Category Archives: Current Affairs

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to me.

Americana, Current Affairs, Evolution, San Mateo County

Yesterday was my 70th Birthday. It is a bigger deal than I expected. Michele suggested that we celebrate -partially – by weeding. It was a great Idea.

Part of the rebuilding of the Portola Valley Town Hall was digging up the pipe and re-naturalizing part of a creek that used to flow through the Town Hall area – only sort of re-naturalizing because, here, the creek was probably a flood plain. The new creek fragment has been planted with natives by Acterra a self-described Environmental education and action nonprofit.

The new plants are thriving but so are the invasive non-natives. The good thing about natives is that the native bugs1 like them. In the past, I would have thought that was a bad thing, but now that I am over 70 – and wiser – I realize that it is a good thing. Bigger bugs and birds like the little bugs and need them to survive. Bugs eating plants is the first step of the food chain.

Because bugs haven't yet adapted to and don't eat – in general – non-native plants, a great looking South African bulb like Crinum macowanii might as well be plastic. They look great but are not part of the food chain. 

Crinum macowanii 

So we spent a couple of hours, under Acterra's tutelage, weeding. It turns out to be a great way to spend a couple of hours on a birthday: getting rid of those things that – while they may look good – don't add to our lives. Sort of like taking stock….with action points. And, when we were finished, the creek looked like we hadn't been there.

TownHallGarden-1
TownHallGarden-2-4635
 

1 bugs as in insects, not bugs in the more limited sense of beetles only.

Fast-Roping 101

Current Affairs, Politics, War

We got back from the Smoke Creek late Tuesday only to see “Israel attacks flotilla”. Having had no news for three days, I don’t have a good picture of what happened except even India is pissed.1 It is as if Israel has been taken over by the Tea Bag Party. Andrew Sullivan, in a blog post entitled The Capitan Speaks,  quotes and comments on an article in Haaretz.Com.

An interesting account:

“I was the second to be lowered in by rope,” said Captain R. “My comrade who had already been dropped in was surrounded by a bunch of people. It started off as a one-on-one fight, but then more and more people started jumping us. I had to fight against quite a few terrorists who
were armed with knives and batons.”

I note two things. It began with a one-on-one fight. This was not a lynch mob primed to kill. It was a reaction that spread as more soldiers arrived. The second thing I note is that the captain describes the passengers as “terrorists.”

This picture, from the Center for a New American Security from where I blatantly ripped it off, is labeled Too Soon? and filed under Israel. 

 

Helos

1. We were in India at the camel festival at Pushkar when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. The Indian government shut everything down and declared a national couple of days of morning. They were that pro-Israel. 

Adrian Newey and the theory of “everything is progressive”

Cars, Current Affairs, Sports

General Grant once said War is progressive, when he was accused of not following the old rules faithfully enough. I will go a step further and say Everything is progressive. Everything is built on the past which was, of course, built on its past. Especially in sports which are – when you think about it – war with a better set of rules.

Part of  Everything is progressive. is that nobody stays on top for long. Think football. Every decade, there is a Team of the Decade, but then new coaches come along and build on what was the newest latest thing but no longer is. For example, the San Francisco 49ers' Bill Walsh. He was a genius and he changed professional football, but, after a while, his opponents began to understand what he was doing, then how to stop him and then incorporate what he was doing and then build on it.

Like football, Formula One Racing is a team sport, and like football, a team is strong for a while, then another team comes along and replaces it. Except for teams that have Adrian Newey. Newey is an racecar engineer specializing in aerodynamics.
When he worked on CART cars in the United States he took Al Unser and then, Bobby Rahal to championships in the 1980s. In the 90s, he worked for Williams in Formula One and took them to several championships. Then he moved to McLaren F1 and they won. Now he is at Red Bull as the technical director and they are the fastest car, by far, this year.

Seeing “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and thinking about New Stories

Current Affairs, Film, Television

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A couple of nights ago, we saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with Laura Atkins and Neil. It is a Swedish movie with lots of subtitles. It is a hack story with lots of gore, a horrific rape scene – two rape scenes, I guess, depending on how you count them – and shot in Rembrandt lighting minus two f stops. I heartily recommend it.

It got me thinking. Why is this a hack story? because I have seen it before? Several times?  This is a story of Buffy Summers  and River Tam, it is the story of any woman in any Luc Besson film. Or, as far as that goes, like the Marine Lioness Program . Then I started thinking What if it isn't a hack story, but a new female archetype?

Mc lioness5

It is an archetype of a young woman as the most powerful person in the
Universe of the story.

Buffy Summers is all that is between Sunnydale and the hoard of
Vampires that will destroy the world. There are men who, maybe, can help her – often
not very well, atleast, compared to her – but she is the only one that can save the world. The men are there to hold the structure, but Buffy holds the power.

Part of the Buffy story is that she is both damaged and vulnerable and River Tam even more so. Mathilda, in Luc Besson's The Professional is incredibly vulnerable and damaged but, in the end, she is more powerful than Leon, her protector.

I think that this is a new myth. A New Story. Granted, my education in myths is preeeety shaky, but I can't think of a Grimm's Tale or a Greek Myth where the female is young, vulnerable, and straight up, kickass, powerful.

And, like any archetype, it is coming out in stories because it exists in the real world. One place, for sure, the archetype is starting to manifest itself is the Marines Lioness Program. The Marines are now training women to go on patrols because they can interact with the local women in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other words, they can go where the men can't. They have power the men don't.