Defense Secretary Gates is in Chile doing something and promoting the new START treaty. I do not know why he is in Chile – which as far as I know is not involved with START – but while he was there, he visited a military academy where this picture was taken.

The guy in the background,  looks a little too Nazi for my taste.

In the early 1960s – after the Beatles song  I Want to Hold Your Hand came out, but before Why Don't We Do It in the Road? which I always thought pretty much covered the arc of the 60s, but that is another story – I taught continuous wave radar to Germans at Fort Bliss, Texas. Because of the heat, classes started at 6am and the Germans would march in – in the morning twilight wearing grey uniforms and jackboots  – singing Deutschland über alles.

I thought that was a little too much, but, at least, they had the common decency to not wear helmets. Now even we are wearing a sort of old German helmet.

Last Saturday, Malcolm Pearson and I drove to Southern California to visit a car museum. What we found was a sacred site. Socal style. In an industrial park, of course, accross the street from a very big church.

It is the Mullin Automotive Museum, where, inside, surrounded by supplicants,  is a shrine dedicated to the Art Deco Movement. Although there is furnature and sculpture; the main show is pre-WWII french cars. I read somewhere that the French Impressionists, especially Monet’s haystacks, came as a reaction to the ass-kicking the French took in the Franco-Prussian War. If that is true, maybe this flash of preposterous creativity in the period leading up to the second World War was in reaction to the growing colossus to the north. A sort of We have to be bold – and very French – now; we aren’t going to have another chance. 

The cars are luscious to the point of being decadent.

If you only think of cars as transportation appliances, then these cars may not be for you. These cars are artifacts that reflect an age as well as self-conscience Art. Through the vision of one person. In my opinion, Art has to be the vision of one person; art by committee is not Art. That is why the UN building doesn’t work; why there are no great novels by two authors. And no great cars.

But, here, there is one great car after another with their names being the names of the people who designed the chassis: Delahayes – by Emile Delahaye – Lagos – by Anthony Lago – and, the most sacred of them all, Bugattis – by Le Patron himself, Ettori Bugatti. With bodies designed by Figoni et Falaschi, Chapron, Saoutchik, and Ettori’s son, Jean Bugatti. These cars were not always good transportation devices – although they often were – they were not, even, always good cars; but they were always interesting. Interesting in form and interesting in their lovingly done detail.

Notice the door handle buried in the chrome trim on this Delahaye with a body by Figoni et Falaschi. Or the way the headlights stick out ahead of the car on this one by the same team, and the subtle tailfin, and the detail on the wood door trim.

The engines are like jewelry (double click to blow up).

And just the general deco-ness of these beauties.

To be continued…

Because of a dead battery, I had to abandon my old Range Rover at a Park and Ride, in San Jose, last Saturday night. Michele said she would give me a ride back down to the Park and Ride and a jump start for  a xlb lunch – xiaolong bao  Shanghai dumplings – on the way.  We decided to try a new place that had great reviews – Shanghai Dim Sum 19066 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino.

As we got close, Michele realized that it was next door to a Muslim grocery store that she liked. Among other things, they have halal meat. We are trying to be more conscience about eating meat by – among other things – eating meat that has been humanely raised. To be halal, meat has to come from humanely-handled halal animals so it is a good fit for us. And – big bonus – they have goat which is not that easy to find, even in Mexican groceries.

They also have halal chicken. Raised by – and this is the punchline -  Amish farmers. 

As an after comment: as per one of my favorite recipes, we salted a couple of chicken legs and thighs, dusted them with paprika, added a little lemon,  put them in the oven on top of a bed of quartered potatoes , and roasted them. They tasted much better than your  average free range, organic chicken.  

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate. Margaret Mead

I ran into this quote some time ago thinking about big houses and how – like everything, such as cars and wine glasses – houses have been getting steadily bigger over the last forty years. And, as we run out of resourses, I wonder if that will turn around.

About two months ago, Michele and I saw The Social Network. One of the inferances in passing – if that is the right way to say it – is that to get rich in high tech – really rich – you have to move to Palo Alto. Now that is not true, of course, but it does become closer to true if you replace Palo Alto with the inner Bay Area.  Or, probably, any urban/inner suburban area.

In Palo Alto, houses are not very big – partially because of small lots and tight zoning true – but, also, the majority of the homes were built before 1980. My guess is that the average house built in  Modesto, far from Silicion valley – even though much, much cheaper – is bigger than the average house in Palo Alto. Houses got bigger as the available land was further and further from the epi-center of the  bay area. Because they were so much cheaper per square foot, they were cheaper, period.

So we probably have a situation where the boss lives in a smaller house than somebody working for the boss. Not always – lots of bosses live in big houses in Atherton – but often. In my imagination, after a Chistmas Party at the bosses house in Palo Alto – and a very long drive home or expensive night in a hotel – the employee will start to think about living in a smaller house.