the blown out sky making a back wall, all push the storyline. We know she is on a red carpet somewhere – I like to think at a film festival of some sort – and there are probably alot of young women strutting their stuff – but not with as much fun as this gal.
Memory is always used in service to the present. remembered, I think correctly, from an On The Media broadcast, is my favorite quote right now. I read an article a couple of weeks ago that was about a poll claiming that everybody thinks the past was better, even something like 59% of African-Americans. I just find that so hard to believe. Sure, isolated things? items? culture-ets were better, although I can’t think of anything right now. OK, traffic, for sure, and fairer wealth distribution – for white men, at least, in the 50s and 60s – that’s a big one.
But almost everything is better now, the level of consciousness in the world, I know that my lens is through the Bay Area, but everywhere really. We are more tolerant. Cars are infinitely better now, there really aren’t any shitty cars anymore. Television, and TVs are way better. War is even better, as rotten, wasteful, and pointless as it is. Nobody is throwing nukes around or sending millions of young men into the meat grinder of battle. Now is the sweet spot on the time continuum.
I contributed fifteen bucks to the Bernie Campaign yesterday, about fifteen seconds later, I got two emails. One, from the Bernie Campaign, said Thank you for the contribution and the other one was from Paypal saying they deducted fifteen bucks from my account and gave it to Bernie. No human was involved. $15 disappeared out of my account and appeared in the Bernie Campaign fund. Nothing really moved except electrons and each one of them didn’t move very far. That’s astounding.
Lewis Hamilton won the Grand Prix of Monaco over the weekend, the Warriors are going to The NBA Finals, and I am thrilled. I also can’t help but be reminded about one of the reasons I was told was responsible for the Fall of Rome, The people were distracted from the failing government by the Games.
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. Henry Kissinger
When he was in Vietnam a couple of days ago, President Barrack Obama announced that the U.S. has fully lifted its arms embargo on that country. 41 years after the end of the Vietnam War – using the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 as the end date – we are going to sell weapons to the country that killed over 58,000 thousand American servicemen.
That is one of the things we do very well, make and sell weapons to kill people. We do it officially as in selling Harpoon Anti-Ship Missiles to Egypt for $143 million, or advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles to Indonesia, and unofficially to our own people. Jimmy Carter, who we all consider a moral anchor, even sealed the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty by selling military equipment to both of them.
Over 2 million people died in the US/Vietnam War and, in the end, it changed nothing. We tell ourselves that we are a force for good in this world but, increasingly, I don’t think so. According to Henry Kissinger – whom [Gail?], during the first or second debate Hillary said is one of her mentors, morality should not be part of the equation. It makes me sad.
“because I’m tired of the puppet show, tired of the games Democrats and Republicans play pretending to be enemies until their corporate bosses need something passed. Then it gets passed really easily.” Chris Vardijan at the Vallejo Bernie Rally, as quoted in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
“Young people ought to have the right to vote for their future, ” Bernie Sanders at the San Jose Rally.
I went to a Bernie Rally last Wednesday… and somewhere in the middle of his speech, around when he was talking about going all the way to the Convention, Bernie said something like, “I have the support of more young people than any other candidate and young people ought to have the right to vote for their future”. It brought me up short. My generation, the Greater Baby Boomer Generation for lack of a better descriptor, has not been a good steward of their future, or our planet, or our democracy, or, even, the economy in whose name we have been trashing our planet and distorting our democracy. Yet we still think we know best. Huge numbers of young people have been brought into the system and are supporting Bernie because they don’t think we do know best, they do not like our decisions for their future, and as Bernie points out, it is really their future that we are all voting on.
When I asked the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Bernie kids why they were for Bernie, they said “That’s easy, Education and the Economy.” That is at the top of their list because education and an economy that works for them is what they value. What we think and say we can afford, as individuals and as a nation, depends on what we value. When Hillary says we can not afford to have free college education, it is because that is not something she values enough to move up her list and these young people know it. These kids do not want perpetual war – and it has been perpetual war since most of them were alive – they do not consider war valuable and Hillary does, she thinks ISIS or Islamic Fundamentalism, or whatever you want to call it, is a major threat to the United States. I think she is wrong, I think educating our children and protecting our planet is more important to our long-term survival than bombing tribal chiefs in Afghanistan, or the Middle East, or North Africa, or even Sub Saharan Africa, but what I think isn’t particularly important, what is important is what these young people think and they think Hillary is wrong.But it wasn’t only young people at the Rally, there were lots of what we used to call minorities and a sprinkling of older people.
When I asked the woman standing next to me, a self-described healer from Santa Cruz about my age, why she is for Bernie,she said, “He is a real human being not a politician pretending to be human.” At the Rally, Bernie’s passion is not canned, his message is deeply felt – although it seems to be his standard stump speech – and it resonates with this crowd as being much truer than an applause line. He is not a particularly good speaker, looking down often at his notes – and like everybody else there, I am sure they were his notes and not a focus group tested line written by a speechwriter – but that only adds to his authenticity. This is a major part of Bernie’s allure, one sign said Not polished, not packaged, not for sale, Bernie Sanders, and maybe that lack of packaging and professionalism – as shallow as it is – along with his age, is part of why I find it hard to be as excited about Bernie as I was about Obama. The first rally I went to for Obama was about as big as this rally and it wasn’t any better organized but it was in a nightclub in May 2007 – eight months before the first primary – and this rally was in the hot sun, four and a half months after that primary.
The Rally itself was in a strange court, on the Santa Clara County Fairground, with stands seating maybe 150 people each, facing each other – and Bernie – at right angles, but most of us stood on the macadam nearby, and it was hot as hell in the sun. When I got back on the Freeway on the way home, the car thermometer said 94° so it must have been close to 90° on the court with no shade, after parking in a dirt parking lot – for ten bucks – and walking about a mile, including a long dirt back alley – past a dirt bike park and an even stranger looking paintball court – before we got to the Secret Service checkpoint. I was worried it would turn people off but that was obviously just projection on my part. A general cognitive dissonance reduction field must have cranked in because nobody seemed particularly upset. Although nobody seemed particularly joyous either. This seemed less like a party than a group of people who were very aware that they are getting the short end of the stick. They listened to Bernie and cheered for Bernie because they believe him and, more importantly, they know he believes in them. FiveThirtyEight gives Hillary a 93% percent chance of winning California and that would almost certainly give her the nomination. That brings up the question, Will Bernie’s supporters switch to Hillary? and I think, in most cases, No! These do not, in the overwhelming majority, seem like the usual political junkies. They are people who think Hillary is part of the puppet show. They do not seem like a group who will easily switch over to the Establishment’s choice for the nominee and Bernie did not seem like the kind of politician who will go quietly into the night. He is more concerned about the message and the cause than the party and so are most of his followers.
About a week or so ago, Michele heard a strange screaming. We looked outside just in time to see Precious Mae running up the stairs with another animal right behind her. Both animals ran under the deck and when Michele went outside to join the fray, a fox ran out from under the deck and disappeared into the wilds of our backyard. Now the fox has been back almost daily – almost always in the dark and at a time of the fox’s choosing – and we think its den is nearby.
All of us, including the fox, are fascinated, although Precious has been staying inside alot more than usual. A couple of days ago we heard the screaming again coming from under a table at the edge of the deck. Precious was backed into a corner and the fox was jumping up on the deck, screaming in a very un-canine way, and jumping down. Precious was silently watching. Michele grabbed her iPhone and sat at the edge of the deck in the dark where she took this short video.
Geologically speaking, the rock above is not an outlier, it is a Glacial erratic, but it is the closest I could get with one of my pictures. Still, Gladwell’s book, Outliers, The Story of Success, is not about geology, it is about very successful people and how big a part luck – both regular luck and deep luck – played in their success. It is pretty typical of the kind of book I like and that all fit into a, sort of, Matrix category. These are the kind of books that says here is what seems like reality and the reasons we are told for that reality, but there are other, deeper, reasons. I should also add that I very often buy into these deeper reasons and I have completely bought into Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments.
Two factoids that are especially interesting are that almost all professional hockey players were born in the first half of the year and that the Chinese way of writing numbers makes basic math much easier.
Professional hockey players are mostly born in the earlier part of the year because Canadian Youth Hockey Leagues segregate players by age, based on the calendar year. So, a five-year old, born on January 1st is about twenty percent older than a youngster born in December of the same year and they play in the same age bracket. At five years old, another year makes a big difference. The older kids do better and are encouraged to work at hockey while the younger kids get discouraged, work less, and fall behind setting a pattern – in hockey at least – the results of which carry through to the Pros or notPros.
As for the numbers, add fifty-three and thirty-five in your head. It is hard to do without converting to Arabic numerals, 53 plus 35. In Chinese, those numbers are written as five-tens three and three-tens five. The logic of the numbers is written into the language making it much easier to work with them.
Gladwell weaves details like this into a new narrative about several successful people including Bill Gates and the Beatles. It’s fascinating and a very easy read.
I love this photo, which I copied from Al Jazeera. The look on her face, the phalanx of photographers – all, but the woman photographer, wearing variations of formal wear – the blown out sky making a back wall, all push the storyline. We know she is on a red carpet somewhere – I like to think at a film festival of some sort – and there are probably alot of young women strutting their stuff – but not with as much fun as this gal.
