Category Archives: Uncategorized

What IS it with Red Bull, anyway?

Uncategorized,

By way of confession, I have never actually drunk a Red Bull, a condition I don’t plan on changing very soon. I did have a sip a couple of years ago and didn’t much like it. I read in the L.A. Times that ordering a Red Bull and Vodka is a sure sign that you like to party and, Oh!  they also seem to have an amazing sports program. They have two Formula11 teams, one of them, was last year’s most successful Formula 1 team. This year they are so far ahead, many people including myself have quit keeping track.

But they also sponsor motorcycles and motorcycle racing, and motocross, and air races. A couple of years ago, when I went to see the Blue Angles

with my Little Brother, Edwin, I was amazed at how big the Red Bull presence was. Now they are sponsoring a race that is both extra nutty and very cool. To quote their website, Athletes race non-stop through the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea, with just a paraglider and a pair of hiking boots to help them…Fly. Hike. Conquer. The athletes can either fly with their paraglider or hike, carrying their equipment with them. The race goes on day and night, sun or snow, until the first pilot reaches goal. ,

in fact, they are sponsors of all kind of nutty races, like Red Bull Crashed Ice, a combination of ice hockey, downhill skating and boardercross! I don’t even know what bordercross is. It just seems amazing that they can sell that much sports – or whatever – drink. Not necessarily in a bad way, just amazing.

1. And speaking of Formula 1, where Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel is way out in front so as to be not very interesting except that each race has been interesting with lots of racing.  Louis Hamilton  beat Red Bull in the last race, the Grand Prix of Germany, partially because his pit stops were so fast: he drove in, they jacked up the car, removed four tires and put four new tires on, and then lowered the car and he drove off – all in 3.2 seconds.

 

Some reflections on Bodie and change

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Bodie is billed as a ghost town and it sort of is and sort of isn’t.

As the remnant of a small city of up to 7,000 people, it is a Ghost Town. Because it is in one of the remotest parts of California, when it died, it wasn’t looted too badly, making it an interesting remnant. As an aside, there are a lot of remote parts of California, more than most people think. Even on the populous coast – right on the coast, right on the water –  there are remote spots, empty beaches. In the middle of the Coast Range, there is the Corrizo Plain; empty most of the time. Most of the Highway 395 corridor – except for Mammoth and Bishop – is pretty remote. End aside. Bodie is also high – over 8,000 feet – and dry – east of the Sierras, so it is preserved by the elements.

Even though they are Park Rangers, people do live in Bodie and it get up to 200,000 visitors a year, so it is hard to think of Bodie as a real Ghost Town.

I think of Bodie as being in a state of arrested decay. If left alone it will turn to mulch, which raises the question of How much should it be allowed to decay? The answer seems to be, with some exceptions of plants growing, none. People come to see it as it is and don’t want to see it different.

If it were restored to its former glory, it would be a Disneyland, requiring  a giftshop and – maybe – a couple of stagecoach rides, if it continues to decay and turn into mulch, it would lose its allure. It would become as empty as Tunnel in the Seven Trough Range.

We like our ruins as partial ruins. More accurately, we like things as they are, even if they are partial ruins; we don’t like change. As a culture, we want to hold on to what is and are very leery of letting go, even for what might be. In almost everything, not just Bodie, the alternative to what is, does not sound as good. Almost all over the world, we support what is. We support the power structure; we can not see any other alternative that is as attractive.

But, meanwhile, back in Bodie, this level of decay is very photogenic.

“Well, it’s not Timothy McVeigh”

Politics, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized,

When I heard about the bombing in Norway, yesterday, my first comment was Shit, I hope it’s not Muslims. The person I was with said “Well, it’s not Timothy McVeigh”.

It turns out to be Anders Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, right wing, nationalist. And, Anders Breivik, it turns out is Norwegian for Timothy McVeigh.

Construction coaching and Allyn Morris

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As a way to make money and get me out of the house, Michele suggested I coach people building new homes or remodeling their homes. She had run into a guy who labeled himself a Landscape Coach and immediately thought I should be a Construction Coach, to quote her, Being a construction coach is a perfect application of your knowledge. It seems like a great idea; after all, one of my specialties is giving advice. And I have been building and remodeling houses for a very long time.

It has been fun building my resume, running across names I have not thought of in years. One of them is an engineer/designer named Allyn Morris, in the early 60’s, I worked for Allyn Morris as a carpenter. (The way he spells his first name says it all.)  Today architecture seems to be all about the past, the best architects, like Robert A. M. Stern, creatively riff on the past, but it still seems about the past. As the building below shows, often spectacularly. Sometimes even 60’s modern as past, but, still, the past.

In the 60’s, it was all about the future and Morris was a master. An almost unknown master.

I worked on finishing and detailing a couple of duplexes(1) for him and on the steel framing of a custom home(2) he designed. His own home and studio were among the best buildings I have ever been in and I still remember it in detail. That home(3) is up for sale and it is still exciting. I remember entering by a bright red door at the back of the carport – whose roof was a huge cantilever – and standing on the third floor, facing a three story glass wall overlooking the Glendale Freeway and – in the distance – the San Gabriel Mountains. Morris thought the Glendale Freeway was a dynamic piece of art. It is, especially at night. The house even has its own website, check it out.

1. The apartment house had wood floors made up of 2×4’s on edge that then cantilevered out – way out – over the garages. People, especially kids would walk out to the end of the cantilevered deck and jump up and down like a diving board. It was starting to cause damage and I suggested propping it up with a 4×4 and then painting it out. Morris’s solution was to put a brightly painted car jack under the end of the cantilever. He said, I want to learn from my mistakes, not cover them up.

2. The vertical members of the steel frame were tubes, each one the exact size that was structurally needed, so that one was six inches in diameter and another was four inches. Sheer, out of the box, genius.

3. One – for lack of a better word – whimsical thing I remember is that there was an open downspout running down the middle of the spiral staircase. When it rained, the water ran down the downspout into a fishpond on the first floor. What nerve, what elan.

An aside about Cluster Bombs

Americana, Current Affairs, Uncategorized, War

I have never understood cluster bombs and why they are such a problem. Now, after a visit to the Hawthorn Ordnance Museum, I do understand.  That might not be the good news. Be warned, if you don’t understand, your ignorance might be bliss; once you do understand, you might not like our fellow Americans as much . While in the airplane, the bomb looks pretty much like a run of the mill people killing device. However, it is innocuously labeled Dispenser, Aircraft so as it will not to be confused with a regular bomb.

The dispenser is rigged to come apart after it is dropped.  Inside are hundreds of tennis ball size bomblets that are then spread across the countryside. They have little aerodynamic wing stubs that start the bomblets rotating once they leave the container.

This act of rotating arms the bomblet so, when it hits the ground, they will explode. Of course, they all go in slightly different directions to cover as wide an area as possible. Because most of the dispensers are dropped from low flying fighter aircraft, many of the bomblets don’t have a chance to arm themselves before they hit the ground. So, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Cambodia, there are just millions of these things still lying around on the ground, or in the grass, or in bushes, all unexploded. Waiting for a farmer to hit them with a plow or a child to pick them up and give them a good shake. Years later, many of them are still there. Waiting.

According to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in The Fog of War, after the firebombing of Tokyo, former Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay said to him, It is a good thing that we are going to win this war, otherwise we would be tried as war criminals. He was probably right. As far as I am concerned, the guys who dropped these all over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, should also be tried as war criminals.

That is one of the problems with war, once in a war, people will do anything to win. The United States is really no exception. We don’t wear suicide vests or club people to death, we don’t have to, we have cluster bombs and drones.