Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Coming back from the Mullin Show, thinking about evolution

California, Evolution, Psychological Musings, Religion, Science

Mullin-2135The sweet spot of any drive up the California Coast, south of San Francisco, is the section between Morro Rock and Big Sur. Of course, that is if the purpose of the drive is the drive, if the purpose of the drive is to get north as quickly as possible, stay off of this section of road. Here the highway turns into a two lane road that follows the contours of the land. As much as anything else, driving this section of road in Michele’s car, with the top down, was the reason we had made the trip south in the first place. (BTW, all the shots from in the car are Michele’s as is the lovely bridge/surf picture near the end.

The two lane section starts after Morro Bay, goes inland for awhile, then gets serious. Mullin-2078
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Mullin-2136But, before the road got serious, we passed the Elephant Seal rookery near the Piedras Blancas Light Station. Neither one of us even knew that the Elephant Seals had moved in south of Ano Nuevo , so we decided to stop for ten minutes. It was more than an hour later before we left and our visit to the Elephant Seals was the surprise highlight of the drive home.Mullin-2133

It seems that a couple of Elephant Seals moved into the area in 1990, first to an offshore island and then to the beach right next to the highway, both north and south of the lighthouse. Now there are about 17,000 animals in the general area.  To back up, Northern Elephant Seals were almost hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th Century but they are now protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and they have bounced back. With a vengeance. It is estimated that there are well over 150,000 animals breeding from Baja to Point Reyes and they take up alot of beach space.Mullin-2088

Elephant Seals really are Seals. They are distant cousins to Raccoons, even more distant cousins to Bears, and they probably evolved from Otters. Their ancestors were land animals and the Seal side of the family, for some unfathomable reason, wandered back into the ocean sometime around 25 million years ago.

To me, that is pretty amazing and it took some drastic changes to make it happen. Not just giving up legs and feet for flippers, the problem of no fresh water in the ocean also had to be solved, and to make the changes even more improbable, the Elephant Seals have chosen a life that requires being able to stay underwater for as long as thirty minutes. They are mammals, carnivores, able to dive as deep as 5,000 feet to get food and unable to move – move for lack of a better word, they sort of half flop, half inchworm along, their body jiggling like jelly – more than a couple of hundred feet from their real home, the ocean.

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At Piedras Blanca, we stand on a wooden deck just above the beach, captivated by the hundreds of huge animals just below us. As they go about their daily lives, it is hard to watch them without wondering how they can even exist.

One theory is that  God made the Elephant Seal, along with all the other creatures that live in the water, on the fifth day of Creation (or, maybe, the sixth day because Elephant Seals were land animals that returned to the water, but let’s not quibble over a day). I find that hard to believe; it goes against all the evidence except the Bible (and it is pretty easy to argue against the Bible with its dubious origins, translations of translations, and its assembly by committee three hundred  years after the fact).

Darwinian Evolution says that it is only a result of random change over 25 million years. I like this theory better, but I found it less satisfying than I had hoped when I went on an Evolution binge about 30 or 40 years ago. The time line is fact, or at least fits all the evidence. And the same with change; what I find hard to embrace is random. The Universe clearly has a direction, from Chaos to Order, from stray particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules. About 3,600,000,000 years ago – somehow – life came along and some molecules became cells. About 600,000,000 years ago, some of those cells became simple animals. Those simple animals became increasingly complex, filling empty econiches. Somehow those stray particles became armadillos and kale. They became sowbugs and flamingos. They became elephant seals and us, wondering how we got here.

To me, this direction, even progression, seems important. I don’t believe in a personal God and I certainly don’t believe in a God that cares how I worship or have sex. But I do believe that the Universe is Connected and Alive, a Self-organizing System rather than a machine.

As an aside, I have long wondered why Fundamentalist Christians – mostly Christians, but also Fundamentalist Jews and Muslims – resist the billion year timeline, insisting on a literal six day Creation. After all, without that time line, Creation and Evolution are not really competing theories. God could have made the Universe over billions of years just as easily as six days (maybe God’s days are longer).  The problem, it turns out is not time, it is change. Because evolutionary change requires destruction of everything that came before, it is hard to square with a just, fair, and caring father. How could this just, fair, and caring God destroy millions – maybe billions – of Bambis and Thumpers, how could a merciful God  wipe out the dinosaurs to get to chickens? End aside.

One of the things that makes Piedras so much fun and what made it so surprising is that you get very close to the animals. And up close and personal, a nursing mother facing off a horny bull becomes high drama and a two and one half ton animal becomes an individual. Mullin-2104

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We finally tore ourselves away from the Elephant Seals, hoping to get to Nepenthe at Big Sur by sunset.

Mullin-2137  The road was as good as I remembered, but it was much busier making it hard to pass without going into full traffic jamming mode and I am getting too old for that.

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We did make it in time for sunset, or as the case was today, in time for the sun to go down behind a cloud layer. So, instead of a sunset, we rewarded ourselves with their Famous Ambrosiaburgera, a couple of glasses of a very nice red wine, and a side order of brussel sprouts.

Thinking about bird culture and cat’s lack of @ the S F Autoshow

Around home, Cars, Evolution, Psychological Musings

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In what I hope will be a tradition, the Friday after Thanksgiving, I went to the San Francisco Auto Show with Grandson Auggie  and his father, Gabe. The San Francisco Auto Show is not a manufacturer’s show, Like the Los Angeles Auto Show or Auto Shanghai. It is really a local show put on by the Bay Area Dealers and that means that the cars that are there are cars that are available at your neighborhood dealer. It is not as exciting as a big show, but it does have its charms and going with the enthusiastic Auggie was great fun. I think he looked especially proto-macho in a Dodge pickup.

The only cars that were new to me were the Lexus RC F which I thought was stunning,

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and  BMW’s new hybrid supercar, the i8 at only $138,000 – I’m serious with the only, what else could you fantasize about for that little – it was the car of the show for me. It will go 22 miles on its electric motor and go from 0 to 60 in 3.8 seconds when another electric motor and its three cylinder, turbo charged 1500 cc engine kick in (and I have already seen three of them on the road).

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Walking around the show, I was interested in how similar so many of the cars were. I don’t mean similar in They all look alike, similar, but similar in that they are watching each other and stealing good ideas. Which is another way of saying Learning from each other. I was taken by the number of cars that had painted brake calipers. I think it was a fad started by Porsche but I am not sure of that. No matter who started it, now almost everybody with pretensions of having a fast car is painting the calipers on said fast car.

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As an aside, it reminded me of a story the great Bob Lutz – whose motto was Often wrong, but seldom in doubt – told on himself. About six or seven years ago, give or take a couple, Lutz was the designated Car Guy at General Motors – they had brought him in because General Motors had almost completely sunk into a bean-counter culture, even referring to, and thinking of, Cars as Units. Lutz was on board to bring Car Love back into The General’s thinking and he was shown the mock-up of a new Buick that had portholes in the front quarter panel like the great Buicks of old. Lutz said, Get rid of the portholes, they are the past, nobody wants to buy an old Buick. A couple of nights later, he went to a party given by Maserati. All the new Maseratis had portholes. The next day Lutz called Buick design and said Put the portholes back in. End aside.

A couple of weeks ago, The Economist had an article about bird learning. They filed it under Animal Culture and that is probably more correct (if there can be degrees of Correct). The article is fascinating, short, and worthwhile. Two different groups of birds are taught two different  – but equally effective – ways to open a box to get food (say Group A and Group B). When they are released into their subgroups of the general population, their feather-mates learn the same trick from them. However, if a member of Group A gets into Group B – for some reason, lost? – the Group A guy starts doing the box opening the Group B way. In other words, he conforms to the new group. Just like an immigrant learns the new county’s language.

Maybe once a week, either Michele or I will remark about how smart our cat, Precious Mae, is (it is embarrassing, but true). By way of example, a while back, Michele had gone to Napa to cook Thanksgiving dinner with her sister and I was home, alone, with the cat. That’s not quite accurate because I was inside and Precious Mae was outside, but the two of us are the only ones on the property. When I open the door, she runs in to get some food but, then, seeing that I am dressed to go out, she stops, thinks about it, and runs outside so that she will not be trapped inside.

However, I have always thought that the cats that have owned me were extra smart. But, when I watch a cat video on You Tube, and those cats often seem much smarter – except for the ones that are way dumber – and I wonder how much smarter Precious Mae would be if she were exposed to those cats in real life. What we do is isolate our cats and they don’t learn from other cats. What they learn, they learn from us or from themselves. Unlike car designers, cats don’t have a culture.

 

A couple of thoughts on Ferguson

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

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I like to think that I never thought I just hit a triple, but that isn’t true, like George Bush, I was born on third base and I have often thought I was responsible for all the easiness in my life. So my emotions on Ferguson are pretty detached and this is not a time for detachment. What I would rather do is post  several quotes that say what I would like to say, only better. The first bunch is from the web but the last two were from good friends who I don’t see enough in real life but still continue to enrich it on facebook, Ophelia Ramirez and Vern Smith.

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor…As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented. Justice Antonin Scalia,

this outcome, and so many like it, are the result of a system functioning the way it is intended to function. Racism is baked right into the foundation:

Every one of those grand jurors might have hearts of purest gold. The outcome was predetermined precisely because the outcome did not rely on the individual character of the jurors. We have police aggression against black people because the white moneyed classes of this country have demanded aggressive policing and the moneyed control our policy. We have police aggression because the War on Drugs provokes it and we still have a War on Drugs because the War on Drugs puts vast amounts of tax dollars in the hands of police departments and a voracious prison industrial complex. We have police aggression against black people because centuries of gerrymandering and political manipulation have been undertaken with the explicit purpose of empowering some people and disenfranchising others. from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. 

None of that can be solved through having pure hearts and pure minds. Racism is not a problem of mind. Racism cannot be combated by individuals not being racist. A pure heart makes no difference. In response to systemic injustice, you’ve got to change the systems themselves. It’s the only thing that will ever work. Jamelle Bouie 

…..The Language of the Unheard.

I will not condone, nor can I condemn. I hear the heartache of a mother, and the frustration of a people, and all people. I’m looking out into a world so broken, saddened, without answers. Does the quest for the blood of one man atone for a justice that cannot be found? Fear, frustration, hopelessness, desperation….they all share the same face on a million souls. I will not accept that there are no answers, that there are no bridges. Justice too often appears like formless smoke, near, but unobtainable. I will not be distracted by sanctimonious condemnation of the act without the damnation of the stage it springs from. And, most importantly, I will not accept the loss of another generation, when so much can be done, if we reach out…..out into a world that seems so broken, and listen without judging, and find our common ground. To build a new future, to find justice, to end the cycle. Vern Smith

A grand jury of twelve people – nine white, three black – decided that the policeman who shot and killed an unarmed teenager will not be indicted of any charge. I did not sit on the jury, nor was I present at the shooting. I do not know, and may never know what really happened. Perhaps the policeman really did feel threatened and in the few seconds he had to make a decision, he felt the use of a firearm was the only way to handle the situation. Perhaps in following the strict letter of the law, the grand jury felt they could not, in good conscience, render an indictment. I just don’t know.

What I do know is this: racism in this country is alive and unfortunately, quite well. I see it in my own life. I well remember my brothers being pulled over and harassed by the police for no other reason other than the color of their brown skin. I hear it in the comments I still get, such as, “You are very pretty for a Mexican girl”, or “For a Mexican, you speak well”. I see it in my extended family where my sister-in-laws niece was killed in a drive by five years ago and the police have yet to catch the killer because, really, they do not have the time/resources to investigate the killing of another black teenager killed in an area where this is an everyday occurrence. And my experiences pale when compared to the 200 plus years of discrimination that people of color have endured, and continue to endure in this country.

I understand the outrage with the lack of indictment of yet another person who has killed an unarmed young man of color. I understand the feeling of despair. However, looting, rioting, destroying property, and possibly hurting someone else is not the answer. How does this possibly help?

What I also know is that we have an opportunity to turn this around; an opportunity to put the outrage into something constructive; an opportunity to turn from hate and know that love really is the answer. Think of the immense changes Gandhi facilitated through non-violence. Civil rights were in large part brought about through determined non-violence. Peaceful actions are more powerful than rioting and looting. More powerful than killing. And more powerful than hate.

I so urge, no I beg everyone reading this to turn away from violence and use this an opportunity to remember that at our core, we are one. We are brother and sisters all. We have, in this situation, the call to effect change through peaceful and powerful channels.

Today, how will you be peaceable?
Ophelia Ramirez 

Age, Ferrari, Brooks Camera, General Motors, and the problem with Capitalism

Art, Cars, Psychological Musings

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A couple of weeks ago, maybe a month now, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the President of Ferrari, was fired. My first reaction is that it was a good move because the Ferrari Formula One Team is doing miserably and Montezemolo is part of the problem. They need fresh blood. Formula One is a constantly evolving sport and Montezemolo who is 67 doesn’t have any new answers.

Rather than taking a chance with young drivers – and engineers – who are on their way up, like Red Bull, which has won four Championships in a row, Ferrari has hired great drivers and engineers on the way down. When a company is not gambling on the future but trying to safely replicate the past with the people of the past, is can only be mediocre and that is a great description of Ferrari’s Formula One program under Montezemolo. But, according to the F1 gossip, that is not why he was fired.  The FIAT Board fired Montezemolo because they want to increase production to increase profits and Montezemolo wants to keep Ferrari exclusive.

In the 60s, 70s, and into the 80s, there was a camera store on the corner of Maiden lane and Kearny, Brooks Camera. Brooks Camera which was started by Julius Bloch – who escaped Nazi Germany in 1936 – was the best camera store on the West Coast, maybe the nation. It was always packed, always! Like 10:00 Tuesday morning packed. It was the kind of place where one could buy a Kodak Brownie, a brand new Nikon, or an obscure camera part (I once stood in line behind a guy who bought, not one, but two  Pierre Angenieux lenses for his Bolex movie camera, saying I am on my way to Vietnam here is my NBC account number).

In different ways and at different levels, both Enzo Ferrari and Julius Block had a vision to create a company that was the best at what it did. That is what Capitalism or Entrepreneurship does best, create the money and arena to create new products and better services out of a visionary’s dream. Ferrari or Brooks would not have existed in a  Command Economy. However, the new products and better services only continue to be created when there is still a Vision. When Bloch retired, he left Brooks Camera to the employees, but they didn’t care about the vision, all they cared about was making money.

I have no idea what will happen to Ferrari, but Brooks Camera is gone. The employees turned the operation into a series of discount camera stores to increase earnings and the world, apparently, doesn’t need another discount camera store. Still, that is often not the case and that is the problem with Capitalism. Usually, after the founder/visionary leaves the company he or she founded, making money becomes the company’s reason for being. Often, when the company has a large market share, is rich enough, or has a deserved sterling reputation, it can lever that into making lots of money. For years, after Alfred Sloan left General Motors, they made more money with GMAC – General Motors Acceptance Corporation which loaned money for people to buy cars (and, eventually, houses) – than they did in actually building and selling cars.

For General Motors, making money became the goal – the overriding goal –  and, in that environment, weighing the cost of replacing millions of ignition switches against the cost of potential lawsuits from criminal negligence, made good sense. When making money becomes the goal, making good products, innovation, or providing good jobs – among other socially desirable goals – becomes secondary, although the companies often do make lots of money. However, they no longer make the world, our world, richer, they only make the shareholders richer.

As an aside, Ferrari still makes wonderful cars – great cars – but they are no longer the reflection of Enzo Ferrari, il Commendatore. If you want a car that is the reflection of one man’s vision, you would have to buy something like a Pagani Huayra, the creation of Horacio Pagani, with its stunning exterior and spectacular steampunk interior. End aside. Pagani Huayra 1

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Lucky Peach and Wired….thinking out of the box

Psychological Musings

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Michele picked up an issue of Lucky Peach, an alternative quarterly journal of food writing, art, and recipes – as it bills itself – a couple of weeks, or so,  ago. We were first introduced to Lucky Peach by Richard Taylor who gave Michele an issue, on Chinese shopping center restaurants, probably more than a year ago. Both Michele and I like Chinese food and cooking, so it was a welcome gift. But it was almost  impossible to read. In an effort to stand out in a very crowded food and cooking magazine universe, to break out of that cooking mag box, Lucky Peach had gone overboard. It reminds me of the first year or so of Wired doing the same thing for the digital/Silicon Valley world. The first couple of issues – with about ten type sizes and faces per page – were way more unreadable than Lucky Peach (even Wired‘s table of contents was hard to read).

It seems to me what these two have in common is that they made a radical departures from what everybody knows works in magazines. Thinking outside the box is a conscious effort to not follow the rules. As an aside, I remember reading that, when Charlie Parker – the great American jazz saxophonist, who revolutionized jazz with bebop – was trying to break away from the Big Band Jazz-sound, he turned the score upside down to get in a different musical space. End aside. Without any rules to rely on, the change usually doesn’t work at first.

It doesn’t work, I think, for a couple of reasons. First, we are all still habituated to the in-the-box rules making the new stuff look weird. Even if an out of boxer decides to think out of the box, it doesn’t mean that we, the user, is agreeing to that (even if we think we are). We are still following the old rules, at least until the out-of-the-boxer convince us to change. Using the old rules, it is very difficult to make judgements on the new stuff and we often just resort to Well, that’s weird, and move on.

Sometimes it is actually weird more than good. The new stuff , by setting out to be outside the box, is, in some ways, just random and, in other ways, is just Do it NOT like they did it. Sometimes, it takes time to invent new rules and refine them. However, I suspect that this happens less than we think.

Often, when I look back at some radical design or piece of art that I thought was terrible 50 years ago, it looks great now.