This changing world – Korea edition

Sports, Travel

This weekend was the Korean Gran Prix, the country’s second Formula 1 race. When I was in Korea, in 63 and 64, it was a very different country.   I was on a Tac Site about two hours down a dirt road. When I tried to find it on Google Earth, I couldn’t, but I did notice a six lane freeway nearby. In those days, driving down a road, we often saw Korean women walking by the side of the road; we irreverently called them Mamasans.  The san being a diminutive stolen from the Japanese.

Anyway, in a thoughtful homage to male chauvinistic piggism, every F1 race has a group of women called Grid Girls. They stand at the grid position with the number of the car that will start from that position. Interestingly enough, they are no longer Mamasans.

 

 

Occupy Wall Street far west edition

Americana, Around home, Politics, San Mateo County

I went to an Occupy Wall Street protest last Friday. We occupied an overpass over Highway 92. The theory being that this overpass was one of 74 bridges have been found to be structurally deficient in San Mateo County. That is a pretty amazing figure; San Mateo is one of the richest counties in the United States and pretty consistently votes democratic and even we doesn’t take care of our infrastructure. There were 122 people signed up to be here and I talked to a couple of people who said that they hadn’t signed up so there were probably somewhere between 120 and 150 people spread out over the overpass.

They were just regular people, some of whom took off work early and some – like me – that didn’t have work to take off of. The crowd seemed completely middle class.

 

 

I especially liked the accidental juxtaposition to the sign in this picture.

It was mostly a late middle age group although there were people of all ages.

I am not sure how much of what I saw and felt was reality and how much is my projection, but – with that qualifier – everybody seemed more sad than enraged, disappointed with a deeping realization that it wasn’t going to get better. At least without a huge amount of work on our part. I talked to one woman who said that it was a typical San Mateo crowd, We are nice people who don’t make waves. These are people who believe in democracy, who haven’t given up or they wouldn’t be here. They are aware that America’s day in the sun is ending but are not happy with the government only helping the rich.  I had the sense that they weren’t going away.

 

 

 

 

Two questions and a macro lens

Americana, Around home, Photography

Last summer, Michele bought a seedling at the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society show. She bought it because it was fuzzy and the deer – seen here looking for something tasty after chomping down on an Acacia sprout –

don’t normally eat fuzzy plants so it seemed like a good choice for the backyard.

Then, a week or so ago, it bloomed at the very tip, right where the new leaves are. I have no idea what the plant is and I am pretty good at identifying plants partially because I am a lumper and not a splitter.  A lumper says that an onion is a Lily and leaves it at that, a splitter wants to know exactly what kind of onion it is. With cacti, the lumper sees the fairly common tree cactus and sees a Opuntia of some kind, or – maybe – a Opuntia brasiliensis; a splitter sees a Brisiliopuntia brasiliensis. Being a lumper is much easier.

After photographing the plant, I went for walk around the neighborhood and saw a baseball laying by the side of the trail where there are no houses. I am tickled by the fact that the ball is OFFICIAL LEAGUE which – let’s face it – is never Official League. Actually, we used to use Official League as a joke, sort of like Industrial Strength or the amp goes to 11. Also, as you can see, the ball is made in China.

Now, for the two questions: what IS that plant? and, are real major league baseballs made in China? or are they still made in the good ol’ USA because baseball is our national pastime, after all?

San Francisco under a full moon

Uncategorized

I drove up to San Francisco to photo the full moon from the Golden Gate Bridge as it came up. Well, that was the plan:  but when I got to South San Francisco, the fog was blowing  across 280.  I figured it would be worse at the Golden Gate, so I bailed on that and drove to Twin Peaks. Looking down on the bridge, I figured I was right.

But the view back at downtown was clear with just a wisp of fog hanging out by Berkeley.

I knew the moon would be coming up too far south for me to get a shot of it over San Fran and that it would be coming up too late for many lights to still be on in buildings downtown but it was a warm – if windy – night so I stuck around. The sun set through the fog behind us as the moon rose over the Hayward Hills.

 

Dinosaurs were birds department

Current Affairs, Evolution

One of the things that interests me about Science is how it is a reflection and enlargement of an individuals reaction to change. A healthy individual. When I was at college, one of the required courses was a two year general science course that included Chemistry, Physics, Geology, and Astronomy, among other things. At the end of the Geology stint, we talked a little bit about continents floating around which was a theory put forward by a sort of loony German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. I remember our teachers pretty much ridiculing him and his theory as being pretty far out and unproved although he did have some interesting points. It sounded more plausible to me than to the teachers, then I forgot about it.

Years later, I got interested – maybe obsessed is a better description –  in human evolution. I read everything I could find on human evolution and, in passing, started seeing lots of references to  plate tectonics. All of the references seemed to take the floating continents for granted. In fact almost everything seemed to be based on the reality of the floating continents. The geological community had gone from denial – Wegener seems loony – to bargaining – maybe Wegener has some good points but there is more/less to it than that – to acceptance.

I have posted about this before, but it is interesting – much more than interesting, really, fun – to see the same thing happening with dinosaurs. They used to be slow and stupid; cold-blooded. Then, maybe, warm blooded – but that seemed sort of unbelievable. Then, OK, maybe warm blooded but still like reptiles. Then, maybe – but probably not – the predecessor to birds.

Now, they have found a new fossil Talos sampsoni – nice name, BTW, Talos for talon, I presume and sampsoni for Sampson; Sampson talon –  and the talk is how the animal is a fast killing machine using its talons. All the bird-like characteristics are just taken for granted. He/she does give Angry Birds a new meaning.