All posts by Steve Stern

San Francisco under a full moon

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I drove up to San Francisco to photo the full moon from the Golden Gate Bridge as it came up. Well, that was the plan:  but when I got to South San Francisco, the fog was blowing  across 280.  I figured it would be worse at the Golden Gate, so I bailed on that and drove to Twin Peaks. Looking down on the bridge, I figured I was right.

But the view back at downtown was clear with just a wisp of fog hanging out by Berkeley.

I knew the moon would be coming up too far south for me to get a shot of it over San Fran and that it would be coming up too late for many lights to still be on in buildings downtown but it was a warm – if windy – night so I stuck around. The sun set through the fog behind us as the moon rose over the Hayward Hills.

 

Dinosaurs were birds department

Current Affairs, Evolution

One of the things that interests me about Science is how it is a reflection and enlargement of an individuals reaction to change. A healthy individual. When I was at college, one of the required courses was a two year general science course that included Chemistry, Physics, Geology, and Astronomy, among other things. At the end of the Geology stint, we talked a little bit about continents floating around which was a theory put forward by a sort of loony German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. I remember our teachers pretty much ridiculing him and his theory as being pretty far out and unproved although he did have some interesting points. It sounded more plausible to me than to the teachers, then I forgot about it.

Years later, I got interested – maybe obsessed is a better description –  in human evolution. I read everything I could find on human evolution and, in passing, started seeing lots of references to  plate tectonics. All of the references seemed to take the floating continents for granted. In fact almost everything seemed to be based on the reality of the floating continents. The geological community had gone from denial – Wegener seems loony – to bargaining – maybe Wegener has some good points but there is more/less to it than that – to acceptance.

I have posted about this before, but it is interesting – much more than interesting, really, fun – to see the same thing happening with dinosaurs. They used to be slow and stupid; cold-blooded. Then, maybe, warm blooded – but that seemed sort of unbelievable. Then, OK, maybe warm blooded but still like reptiles. Then, maybe – but probably not – the predecessor to birds.

Now, they have found a new fossil Talos sampsoni – nice name, BTW, Talos for talon, I presume and sampsoni for Sampson; Sampson talon –  and the talk is how the animal is a fast killing machine using its talons. All the bird-like characteristics are just taken for granted. He/she does give Angry Birds a new meaning.

Steve Jobs R.I.P.

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“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”—Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

The Free Press

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

Check out the two pictures above. According to Sociological Images, what really happened is that the police complained to the New York Times and they changed the article. I am not much of a conspiracy kind of guy but I do think that the press does have a point of view and is susceptible to influence. Even the New York Times. We liberals think that Fox is a right wing propaganda machine and the rest of the press is neutral. That is not true.

Almost all the press is owned by the establishment  and tends to back the establishment and protect the establishment and listen to the establishment. We, on the other hand, are pretty much trained to passively and uncritically absorb whatever is in front of us. So when the New York Times says that In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridge’s Brooklyn-bound roadway we believe it. Except that that isn’t what really happened.

 

 

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Palo Alto

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I lived in Palo Alto in the mid 80s. The home I lived in was typical of the area: it was around 1,700 feet and cost $236,000. The whole experience seemed normal, the top of the normal range but, still, a normal suburban life. Behind us was a family from Peru who had moved to Palo Alto so their daughter could be treated for anorexia at Stanford. They would occasionally talk about how much different their lives were in Peru where they had servants to serve them and guards to protect them.

When I went to Peru  – to go to Machu Picchu among other things – I timed the trip to spend a couple of days with my neighbors at their home in Lima. It seemed so unlike the United States, the houses had gates and guards (24/7 as we would say now). In Palo Alto, they were swimming in the normalcy of suburban life; in Peru, they were cut off.

A couple of days ago, I was driving by where I used to live and I stopped to walk around the area for a few minutes. The place looked pretty much the same, but it felt entirely different. There were still small houses like the one below,

and bigger houses

and even bigger houses, all of which had been there when I lived there.

That is not the real difference. The real difference is that everything just feels richer. Every house is refurbished, every detail is done in the most expensive way it can be done.

A little further along, I came across a blue box that sort of looked like a conex container.

I also saw a large pipe dumping water into the storm system but I didn’t connect the two. It turns out that they were building a new house – that was pretty obvious – and the new house has a very deep basement. Not a basement in which to put a heater, but a huge basement filling the whole lot. The guy I talked to said that they ran into an underground river but I suspect that they had just gone down lower than the water table. Either way they ran into water and had to pump it out but it was too contaminated – I don’t know with what; saltwater? the state rock, asbestos? – to pump into the storm system so they had to install this huge filtration plant.

According to Zillow, this 8,400 sq. foot lot sold for $1,700,000 a little more than a year ago. My guess is that they hadn’t planned on the filtration plant needed to build their basement. A couple of weeks ago, I talked to a guy who was thinking about moving to Palo Alto from San Francisco but was getting discouraged. He said that he was willing to pay $1,000 per square foot of house but not $2,000 per foot.  A real estate broker I talked to a couple of months before that said that 32% of the houses in Palo Alto – over $1,200,000 – sold for all cash. This is where the rich people live.

This has become one of the most expensive places to live in the world. As I was walking by Steve Jobs house with my camera,

a guy came up to me and said Do you mind if I walk along with you? He looked like a cop and I asked him if he were – was? – a cop and he said No. He was a security guard watching Job’s house. And he wasn’t like a mall security guard, he was like a Russian mafia security guard. We talked for a couple of minutes and – among other things, like Do me a favor, stay on this side of the street. –   he said that there were about 30 other security guards nearby. It reminded me of Peru.