Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Why isn’t this photo on the front page of the papers ?

Americana, Current Affairs, Psychological Musings, Religion, ,

Prayer
 

Three weeks ago, eight prominent American imams went to Dachau to pray for and commemorate the six million Jewish dead.   It was obviously done, at least partially, for publicity – that isn't bad just like Obama making a speech at a green factory isn't bad – but almost nobody seemed to pay any attention.

One thing we hear over and over again is the meme Why don't moderate Muslims protest extremist Muslims? It turns out that they do, but it just doesn't get reported in very much.

Right after 9-11, a prominent Muslim cleric said Attacking innocent people is not courageous, it is stupid and will be punished on the day of judgment. Another one said Terrorists are not Muslims. And there has been a steady and continuous litany of Muslims condemning violence. But we don't hear much about it.

I don't think it is a conspiracy or laziness. The heading of this post is a real question. I just don't understand why.


Plant Sale

Americana, Cactus & Succulents, California, Psychological Musings

As a preamble – When I was in highschool, I was part Jewish – by heritage – in a world that was almost completely WASP and at a time when Jews were still considered second class. (I went out with a girl and later found out that her father beat her because she had sullied the family name by going out with me.). Our family was desperately trying to be middle class – we liked to think upper middle class – trying to follow a set of arcane rules we didn't quite understand.

By the time I got to highschool, I wanted to be cool. I suspect this is pretty much a universal impulse, and  – at the time and for years after – it was my major motivator. I pretty much pulled it off. I played football – not because I liked playing football – to be one one of the cool kids. I got in fights. I dressed like the cool kids, etc, etc. I didn't get very good grades.

I was a nerd: but I was a closet nerd.

In my mid-30's, I discovered the San Jose Cactus and Succulent Society – here were nerds who liked being nerds, who were willing to let their nerdieness enrich their lives – and it changed my life. End preamble.

Sunday was the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley Fall Plant Sale. I hadn't been to a plant sale at a Botanical Garden in about 30 years and Michele had never been so we were a little unprepared for how great and tempting it would be.

It was a beautiful late summer day and plant people were out in force.

Plant Sale-0273

What makes plant sales fun – whether it is the Rhoddy Club, the Cactus and Succulent Society, or UC Botanical – is that the people involved are so into the plants they are hawking. Putting up for adoption is probably a better term.

Plant Sale-0276

At the cactus area – where I always go first – I got into a discussion on watering in which the seller? docent? salesperson? plant sitter? promoted watering some plants every six days and others – in the same greenhouse – every seven days. And he did this with a straight face. Now I am a little nutty on watering myself – being willing to hand water, with water that has a tablespoon of vinegar added to five gallons of the tap water, to bring the acidity up – but this seemed extreme.

Michele got hijacked at the shade plant table where the seller exposed her to the joys of a Podophyllum hybred – Asian Mayapple to us less informed – seen here on the left of the table.

Plant Sale-0281

Everywhere there were interesting plants.

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Plant Sale-0291

And interesting people buying them. It was fun and going to an event like this and seeing young, hip, kids buying plants is very exciting.
 


   

 

 

 

 

A continuum from Stand Up to being president

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

Last week, two guests on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart were especially illuminating. Tony Blair and Tim Kaine. Jon Stewart started out as a Stand Up comic and, from what I read, he still does Stand Up. In Stand Up, the feedback is instant. If a joke is good, he knows, instantly, if it is bad, ditto.

By doing Stand Up, Stewart knows what is happening in the world. Not so much the facts of what is happening, but people's reaction to those facts. He has a direct feel for what is going on. 

I first saw that when I worked for Shapell Homes in the 1970's. When the market crashed – I guess mini-crash would be more accurate when compared to today – the Sales People knew the first weekend. The Sales Manager who was slightly out of it saw the same facts, but didn't quite believe them; but, after two or three weeks, he got the drift. I was Director of Operations and didn't believe it for another couple of weeks but I still couldn't convince Nathan Shapell who thought it was a blip – or something other than a crash.

Our banker, who only got his information from us, was blissfully happy.

Both Tony Blair and Tim Kaine – the head of the Democratic Party – are not only out of the loop, they are  constantly surrounded by sycophants. Every day, they have people giving them good news. So, when they showed up on the Daily Show, they were shocked by Stewart asking them questions that they should have expected but was, really, out of their world view.

Stewart asked Blair something about Iraq that assumed what we all know – that they war was misguided at best, and, more realistically, an epic disaster – and Blair just didn't even get the question. He answered it as if the war had been a huge success. 

When Stewart asked Kaine how he was doing, Kaine answered Great, I'm having a lot of fun. Stewart was surprised and said something like, Really, the Democrats are getting their asses kicked. Kaine tried to brush it off as if Stewart didn't know the real story.

But, of course, Kaine and Blair don't know the real story. And, I am afraid, Obama is even worse informed. Not to the facts, maybe, but to the tenor of what is happening in the country. People are pissed, but I don't think Obama is in a position to see it. 

It is a thin line between madness and art; between madness and riches

Americana, California, Psychological Musings

We went to see the Green Prix in San Jose over the weekend. Why is sort of a long story. Michael Moore sent me several pictures his brother had taken at Burning Man. One of them was of a  '60 Chevy -  '94 Komatsu1 mutant vehicle called Maria del Camino.

'60 chev

Mike also sent along a URL that referenced that the mutant vehicle would be in an artist parade in San Jose.

So we were lead to "Build Your Own World,” ZER01 in San Jose. It was billed as an biannual event that in collaboration with dozens of partners,
will present over the course of 4 days, from September 16-19, hundreds
of artworks, performances, events, and artist talks, which not only
imagine the future of the world but begin to build it. Not including participants but including us, I think there were about twenty six people there.

Green Prix-0201

Many – probably the majority – of the participants were just goofy. Many – probably the minority – required a lot of work and it got me wondering, What is art?

To paraphrase Stalin who once said Quality is important, but quantity has a quality of it own; lots of work is art of it's own. Somehow a goofy project done with sincerity and an investment of work, becomes art. Take Watts Towers

25p1watts
or many of the parade floats – or whatever – at the Green Prix.

I was reminded by the Green Prix that, to create art, we have to be goofy; I know that, to have any chance of creating art, I have to be willing to risk it. I am reminded that the risk may result in my falling flat on my face but being safe only guarantees that I will be safe. There were not many spectators, but there were quite a few participants willing to be unsafe.

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Green Prix-0207

Green Prix-0220


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Interestingly enough, the New York Times – that's The Time to the cognoscente – in an article entitled Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs,  says almost the same thing about guys trying to raise money for new ventures.  

Green Prix-0230 

Probably it's a comment on life.

When is torture, torture?

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

There are times when I read the The New York Times – or, atleast, look at the front page – when I think that newspapers, and especially the New York Times, are all that is standing between us and politicians running wild. That a free press is critical to democracy. Then there are times when I think the papers will do anything, print anything, the politicians want.

For as long as I can remember, waterboarding has been torture.  Everybody called it torture. When we learned about the Spanish Inquisition _ and it is interesting that, in a burst of PC religious tolerance, it was called the Spanish Inquisition not the Catholic Inquisition – waterboarding and burning at the stake were highlights. It was defined as torture by the Geneva Convention that we signed. I was taught we didn’t do stuff like that – Nazis did stuff like that, North Koreans – it was one of the main reason we were better than them.

Then we start torturing and the New York Times – as well as the Los Angeles Times – started referring to waterboarding as enhanced interrogation. The NYT defend the new terminology by saying it is somewhat misleading and tendentious to focus on whether we have embraced the politically correct term in our news stories. There seemed and still seems to be no recognition that what the paper called torture for fifty or sixty or seventy years – and has now been changed – is more than just a politically correct nicety.

Waterboarding-comic

When the wars started and the military said that it would embed journalists, there was a short dust-up about whether they could still be objective. But journalists are already embedded: they are embedded with the Washington establishment and they are not objective. Hell, they are part of the Washington establishment. Actually and even worse, they may be objective but are afraid to say anything negative.

As an aside, for some strange reason – unknown to me – the only thing that seems to break loose from the black hole of sympathetic and sycophantic news coverage of Washington elites by other Washington elites, are sex scandals or racist remarks. A politician – especially a powerful politician like the president – lies about, say, WMD’s; the papers go along. End aside.

When, Stephen Colbert, speaking at the White House Correspondents Dinner, attacked the stupid things George Bush was doing, the assembled journalists were shocked. It was rude. As if unnecessarily going to war isn’t rude. No wonder torture has become enhanced interrogation.