Voting

Before I start on the vacation blogs, I want to rant about the election a little. Not the national election, that's a wrap for the moment; the recent state and local elections in California, and Alameda County, and the city of Oakland. These were actually quite important elections: this was the primary for every partisan office except the presidency; and both the state legislative seats and about half the Oakland City Council were all up for re-election. Both the legislative seats were open contests, too, because the seat holders were termed out.

I frequently read or hear the complaint that people don't vote because their vote "doesn't count." From the Alameda County Election Results site, I have some numbers about that:

• Total Alameda County voter registration for the June 3 election was 725,098.
• Total votes cast at the polling place? 78,753.
• Total absentee ballots cast? 138,338.

That's right - out of 725,098 registered voters, only 217,091 bothered to vote: just under 1 in 3. (The county site doesn't show the percentage of registered voters who voted in each individual contest, just for the main election.)

When you turn out and vote in a contest like that, you're a bigger frog, in a smaller pond, than you realize. A "majority of the vote" in this case could be as little as 15% of the electorate (51% of 29.94%). And those are the people who determine who will be running the joint for the next term.

So, does your vote count?? You bet it counts! And just remember - if you don't vote, and you don't like the way things go, I don't want to hear one peep out of you. You forfeit your right to complain if you don't vote.

So - next election, get your lower dorsal elevation down there and VOTE!

Basin and Range

I've never done this before, but I have my laptop with me on vacation, so I'm going to blog it "live" from time to time. We'll see how this works. I'm writing from the Crystal Inn in Brigham City, Utah, on our way to Yellowstone.

We've spent the last 2 days on I-80, crossing Nevada and Utah - the great Basin and Range country written up by John McPhee in his book of that name. If you've never driven across this country you can't imagine how hostile it is to life; I can't conceive walking across it behind an ox cart, or even riding a horse. It wasn't especially hot, rather somewhat chilly, mostly overcast, and very windy. The roads are straight and empty; no buildings line them, no trees shade them, and they stretch out before you to a vanishing point on the horizon. Sometimes they turn, and you can see the curve laid out before you for miles in advance. Between the occasional towns there is nothing. You regularly pass named freeway exits marked "no services" - Jim thinks these are isolated ranches or mines, but they have freeway access. The wind was constant, and strong enough to jolt the car sideways on the freeway now and then. It's very hard to stay awake at the wheel because it's boring - the view changes very, very slowly, and you watch the same sights for a long time. Apart from the dust devils, almost nothing moves. You're driving at 70 or 75 miles an hour (the speed limit is 75), but so is any other traffic; there was very little, just an occasional semi hauling freight. The relative motion of the vehicles is very slow, within 5 or 10 miles per hour; this gives you the odd feeling that you and the other traffic are standing still, and the empty, silent landscape is very slowly revolving past you.

When we first passed Reno and Sparks, it was different - the road follows the Truckee River valley until Fernley, the hills are right near the road, and the river bottom is lush and green. Up the hill a few feet, though, is warning of things to come: sparse sagebrush scrub on dusty brown dirt. After Fernley, the river turns north and the road continues east through great acres of salt pan, partly obscured as we drove by blowing dust in the steady wind. There's still sagebrush, but less, and it's odd to see plants next to, or in, obvious crusts of salt on the ground; huge expanses have no plants at all, just salt and dirt. These are the Humboldt Sink and part of the Forty Mile Desert, obstacles on the Emigrant Trail, which Interstate 80 more or less follows. The regular ranges of mountains are dry and treeless, their shapes rounded by the wind. This continues for around 60 miles, until you reach Lovelock.

The farther east you go, the higher (gradually) the ground rises, and the wetter (very slowly) things get, even at the bottom of the basins. After Lovelock you see occasional cattle grazing. By Elko, there are irrigated pastures and more grazing herds. But the trees are still few and stunted.

We chased a rainstorm, and vice versa, most of the way from Lovelock to Elko. In the last stretch, we drove along the edge of the rain, with black clouds to our left and the late afternoon sun to our right; we were escorted by a full arch rainbow for several miles, sliding along the desert to our left. I've never seen such a thing before.

Life on Mars

Phoenix has landed safely on Mars, to great exaltation. Now we're going to find out if there ever was life on Mars.

Why do we care so much?

Mind you, I don't object to scientific exploration for its own sake; we know a number of very useful and interesting things that we found out while just looking to see what was there. But we sent men to the Moon, and we've sent a number of exploring space craft to Mars, and we've landed three craft on Mars now, and the justification seems to be not, what does the place look like? but, is anybody else there?

So far, nobody else is there. I'll go farther and make a prediction, which the Phoenix team at JPL will be spending the next 10 years or so trying to disprove: nobody else ever was there. There has never been life on Mars. There certainly has never been our variety of life on Mars, the kind that's based on liquid water. And not on any of the other planets in this system either.

All our science fiction is based on the assumption that we're not alone. Writers have peopled "space" with a delightful and amazing population of "aliens", from Andre Norton's Zacathans to Larry Niven's K'zin to Anne McCaffrey's telepathic species and beyond (and I haven't read nearly as much sci-fi as some people), with one specification for all these unlikely creatures: we can talk to them.

Apparently, talking among ourselves isn't enough for us, despite the fact that we spend more time fighting each other than talking. Why would we think we'd do anything with "aliens" except fight them, given how we treat each other?

Based on the evidence I've seen, reading all the astronomy articles in Scientific American and other lay journals for 30 years, Ockham's Razor seems to imply that there isn't anyone else out there. We're asking these questions because of a long sequence of coincidences that produced a planet with enough water, and the right temperature range (most of the time), and the right chemicals, and so on, that over millions of years a mammalian species evolved which developed the ability to - ask questions. (And before you bring it up, no, I don't buy the argument that God created all this in 4004 B.C.) Most of the planets we've been able to observe so far are prima facie unable to support life - wrong temperature range, not enough carbon or oxygen, etc. Most of the stars we've been able to observe are prima facie unable to support life - too big, too hot, too small, too cool. Stars like our sun are a minority. They aren't rare, there are just a lot of other types.

In other words, we are unique, and we are alone, and we'd better learn how to get along with each other, because there isn't anybody else out there to get along with. As the "mindfulness" people say, wherever you go, there you are.

But it fascinates me that we're so convinced that we aren't alone, that we spend really large amounts of money and time trying to find "them." Even if, in the case of Phoenix, the definition of "them" would be some evidence the Mars may have supported liquid water in which some kind of single-celled life form may have lived long enough to reproduce for awhile.

Whatever it was, if it was, I guarantee we wouldn't have been able to talk to it.

Why are we so desperate to find "them"?? Do we think they have Answers that we don't have? Or do we just think that if "they" can survive on a planet, then we could move in and take it over from them? (An unfortunate but likely supposition; and in the case of the current Mars, patently absurd.)

If you really want to contemplate "life on Mars," go read Edgar Rice Burroughs' wonderful Mars series: John Carter, Warlord of Mars. They're great.

Roast Swan

Not long ago, the Oakland Symphony Chorus performed Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. For those of you who don't know about the 13th century manuscript collection this is based on, there's a Wikipedia article. Carl Orff wrote the modern piece, based on the manuscripts, in Germany in the middle 1930s, and that's what we did. Three times, which is a lot. And under two different conductors, which was interesting, as they didn't interpret it the same way at all.

Whenever you spend 5 months rehearsing something and then most of a solid week doing concert prep, after the concert the music doesn't necessarily stop running through your head right away. Or for a while. But there's one part of it that's stuck in my head for nothing directly to do with the music. Of the 5 parts of Carmina Burana, the long middle section is about drinking and taverns, sung by the men; and it contains an extremely weird little solo piece called, alternatively, Cignus ustus cantat or Olim lacus colueram (the first line) - which is usually referred to as "The Roast Swan."

It's significant for 2 reasons: musically it's one of the higher tenor pieces in the repertoire, the tenor has to hit a high D; and textually it's the story of a roast swan being served up for dinner, from the swan's point of view. Unless the text is published in the program or they've looked it up, the audience usually misses this, because it's sung in medieval Latin, which is less common than it once was. Here is the text, in the excellent translation provided by classical.net:

Olim lacus colueram,        Once I lived on lakes,
olim pulcher extiteram,       once I looked beautiful
dum cignus ego fueram.       when I was a swan.

(Male chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
Girat, regirat garcifer;      The servant is turning me on the spit;
me rogus urit fortiter;       I am burning fiercely on the pyre:
propinat me nunc dapifer,      the steward now serves me up.

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
Nunc in scutella iaceo,       Now I lie on a plate,
et volitare nequeo         and cannot fly anymore,
dentes frendentes video:      I see bared teeth:

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

You can see where they might not always print the translation. The chorus, sung by the basses and tenors, is one of the best known parts of Carmina, it's very exciting.

In the first two concerts, the tenor stood in the usual stiff concert pose. He had a beautiful if rather light voice and hit all the notes correctly, but he didn't try to do any physical interpretation. The soloist in the third concert (under the second conductor) chose to act out the story. (He's an opera singer; in fact, his name is Brian Staufenbiel, and he's the head of the opera program at U.C. Santa Cruz.) As he sang the first verse, he waved his arms as if flying, and looked around. As he sang the second verse, he stood with his hands locked behind his back, as if trussed up. As he sang the last verse, he stood straight and stiff with his hands at his side.

It made the swan quite uncomfortably real, and I can't get it out of my head.

It didn't help that, at the dress rehearsal, the soprano and bass soloists were sitting over to the side during the solo, making synchronized cranking motions, as if turning a spit. It was funny in a very black way. From what I know about the middle ages, all of this would have been hilarious to them; so maybe this is just a measure of how much we've changed in 700 years.

But I still can't get it out of my head.

I Take It Back

I've occasionally expressed my admiration for Nancy Pelosi in this blog; she seemed to me to be doing a good job, although I didn't and don't agree with all her decisions. I officially take it back with the most recent mess over the farm bill. (And when I say "most recent": the AP article is datelined about an hour and a half ago.) She may not be personally responsible for this snafu, but she's in charge, and it happened on her watch.

To begin with, I didn't and don't support the farm bill Congress finally passed; I supported the more radical bill that Barbara Boxer introduced, which would have replaced commodity farm subsidies entirely with a disaster insurance program. (I may be hazy on the details.) I'm in the extremely unusual position of agreeing with Dubya on something: I think this bill should be vetoed.

Now to the mess. Having passed this obscene farm bill with veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, the idiots in charge of the process sent the White House a version of the bill to sign that was ... missing 34 pages.

What?

That's right - they didn't collate the bill properly when they printed it on parchment, and they left out a 34 page section. So Bush vetoes the bill, as he said he would. But ... what he vetoed isn't what Congress passed. Is that constitutional? Is that even rational?

Congress is now scrambling around to arrange a second round of voting on the full bill, by Thursday (the current law expires on Friday), after which they'll re-submit it to the White House for another veto. After which they'll override it again? (Why do they need to vote on it again? They voted on the full bill, they just didn't print the full bill to send to the Pres. Or am I missing something?)

Can these people find their socks in the morning? If Congress wonders why their approval ratings are even lower than Dubya's, look no farther.

Biofuels

I've read a couple of different articles recently on the subject of biofuels, but I was particularly struck by this one in today's San Francisco Chronicle; Arrol Gellner regularly comments on the relationship between humans and their environment. I'm glad to see that some people are beginning to agree with me, and to speak out, on the stupidity of the whole biofuels business. It doesn't help that Congress has just passed a draft farm bill that continues to subsidize the corn farmers of the midwest beyond their wildest dreams of avarice.

We have to quit messing with biofuels. Yes, and the Europeans and everyone else have to quit it too. Our insistence that we can turn corn into fuel for cars is causing a worldwide famine, by driving up the price of food in general. I'm not sure we shouldn't just Give Up On The Whole Idea, even eliminate switchgrass as a source - because land planted for switchgrass is not land planted for edible crops.

Which is more important - driving to work, or eating? Is it more important for you to drive to work than it is for an Indian subsistance farmer's family to eat one meal?

We're killing people here, or we will be shortly. People who live on a dollar a day (or even two dollars a day) will be dying of starvation.

And it's all because we're hooked on automobiles. Nobody wants to hear this - especially nobody who commutes 60 miles a day to work because that was the closest house he could afford to buy - but we are all of us going to have to rethink how we live, and how we get places. We'll have to break our addiction to the automobile, and the ease in traveling that it gives us. It'll be really expensive; it'll be really hard, and we'll have to rebuild stuff; but the alternative will be to continue to drive cars, using increasingly expensive fuel, until we can't afford any more fuel at all; by which time we'll have overloaded the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Then we'll have to abandon the cars because we can't move them without fuel.

And then we really will have to do the hard stuff: walk. Take transit (if it exists). Move to some place where you CAN walk or take transit. Maybe we'll go back to horses; treat horses reasonably, and they'll produce new little horses for you every year, for free. Of course, you have to feed horses; and we're back to cropland again. Plant it in edibles, or biofuel sources??

And yes, we're driving to Wyoming and Montana on vacation this summer. I'm addicted to cars too. We've built a world where cars are how you get around, and there really aren't alternatives in a lot of places. But we have to start thinking about alternatives.

Voting

There's been a great deal of loose talk lately about who Democrats will and won't vote for. We have more new people registered to vote than we've seen in a generation, and they're Democrats almost 2 to 1; and yet, the word is that if "their candidate" isn't the eventual Democratic nominee, they won't vote at all. Or they'll vote for McCain. "Hillary's voters" can't possibly vote for Barack Obama. "Obama voters" will never vote for Clinton.

I'm sorry - this is childish. Of both groups. The goal here is to put the Presidency of the United States, and as much of the Congress as possible, in the hands of the Democratic Party, thereby removing it from the hands of the Republican Party which has done so much appalling damage over the last 7 years. And if the Democratic Party can hang together, they can do this; Democratic turnout in every primary has been more than twice the Republican vote.

The problem, of course, is that for the first time in U.S. history, a major political party has two candidates who are both minorities: a black man and a white woman. (I still find it bizarre that women, who constitute just over 50% of the population, are considered a "minority", but let's not get into that just now.) This provides endless opportunities for mud-slinging: if you vote for Obama, it's because you hate women. If you vote for Hillary, it's because you're a racist. And it's regrettably possible that both of these accusations are true in some cases: America's bigots (few of whom have only one prejudice) have been given a rare opportunity to decide out whom they dislike the most.

Both candidates have more to offer than the "first". Both candidates are intelligent, talented, and determined people. Despite Senator Clinton's insistance on her "experience", they actually have about the same amount of national experience: a few terms in the Senate. As Mrs. Clinton, she may well have been in the White House when momentous decisions were made; but I'm sorry, I don't count pillow talk with Bill as "experience in government," and the only time she actually tried a major project (health care reform), she blew it. She appears to have learned from the experience, but don't give me any guff about her foreign policy expertise. She doesn't have any more than Obama does. In both cases we are banking not on experience, but on native ability and smarts.

The symbolism of "the first" is causing the trouble. We can elect "the first woman president" or "the first black president" - but we can't elect both. The zealots on both sides are determined that their "first" shall be the one, to the point that they're demonizing the other "first" as a mortal threat. Materially assisted by Senator Clinton's strongly negative campaign, I might add; it's true that I support Senator Obama, but I believe it to be an objective fact that she has slung more mud than he has.

What really worries me is the possibility that the people who can't bring themselves to vote for the "wrong first" will end up causing the election of the first 71-year-old President. And we bloody well will be in Iraq for 100 years.

Burma

God help the unfortunate people of Burma. Their government seems completely disinclined to do so. The junta, of course, was completely unaffected by the storm; they moved themselves to a new capital, back in the hills. It's only the people they're supposed to be responsible for who are starving in the mud.

I lost a bet with myself. I bet that the military junta which runs Burma (I've decided that calling it "Myanmar" is simply pandering to them) would refuse international aid, because it would mean letting outsiders into the country. I see that not only have they allowed aid in from Thailand, they've allowed the U.S. to land a C-140 full of supplies. Amazing. If Ban Ki-Moon persuaded them, he's better than I gave him credit for.

The people of Burma have just had it clearly demonstrated to them that their rulers have no interest in their welfare. I wonder what they'll do about it, if anything. The rulers have the guns. The people have the numbers. Or will they continue to submit?

Crime in Oakland

Since one of the things I do for the Greater Rockridge NCPC is monitor 3 different Yahoo email groups relating to crime in the north Oakland area where I live, I haven't posted much about it here - I spend quite enough time dealing with it already. But although it's an undeniably useful community service, I'm finding that it's very hard on me.

I'm continually reminded that I live in a city where crime is almost completely out of control. If you call the police they may or may not come; if you don't call the police, the crime in essence never happened, since the only crimes they deal with are the ones that are reported through the 911 dispatch center. People within blocks of my house have been robbed by armed assailants within the last few weeks; and we live in one of the safer neighborhoods. It's very hard not to conclude that everyone you pass on the sidewalk is a potential criminal assailant; I regularly have to do a reality check and remind myself that I have never been mugged. (Knock wood.)

On the other hand, I take precautions. I don't walk along plugged into an iPod, or a cell phone. I watch my surroundings. I lock my car, and don't leave stuff visible inside it. We have house lights on timers. If I weren't monitoring all those Yahoo groups, I'd tell myself this is just part of living in a city; but when the city you live in is officially the 4th most dangerous city in the U.S., and there's a good deal of evidence that the city government (not just the police department) is completely unable to deal with it, it feels a little different.

We've lived here a long time; we like the neighborhood and the neighbors. We have a lovely house, that we're considering remodeling to make it more comfortable to live in. And yet I keep wondering: what will this be like in another 10 years? Is this just a blip, which will go away when the Oakland mayor and city council finally fire the police chief (which, IMHO, he fully deserves) and hire someone competent? (Assuming they're capable of finding someone competent?) Or is this the start of a slide that will leave us, as we're getting older and frailer, locked into a house that we can't sell because the neighborhood has gone to the dogs, and can't live in without bars on all the ground floor windows? I don't know. There's a lot to like about Oakland; but there's a lot that's really scary too. I just don't know.

Where Was I?

I'm beginning to think I may be overdoing this volunteer thing; I just realized I haven't blogged in 2 weeks. In case you wonder what I am doing, I'm:

- The secretary of the local Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council; since Oakland has just disbanded the Community Policing Advisory Board, it isn't clear what standing we still have, but we're currently planning our next monthly meeting. It's amazing how short a month is when you're planning meetings. I may be about to become the webmistress of the NCPC's new site, too.

- Director and webmistress of the Oakland Symphony Chorus (also an alto - I do sing in it). In the last 8 days this has involved 4 rehearsals (total duration about 15 hours) and 2 performances of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (with the California Symphony); and we'll be doing it again in 2 weeks with the Young People's Symphony Orchestra, under a different conductor. (The last rehearsal was with YPSO's conductor.) Next week I have rehearsals Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights and a concert the following Sunday.

- Web designer and technical consultant for LifeRing Press, the e-commerce site of the LifeRing recovery group; I'm rebuilding it using ZenCart, in which I have found and reported a bug. I wanted to bring the rebuild live before we went on vacation in June, but it's occurred to me that it's a bad idea to bring the thing live and then leave, so it'll have to wait until I get back to babysit it.

- The LifeRing CEO also wants me to devise and implement a nationwide structure for support groups for the partners, families, loved ones, etc. of people using LifeRing for addiction recovery. Sort of like Al-Anon. The scope of this request leaves me breathless. Also, many people involved in LifeRing agree that the main LifeRing web site, unhooked.com, needs to be completely redesigned and rebuilt; but since no one can yet agree on what business functions they want the web site to provide, I'm ignoring it on the grounds of lack of specs.

- Finally, in an attempt to get myself out of the house and into the company of human beings at least once a week, I recently began volunteering with an after-school program for 3rd-5th grade girls called SMART, run by Girls, Inc. This may be one too many; I'm committed through the end of this month and then I'm going to rethink it. I'm not sure that 10 year old girls were the human beings I had in mind.

At least I'm not bored: I barely have time to read the newspaper which may explain the lack of blogging. And the library card I got? Fergeddaboudit.

Sheehan vs. Pelosi

So Cindy Sheehan, of anti-war activism fame, is running for Nancy Pelosi's seat in Congress. Sigh.

I don't have any skin in this game, since I don't live in the district. But I read the article in today's Chronicle, and I'm just shaking my head over this. This woman has no clue; she's trying to chew up more than she can bite off; and if she were to succeed, she'd do serious damage to California's interests in Congress.

I don't agree with everything Nancy Pelosi does, but she's got my serious respect as a politician who picks her fights carefully, and keeps coming back until she wins. Her argument for not going after impeachment is compelling ("it would be divisive, we couldn't get the votes, and we would have to spend all our time on it."). I'm also impressed by the way she's maintained absolute public impartiality in a lively Democratic presidential primary. I think she knows her job and does it well.

She's the speaker of the House. If Cindy Sheehan unseats her, she will be the most junior of the junior, and San Francisco's (California's) influence in Congress will be significantly diminished.

Of course I know I'm arguing in support of the current incumbent-biased system. I don't agree with it, and have voted to change it whenever I was given the chance, but absent change, you have to work with what you have. Congress is a system in which long service equals more power.

So Cindy, I'm not going to wish you good luck, because frankly, I don't think you either can or should win. You certainly have a right to try.

Beer Tax

Every so often one rolls by that just makes you say, "What??" (I've been reading the wonderful comic strip Candorville, in which people regularly say "What?")

As reported in the invaluable San Francisco Chronicle, a group of students in San Jose is revolting (that's an active verb, not an adjective. Yet.) over the fact that one of California's proposed ways to close the budget deficit is to increase the tax on beer by as much as $1.88 per six-pack. Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, proposes to raise the beer tax from 20 cents per gallon to $2.88 per gallon.

The San Francisco State Republicans are marching around outside Assemblyman Beall's offfice in San Jose, complaining about "a tax on poor students." They're waving signs reading, "Students Opposed to Unjust Taxation!", and (I really can't believe this one) "No taxation on intoxication."

OK, let's rephrase this in simple English. A group of self-identified Republican students complain that an increase in the tax on beer is an infringement of their right to get drunk at the end of a long day of studying, because they're too poor to afford an additional $1.88 a six-pack. These are college students, so only the graduate students and some seniors can even drink beer legally; but they're acting as if they were the Sons of Liberty, dumping tea into Boston Harbor.

It's perfectly true that sin taxes, like this one, are regressive taxes on the poor, if only because all sales taxes are regressive taxes on the poor. I just find it hard to put the words "poor" and "Republican" in the same phrase, although I realize I am stereotyping. Still, "poor" and "student" are normally coupled, so we'll let that one pass.

"Fight for your right to party!" they complain. I knew the educational system was bad, but in this case it has clearly failed miserably, because these yokels can't distinguish between a "right", like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, and a "privilege", which means that, if they are over 21 years old and have the money, they are allowed to buy and drink beer, as long as they don't drive a car afterward.

Students under 21 have no "right" to buy or drink beer at all, under any circumstances. Period. Regular readers of this blog know that my husband is a recovering alcoholic. Alcoholism is no joke, and there were reasons it was once prohibited, even though the cure turned out to be worse than the disease and was eventually repealed. There's a level at which society can't protect people from their own stupidity; but there's no social obligation to make that stupidity affordable. Or easy.

The article contains some serious statistics about the effects of underage drinking, which unfortunately these kids are not reading. One of the protest organizers says that "some of his fellow students spend as much as 60 percent of their paychecks on beer." Based on my experience, frankly, those students are at very high risk for alcoholism right now. I hope they wake up to the problem and stop before they do themselves real damage.

Bananas

I have to quote this. I just love it. Apparently some scientists at Cal have created T-shirts that read as follows:

We share 25% of our DNA with bananas. Get over yourself.

So far I can't find this on the Cal sites, it was cited in Leah Garchik's gossip column on Monday; but as the old saying goes, it's a good story. Let it stand.

But if I find out where to buy it, I'm getting one of those T-shirts.

Photograph

My former college roommate just retired from her job, and to celebrate, the two of us took in the Annie Leibowitz show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor this morning. I knew it would be fabulous, and it was; what an eye that woman has. But one photograph stopped me in my tracks. After admiring a gorgeous color portrait of Gen. Colin Powell, in full dress uniform as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I turned my head and saw it: a formal portrait of George W. Bush's first cabinet, in (I suppose) the Oval Office, right after the 2000 election. Dubya was standing casually in the center, his hands in his pants pockets, his coat pushed back. To his left, Condi Rice, seated. Colin Powell, standing at the left (viewer's perspective). Dick Cheney, seated in front of Powell. Donald Rumsfeld, seated to the right. There was one other, standing behind Rumsfeld, and I can't recall who it was (Ashcroft?). Everyone but Dubya had his or her suit coat buttoned. It was one of the few portraits done in color; Leibowitz normally works in black and white; but since all the suits were either dark gray or dark blue, only the faces and the walls had anything like color.

It was just a formal portrait, but the print was big enough that the figures were about half life-sized; they looked huge. Everybody was serious and sober; Dubya's face was serious and sober, but the stance just looked - cocky. I looked at that portrait, and thought of what those people were collectively and individually responsible for over the next seven years, and I went cold.

Geek Pleasure

It's amazing how the small things can light up your life. I just upgraded my old Dell desktop to 4 GB of memory - all by myself! This may not sound like much, but as we used to say when nobody could get the video-feed projector to work, I'm a software type: I don't do hardware. What I do, however, is Read The Fine Manual. To give the Dell his due, Dell publishes excellent, detailed online manuals including step by step instructions on how to swap out your system memory and put in new stuff; and I printed them out and followed them, and LO! I have subsecond system response again! What a pleasure!

I suppose I could have stopped running Rosetta@home in the background. In fact, a couple of times lately, I did - I don't know what kind of proteins they're analyzing this week, but even as I type this, the 2 jobs Rosetta jobs running are taking up 650 MB of memory, all by themselves. On the 1 GB of memory I had before, this hardly left enough to bring up WinXP, much less actually DO anything. So whee! I have new memory, I have a newly fast box, and I didn't fry anything in the attempt!

Thoughts on the Police

Over the last several weeks, I've been doing something new: I've been getting to know the Oakland Police Department.

No, I haven't been arrested. Although I did spend the other afternoon riding around in a police cruiser. In East Oakland.

I subscribe to a local Yahoo! newsgroup on crime in the neighborhood. (After all, I live in the 4th most dangerous city in the United States.) Through the Yahoo! group, I learned that the OPD regularly offers a free "Citizens' Academy" - a 14 week program, available to any Oakland resident who's willing to show up every Saturday from 9 to noon. (They do run background checks. I doubt they'd let you attend if you had outstanding warrants.) You get presentations on every department (traffic, patrol, vice and narcotics, crime lab, K-9, etc.), given by people with experience in the department. I'm enjoying the class thoroughly; I've been reading detective stories for 50 years or so, and at last I'm finding out how a real police department functions, as opposed to the ones in the books.

So how did I end up riding around in a cruiser? Part of the Academy is a "ride-along" - each student picks a date and a shift, and you show up at the beginning of the shift and are assigned to an officer for the duration, usually 6 hours (although the officer's shifts are 12 hours). You ride around with him (I was assigned to a guy, although OPD has female officers) and see what he does. I went in with him on several low-risk interviews (a parked car bashed by a hit-and-run; a stolen vehicle; a school administrator trying to get a restraining order for a problem parent; a woman whose neighbor complained that her pets were waking him up). I sat in the car for some edgier stuff: a bunch of middle-school kids, fighting; a traffic stop of a rolling boom box. We answered a call for support on the school fight; the officer said that we "weren't going especially fast," and he didn't use the lights or siren, but we were going a whole lot faster than I'd ever drive through that kind of traffic!

I can't discuss one call very much, since I hope it goes to court, but there was an assault and robbery; the officer took the report, and realized that the suspects might still be in the area; he called for support, and with his colleagues' help, got them into the station in handcuffs, with solid evidence. (Well, it looked solid to me.) Let's just say they were very mean, but they weren't very bright.

So what does a police officer do all day? Think a minute and you'll realize: he does paperwork. He fills out endless reports. He listens to people and writes down what they tell him, by hand, then takes it back to the station and files it. The officer I accompanied was tirelessly patient and courteous, I never heard him raise his voice. I saw him put his hand on his gun once, but he never drew it. He was also very nice about explaining to me what he was doing and why.

The class isn't my only interaction with OPD. I'm also active in the local Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council, which does liaison between police and the neighborhood; and I'm volunteering as a citizen interviewer on the oral review boards which are part of the OPD's hiring process. So one way and another, I'm meeting a lot of cops these days.

Frankly, my opinion of the OPD has changed because of this. (Not that I ever fully bought the '60's rants about "the pigs.") The officers I've met are sharp, dedicated professionals, and they love their jobs. Some of them even love (incredibly) being cops in Oakland. Some of them are Oakland natives, born and raised. Obviously there's some selection in the people who present to the class; still, the message is very consistent, and it doesn't correlate with unquestioning support of the OPD management. But the ordinary cops on the street? They're class acts. I just wish there were more of them; Oakland has half the national average of police officers for a city of 400,000; and more than twice the crime. This can't be a coincidence.

Red Rocks

One of the other things we did while visiting in Las Vegas was to drive out to the Red Rock country for a short hike. These rocks are really red, by the way; one of these days I'll get my photos developed and then you'll see. This is all BLM land, and it was as green as it ever gets, and I saw something I've never seen before: a Joshua tree in bloom. They're quite lovely if a little odd. The highway through the area is studded with signs warning about the wild horses and burros that live in the area; they sometimes mob stopped cars, looking for food, but we didn't see any that day.

Standing in the overlook, examining the Joshua tree, I noticed a woman walking down a desert path. She wore a floor-length dark dress and carried a parasol, which seemed unusually formal for a desert hike. The overlook was on a bluff and she was maybe 30 or 40 feet below me; so I hauled out my trusty binoculars and took a look. There was a wedding party on the desert floor below the overlook. All I could clearly see was a woman, not formally dressed, with a serious camera on a tripod; but through a small tree I saw a woman wearing a cream colored floor length dress with a slightly darker cream bow on her behind, and something cream or white on her head - presumably the bride.

Then a man walked out from behind the tree, into the clearing with the photographer. He was wearing a black tail coat, with vest and the usual black pants, and a top hat. He removed the top hat, revealing an entirely bald (possibly shaved) head, dropped flat on his face on the ground, and executed about 6 pushups. Then he got up again, retrieved the hat, and walked back behind the tree. I don't remember whether the photographer got any pictures of this or not, I was too startled to notice. I hope she did.

I'm still wondering why the groom in a desert wedding would choose to drop into the dust, in full wedding regalia, and do pushups.

I also wonder whether the BLM ranger who asked to borrow my binoculars for a look at all this, actually went down and kicked them out. She spoke as if she might - maybe they didn't have permits.

Standing in Line

We took a break over Easter weekend and went to Las Vegas to visit my sister and brother-in-law, who live there. Among the amusing things we did was to take in the Penn & Teller show - which I highly recommend, by the way. It's a great magic show, and you could take a 9 year old to it, if you don't mind all the questions afterward about how they did the tricks.

But aside from the show, I saw something interesting. We got to the theater about 40 minutes early, having been tipped that our wait in the theater would be lightened by the jazz pianist and his bass player. (The add said something about a "trio" but the most I ever saw was two, and I think one of them may have been Penn. It was certainly Penn playing the bass fiddle briefly, later in the show.) As we took our seats, I realized that the stage was full of people, standing in line. The pianist had just finished saying something but I missed it; he began to play again; and after awhile the line dwindled. However, after another set, the pianist stopped playing and, in the most seductive male voice you could imagine, invited the audience to "come up on the stage and participate in Penn & Teller's envelope signing."

What?

Yes, envelope signing. They had an ordinary manila envelope tacked to an easel, and to while away the wait for the show, they were inviting the audience to come up onto the stage and sign their names on the envelope. The envelope would be used in the show, the pianist explained, and Penn & Teller would like everyone in the audience to come up and participate in the show by signing the envelope.

"If you are sitting next to someone who says, 'You never take me anywhere!', bring them up onto the stage for the Penn & Teller Envelope Signing."

"Bring your loved ones."

I am not making this up. And no, I didn't sign the envelope. But for the entire 40 minutes or so we waited for the show, I watched as a fairly large section of the audience - I'm guessing maybe a third - walked up to the stage, stood more or less patiently in line, and signed their names on a 9x12 manila envelope. From what I could see, enough people signed it that it was about full by the time they took it back stage. People were signing it sideways. And every time the line began to shorten, the piano player took another short break, and issued another soothing, mellifluous invitation to come up on stage and Participate in the Penn & Teller Envelope Signing.

And the moral of the story is the amazing things that people will do, if it seems harmless, they have nothing else to do at the moment, and someone asks them to in a soothing, encouraging voice.

Welcome to Las Vegas. Come up on stage and sign the envelope.

Normalcy

Mr. Bush informs us today that "Normalcy is returning back to Iraq."

On the same page in my newspaper, articles describe Basra and Baghdad both in flames, open warfare between the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi army, and the Green Zone in Baghdad, supposedly our "secure" headquarters, under continual rocket and mortar attack. Green Zone residents have been advised to sleep only in fortified buildings, not in trailers.

This is beyond Orwellian. In what alternate universe can a state like this be described as "normal?"

The trouble is, of course, since we invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam Hussein, this condition has been normalcy for Iraqis. The state of relative calm which followed the troop surge last year is abnormal.

What is it about the word "normalcy" that makes only the worst presidents use it? The last president to call for a "return to normalcy" was Warren Harding...

Double Standard

Once again I'm astounded at the way the U.S. Government allows itself to function. Today's cause for amazement is an article with this delightful title:

Pentagon accidentally sent nuclear missile parts to Taiwan

Seems that, back in 2006, Taiwan ordered some spare batteries for helicopters from the Defense Logistics Agency, a separate government unit which has a warehouse in Utah for unclassified material. This seems normal. However, the shipping containers they actually got contained four electrical fuses for ICBM nose cones. These are the triggers that make a nuclear missile go "boom" (they're not nuclear themselves).

What bothers me is that the DLA doesn't seem to know how this happened. The Air Force had shipped the fuses to the DLA for storage, in 2005. The fuses, being part of a nuclear weapon, should have been stored in a classified warehouse. Also, they should have been accounted for in regular quarterly audits. Helicopter batteries, of course, are not classified and should have been in a different warehouse. And yet, when the time came to ship copter batteries to Taiwan, the boxes they pulled out had classified nuclear weapons parts in them. I think this constitutes having "lost" the nuclear triggers.

Any business that operated like this would have been toast years ago; but apparently the U.S. Government can continue to bumble on uninterrupted. Can these people even count??