We're looking at a kitchen remodel - we'll get the first round of
quotes tomorrow. And one big issue is the laundry equipment, because
our kitchen is also our laundry. Our washer and dryer are about 4 years
old. The washer is pretty good; the dryer has a stupid design flaw that has
ruined some clothes, but I work around it. Jim suggested we should replace the set. The
kitchen designer also suggested we should replace the set - with a Miele
compact washer and dryer. I checked this object out. It's
smaller that what we have (2.5 cu.ft. instead of 3.5); and Consumer Reports says it has twice the
cycle length (95 minutes to 45 minutes).
After looking around, I've realized that most
washers and dryers on the market today, if they handle the same cubic
footage as ours, are too big for our kitchen. They're 5-9 inches
deeper, and 3-9 inches taller. Taller is important because I use them
as a working platform to fold clothes, and I'm only 5' 5 1/2" tall. A
washer top 40" high is too high for me to work comfortably on. No,
folks, bigger isn't always better. We probably don't need the 3.5 cubic
feet day-to-day, but it does mean that we don't have to take Jim's
sleeping bag to the laundromat.
So I'm looking at "compact"
washers, which handle 2.5 cubic feet more or less. These are small
enough to fit in our kitchen. There aren't many of them, and the two
top brands seem to be Miele and Bosch. Which brings me to the
evaluation part. How do I tell what to buy, and whether Miele really is a good idea? I have three sources: Consumer Reports, online
customer reviews (including CR), and the verbal evaluations of local
merchants who sell and service them.
Consumer Reports doesn't
rate small washers. It only rates the big honking 4 cubic foot models.
So all I can use there are the brand ratings, and the remarks of people
who've bought the big boys. CR isn't even rating Bosch these days; a
search brings up an old review page on a Bosch model with customer
comments. It rated a large Miele (which has since been discontinued), but it doesn't give a brand reliability rating.
For both
Bosch and Miele, the online comments (and not just at Consumer Reports)
are deeply split. People who buy these machines either ADORE them or
HATE them. And the haters tell stories about leaky machines and slow,
rude customer service response which don't encourage me.
The
local merchants who sell the brands say they're both good and neither
brand has unusual reliability problems. But then, they want me to buy
from them. The guy who sells Miele did say that he doesn't service them
because Miele does all its own service. Maybe it's a good thing I've
been learning German. The woman who sells Bosch says they service them
and they don't have a lot of calls; I've been buying appliances from
this store for years, and I kind of trust them. The guy who sells both Miele and Bosch says he thinks Miele is a little better on not needing service.
I got curious and checked the user comments on the Whirlpool Duet
and the LG washer, both very highly rated by Consumer Reports.
Interesting - they too had the split between "I love it" and "I'll never
buy another one." I'm concluding that online comments on washing machines aren't as useful as I've sometimes found when researching computer equipment. With any luck on a computer review, you'll get someone who has done a detailed technical analysis.
Given that all the machines on the market today are either (a) too big for my space or (b) smaller capacity than I now have, and given that all of
them seem to feel that 75 minutes and up are an appropriate length for a
laundry cycle, I don't see any good choices. I'm actually considering
keeping the old Frigidaire, even if the dryer does occasionally tear up a sweater. On the other hand, eventually this too will die and then I'll have the same problem all over again.
But this raises the question: how do consumers (that would be us) determine
whether these expensive pieces of equipment are with the four figures
that most of them cost? Consumer Reports is the only independent
evaluator I know, and from what I read in the customer comments, even a washer they rate highly in their really exhaustive tests is as likely as not to leak water all over the floor, or tie the towels in a damp soggy knot because the load was unbalanced, or drip soap down the front of the machine.
My crappy old Frigidaire is compact, washes really well, never takes
more than 45 minutes on a load, and usually spins things really dry. I
don't see an advantage in upgrading because of the risk of getting a
lemon.
Or am I letting myself by bulldozed by a very small number of vocal discontents? Any of my friends have any opinions on washing machines?
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Learning German
After we decided to take a river cruise in Europe this summer, Rhine-Main-Danube, Jim decided that he wanted to relearn German; I think his grandparents spoke it, and it was common in Milwaukee when he was a child. I borrowed the first book of the Pimsleur German course from the local library, and he liked it so much he sprang for the whole thing, so we've both been studying it.
Pimsleur teaches you languages by walking you through a series of increasingly complicated conversations; I'm finding it quite effective. It's true that languages are my strong point, I took German in college and have been singing in it for years; I don't know how well it would work for someone who's never said Ja or Nein in his life.
All the conversations, which we faithfully repeat several times to learn them, are between a Lady and a Gentleman, so they can work in the appropriate gender endings - an American man is Amerikaner, but an American woman is Amerikanerin. It's all done by repetition; they never tell you how the stuff is spelled, although every lesson has a "reading lesson," a PDF that shows some words on the page and has you repeat the pronunciation. I'm remembering a lot; but I cannot learn a word if I don't know how it's spelled (a personal quirk), so I've been dodging over to Google Translate now and then to check things I'm not sure of.
But the conversational situations are - well, they're odd. Back in the early lessons, when all the instructions were in English, we talked a lot about ordering Bier (beer) and Wein (wine); I remember thinking, my God, these people drink like fish. ("I want to order five beers," said the Lady in German, for example.) And I was relieved when they finally taught me how to order Thee (tea) and Mineralwasser (mineral water), since my doctor advises me not to drink. Then later the Lady kept asking the Gentleman to give her a lot of money. And they never could agree on a time for a dinner date.
I'm almost done with Book I; I've advanced to the point where the instructions are also in German. We're learning the various words for traveling - fahren (to drive, or travel in a vehicle), wegfahren (to go away). We also just learned zusammen (together) and alleine (alone). This led to a really odd little conversation between the Lady and the Gentlemen, which I repeat in English because I don't want to fool with German diacritical marks. Are you alone? he asked her. No, I'm here with my husband, she said. If you're not alone, I'm going away, he said; I'm going alone. You're going alone? she asks. We could go away together. Yes, he said, we could go away together. All this was repeated several times to get the vocabulary and the word order solidly down.
Meanwhile I'm thinking, wait a minute, lady, I thought you were here with your husband (Mit Ihrem Mann), now you're going to go away together (zusammen) with this guy? What's going on?
I await with interest Lesson 28, and the next adventures of these two oddballs.
Of course, we'll be on a totally English-speaking cruise ship with totally English-speaking guides; but never mind. It's useful to relearn a language.
Pimsleur teaches you languages by walking you through a series of increasingly complicated conversations; I'm finding it quite effective. It's true that languages are my strong point, I took German in college and have been singing in it for years; I don't know how well it would work for someone who's never said Ja or Nein in his life.
All the conversations, which we faithfully repeat several times to learn them, are between a Lady and a Gentleman, so they can work in the appropriate gender endings - an American man is Amerikaner, but an American woman is Amerikanerin. It's all done by repetition; they never tell you how the stuff is spelled, although every lesson has a "reading lesson," a PDF that shows some words on the page and has you repeat the pronunciation. I'm remembering a lot; but I cannot learn a word if I don't know how it's spelled (a personal quirk), so I've been dodging over to Google Translate now and then to check things I'm not sure of.
But the conversational situations are - well, they're odd. Back in the early lessons, when all the instructions were in English, we talked a lot about ordering Bier (beer) and Wein (wine); I remember thinking, my God, these people drink like fish. ("I want to order five beers," said the Lady in German, for example.) And I was relieved when they finally taught me how to order Thee (tea) and Mineralwasser (mineral water), since my doctor advises me not to drink. Then later the Lady kept asking the Gentleman to give her a lot of money. And they never could agree on a time for a dinner date.
I'm almost done with Book I; I've advanced to the point where the instructions are also in German. We're learning the various words for traveling - fahren (to drive, or travel in a vehicle), wegfahren (to go away). We also just learned zusammen (together) and alleine (alone). This led to a really odd little conversation between the Lady and the Gentlemen, which I repeat in English because I don't want to fool with German diacritical marks. Are you alone? he asked her. No, I'm here with my husband, she said. If you're not alone, I'm going away, he said; I'm going alone. You're going alone? she asks. We could go away together. Yes, he said, we could go away together. All this was repeated several times to get the vocabulary and the word order solidly down.
Meanwhile I'm thinking, wait a minute, lady, I thought you were here with your husband (Mit Ihrem Mann), now you're going to go away together (zusammen) with this guy? What's going on?
I await with interest Lesson 28, and the next adventures of these two oddballs.
Of course, we'll be on a totally English-speaking cruise ship with totally English-speaking guides; but never mind. It's useful to relearn a language.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Syria
I've heard one too many anguished complaints from Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Annan that if "nothing happens," the situation in Syria may develop into a "civil war." I can't stand it any more.
Reality check, folks: the situation in Syria is a civil war. Specifically, it is a religious civil war; the Sunni majority is trying to oust the Assad family and their supporters, mainly members of the Alawite sect (a minority Shia group). To give the protesters credit, for a long time they simply stood out in the squares and protested peacefully - to which Assad responded with tanks and mortar fire. In the last few months, some of the formerly peaceful people have been shooting back (using captured or smuggled arms), but they're still out-gunned by the Syrian army. And the Syrian army, except for a few defectors who refused to shoot their fellow citizens, still supports Assad.
It's clear to me that Assad, in apparently agreeing to Annan's "peace plan," was using what I call the "Yes, Ma" response. My dad used to say that to his mother, after which he would go about whatever it was he meant to do anyway. Assad knows perfectly well that "negotiations" would lead to exile and loss of power at best, and he has no intention of negotiating with anybody.
Ki-Moon and Annan know this; but if they admit that the "peace plan" isn't worth the paper it's written on, they then have to confront the question: now what? A lot of people are asking that question anyway, and they're all looking sideways at the United States when they do.
So - now what? After the Houla massacre (not to mention the one that just happened in Mazraat al-Qubeir), Syria is diplomatically isolated. Everybody's ambassadors have gone home, nobody is talking to Syria except the U.N. team - and the Russians, who persistently support Assad. It's pretty clear that international disapproval doesn't mean a thing to Assad. I believe he thinks he's fighting for survival; he may be right. I also think there's probably a touch of "My father built this and handed it to me and I'm going to keep it." As long as Russia keeps supporting him and selling him arms, he can pretty much ignore the rest of the world. And he will.
Nobody at the Secretary of State/Foreign Minister level in any country is saying this publicly, but I think there's some background muttering to the effect that we helped the Libyans, why aren't we - why isn't NATO - helping the Syrians? Recently I've seen some signs that the Syrian opposition is coalescing into a single force; but until now there were just scattered towns and villages under attack, there wasn't any "Syrian opposition" to support. And that means that "helping the Syrians" would involve ... invading Syria.
Just think about that for a minute. Russia is feeding Syria arms, do we really want to get into a proxy war with Russia in Syria? And the Syrian people might welcome western troops as liberators, but on the record in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're just as likely to stop fighting each other and unite against the invaders.
Really, folks, the last time U.S. troops were genuinely welcomed as liberators was in France in 1944. We've sent troops into a number of other countries since then and it's never happened again. We have to stop trying to be the world's peacekeeper. The U.S. hasn't got one single political reason to go into Syria, and that means that we should Stay Out.
Are we going to sit here and watch Assad murder his own citizens? Yeah, I think we have to. The Syrian people have to solve this one themselves. I really believe this. I also believe in the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you bought it. If we go into Syria for the noble cause of helping them overthrow their own government, we'll be there for decades.
Reality check, folks: the situation in Syria is a civil war. Specifically, it is a religious civil war; the Sunni majority is trying to oust the Assad family and their supporters, mainly members of the Alawite sect (a minority Shia group). To give the protesters credit, for a long time they simply stood out in the squares and protested peacefully - to which Assad responded with tanks and mortar fire. In the last few months, some of the formerly peaceful people have been shooting back (using captured or smuggled arms), but they're still out-gunned by the Syrian army. And the Syrian army, except for a few defectors who refused to shoot their fellow citizens, still supports Assad.
It's clear to me that Assad, in apparently agreeing to Annan's "peace plan," was using what I call the "Yes, Ma" response. My dad used to say that to his mother, after which he would go about whatever it was he meant to do anyway. Assad knows perfectly well that "negotiations" would lead to exile and loss of power at best, and he has no intention of negotiating with anybody.
Ki-Moon and Annan know this; but if they admit that the "peace plan" isn't worth the paper it's written on, they then have to confront the question: now what? A lot of people are asking that question anyway, and they're all looking sideways at the United States when they do.
So - now what? After the Houla massacre (not to mention the one that just happened in Mazraat al-Qubeir), Syria is diplomatically isolated. Everybody's ambassadors have gone home, nobody is talking to Syria except the U.N. team - and the Russians, who persistently support Assad. It's pretty clear that international disapproval doesn't mean a thing to Assad. I believe he thinks he's fighting for survival; he may be right. I also think there's probably a touch of "My father built this and handed it to me and I'm going to keep it." As long as Russia keeps supporting him and selling him arms, he can pretty much ignore the rest of the world. And he will.
Nobody at the Secretary of State/Foreign Minister level in any country is saying this publicly, but I think there's some background muttering to the effect that we helped the Libyans, why aren't we - why isn't NATO - helping the Syrians? Recently I've seen some signs that the Syrian opposition is coalescing into a single force; but until now there were just scattered towns and villages under attack, there wasn't any "Syrian opposition" to support. And that means that "helping the Syrians" would involve ... invading Syria.
Just think about that for a minute. Russia is feeding Syria arms, do we really want to get into a proxy war with Russia in Syria? And the Syrian people might welcome western troops as liberators, but on the record in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're just as likely to stop fighting each other and unite against the invaders.
Really, folks, the last time U.S. troops were genuinely welcomed as liberators was in France in 1944. We've sent troops into a number of other countries since then and it's never happened again. We have to stop trying to be the world's peacekeeper. The U.S. hasn't got one single political reason to go into Syria, and that means that we should Stay Out.
Are we going to sit here and watch Assad murder his own citizens? Yeah, I think we have to. The Syrian people have to solve this one themselves. I really believe this. I also believe in the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you bought it. If we go into Syria for the noble cause of helping them overthrow their own government, we'll be there for decades.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
How Did That Happen?
Since I'm singing this afternoon (with the Oakland Symphony Chorus) at the 75th anniversary celebration for the Golden Gate Bridge, the subject came up yesterday morning in the hot tub at the gym, as we all thawed out after the water aerobics class. Somebody asked, didn't a lot of people walk on the Bridge at the 50th anniversary celebration?
And the hot tub group agreed, yes, they did, a ridiculous and uncountable number of people walked on the bridge at the 50th anniversary celebration - so many people that the arch of the bridge visibly flattened, scaring the daylights out of every engineer who could see it. (The Bridge web site estimates 300,000 people walked on the bridge that day.) We all agreed, yes, we remembered that; and that's why they are not letting people walk on the bridge this time.
Then someone said, "That was twenty-five years ago?? How did that happen?"
And nobody had an answer.
And the hot tub group agreed, yes, they did, a ridiculous and uncountable number of people walked on the bridge at the 50th anniversary celebration - so many people that the arch of the bridge visibly flattened, scaring the daylights out of every engineer who could see it. (The Bridge web site estimates 300,000 people walked on the bridge that day.) We all agreed, yes, we remembered that; and that's why they are not letting people walk on the bridge this time.
Then someone said, "That was twenty-five years ago?? How did that happen?"
And nobody had an answer.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Anonymous Money
The 2012 election may be decided by anonymous money. Since the disastrous Citizens United case, a SCOTUS decision that ranks with the Dred Scott decision in its sheer wrongness, anyone can give any amount of money to any candidate or political organization, and not have to say who they are or why they want to donate.
Here is the Court's chain of reasoning as I understand it:
Money in politics is a form of speech, since it can be used to buy advertising.
Since the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, any restriction on money spent in politics is unconstitutional.
The obvious implication to everyone except the Justices is that the election, and the Presidency, is now up for grabs by the people with the deepest pockets.
I suppose if we must have money-driven politics, we must; but why does it have to be anonymous? As a matter of fact, the Justices argued that it shouldn't be anonymous; but existing law lets nonprofit 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations hide their donor lists, and they do hide them. Two questions disturb me about this situation:
Why do these donors wish to be anonymous?
Why is the Republican Party so anxious to help them remain anonymous? (The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 has no Republican sponsors.)
Consider the first issue: why do the donors wish to be anonymous? I feel very deeply that if you're going to put money behind a candidate or a cause, you should put your name on it. (Yes, I blog under a pen name; but I don't have any money on the line here, and it isn't that hard to figure out who I am.)
This bothered me in the whole Proposition 8 campaign in California about gay marriage: the opponents were willing to spend huge sums to defeat the measure, and yet they fight bitterly to hide their donor lists. The opponents of Prop. 8 claimed to fear physical retaliation from gay rights supporters; do the Republican super-PAC donors fear crowds of angry Democrats, with pitchforks and torches?
What do these donors, the ones donating to the super-PACs, fear? I have to conclude that they fear the publicity that would be associated with donating money to this or that super-PAC. They want to accomplish a political end but they don't want their fellow citizens to know. This way lies the end of the American Republic; this way lies dictatorship. And we won't even know who the dictator is.
On the other question: Is the Republican Party so anxious to block the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 because it doesn't want its general constituents to know who are the major donors to whom it will owe allegiance if elected? Fits right in with the donors' reluctance, doesn't it?
If you aren't willing to put your name on your political actions, doesn't that say that there's something wrong with them?
I have just become a citizen co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, which is supported by (among many others) the League of Women Voters. I urge all of you to consider supporting this act, and to tell your representatives in Congress to pass it.
Here is the Court's chain of reasoning as I understand it:
Money in politics is a form of speech, since it can be used to buy advertising.
Since the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, any restriction on money spent in politics is unconstitutional.
The obvious implication to everyone except the Justices is that the election, and the Presidency, is now up for grabs by the people with the deepest pockets.
I suppose if we must have money-driven politics, we must; but why does it have to be anonymous? As a matter of fact, the Justices argued that it shouldn't be anonymous; but existing law lets nonprofit 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations hide their donor lists, and they do hide them. Two questions disturb me about this situation:
Why do these donors wish to be anonymous?
Why is the Republican Party so anxious to help them remain anonymous? (The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 has no Republican sponsors.)
Consider the first issue: why do the donors wish to be anonymous? I feel very deeply that if you're going to put money behind a candidate or a cause, you should put your name on it. (Yes, I blog under a pen name; but I don't have any money on the line here, and it isn't that hard to figure out who I am.)
This bothered me in the whole Proposition 8 campaign in California about gay marriage: the opponents were willing to spend huge sums to defeat the measure, and yet they fight bitterly to hide their donor lists. The opponents of Prop. 8 claimed to fear physical retaliation from gay rights supporters; do the Republican super-PAC donors fear crowds of angry Democrats, with pitchforks and torches?
What do these donors, the ones donating to the super-PACs, fear? I have to conclude that they fear the publicity that would be associated with donating money to this or that super-PAC. They want to accomplish a political end but they don't want their fellow citizens to know. This way lies the end of the American Republic; this way lies dictatorship. And we won't even know who the dictator is.
On the other question: Is the Republican Party so anxious to block the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 because it doesn't want its general constituents to know who are the major donors to whom it will owe allegiance if elected? Fits right in with the donors' reluctance, doesn't it?
If you aren't willing to put your name on your political actions, doesn't that say that there's something wrong with them?
I have just become a citizen co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, which is supported by (among many others) the League of Women Voters. I urge all of you to consider supporting this act, and to tell your representatives in Congress to pass it.
Friday, May 11, 2012
They Never Learn
In the fall of 2008, I wrote a couple of posts (The Sorceror's Apprentice, What a Week) about the joys of credit-default swaps (CDSs), a wonderful financial instrument which lets you take out insurance against the issuer of a bond going broke and failing to redeem the bond. The amusing thing about CDSs was and is that you don't have to own the bond to buy the CDS - in effect you can bet on a bankruptcy that you have no other stake in. This instrument was part of what brought down the world financial system over the next two years.
I'm therefor Not Amused to discover that JP Morgan Chase has just lost $2 billion through the actions of a rogue trader (nicknamed "The London Whale") who was betting on - guess what! - right, CDSs.
This isn't the first time a large bank has lost a huge amount of money due to the actions of a single inadequately supervised idiot, or does anyone else remember the name Nick Leeson? Nick Leeson's bets brought down Baring's Bank, which had successfully done business as a merchant bank since 1765. The bank was broken up and no longer exists. I'll be interested to see what happens to JP Morgan Chase, especially since it is one of the 4 or 5 "too big to fail" companies that the U.S. Government has evidently decided they'll have to subsidize.
It is true that Nick Leeson was trading currency futures, while the London Whale, whose name is Bruno Iksil, was trading CDSs. But they both made the same mistake. They told themselves they were "hedging," which is supposed to be a respectable activity for a bank. As Wikipedia puts it, "A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment. In simple language, Hedge (Hedging Technique) is used to reduce any substantial losses suffered by an individual or an organization." Sorry, as practiced by these loosest of cannons, hedging is just another word for gambling: you have investment A, which may go down, so you also buy investment B, which you expect to go up. Do you know it will go up? No, you don't. This is gambling. The house always wins in gambling; I suspect Mr. Iksil forgot that JP Morgan Chase is not the house. The market as a whole is the house. And ultimately, nobody wins.
The other issue here is, why did nobody at JP Morgan Chase know what this wildcard was up to? Questions are popping up all over the press; I linked Yahoo Finance, but just Google "jp morgan loss" to see the scope of this. I hope we'll see an answer to that in days to come.
In March 2009, I wrote an article called Evaluating Risk, which summarized a much longer article in Wired Magazine on "the formula that killed Wall Street" (except, of course, Wall Street isn't dead). Bankers and investors have been plagued by risk for centuries. In recent decades, brilliant mathematicians have thought that they could measure risk mathematically, and they developed this formula which was supposed to measure risk and reduce it to a single, simple number. Thereafter, the financial industry assumed they had control of risk. And the whole subprime mortgage crash happened because bankers thought they could divide risk up and pass it off to others so it wouldn't hurt them.
This was a lie. The formula didn't cover all the possible assumptions. We will continue to be plagued by this sort of crash until "Wall Street" finally admits that what they do is gambling, and that the risks ultmately cannot be controlled. That means crashes will be around for a long, long time. Because they do not learn, as this mess shows yet again.
I'm therefor Not Amused to discover that JP Morgan Chase has just lost $2 billion through the actions of a rogue trader (nicknamed "The London Whale") who was betting on - guess what! - right, CDSs.
This isn't the first time a large bank has lost a huge amount of money due to the actions of a single inadequately supervised idiot, or does anyone else remember the name Nick Leeson? Nick Leeson's bets brought down Baring's Bank, which had successfully done business as a merchant bank since 1765. The bank was broken up and no longer exists. I'll be interested to see what happens to JP Morgan Chase, especially since it is one of the 4 or 5 "too big to fail" companies that the U.S. Government has evidently decided they'll have to subsidize.
It is true that Nick Leeson was trading currency futures, while the London Whale, whose name is Bruno Iksil, was trading CDSs. But they both made the same mistake. They told themselves they were "hedging," which is supposed to be a respectable activity for a bank. As Wikipedia puts it, "A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment. In simple language, Hedge (Hedging Technique) is used to reduce any substantial losses suffered by an individual or an organization." Sorry, as practiced by these loosest of cannons, hedging is just another word for gambling: you have investment A, which may go down, so you also buy investment B, which you expect to go up. Do you know it will go up? No, you don't. This is gambling. The house always wins in gambling; I suspect Mr. Iksil forgot that JP Morgan Chase is not the house. The market as a whole is the house. And ultimately, nobody wins.
The other issue here is, why did nobody at JP Morgan Chase know what this wildcard was up to? Questions are popping up all over the press; I linked Yahoo Finance, but just Google "jp morgan loss" to see the scope of this. I hope we'll see an answer to that in days to come.
In March 2009, I wrote an article called Evaluating Risk, which summarized a much longer article in Wired Magazine on "the formula that killed Wall Street" (except, of course, Wall Street isn't dead). Bankers and investors have been plagued by risk for centuries. In recent decades, brilliant mathematicians have thought that they could measure risk mathematically, and they developed this formula which was supposed to measure risk and reduce it to a single, simple number. Thereafter, the financial industry assumed they had control of risk. And the whole subprime mortgage crash happened because bankers thought they could divide risk up and pass it off to others so it wouldn't hurt them.
This was a lie. The formula didn't cover all the possible assumptions. We will continue to be plagued by this sort of crash until "Wall Street" finally admits that what they do is gambling, and that the risks ultmately cannot be controlled. That means crashes will be around for a long, long time. Because they do not learn, as this mess shows yet again.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Killing Bin Laden
On the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the government has chosen to release some of the documents they captured in Abbotabad, which, with the President's night trip to Afghanistan, has revived the subject. The general summary from NPR today,
of the official documents just released, suggests that Bin Laden was
frustrated because the regional jihadi groups kept killing
Muslims, thus destroying Muslim support for Al Qaeda, and he felt that he
didn't have control over them.
Another story published recently was Truthout's Exclusive Investigation: The Truth Behind the Official Story of Finding Bin Laden. This article (which is quite interesting) claims that in 2003, the active directors of al-Qaeda isolated Bin Laden in his Abbotabad hideout, and essentially removed him from "command" of al-Qaeda operations, on the dual grounds that he was (a) physically not well and required care, and (b) a total loose cannon whose ideas where impractical and dangerous. After reading the Truthout article, a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook:
Was it really necessary for the U.S. to assassinate Osama bin Laden? I believe it was.
Bin Laden was the driving force behind the World Trade Center attacks, even though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did (or says he did) the actual operational planning. If the World Trade Center attacks had been organized and carried out by a country, they would have been an act of war. They were the second attack on U.S. territory by a foreign power since the bombing of Pearl Harbor (after the World Trade Center attack in 1993), and one of only a few in the history of the nation. The casualties were higher than at Pearl Harbor, and worse - 3,000 civilians died in New York, whereas 2,402 military personnel died at Pearl Harbor.
Having been attacked, I believe the United States had to respond. When President Bush attacked Afghanistan (because the Taliban, ruling Afghanistan, were publicly harboring Al Qaeda) the world supported the action as self-defense. Unfortunately, Bush and his cabinet soon began planning the insane attack on Iraq. At that point he lost world support, and the action in Afghanistan took second place to the Iraq war.
Fast forward to the beginning of last year. President Obama has been in office for 3 years, he is pulling the last troops out of Iraq (finished Dec. 2011). Osama bin Laden communicates less frequently than he once did, but he's still there, and he was and is the man symbolically responsible for the September 2001 attacks. President Bush, after talking repeatedly about "getting" bin Laden, ultimately failed to do so. President Obama now has intelligence that suggests Bin Laden may be in the house in Abbotabad. What does he do? We know what he did do: he authorized a highly risky operation by the Navy Seals to go in and "take" bin Laden. The Seals say that bin Laden resisted them with arms when they broke in, and they shot him. Given the Seals' training, this was predictable, although I heard an interview on NPR that suggested they would have taken him alive if he had obviously surrendered. The point is moot.
What if the President had not sent the Seals? Bin Laden would have stayed in Abbotabad, probably communicating less and less, and eventually died. But the man responsible for killing 3,000 civilians in September 2001 would be free and would die a free man. The symbolic message to the rest of the jihadi world? You can attack the United States with impunity. We won't come after you. The U.S. is a paper tiger - as bin Laden is said to have believed.
It would have been irresponsible of a U.S. President to allow that message to stand, if he could alter it. The message now is: attack the United States, and we will hunt you down if it takes a decade. The operational effect on Al Qaeda may well have been minor; the symbolic importance is overwhelming.
Should we have taken bin Laden alive and tried him in the U.S.? If we could, yes. Could we have done it? I doubt it. For one thing, I don't believe he would have surrendered. If we had captured him alive, we couldn't have tried him in civilian courts - we attempted to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the New York courts, and New York refused to host the trial on security grounds. We would have had to try bin Laden at Guantanamo, which would have tainted the entire proceeding.
If somebody slugs you in the nose, you can choose not to respond, at which point the attacker may or may not hit you again. No one is at risk but you. If a group attacks a nation, and kills a number of its citizens, can the government of that nation reasonably say, oh, how sad, we wish it hadn't happened, and take no action against the attackers? I don't think so. The rules of engagement with the worldwide jihad are being made up as we go along, but one of the things a government is supposed to do is defend its citizens from attacks by outsiders.
Another story published recently was Truthout's Exclusive Investigation: The Truth Behind the Official Story of Finding Bin Laden. This article (which is quite interesting) claims that in 2003, the active directors of al-Qaeda isolated Bin Laden in his Abbotabad hideout, and essentially removed him from "command" of al-Qaeda operations, on the dual grounds that he was (a) physically not well and required care, and (b) a total loose cannon whose ideas where impractical and dangerous. After reading the Truthout article, a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook:
Hmm. So it seems that the killing of Bin Laden was a completely empty gesture? "bin Laden was not the functioning head of al-Qaeda at all, but an isolated figurehead who had become irrelevant to the actual operations of the organization."The Truthout account sounds plausible, but it concerns me, because as I read it, it is based on information from a single source, retired Pakistani Brig. Gen. Shaukat Qadir. Gen. Qadir apparently knew large numbers of both ISI operatives and local militants, because of his long military career, and they all seem to have repeated everything they knew to him. (Great security.) If you assume that these sources always told Gen. Qadir the truth, and that he repeated what they said accurately, the story is significant; but those are two large ifs. Also, frankly, I'm not sure the extent of Bin Laden's control over Al Qaeda over the last few years really matters.
Was it really necessary for the U.S. to assassinate Osama bin Laden? I believe it was.
Bin Laden was the driving force behind the World Trade Center attacks, even though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did (or says he did) the actual operational planning. If the World Trade Center attacks had been organized and carried out by a country, they would have been an act of war. They were the second attack on U.S. territory by a foreign power since the bombing of Pearl Harbor (after the World Trade Center attack in 1993), and one of only a few in the history of the nation. The casualties were higher than at Pearl Harbor, and worse - 3,000 civilians died in New York, whereas 2,402 military personnel died at Pearl Harbor.
Having been attacked, I believe the United States had to respond. When President Bush attacked Afghanistan (because the Taliban, ruling Afghanistan, were publicly harboring Al Qaeda) the world supported the action as self-defense. Unfortunately, Bush and his cabinet soon began planning the insane attack on Iraq. At that point he lost world support, and the action in Afghanistan took second place to the Iraq war.
Fast forward to the beginning of last year. President Obama has been in office for 3 years, he is pulling the last troops out of Iraq (finished Dec. 2011). Osama bin Laden communicates less frequently than he once did, but he's still there, and he was and is the man symbolically responsible for the September 2001 attacks. President Bush, after talking repeatedly about "getting" bin Laden, ultimately failed to do so. President Obama now has intelligence that suggests Bin Laden may be in the house in Abbotabad. What does he do? We know what he did do: he authorized a highly risky operation by the Navy Seals to go in and "take" bin Laden. The Seals say that bin Laden resisted them with arms when they broke in, and they shot him. Given the Seals' training, this was predictable, although I heard an interview on NPR that suggested they would have taken him alive if he had obviously surrendered. The point is moot.
What if the President had not sent the Seals? Bin Laden would have stayed in Abbotabad, probably communicating less and less, and eventually died. But the man responsible for killing 3,000 civilians in September 2001 would be free and would die a free man. The symbolic message to the rest of the jihadi world? You can attack the United States with impunity. We won't come after you. The U.S. is a paper tiger - as bin Laden is said to have believed.
It would have been irresponsible of a U.S. President to allow that message to stand, if he could alter it. The message now is: attack the United States, and we will hunt you down if it takes a decade. The operational effect on Al Qaeda may well have been minor; the symbolic importance is overwhelming.
Should we have taken bin Laden alive and tried him in the U.S.? If we could, yes. Could we have done it? I doubt it. For one thing, I don't believe he would have surrendered. If we had captured him alive, we couldn't have tried him in civilian courts - we attempted to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the New York courts, and New York refused to host the trial on security grounds. We would have had to try bin Laden at Guantanamo, which would have tainted the entire proceeding.
If somebody slugs you in the nose, you can choose not to respond, at which point the attacker may or may not hit you again. No one is at risk but you. If a group attacks a nation, and kills a number of its citizens, can the government of that nation reasonably say, oh, how sad, we wish it hadn't happened, and take no action against the attackers? I don't think so. The rules of engagement with the worldwide jihad are being made up as we go along, but one of the things a government is supposed to do is defend its citizens from attacks by outsiders.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Sheriff Mirkarimi, Shut Up
For more months than I care to remember, I've been reading the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of the Ross Mirkarimi case. For those of you not so informed, here's the 50,000 foot view:
S.F. Supervisor runs successfully for County Sheriff. Sheriff-elect, not yet in office, grabs wife by arm and bruises her in a heated dispute. Wife complains to neighbor, who videotapes her (including bruise). Neighbor takes video to police. Sheriff-elect says it's a "private family matter." Sheriff-elect indicted for domestic violence, cops a plea for unlawful imprisonment, takes office. Mayor suspends sheriff pending Ethics Commission Review.
San Francisco's well developed and active domestic violence prevention community went ballistic at that "private family matter" remark. This is what domestic abusers always say, it's the classic response. It hasn't been legally true in the U.S. since 1871, although enforcement has been very variable around the country. The sheriff-on-leave has gone public recently in several detailed and vocal defenses of his position. If you really want to read the details, just Google "Mirkarimi" - I don't think there's anyone else in the news with that name right now. He was even on Michael Krasny's Forum on KQED for an hour.
I have one piece of advice for Sheriff Mirkarimi. Sheriff, button your lip and zip it up tight. Shut your pie-hole, and let your lawyer do the talking. Because you convict yourself every time you open your trap.
Mirkarimi thinks his problem is that the mayor has unjustly suspended him from "his job," and referred his case to the Ethics Committee. He has problems, but that isn't one of them.
His first problem is that he doesn't think he did anything really wrong. He's apologized. He's taken responsibility. He now thinks that everyone should forget and forgive him, if he only explains himself enough.
His bigger problem: he doesn't realize (or won't admit to himself) that the Sheriff's job isn't really "his." The Sheriff is an elected official in San Francisco. He ran for the job and won; the people voted for him. Ask yourself if he would have won that election if this incident had happened, say 3 weeks before election day. You know the answer. I don't think he's ever considered the question.
Why do I care? I don't even live in San Francisco. I care for two reasons. One, I have close female relatives who have been abused by their husbands. I've never been a victim, but I know victims. And this guy reminds me of those men. Two, I care about even-handed law enforcement. And you can't have a man enforcing the law who thinks it's OK for him to break it, as long as it's just a little chip off the edge. If the crime involved here was theft, or murder, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But it's only domestic abuse, so we get to listen to the Sheriff try to explain how misunderstood he is.
No, sir. You are not misunderstood. I understand you all too well.
S.F. Supervisor runs successfully for County Sheriff. Sheriff-elect, not yet in office, grabs wife by arm and bruises her in a heated dispute. Wife complains to neighbor, who videotapes her (including bruise). Neighbor takes video to police. Sheriff-elect says it's a "private family matter." Sheriff-elect indicted for domestic violence, cops a plea for unlawful imprisonment, takes office. Mayor suspends sheriff pending Ethics Commission Review.
San Francisco's well developed and active domestic violence prevention community went ballistic at that "private family matter" remark. This is what domestic abusers always say, it's the classic response. It hasn't been legally true in the U.S. since 1871, although enforcement has been very variable around the country. The sheriff-on-leave has gone public recently in several detailed and vocal defenses of his position. If you really want to read the details, just Google "Mirkarimi" - I don't think there's anyone else in the news with that name right now. He was even on Michael Krasny's Forum on KQED for an hour.
I have one piece of advice for Sheriff Mirkarimi. Sheriff, button your lip and zip it up tight. Shut your pie-hole, and let your lawyer do the talking. Because you convict yourself every time you open your trap.
Mirkarimi thinks his problem is that the mayor has unjustly suspended him from "his job," and referred his case to the Ethics Committee. He has problems, but that isn't one of them.
His first problem is that he doesn't think he did anything really wrong. He's apologized. He's taken responsibility. He now thinks that everyone should forget and forgive him, if he only explains himself enough.
His bigger problem: he doesn't realize (or won't admit to himself) that the Sheriff's job isn't really "his." The Sheriff is an elected official in San Francisco. He ran for the job and won; the people voted for him. Ask yourself if he would have won that election if this incident had happened, say 3 weeks before election day. You know the answer. I don't think he's ever considered the question.
Why do I care? I don't even live in San Francisco. I care for two reasons. One, I have close female relatives who have been abused by their husbands. I've never been a victim, but I know victims. And this guy reminds me of those men. Two, I care about even-handed law enforcement. And you can't have a man enforcing the law who thinks it's OK for him to break it, as long as it's just a little chip off the edge. If the crime involved here was theft, or murder, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But it's only domestic abuse, so we get to listen to the Sheriff try to explain how misunderstood he is.
No, sir. You are not misunderstood. I understand you all too well.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Reconciliation??
The first step in learning a new choral piece is to read the text through, several times. The Oakland Symphony Chorus just began preparing Ralph Vaughn Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem, a cantata written in 1936, between "the war to end all wars" and the "world war." (For those of you in the S.F. Bay Area, we'll perform it on May 20 at the Scottish Rite temple in Oakland, with the Oakland Youth Orchestra.)
In the context of the recent incident in Florida where a "neighborhood watch captain" followed and shot a young black man returning from a convenience store, the text of the third movement of our new piece struck me.
Before I get to that, I want to say that as a community policing volunteer in Oakland, I am disgusted by George Zimmerman. Any real Neighborhood Watch volunteer would know his neighbors well enough to be aware of their visiting relatives, and would understand who "has a right" to be walking around in the neighborhood. That's what Neighborhood Watch is about. George Zimmerman appears to have had no idea that "his" gated neighborhood could legitimately have a young black man walking around in it - which means he didn't know the neighborhood very well, did he?
But I digress. A lot of Dona Nobis Pacem is set to poetry by Walt Whitman. I had forgotten how great Whitman's poetry is. The third movement uses this eloquent text:
In the context of the recent incident in Florida where a "neighborhood watch captain" followed and shot a young black man returning from a convenience store, the text of the third movement of our new piece struck me.
Before I get to that, I want to say that as a community policing volunteer in Oakland, I am disgusted by George Zimmerman. Any real Neighborhood Watch volunteer would know his neighbors well enough to be aware of their visiting relatives, and would understand who "has a right" to be walking around in the neighborhood. That's what Neighborhood Watch is about. George Zimmerman appears to have had no idea that "his" gated neighborhood could legitimately have a young black man walking around in it - which means he didn't know the neighborhood very well, did he?
But I digress. A lot of Dona Nobis Pacem is set to poetry by Walt Whitman. I had forgotten how great Whitman's poetry is. The third movement uses this eloquent text:
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,Does George Zimmerman really feel that Trayvon Williams is not "a man divine as myself," merely because the face in the coffin is brown and not white?? If he does, what a terrible judgment on us all that we allowed him to learn to think that way.
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Stop Calling It Birth Control
Part of the issue with those pills that only women take is that "birth control" - preventing pregnancy - is only part of what they do. It's a big part, but it isn't the whole Megillah. They really are a daily adjustment of a woman's hormone balance. In fact, the wonderfully named site LadyPartsManual.com calls them HBC - hormonal birth control - as opposed to all the other possible birth control methods. LadyPartsManual is doubtful about HBC - those hormones can have unpleasant side effects, too. But on balance their impact on a woman's life is positive.
Here is an article from WebMD explaining the long list of other reasons women might sign up for that monthly packet of bubble-wrapped pills, even if they don't actually have a sex life at the time:
Other Reasons to Take the Pill
I personally have used the pill for at least two of those reasons. Google "other reasons to take birth control" and you'll see a whole list of similar citations from all sorts of sources; WebMB, as far as I know, is a purely medical site. I also know from experience that, even if you really don't want to get pregnant, the symptomatic relief of menstrual symptoms that the pill gives can be nearly as important to your personal life. For a very balanced discussion of the issues, read Beyond Birth Control, from the Guttmacher Institute.
It's impossible to discuss this topic from either side without sounding sexist. The human race comes in two genders, with totally different plumbing and hormonal environments; and in my experience, neither side understands the other's situation very well. Some men in particular don't even seem to want to understand the implications of living in a body that bleeds for a week every month (associated with pain that sometimes stops you in your tracks) - it's yucky and they'd rather not think about it. Sorry, guys, I'm going to horrify you and talk about it. For a single woman who doesn't get paid unless she goes to work, the ability to control serious menstrual distress so she won't miss a day can be critical. Believe me, many employers will fire you if you miss one day of work a month.
Wikipedia's article on the menstrual taboo cites a 1981 study which found (emphasis mine):
The most annoying feature of this debate is that the who-pays-for-health-care issue is being drowned in the screaming over whether women should be able to decide not to have babies for awhile. The real issue isn't contraception - it's contraception that is paid for by health insurance. And in this Presidential campaign year, it's contraception that must be paid for under the new health care law.
The argument comes down to this: are we willing to provide hormone therapy treatment for all women, or only for women rich enough to front it themselves? Which would include the wives of the men who rant about paying for contraception for poor women because it infringes their religious freedom.
We have the most rationed health care in the world: health care rationed by luck. Are you lucky enough to work for an employer with a paid plan? You're in. Are you self-employed and not very well off? Do you work for a firm too small to pay for a plan? You're out. And if you're out and need serious health care, you either won't get it (and may die), or you will get it and they'll bill you directly, at a rate several times higher than they charge the insurance plans they deal with (which will bankrupt you).
Are we willing to pay for the health care that everyone needs, when they need it (and at the same rate for everyone), or shall we continue as we are? That is the question, ladies and gentlemen. That is the question.
Here is an article from WebMD explaining the long list of other reasons women might sign up for that monthly packet of bubble-wrapped pills, even if they don't actually have a sex life at the time:
Other Reasons to Take the Pill
I personally have used the pill for at least two of those reasons. Google "other reasons to take birth control" and you'll see a whole list of similar citations from all sorts of sources; WebMB, as far as I know, is a purely medical site. I also know from experience that, even if you really don't want to get pregnant, the symptomatic relief of menstrual symptoms that the pill gives can be nearly as important to your personal life. For a very balanced discussion of the issues, read Beyond Birth Control, from the Guttmacher Institute.
It's impossible to discuss this topic from either side without sounding sexist. The human race comes in two genders, with totally different plumbing and hormonal environments; and in my experience, neither side understands the other's situation very well. Some men in particular don't even seem to want to understand the implications of living in a body that bleeds for a week every month (associated with pain that sometimes stops you in your tracks) - it's yucky and they'd rather not think about it. Sorry, guys, I'm going to horrify you and talk about it. For a single woman who doesn't get paid unless she goes to work, the ability to control serious menstrual distress so she won't miss a day can be critical. Believe me, many employers will fire you if you miss one day of work a month.
Wikipedia's article on the menstrual taboo cites a 1981 study which found (emphasis mine):
A substantial majority of U.S. adults and adolescents believe that it is socially unacceptable to discuss menstruation, especially in mixed company. Many believe that it is unacceptable to discuss menstruation even within the family.[5]This attitude is still around thirty years later, and may explain something that has puzzled me: except for the Catholic bishops, most of the men who have been ranting about the evils of contraception are married. They have wives, and I guarantee you, those wives either menstruate now or have previously done so. Do their husbands actually not understand about this? Have they never discussed it? Given the attitudes revealed in that study, maybe they don't. Which raises the issue, maybe they should.
The most annoying feature of this debate is that the who-pays-for-health-care issue is being drowned in the screaming over whether women should be able to decide not to have babies for awhile. The real issue isn't contraception - it's contraception that is paid for by health insurance. And in this Presidential campaign year, it's contraception that must be paid for under the new health care law.
The argument comes down to this: are we willing to provide hormone therapy treatment for all women, or only for women rich enough to front it themselves? Which would include the wives of the men who rant about paying for contraception for poor women because it infringes their religious freedom.
We have the most rationed health care in the world: health care rationed by luck. Are you lucky enough to work for an employer with a paid plan? You're in. Are you self-employed and not very well off? Do you work for a firm too small to pay for a plan? You're out. And if you're out and need serious health care, you either won't get it (and may die), or you will get it and they'll bill you directly, at a rate several times higher than they charge the insurance plans they deal with (which will bankrupt you).
Are we willing to pay for the health care that everyone needs, when they need it (and at the same rate for everyone), or shall we continue as we are? That is the question, ladies and gentlemen. That is the question.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Polychoral Splendors
Have you ever heard a 40 voice choral piece? No, not 40 singers singing 4 or 8 parts; 40 singers, each performing a separate individual part. That's what we heard last night.
When my husband bought us tickets for Cal Performances' Polychoral Splendors of the Florentine Renaissance, I mostly noticed that it featured His Majestys Sagbutts and Coronets (that's pronounced "SACKbutts", by the way). I didn't realize until I heard the pre-concert lecture that we were attending the 21st century premieres of three choral works that haven't been performed since the sixteenth century. None of these works has less than 40 voices, and one of them has 60.
That's right. Sixty separate vocal lines, each sung by one singer. From the program notes: "... to experience the important spatial dimension of many choirs that are physically separated, a 16th-century version of 'surround sound' that is almost impossible to reproduce effectively on recordings." (Although they did record the concert; and if it's ever on sale, I'll buy it.) In Berkeley's First Congregational Church, we had the acoustics we needed.
The story behind this concert is absolutely fascinating, but it's also quite long, so I'll refer you to the concert program notes, which you can find online at Cal Performances. (Warning: it's 3.5MB.) In very brief, it's based on conductor Davitt Moroney's scholarly research into "gigantismo" - the suggestion that in the mid-16th century, there was more than the one known instance of choral works written for 40 or more voices. His research uncovered three of them, two from the court of Cosimo de Medici, in Florence, the third from Spain. This was all part of the amazing flowering of art that produced the great visual treasures of Florence - who but Cosimo de Medici could have afforded a sixty-voice choir? In fact, the pre-concert lecture noted that when Alessandro Striggio's mass, Missa sopra "Ecco sì beato giorno", was composed, there were only 5 places in Europe where it could be performed: Florence, Vienna, Hamburg, Rome, and Madrid. My composer can write more choral parts than your composer.
Listening to this music is like looking at a renaissance tapestry. It's incredibly detailed and dense. It isn't polyphony, there's no fugue. The separate parts blend together into a sonorous wall, with brief illuminations as a soprano or a tenor soars above the sound and then blends back in. I've never felt so much that I was in the presence of another age. The sound was overwhelming.
I particularly liked the 40-voice canon on the Ten Commandments - ten 4 voice choruses, each singing the same canon 10 times. When the 10th chorus comes in, all the choruses are singing all the words of all ten commandments at once (in Latin hexameter verse). You'd think it would be total chaos. In fact it's a brooding, introspective piece that is amazingly soothing. You can't understand the words but you're supposed to know what they are.
Oh, the Sagbutts. That's a proto-trombone, in case you didn't know. They had a whole family of them, I particularly enjoyed the Gabrieli Canzon primi toni which they performed. The really significant one was the grand bass sackbutt - I never could quite see the whole thing but it was so huge I wondered how long it was. Wikipedia says that the double-bass or "Octav-Posaun" sackbut was pitched in A in Michael Praetorius' day, but the modern version is in B flat. My husband, a former tubist, says that means the fully extended tube is 32 feet long, and the extended slide is probably 10 feet. It had a "pusher" attached, because the slide is too long for a man's arm to extend fully. Still according to Wikipedia, the only modern copy of the only surviving 17th century double-bass sackbut "is currently owned and played by Wim Becu," and that was the name of the performer last night.
Astounding music, all around. Do read the program notes.
When my husband bought us tickets for Cal Performances' Polychoral Splendors of the Florentine Renaissance, I mostly noticed that it featured His Majestys Sagbutts and Coronets (that's pronounced "SACKbutts", by the way). I didn't realize until I heard the pre-concert lecture that we were attending the 21st century premieres of three choral works that haven't been performed since the sixteenth century. None of these works has less than 40 voices, and one of them has 60.
That's right. Sixty separate vocal lines, each sung by one singer. From the program notes: "... to experience the important spatial dimension of many choirs that are physically separated, a 16th-century version of 'surround sound' that is almost impossible to reproduce effectively on recordings." (Although they did record the concert; and if it's ever on sale, I'll buy it.) In Berkeley's First Congregational Church, we had the acoustics we needed.
The story behind this concert is absolutely fascinating, but it's also quite long, so I'll refer you to the concert program notes, which you can find online at Cal Performances. (Warning: it's 3.5MB.) In very brief, it's based on conductor Davitt Moroney's scholarly research into "gigantismo" - the suggestion that in the mid-16th century, there was more than the one known instance of choral works written for 40 or more voices. His research uncovered three of them, two from the court of Cosimo de Medici, in Florence, the third from Spain. This was all part of the amazing flowering of art that produced the great visual treasures of Florence - who but Cosimo de Medici could have afforded a sixty-voice choir? In fact, the pre-concert lecture noted that when Alessandro Striggio's mass, Missa sopra "Ecco sì beato giorno", was composed, there were only 5 places in Europe where it could be performed: Florence, Vienna, Hamburg, Rome, and Madrid. My composer can write more choral parts than your composer.
Listening to this music is like looking at a renaissance tapestry. It's incredibly detailed and dense. It isn't polyphony, there's no fugue. The separate parts blend together into a sonorous wall, with brief illuminations as a soprano or a tenor soars above the sound and then blends back in. I've never felt so much that I was in the presence of another age. The sound was overwhelming.
I particularly liked the 40-voice canon on the Ten Commandments - ten 4 voice choruses, each singing the same canon 10 times. When the 10th chorus comes in, all the choruses are singing all the words of all ten commandments at once (in Latin hexameter verse). You'd think it would be total chaos. In fact it's a brooding, introspective piece that is amazingly soothing. You can't understand the words but you're supposed to know what they are.
Oh, the Sagbutts. That's a proto-trombone, in case you didn't know. They had a whole family of them, I particularly enjoyed the Gabrieli Canzon primi toni which they performed. The really significant one was the grand bass sackbutt - I never could quite see the whole thing but it was so huge I wondered how long it was. Wikipedia says that the double-bass or "Octav-Posaun" sackbut was pitched in A in Michael Praetorius' day, but the modern version is in B flat. My husband, a former tubist, says that means the fully extended tube is 32 feet long, and the extended slide is probably 10 feet. It had a "pusher" attached, because the slide is too long for a man's arm to extend fully. Still according to Wikipedia, the only modern copy of the only surviving 17th century double-bass sackbut "is currently owned and played by Wim Becu," and that was the name of the performer last night.
Astounding music, all around. Do read the program notes.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Life, Death, and Rules
This isn't the post I started to write last night. In the interval, the power of the Internet has manifested itself again, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation has agreed that it made a mistake, apologized for cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and agreed to restore it. Apparently (as happened with SOPA/PIPA a few weeks ago), when we all rise up on Facebook and Twitter to complain, they actually do hear us. Most of what I read on Facebook yesterday was about this.
It all began yesterday when the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced they had decided to drop funding to Planned Parenthood ($600,000 a year, used only for breast cancer screenings) because Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress, some of whose members suspect it of illegally using federal funds to perform abortions. We have a new rule about donating to organizations being investigated, the Foundation said. We're just following our rules.
I'm not the only Planned Parenthood supporter out there who thought this was nuts; or the only one wondering, if they were just following the rules, why they hadn't pulled the plug on their $7.5 million dollar grant (for breast cancer research) to Penn State, currently under investigation for ignoring child sexual abuse. Is providing abortions really worse than ignoring pedophilia? What a question.
Now that the Komen Foundation has been bombed out of a position that no one with any sense would have occupied in the first place, I want to consider some of the issues this incident raised. The whole thing is a classic "be careful what you ask for" - one side effect was an absolute avalanche of support for PP, which the Komen folks probably didn't intend. But it made me think.
In a fit of anger, I wrote this on Facebook:
So, which is worse - a woman dying from breast cancer or a fetus being aborted?
The trouble with the abortion issue is that there are two lives involved - and each side of the argument insists that only one of those lives is important. But when you bring breast cancer screening into the equation, in the way the Komen Foundation did, you turn it into a decision on who should die - the mother, or the child. But that's a fool's game, because any child's welfare depends on a living, healthy mother - not one who dies of (or even spends years fighting) breast cancer.
Americans don't like to talk about death. I suspect that our culture feels if we can just be a little more brilliant and inventive, we can make the whole thing go away. But we can't. Sooner or later, all of us will die; the only question is when, and how. That child saved from abortion by defunding evil Planned Parenthood? Will die; the only question is when, and how. The mother with breast cancer? Will die; in her case, the question is, will she die sooner of cancer or later of something else.
I don't know anyone anywhere who thinks abortion is a good idea. It's a last resort tool. The anti-abortion side tends to demonize women who have abortions; I know some women who have had them, and the decision is, always, wrenching. I'm not going to argue either side; those arguments are unwinnable. But I want to point out that against the 3% of its time that Planned Parenthood spends doing abortions, it spends 35% of its time providing contraception, mostly to women who couldn't normally afford it - which has probably prevented more abortions than any right-to-life group in existence.
I'm glad that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has changed its mind. I'm afraid they will find that, even after changing their minds and doing (what I consider) the right thing, they've lost some important credibility. And only time will show what this has done to their donor base. Everyone will now look at them and ask, now what? And that's too bad, because they've done serious good in their day and may still do more. Ms. Handel is still at the Foundation.
It all began yesterday when the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced they had decided to drop funding to Planned Parenthood ($600,000 a year, used only for breast cancer screenings) because Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress, some of whose members suspect it of illegally using federal funds to perform abortions. We have a new rule about donating to organizations being investigated, the Foundation said. We're just following our rules.
I'm not the only Planned Parenthood supporter out there who thought this was nuts; or the only one wondering, if they were just following the rules, why they hadn't pulled the plug on their $7.5 million dollar grant (for breast cancer research) to Penn State, currently under investigation for ignoring child sexual abuse. Is providing abortions really worse than ignoring pedophilia? What a question.
Now that the Komen Foundation has been bombed out of a position that no one with any sense would have occupied in the first place, I want to consider some of the issues this incident raised. The whole thing is a classic "be careful what you ask for" - one side effect was an absolute avalanche of support for PP, which the Komen folks probably didn't intend. But it made me think.
In a fit of anger, I wrote this on Facebook:
The anti-abortion people essentially state that they would rather allow poor women (the only ones this affects) to die of breast cancer, than give them any opportunity at all to get an abortion, for any reason.This was unfair to the majority of anti-abortion people, of course; that's the trouble with writing, or speaking, in anger. But the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision appeared to take exactly that position. They said they were stopping funding for cancer screenings because PP was "under investigation" - but Karen Handel, the Komen Vice President for public policy since last January, who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is "pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood," is reported (in an article in The Atlantic) to have driven the decision to create the rule about being under investigation, for the specific purpose of defunding PP.
So, which is worse - a woman dying from breast cancer or a fetus being aborted?
The trouble with the abortion issue is that there are two lives involved - and each side of the argument insists that only one of those lives is important. But when you bring breast cancer screening into the equation, in the way the Komen Foundation did, you turn it into a decision on who should die - the mother, or the child. But that's a fool's game, because any child's welfare depends on a living, healthy mother - not one who dies of (or even spends years fighting) breast cancer.
Americans don't like to talk about death. I suspect that our culture feels if we can just be a little more brilliant and inventive, we can make the whole thing go away. But we can't. Sooner or later, all of us will die; the only question is when, and how. That child saved from abortion by defunding evil Planned Parenthood? Will die; the only question is when, and how. The mother with breast cancer? Will die; in her case, the question is, will she die sooner of cancer or later of something else.
I don't know anyone anywhere who thinks abortion is a good idea. It's a last resort tool. The anti-abortion side tends to demonize women who have abortions; I know some women who have had them, and the decision is, always, wrenching. I'm not going to argue either side; those arguments are unwinnable. But I want to point out that against the 3% of its time that Planned Parenthood spends doing abortions, it spends 35% of its time providing contraception, mostly to women who couldn't normally afford it - which has probably prevented more abortions than any right-to-life group in existence.
I'm glad that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has changed its mind. I'm afraid they will find that, even after changing their minds and doing (what I consider) the right thing, they've lost some important credibility. And only time will show what this has done to their donor base. Everyone will now look at them and ask, now what? And that's too bad, because they've done serious good in their day and may still do more. Ms. Handel is still at the Foundation.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
A path to civil war
USA Today published the following quote, from the AP:
I have one question.BEIRUT (AP) – A senior Russian diplomat Tuesday said a draft U.N. resolution demanding Syrian President Bashar Assad step aside is a "path to civil war," as Syrian troops besieged rebellious areas with hours of shelling and machine-gun fire.
What do they think is going on in Syria right now, anyway? It looks like a civil war to me.
I don't suggest that we should all crank up the armies again and pile into Syria the way we did into Libya. But if Russia thinks what's going on in Syria right now isn't a civil war, I'd like to know how they define one.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tracking the Money
The city of Oakland is facing the loss of $28,000,000 from its general fund, caused by two outside events: One, Governor Brown eliminated redevelopment agencies in this year's state budget, and Two, the state Supreme Court ruled that the "give-back" the Legislature crafted, which would have let cities and states "buy" their redevelopment agencies back, was unconstitutional. So - there goes the Redevelopment Agency money.
Why is this causing such consternation in Oakland?? Because they were using the Redevelopment Agency money for general operating funds, that's why. In addition to the 159 people who actually work for the Redevelopment Agency, the city was using those funds to pay, or partly pay, for positions all over the city, including (this one staggers me) half the mayor's salary! What??
Why do they do this? I've seen this before. In the early '70s, I worked for the San Jose Public Library. At that time, Lockheed-Martin was a major employer (pre-Silicon Valley), the economy was booming, the bucks were rolling in. (Also pre-oil shock.) And the city of San Jose, having found that citizens were always happy to pass bond issues, had developed the habit of funding basic operations (among other things, the library) out of those bond issues - so as not to have to engage in ungentlemanly conversations about, you know, taxes.
Then Lockheed-Martin lost a big contract. In the intervening 40-odd years, the details of the disaster have escaped me; but I distinctly remember that they laid off what seemed like half the Santa Clara Valley, and the next bond issue that came up for a vote died like a skunk on the freeway. And suddenly the city had payroll obligations that it didn't have enough general fund money to meet. And citizens who were even less likely to vote for new taxes than they had been when they were approving bonds. I forget what gyrations they used to solve their problem; I didn't lose my job, the city of San Jose still has a library. But this all came back to me when I heard that the city of Oakland was paying half the mayor's salary with redevelopment funds. (If I keep repeating that, it's because I still can't believe they did that.)
The cases in the two cities are identical. They couldn't get the taxpayers to raise taxes enough to pay for what they wanted to spend (and the San Jose case was before Proposition 13, they only needed a majority), there was this other money "lying around," so they used it. They ignored the fact that, technically, the other money had another purpose they were legally required to use it for. I would love to hear the justification for paying half the Oakland mayor's salary out of redevelopment funds.
The minimal good news out of all this, for Oakland today, is that the new City Administrator has devised a plan to consolidate services and remove duplications, including eliminating a number of "jobs" that weren't actually being performed by anyone, and will be able to correct the situation by laying off no more than 105 people (out of just over 3,000) and not closing any libraries or senior centers.
This is the first glimmer of fiscal responsibility I've seen in Oakland since before we elected Ron Dellums. God bless Deanna Santana. The mayor (and previous city council member) has tried multiple times to get citizens to vote for property tax increases, without success; and she didn't succeed because none of us trusted the city to spend the money in a responsible and prudent way. We all suspected the city government was full of duplicated services and overstaffed departments, and if we gave them more tax money they would just continue to throw it away.
The new budget is responsible and prudent. I'm still not ready to vote for a property tax increase. But if Ms. Santana stays around and continues to talk turkey about consolidation and simplification, some day I might consider it.
On the other hand, the city council hasn't accepted the new budget yet. Maybe it's too soon to relax.
Why is this causing such consternation in Oakland?? Because they were using the Redevelopment Agency money for general operating funds, that's why. In addition to the 159 people who actually work for the Redevelopment Agency, the city was using those funds to pay, or partly pay, for positions all over the city, including (this one staggers me) half the mayor's salary! What??
Why do they do this? I've seen this before. In the early '70s, I worked for the San Jose Public Library. At that time, Lockheed-Martin was a major employer (pre-Silicon Valley), the economy was booming, the bucks were rolling in. (Also pre-oil shock.) And the city of San Jose, having found that citizens were always happy to pass bond issues, had developed the habit of funding basic operations (among other things, the library) out of those bond issues - so as not to have to engage in ungentlemanly conversations about, you know, taxes.
Then Lockheed-Martin lost a big contract. In the intervening 40-odd years, the details of the disaster have escaped me; but I distinctly remember that they laid off what seemed like half the Santa Clara Valley, and the next bond issue that came up for a vote died like a skunk on the freeway. And suddenly the city had payroll obligations that it didn't have enough general fund money to meet. And citizens who were even less likely to vote for new taxes than they had been when they were approving bonds. I forget what gyrations they used to solve their problem; I didn't lose my job, the city of San Jose still has a library. But this all came back to me when I heard that the city of Oakland was paying half the mayor's salary with redevelopment funds. (If I keep repeating that, it's because I still can't believe they did that.)
The cases in the two cities are identical. They couldn't get the taxpayers to raise taxes enough to pay for what they wanted to spend (and the San Jose case was before Proposition 13, they only needed a majority), there was this other money "lying around," so they used it. They ignored the fact that, technically, the other money had another purpose they were legally required to use it for. I would love to hear the justification for paying half the Oakland mayor's salary out of redevelopment funds.
The minimal good news out of all this, for Oakland today, is that the new City Administrator has devised a plan to consolidate services and remove duplications, including eliminating a number of "jobs" that weren't actually being performed by anyone, and will be able to correct the situation by laying off no more than 105 people (out of just over 3,000) and not closing any libraries or senior centers.
This is the first glimmer of fiscal responsibility I've seen in Oakland since before we elected Ron Dellums. God bless Deanna Santana. The mayor (and previous city council member) has tried multiple times to get citizens to vote for property tax increases, without success; and she didn't succeed because none of us trusted the city to spend the money in a responsible and prudent way. We all suspected the city government was full of duplicated services and overstaffed departments, and if we gave them more tax money they would just continue to throw it away.
The new budget is responsible and prudent. I'm still not ready to vote for a property tax increase. But if Ms. Santana stays around and continues to talk turkey about consolidation and simplification, some day I might consider it.
On the other hand, the city council hasn't accepted the new budget yet. Maybe it's too soon to relax.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Why I Oppose SOPA and PIPA
Who could be in favor of Internet piracy? For the record, not me. But PIPA and SOPA are not only about Internet piracy. (For the record: SOPA is the house bill, PIPA is the Senate bill. Any law would have to be a combination of the two.)
In the interest of the free Internet, I will do something that could potentially be illegal under SOPA/PIPA: I will quote two extended discussions of the legislation from other blogs.
Yesterday on the global blog Crooked Timber (which I'm delighted to learn about), blogger Maria Farrell posted this:
Because Freedom isn’t Free: Why We* Blacked Out Crooked Timber
This is a detailed and thoughtful analysis of what could easily happen under SOPA/PIPA to almost any blog. Including this one. And it wouldn't even have to be anything I did: if any poster on Blogger were to post allegedly pirated content, the attorney general would legally be able to - shut down Blogger. All of it.
If this seems extreme, read this from Chris Heald at Mashable yesterday:
Why SOPA is Dangerous
Heald analyzes in detail exactly what's so threatening about this legislation, with links to the actual bill, so you can read it for yourself.
But this is my blog, so here's why I think this is wrong, based on reading these two sources (and other sources, but these were the best):
It is so broadly written that all anyone would have to do to shut down a web site, any web site, would be to file a complaint with the attorney general that the site was "facilitating the commission of copyright infringement."
There is no definition of "facilitating" in the bill. Here's the actual definition in SOPA (for the record this is sec. 102):
That's it. That's the entire definition. That means that a site is a "foreign infringing site" if the attorney general says it is. Don't let the code sections they list fool you. There is no standard of proof in this act. There is no way for a site to prove that it isn't "infringing." You are infringing if someone says you are.
This disturbs me deeply. This is another step toward the end of the rule of law in this country, following on the legalizing of indefinite detention of U.S. citizens in the N.D.A.A. recently. Even more disturbing, the attorney general is only required to make a cursory attempt to locate the owners of the site before starting proceedings. (Read the Mashable article, and the bill, if you don't believe me.) So your totally innocent site could be blocked and you might not find out until you tried to go there yourself.
And they're doing this based on bogus numbers. The GAO concluded about a year ago that commonly quoted "government statistics" on internet piracy can't be validated and appear to have been mostly made up: see this article by Nate Anderson in ArsTechnica on a GAO review of commonly published piracy estimates:
In the interest of the free Internet, I will do something that could potentially be illegal under SOPA/PIPA: I will quote two extended discussions of the legislation from other blogs.
Yesterday on the global blog Crooked Timber (which I'm delighted to learn about), blogger Maria Farrell posted this:
Because Freedom isn’t Free: Why We* Blacked Out Crooked Timber
Yesterday
This is a detailed and thoughtful analysis of what could easily happen under SOPA/PIPA to almost any blog. Including this one. And it wouldn't even have to be anything I did: if any poster on Blogger were to post allegedly pirated content, the attorney general would legally be able to - shut down Blogger. All of it.If this seems extreme, read this from Chris Heald at Mashable yesterday:
Why SOPA is Dangerous
Heald analyzes in detail exactly what's so threatening about this legislation, with links to the actual bill, so you can read it for yourself.
But this is my blog, so here's why I think this is wrong, based on reading these two sources (and other sources, but these were the best):
It is so broadly written that all anyone would have to do to shut down a web site, any web site, would be to file a complaint with the attorney general that the site was "facilitating the commission of copyright infringement."
Section 102(a)(2) permits the attorney general to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if “the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement].”And as you notice, it doesn't even have to be a U.S. site. This is the United States trying to impose its own legal structure on the entire world. Must be okay because we're just trying to get criminals, right?
There is no definition of "facilitating" in the bill. Here's the actual definition in SOPA (for the record this is sec. 102):
- (a) Definition- For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a `foreign infringing site' if--
- (1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States;
- (2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is
committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations
punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter
90, of title 18, United States Code; and
- (3) the Internet site would, by reason of acts
described in paragraph (1), be subject to seizure in the United States
in an action brought by the Attorney General if such site were a
domestic Internet site.
That's it. That's the entire definition. That means that a site is a "foreign infringing site" if the attorney general says it is. Don't let the code sections they list fool you. There is no standard of proof in this act. There is no way for a site to prove that it isn't "infringing." You are infringing if someone says you are.
This disturbs me deeply. This is another step toward the end of the rule of law in this country, following on the legalizing of indefinite detention of U.S. citizens in the N.D.A.A. recently. Even more disturbing, the attorney general is only required to make a cursory attempt to locate the owners of the site before starting proceedings. (Read the Mashable article, and the bill, if you don't believe me.) So your totally innocent site could be blocked and you might not find out until you tried to go there yourself.
And they're doing this based on bogus numbers. The GAO concluded about a year ago that commonly quoted "government statistics" on internet piracy can't be validated and appear to have been mostly made up: see this article by Nate Anderson in ArsTechnica on a GAO review of commonly published piracy estimates:
US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus
If you haven't already done it, I urge you all to contact your representatives in Congress and the Senate and ask them to oppose these bills. Sure, Internet piracy is wrong, but this isn't the way to fight it.
Monday, January 16, 2012
In and Around Whistler
I'll admit I wondered about visiting a world-famous ski resort in the summer. After all, don't you go to a ski resort to ski? But the mountains around it are gorgeous, and when there's no snow you can hike. There actually was snow, above about 5,000 feet - on the peaks, around 6,000 feet, it was quite snowy. It only rained on us one day, and one of the days we were there was glorious - sunny and warm! I'd say the activities we saw the most of included snowboarding (at appropriate altitudes, of course) and mountain biking (everywhere!).
The gallery On to Whistler starts with some photos I took on the drive from Powell River; waiting for the ferry at Saltery Bay I got some shots of a bald eagle, who was just hanging around the ferry terminal waiting for something edible to come along:
We watched the ferry come in and dock, a very slow and stately process. We've gotten so used to cars and airplanes that we forget how long it takes to make a boat do anything in the water:
At Langdale I got some shots of seagulls from above, they were cruising below me, looking for garbage (sorry, but it's true):
I don't have a lot of photos of Whistler itself, the town just isn't that photogenic. I've written about the bears we saw in another post, they have their own gallery. The day I enjoyed the most was the nice day, when Jim went on a strenuous hike and I strolled around Lost Lake, a lovely lake that you can get to on the bus. Here's Lost Lake from part way around, you can see the beach:
The high points of Lost Lake were the female merganser duck, with her five very small ducklings riding on her back:
I got several more photos of the ducks, and some very beautiful shots of the lake edges, but the other highlight was this fellow:
That, my friends, is an osprey, who hovered overhead long enough for me to get several other photos! All the photos are at the gallery Lost Lake, for your viewing pleasure.
The gallery On to Whistler starts with some photos I took on the drive from Powell River; waiting for the ferry at Saltery Bay I got some shots of a bald eagle, who was just hanging around the ferry terminal waiting for something edible to come along:
We watched the ferry come in and dock, a very slow and stately process. We've gotten so used to cars and airplanes that we forget how long it takes to make a boat do anything in the water:
At Langdale I got some shots of seagulls from above, they were cruising below me, looking for garbage (sorry, but it's true):
I don't have a lot of photos of Whistler itself, the town just isn't that photogenic. I've written about the bears we saw in another post, they have their own gallery. The day I enjoyed the most was the nice day, when Jim went on a strenuous hike and I strolled around Lost Lake, a lovely lake that you can get to on the bus. Here's Lost Lake from part way around, you can see the beach:
The high points of Lost Lake were the female merganser duck, with her five very small ducklings riding on her back:
I got several more photos of the ducks, and some very beautiful shots of the lake edges, but the other highlight was this fellow:
That, my friends, is an osprey, who hovered overhead long enough for me to get several other photos! All the photos are at the gallery Lost Lake, for your viewing pleasure.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
More Template Problems
I was still more annoyed to learn that I can't modify the design and layout of my blog template anywhere except in the Chrome browser. Trying to rearrange the layout in FireFox just doesn't work. Grump. For now, this will be my now blog template. I still want the old one back but it isn't going to happen.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Be Careful What You Ask For
I've lost my nice template. I tried one of Blogger's new templates just to see what it looked like - it looked crappy - and now I can't get my old template back because it doesn't fit in their "new" system. Damn. Watch this space.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
A Christmas Hike
Somehow, hiking at Sibley Regional Park seems to be a good way to spend a sunny Christmas Day, when my various physical issues allow it. My photo site shows that I did this in 2009, too. Last year, no, but this year the new knee is doing great, the ten year old knee is cranking right along, and the weather is clear and cold. And smoggy, sigh - we haven't been able to have a fire in the fireplace for days. You can see the smog obscuring Mt. Diablo in this photo from Volcano Trail:
I set out to hike around the Lafayette Reservoir, always a pretty trek; but when I got there I couldn't park. On Christmas Day, of course, there was no human taking money for parking; and the machine was apparently taking people's money and not producing a parking voucher. By the time the 3 of us in line realized this, the last of the coin-metered spots was gone. Phooey, I thought, I'll go to Sibley; it's on the way home anyhow.
I've recently learned how to get into Sibley the back way, up Old Tunnel Road to the Quarry Road. Here is the Quarry Road:
This looks flat, but I assure you, it isn't - the Quarry Road is roughly a 10% grade, and you climb it for a 390 foot elevation gain in about 3/4 mile. This takes you to the beginning of the Volcano Trail; and it took me 50 minutes, mainly because I kept stopping to pant. (Asthma.) Sibley has several dead volcanoes and I've never gotten up to them before, so I was determined to do it.
The back end of Sibley is astoundingly silent. You can hear small birds rattling around in the underbrush. Way off in the distance you hear a dim roaring sound that represents the rest of the Bay Area; but for much of my 2 1/2 hour hike there was nobody there but me, and no sound but my steps and my breathing.
There were other people there; in the first half of the trip I ran into roughly a dozen people and 4 dogs. This is dog walking country because for much of it you can let the dog run off-leash. I was leaning over putting my jacket in my backpack, when suddenly I had a tan muzzle in my face - somebody's friendly mutt. The owner apologized; no harm done.
There were more people (and dogs!) around in the second half of the trip - they came in from the main park entrance on Skyline, where you don't have to climb a continuous mile to get anywhere. There had been horses quite recently but I could only see their traces.
I walked part of the Volcano Trail (another 75 foot elevation gain for a total of a little over 450 feet), stopped carefully at all the numbered points of interest and read the descriptions in the park map. There's no steaming caldera, these are dead volcanoes. There are several very dark red tuff formations (heated by the lava, says the map):
There's no great philosophical message here, just a pleasant three-mile hike on a brisk day. I got some nice bird photos at the beginning of the Volcano Trail, here's one:
You can see the rest of my photos in my new gallery Christmas Day at Sibley 2011.
I set out to hike around the Lafayette Reservoir, always a pretty trek; but when I got there I couldn't park. On Christmas Day, of course, there was no human taking money for parking; and the machine was apparently taking people's money and not producing a parking voucher. By the time the 3 of us in line realized this, the last of the coin-metered spots was gone. Phooey, I thought, I'll go to Sibley; it's on the way home anyhow.
I've recently learned how to get into Sibley the back way, up Old Tunnel Road to the Quarry Road. Here is the Quarry Road:
This looks flat, but I assure you, it isn't - the Quarry Road is roughly a 10% grade, and you climb it for a 390 foot elevation gain in about 3/4 mile. This takes you to the beginning of the Volcano Trail; and it took me 50 minutes, mainly because I kept stopping to pant. (Asthma.) Sibley has several dead volcanoes and I've never gotten up to them before, so I was determined to do it.
The back end of Sibley is astoundingly silent. You can hear small birds rattling around in the underbrush. Way off in the distance you hear a dim roaring sound that represents the rest of the Bay Area; but for much of my 2 1/2 hour hike there was nobody there but me, and no sound but my steps and my breathing.
There were other people there; in the first half of the trip I ran into roughly a dozen people and 4 dogs. This is dog walking country because for much of it you can let the dog run off-leash. I was leaning over putting my jacket in my backpack, when suddenly I had a tan muzzle in my face - somebody's friendly mutt. The owner apologized; no harm done.
There were more people (and dogs!) around in the second half of the trip - they came in from the main park entrance on Skyline, where you don't have to climb a continuous mile to get anywhere. There had been horses quite recently but I could only see their traces.
I walked part of the Volcano Trail (another 75 foot elevation gain for a total of a little over 450 feet), stopped carefully at all the numbered points of interest and read the descriptions in the park map. There's no steaming caldera, these are dead volcanoes. There are several very dark red tuff formations (heated by the lava, says the map):
There's no great philosophical message here, just a pleasant three-mile hike on a brisk day. I got some nice bird photos at the beginning of the Volcano Trail, here's one:
You can see the rest of my photos in my new gallery Christmas Day at Sibley 2011.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Interpreting A Christmas Carol
During a recent online discussion of whether Dickens' A Christmas Carol is really a "great activist story for the Working Class" (imagine an adaptation inspired by Occupy Wall Street), I was asked offline to post my opinion of the book, by someone who isn't familiar with it. This seems a reasonable thing to do on Christmas Eve.
For those not familiar with the story: Ebenezer Scrooge is a very rich and successful Victorian businessman, not noted for his philanthropy. ("Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?") On Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley - who tells him that he (Marley) is damned forever, and he (Scrooge) will also be damned forever unless he changes his ways. Marley has arranged for Scrooge to be visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, as a way to encourage him to change. In the course of the visits he does change, and the book ends happily. Terrible synopsis.
First of all, if you really have never read this book, read it. It isn't long, it's available at every library, and it's a world classic.
Second, although the book is full of poor working people being treated poorly by the rich, the book isn't about them. They're there because that was the world Scrooge lived in. If you want a slightly different take on the same period, read the detective stories by Ann Perry, especially the ones about William Monk - they're set in the 1860s, about 20 years after Dickens' book, but it is the same world.
The center of A Christmas Carol is Ebenezer Scrooge, who has great wealth, but no happiness and no friends, at least in the sense we usually speak of friends. He is tolerated at best and feared at worst, even by his relatives. All his adult life he has focused on himself, his wealth, and his mastery (he's clearly proud of his skill at business). At the peak of his career, that's all he has. The ghostly intervention of Jacob Marley is meant to give him a second chance - a chance to reconsider whether his wealth and power are really so valuable that he should devote all his attention to them.
The three Ghostly Visitors show Scrooge events from Christmases in his past, from the Christmas being celebrated at the time by people he knows, and from a Christmas which may be celebrated in the near future. In the course of all this, Scrooge changes his mind about charity and compassion - as Dickens means him to do. In changing his mind, he changes his present and his future, and is happily absorbed into a society that values him for his willingness to be charitable. I don't mean that he's willing to give away money, although he does; I mean that he comes to view other people, poor people, as human beings like himself ("fellow passengers to the grave"), worthy of his compassion and his help. In Dickens' day, people still understood "charity" as being derived from caritas, or altruistic love of others.
The real statement of A Christmas Carol is that the worst of us can change. No matter how evil we are, if we truly choose to do so, we can become something better.
I'm on thin ice here, because I haven't reread the book yet this year; but the really interesting thing about it is how "non-Christian" it is. I don't recall that Scrooge changes because he's what we would now call "born again." There's no mention of accepting Jesus as his savior. Jesus is mentioned, if at all, in passing as a model of how a compassionate man would act. Scrooge is "saved" because he chooses to change, and does change. It is a story of personal redemption, after what must be the weirdest intervention in fiction.
For those not familiar with the story: Ebenezer Scrooge is a very rich and successful Victorian businessman, not noted for his philanthropy. ("Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?") On Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley - who tells him that he (Marley) is damned forever, and he (Scrooge) will also be damned forever unless he changes his ways. Marley has arranged for Scrooge to be visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, as a way to encourage him to change. In the course of the visits he does change, and the book ends happily. Terrible synopsis.
First of all, if you really have never read this book, read it. It isn't long, it's available at every library, and it's a world classic.
Second, although the book is full of poor working people being treated poorly by the rich, the book isn't about them. They're there because that was the world Scrooge lived in. If you want a slightly different take on the same period, read the detective stories by Ann Perry, especially the ones about William Monk - they're set in the 1860s, about 20 years after Dickens' book, but it is the same world.
The center of A Christmas Carol is Ebenezer Scrooge, who has great wealth, but no happiness and no friends, at least in the sense we usually speak of friends. He is tolerated at best and feared at worst, even by his relatives. All his adult life he has focused on himself, his wealth, and his mastery (he's clearly proud of his skill at business). At the peak of his career, that's all he has. The ghostly intervention of Jacob Marley is meant to give him a second chance - a chance to reconsider whether his wealth and power are really so valuable that he should devote all his attention to them.
The three Ghostly Visitors show Scrooge events from Christmases in his past, from the Christmas being celebrated at the time by people he knows, and from a Christmas which may be celebrated in the near future. In the course of all this, Scrooge changes his mind about charity and compassion - as Dickens means him to do. In changing his mind, he changes his present and his future, and is happily absorbed into a society that values him for his willingness to be charitable. I don't mean that he's willing to give away money, although he does; I mean that he comes to view other people, poor people, as human beings like himself ("fellow passengers to the grave"), worthy of his compassion and his help. In Dickens' day, people still understood "charity" as being derived from caritas, or altruistic love of others.
The real statement of A Christmas Carol is that the worst of us can change. No matter how evil we are, if we truly choose to do so, we can become something better.
I'm on thin ice here, because I haven't reread the book yet this year; but the really interesting thing about it is how "non-Christian" it is. I don't recall that Scrooge changes because he's what we would now call "born again." There's no mention of accepting Jesus as his savior. Jesus is mentioned, if at all, in passing as a model of how a compassionate man would act. Scrooge is "saved" because he chooses to change, and does change. It is a story of personal redemption, after what must be the weirdest intervention in fiction.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)