Psychotraders

Remember a few weeks ago when a rogue trader at UBS, Kweku Adoboli, was arrested for squandering 2 billion dollars of the bank's funds on a risky investment scheme? A similar caper was discovered in France a few years ago when Jerome Kerviel blew a few billion francs on his own scam. Here in the United States J.P. Morgan helped start our own recession after peddling their trashy paper to Merrill Lynch.

There may be a very good reason that these events occur. A new study by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland shows that stockbrokers are actually more reckless and manipulative than psychopaths. After reading an abstract on the findings, I suppose that we should treat the pathological and predacious conduct of the folks on Wall Street with a bit more sympathy and understanding. These people are merely very sick. Like the scorpion who hitches the ride on the duck's back, it is their essential nature to be sociopathic.

From Spiegel:


Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study's co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.


"Naturally one can't characterize the traders as deranged," Noll told SPIEGEL. "But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test."


Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren't aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, "it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents," Noll explained. "And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents."


Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, "and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves."


The researchers were unable to explain this penchant for destruction, they said. 

Pouring its light into ashes

Dark Star Crashes

Nasa has just released these fantastic pictures of the Crab Nebula. Astronomers have detected gamma pulse radiations from this nebula that are higher than anything ever tested and beyond our ability to measure. The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) detected these emissions and their findings were published in Science on Friday.

The gamma ray energies detected range between 100 and 400 billion electronvolts, with previous detections only picking up 25 electronvolts. Up until now, the Crab Nebula was one of the best understood systems. But these new findings have thrown the experts an interstellar curveball.

About 6,500 light-years away from Earth, this system was born from a massive star explosion that is said to have occurred in 1054 a.d.. This event was recorded by chinese and native american stargazers. The dying star was located in the constellation Taurus when it exploded into a gigantic supernova.

A pulsar is what you have left after a star's core has exploded. The energy from this particular explosion is stronger than x-rays or 100 billion times stronger than visible light. Pulsars turn into spinning neutron stars. This one is spinning about 30 times a second and is so dense that it has a mass greater than our sun. This nebula is breaking new scientific ground. Scientists have detected high energy coming from the nebula but never before from the pulsar itself.

The pulsar was detected from the Smithsonian's Whipple Telescope, located south of Tucson.

Pentangle - Travelling Song

I have posted this once before but it is one of my favorite Pentangle songs and I play it once more in memory of the recently deceased Bert Jansch. His duets with the heavenly voice of Jacqui McShee are so lovely and pure. Renbourn and Jansch were one of the most muscular and competent guitar pairings of their time, weaving a sonic signature that became known as folk baroque. Jansch was a Scot from Glascow and died on October fifth, a week ago, after a long battle with cancer.

El Tigre

I am a casual golf fan at best. Like most americans, my interest in golf is usually tied to how Tiger Woods is doing on any particular weekend. Tiger Woods is certainly one of the two greatest golfers in history, a position he shares with Jack Nicklaus.

The idea that a man could so thoroughly dominate a tour for as long as he did, amongst the absolute best of the best is just really incredible to me.

Having said that, this is America after all. And there is nothing Americans love to watch as much as they love to watch a good train wreck. Woods' train careened off the track in one of the greatest and spectacular immolations in sports history. A serial philanderer, he would tap anything and everything, including the babysitter next door. Absolutely no conscience. Just like his pop.

For the last several months I have been reading golf stories every wednesday about how Tiger was now healthy and ready to make his move. And every week has been a disappointment. In the last 25 events, the boy wonder has been in the top 25 three times, his highest finish being a fourth at the Masters. Okay for mortals, not so good for Tiger Woods. Awful, in fact. In 2011, he has been in the top ten twice, at eight events.

Woods accuracy off the tee has plunged from 66 to 54.1%. Greens in regulation went from 70.1 to 65.1% inTotal Accuracy, a measure of Gir and Accuracy has nosedived from a rank of 20 to 45. Tiger barely made the cut today but made a couple timely pars and hung on.

I wonder about two things with Tiger and the loss of his game. It is a known fact that he was a patient of  the famed steroid doctor, Anthony Galea. Could he have been juicing? Could his past dominance be at least partly a result of obtaining some sort of biological and physiological edge? After seeing the evidence against the Lance Armstrongs and Roger Clemons of this world, I have little faith in any hero today.

What I find even more likely than Tiger's decline correlating to some loss of an outside edge is the possibility that when the guy stopped getting all that strange, his game went into the toilet. The pirate, swashbuckling bad boy who liked to get freaky with the slutty strippers gets his wings clipped and can't get his mojo back. Like Sampson and his hair, Tiger has the psychological ailment of the "wounded johnson." The key to his juju just might be his insatiable sexual appetite.

Millions of american golf fans are hoping that their golf idol can find a way to change his luck. The old fashioned way. Bang a skanky waitress or two, Tiger. Find your forgotten huevos and hopefully your game again. Your fans demand it. I think this golf gladiator is going to need an awful lot of fresh poontang if he ever hopes to be back on top of the leaderboard.

The Chocolate Watchband-Sweet Young Thing

melts in your brain, not on your wrist...

The lead guitar player for this band, Mark Loomis, lives or lived in Oceanside. I took this picture of Mark and his wife at my friend Kevin Kinnear's old guitar shop, Epic, a couple years ago. Many denizens of psychedelic and underground garage music consider the Watchband the best of the bunch. As this photograph shows, he may have flown just a little too close to the flame.

10.6.11

This photo from last week kind of hit me. An Alabama potato farmer leaning against his truck after only five of his twenty farm workers show up for work. This is the day after the new law passed that allowed the Alabama cops to check immigration status at routine stops and empowered school officials to do the same at enrollment. The latinos sort of up and vanished overnight. From the schools and from the jobs. Even many of the legal hispanics are leaving, hating the "vibes" in the current racial climate.

I am not an advocate for illegal immigration, in fact I am strongly against it. But I think that it is time to be careful what you wish for.  White people in this country, no matter how poor, are simply too soft and lazy to do farm work, or much of the other dirty occupations that are currently the province of illegals in this country. In Alabama they are trying to cover the shortage with prisoners and parolees. I think that I would rather take my chances with the illegals, thanks.

I read a story the other day about a bunch of white folks that showed up for a farm workers job, a job that paid over eleven bucks an hour. They all dropped out before noon. Soft. I can't wait until they pass the Alabama law in a bunch of other states and the rest of our industries that depend on a cheap labor force that is willing to do the hard work find themselves grinding to a halt. That big sucking sound will be the American economy going into the toilet.

Then instead of vilifying poor immigrants who are trying to feed their families, the tea baggers can go after the real enemy, an American working class not yet sufficiently poor enough to want to do the dirty work for their patrician masters.

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A solution to our economic woes requires fresh thinking and this Republican lawmaker from Florida may have just the trick - bring back dwarf tossing.

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French ban ketchup in the schools.

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Grok the egyptian woman who applied for parole twenty years after grilling her husband and feasting on his carcass. She didn't say she was having fun, she said she was having a ball. The psychiatrist at the trial testified that Nelson said she put on red shoes, a red hat and red lipstick before chopping up and cooking her husband's body. She said she prepared his ribs like in a restaurant and said aloud, "It's so sweet." A fashion and culinary statement. She says that she is not a monster. She meets a guy, marries him and then throws him in the stew pot after three weeks of convivial bliss, but she says she didn't swallow, so she doesn't qualify for full blown monsterhood.

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Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the man who posed nude in college, says that he hopes that he never has to see his opponent Elizabeth Warren with her clothes off. Why do men never get comments like this, that they aren't pretty or sexy enough? More bullshit high school style misogyny if you ask me.

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Ann Coulter is going after the Occupy Wall Street crowd as smelly hippies, steeped in patchouli, with an aversion to bathing. Uh, Ann, you said that you followed the Grateful Dead for years, by your account 67 shows, that crowd didn't exactly smell like roses, did it? Which parking lot were you scoring your kind veggie burritos and shrooms in? Did you try your elitist shtick on them?

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U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein punts on CIA sanctions, even after they violated his own order.

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Ronald Brownstein on Swing State Republicans and the environment - National Journal

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Feds declare war on medical marijuana. So much for Obama's lip service about respecting state laws and the will of the people.

The Doors

Crystal Ships

Fivefold 2d aperiodic pattern

“The main lesson that I have learned over time is that a good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he reads in the textbooks.”
Dan Shechtman


The neatest story I read today was about recent Israeli Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman. Apparently Shechtman noticed some crystal formations that weren't exactly behaving correctly, at least according to all the academic experts. He brought it to the attention of his colleagues at the university and he was vilified for it, even told that he was a humiliation to the whole department.

In 1982 Shechtman discovered a new class of solid matter called quasicrystals, with atoms so densely packed that their patterns would not repeat, as so called "normal" crystal forms are supposed to be constructed. Crystals are said to be periodic at the molecular level.

His discovery was not well received and he was forced to leave his research group, his hypothesis thought by skeptical scientists to be both preposterous and embarrassing and he was told that he "brought disgrace" to the group.

Shechtman's discovery dates to April 8, 1982, while on a sabbatical at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, he was studying an alloy of aluminium and manganese at the time.

Shechtman was looking at a section of chilled molten metal with an electron microscope when he realized that the atomic structure appeared in a pattern that was not known to comport with any known laws of crystal structure. The pattern of dots had a tenfold symmetric pattern, while only three, four or six were thought possible. He could turn the structure and view it from ten vantages that all looked identical. He noted the discovery in his notebook that day.

Shechtman was vilified by his peers, told that his research was contrary to the laws of nature itself but he kept battling for his beliefs and finally forced fellow scientists to reconsider the nature of crystal forms. One colleague initially said, “Go away, Danny.”

Linus Pauling, a double Nobel Laureate, for chemistry and for peace, once declared publicly that 'Danny Shechtman is talking nonsense. There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.'  Paulson believed that the base five structure was the result of a combinative event called twinning. When Pauling died in the early 1990's, people started looking at Shechtman's work with fresh eyes and opposition finally vanished.

The definition of crystal had to be changed. Previously, a crystal had been defined as having “a regularly ordered, repeating three-dimensional pattern,” according to the International Union of Crystallography. The new definition, adopted in 1992, states that a crystal is simply a solid with a “discrete diffraction diagram.”

The Tel Aviv born scientist teaches at the prestigious Technion University in Haifa and is the 10th Israeli to win the nobel and the fourth to win it in Chemistry. You have to love a guy who has made an empirical discovery, gets vilified and slandered and yet has enough faith and endurance to stick to his guns, gain acceptance and shut up his detractors.

I read an interesting article about his discovery today by Richard Allen Greene of CNN of which I excerpt:

Interestingly, the structure of quasicrystals seems to have been foreshadowed in medieval Islamic art that contradicts what Western geometry had always taught."If you want to tile a bathroom floor with squares, you can do it out to infinity," said Peter J. Lu, a Harvard University professor who has studied Islamic tile work."If you want to do it with five-sides figures, there are gaps," he explained.


But Islamic artists figured out how to do it without leaving gaps by making the pattern irregular rather than repeating -- the same thing that happens in quasicrystals, he said."Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level," the Swedish academy said.

Islamic tile patterns dating back to the early 1400s were put together in ways not understood in the West until 1973, Lu and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University argued in a paper in 2007 in the journal Science. The Muslim artists discovered ways to tile shapes with five, 10 or 12 shapes without leaving gaps between them -- a structure thought by standard geometry to be impossible.


British mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose explained in 1973 how it was done, and just over a decade later the same pattern was found at the molecular level in quasicrystals, according to a report in Lu and Steinhardt's work in the journal Nature in 2007.


Mueller, a principle research scientist at MIT, said he was "fascinated" by the structure of quasicrystals, even as he admitted he would not have the knowledge to analyze them himself. But specialists in quasicrystals will eventually "gain knowledge of some structures which we cannot analyze with conventional methods," he predicted. The academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry said quasicrystals have a "unique atomic structure" which makes them "bad conductors of heat and electricity, and (they) have nonstick surfaces."

Medicine Wheel

Company, fish and politics

Any one who was under the impression that the Obama Administration was going to bring some sort of virtue and probity to the Oval Office will need to repent for their foolishness and naiveté. I know, I know, this was going to be the administration that pushed transparency and wouldn't engage in the wanton croneyism of its predecessors. Right.


The environmental group Friends of the Earth secured emails on monday under the Freedom of Information Act that shed light on the ugly game of footsy mthe State Department is playing with the TransCanada Pipeline Company. In July they emailed the State Department that they planned to drop their request to operate the pipeline at pressures allowed in the United States and then reapply for the exception once the project had passed and the political smoke had cleared. Rather than fairly and objectively oversee the implications of this massive project that many environmentalists adamantly oppose, the State Department and EPA act as a hand maiden and facilitator for their lobbyist pals. Oh yes, the top lobbyist from TransCanada in an ex senior staffer for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Paul Elliott. So much for an end to favoritism.

Trans Canada was given total access to the corridors of power on this project, countless meetings with Assistant Secretaries of State and plenty of inside information no doubt, the environmentalists limited to one single meeting. The 1700 mile long proposed pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas. It is said that its construction will result in unacceptable emissions and wreak havoc on pristine ecosystems.

It also points to a quite cozy relationship between Marja Verloop at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa and industry groups, cheerleading for them and teaching them how to end around the political process. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is not powered to act on the authorization, even criticized the State Department environmental assessments as inadequate.

The project apparently bores right through the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the great plains' principal water sources. The crude is said to lay in subterranean oil sands and that removal from these areas will result in higher than normal emissions and will destroy forests.

The conduct of those employees of the United States government who are supposed to be acting independently, in our best national interest, is certainly called into question regarding this pipeline. The pipeline may or may not be in our best interest but it certainly seems like the State Department has already made up its mind. This will be an interesting story to follow.

Dean Martin

Tuesday with Tantor

Louis Nidorf has sent over the very cool Newseum link. Run your cursor over the map and you can click on front pages from over 800 newspapers.

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Have you noticed that many of the younger drivers today are totally clueless? Are they still teaching driver's training? My favorite move is the cut across four lanes and nail your exit at the last minute trick, but make sure not to signal or acknowledge the people that you are cutting off and extra style points if you miss my front bumper.

Another thing I have deduced is that the slow lane is officially dead. It is now the slingshot lane for the super speeders. I get a little pissed off getting tailgated doing sixty five or seventy in the slow lane.

Of course where I live there are lots of marines on motorcycles, back from the tour with a lot of adrenaline and a healthy dose of don't give a shit. They like to drive their rice rockets at near supersonic speeds. I don't feel comfortable getting passed by one of these guys at 100 mph, on the right, at 6:30 in the morning but it happens all the time and we lose about a couple a month.

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The Angels are purportedly looking at Padres Manager Bud Black for their recently vacated G.M. position. Black is a really good guy, a great manager and shouldn't pass up the chance to work for a major league club.

His boss, slick agent Jeff Moorad, signalled this week that the Padres are his team and his toy to run into the ground as he sees fit and that the fences would not be moved in. He has castrated every hitter he has brought to the club and just fired his sixth batting coach in the last seven years, Randy Ready.

Pitching and defense may win games but you better score at least a run. Couple that with an aged double play combination and a jaded absentee ownership and you have the 2012 Padres, ladies and gentlemen.

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Kudos to the Occupy Wall Street folks. A movement of mostly young people, aligning to seek redress from a band of thieves and merry men who have had carte blanche to dupe the american public with their AEG trash for a little too long. Nice for the kids to make a stand for something.

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I was reading a middle eastern newspaper the other day and the article I read spoke of the body guard killer of Afghanistan's Rabbani. Guy had been vetted by the CIA and Afghanis, trained and then turned into a suicide bomber, assassin.

Remember a few months ago when the Afghani soldiers were complaining about the american soldiers farting? Well this article said that part of the reason this guy flipped was because the american soldiers said fuck or the f-word too much and it hurt his tender sensitivities.

These people can stone their women, commit honor killings, play polo with a goat carcass, kill their neighbor because they practice the wrong brand of the native religion, lie, cheat and double deal, cut off women's sexual organs and blow themselves to bits on a moment's notice but god forbid you curse around them. What's that old saying; wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful. We aren't fighting a religion, maybe we are fighting a vile culture.

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I have not been shy about showing what a narrow minded snob I can be on a variety of fronts, and a tattoophobe of the highest order. Add eyebrow jewelry and stomach piercings to the tired rolls. Everyone has a nose stud, even some of the illegal women in my town and many of the septuagenarians. Can we officially call them over? Warren was in New York City last week and said he saw so many beautiful women and only about three of them inked, the whole time. Of course, this is a fashion statement with a rather unique shelf life.

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Michael just came back from Thailand and observed that the Blast has been more political of late. Has it? I hadn't really noticed. My friend R cautioned me that I maybe should be a little worried as the circulation is quite large, world wide now and forever and some unknown avenger might just set his sights on me for some unknown slight or slander. I have had a few hits and expletives from eastern european skinheads in the last several weeks. It's just my opinion folks. Don't take it too seriously.

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Pakistan moves towards China. Afghanistan countermoves and embraces India.

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According to Google, this is my twenty five hundredth blog post, notwithstanding the couple hundred that I deleted or expunged. Still going strong. Still no hits from Antarctica but holding steady in Iceland and starting to show up a bit more in South America and Africa. If you see an arctic hit on my blog, please take a screen shot for me. On the Mac it is shift, control, 4.

Who is my new steady reader in Hilo? Is that you S & T?

Samson and Delilah

Nigger Nate

Lots of folks are up in arms over presidential candidate Rick Perry's family hunting at an old lodge with the unfortunate name of Niggerhead. Although I have no truck with the man, I think he should get a break on this. If I can remember right, they wanted to ban Tom Sawyer because of the word nigger, should we throw Mark Twain out of the library too? Like it or not, such cruel epithets are a part of our history and culture. Rick Perry didn't name the rock that gives the lodge its sobriquet and our country is full of place names that allude to our racist past. In fact there is a town in Texas called Nigton, you can guess what it was shortened from, that was founded by former slaves in 1873. This type of place name was long a part of our cultural vernacular, and more recently than you might assume.

San Diego County has a very similar situation up on Palomar Mountain. Back as long as I can remember, people, without any intended malice, have called the dirt back road up the mountain, Nigger Nate Grade. This is the steep (10%) western route up the mountain and was the only way up until the 1940's when the more easterly "Road to the Stars" was built. It is the logical and unmarked extension of County Rd. S7.

The Nigger Nate was Nate Harrison, a runaway slave who was born sometime in the early 1800's and passed on in 1920. He was said to be 101 when he died but the figure is in some dispute. In any case he sought refuge and solace on the mountain in the 1860's. The diminutive Nate was much loved and a friend to all. He helped many travelers by giving them water from his fresh, cool spring. Read a nice story about the man in this link to the Journal of San Diego History, January 1958. Or here. This is a link to an interesting pdf by archaeologists who have discerned that Harrison was from Virginia, not Mississippi or Kentucky as he sometimes claimed and he once was the property of a Virginian named Lysander Utt.

Palomar was once known as Smith Mountain and Harrison was on the posse that tracked and strung up badmen, even finding the desperadoes that killed Smith himself. Everybody back then called Nate nigger, hell, that is what he called himself. Until the fifties the grade was marked Nigger Nate Grade or Nigger Grade on all the local maps. The NAACP made a stink in the 1950's and the name was finally cleaned up in 1955. Later, in 1967, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the names of 143 places throughout the country from “nigger” to “negro.”

San Diego County, even way out here in the liberal west, was certainly not immune from racism. I can remember seeing old pictures of the interior of the Del Dios Store in the 1950's with a sign that clearly said "white trade only." Blacks and jews were forbidden to live in the covenant of Rancho Santa Fe and in La Jolla until the early 1960's.

From A Brief History of the San Diego NAACP, 1917-2007:

In February 1924, San Diego NAACP president Elijah J. Gentry, a “shoe shiner” by trade and leader of the five year old branch sent a frank assessment of the racial climate in San Diego to NAACP field secretary James Weldon Johnson in New York.  “Colored people [in San Diego] are not allowed in restaurants, nor to drink soda water in drugstores, nor can they rent bathing suits at any bathing house or beach in this city,” Gentry revealed.  Despite the small number of blacks in the area and the perception of racial tolerance, San Diego was nonetheless “a very prejudice[d] city.” Moreover American-style racism had crept south of the border.  In 1926 when branch officials looked across the border in Tijuana, Mexico they saw signs in shops that proclaimed “colored not wanted.”  

(The NAACP) would be led by Jack Johnson Kimbrough, a gentlemanly, refined dentist from Lexington, Mississippi who arrived in San Diego from UC-Berkeley in 1935 and who held the branch presidency in 1947-1948.  


Humiliated and angered at having been refused a snack at a downtown “greasy spoon,” Kimbrough methodically devised a plan for redress that made him a pioneer in anti-discrimination protest tactics at the dawn of the civil rights revolution.  He recruited a group of black and white students at San Diego State College, carefully rehearsed them to act as customers and witnesses and then targeted white-owned restaurants that discriminated.  As the black students were denied service, the already seated white students would observe what transpired and be prepared to testify in court as to what they had witnessed.    
Using Kimbrough’s innovative scheme, the NAACP filed and won 31 of its 32 lawsuits against San Diego restaurants in little over a year, usually with court awards to plaintiffs of $300 per case which was split between the students and their attorney.  Kimbrough followed up this triumph with the desegregation of the Grant Grill at the prestigious U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego in 1948.  


From Wikipedia regarding La Jolla and antisemitism:

From its beginnings to the early 1960s, La Jolla was marketed by developers as a bastion of isolation and exclusivity. Antisemitic housing practices began in 1926 with the development of La Jolla Shores, and continued from the 1920s through about 1970.[27] In La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Hermosa, only people with pure European ancestry could own property (this excludes Jews, who were not considered "white"), and housing notices included racist comments against Jews and other minority groups. Housing restrictions were thought to be enough to keep "undesirable" ethnic groups from living in La Jolla, until the 1948 Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer prohibited such restrictive covenants. After the ruling, real estate companies used less obvious tactics to keep Jewish people out of La Jolla. Real estate agents would be fired if they sold a house to Jewish clients. There were no for-sale signs put up on properties, requiring the prospective buyer to go to a real estate office to find out what was available. If an agent suspected that a potential home buyer was a Jew, they would demand higher down payments and display green cards on their dashboards marked with the Star of David to warn the seller. The sellers would also send codes to their real estate agents; if their porch lights were on during the day, they did not want Jewish buyers.[28]

My family was one of the first openly jewish families when we moved into Rancho Santa Fe in the early 1970's. I can remember my little sisters bringing dreidle's to school, the small spinning tops that are synonymous with Chanukah. Other kids sheepishly admitted that they had similar objects at home but never felt comfortable disclosing their heritage in public. When the Protective Covenant of Rancho Santa Fe was first written back in the 1920s, there were restrictions or “Gentlemen’s Agreements” as to who could live in the Covenent, which excluded “Negroes, Asians and Jews.” Here is a pdf regarding the racial backstory to Rancho Santa Fe's Protective Covenant and the way it kept hispanics as a workforce yet denied them the right to live in the area, sending them instead to the balkanized community of Eden Gardens in nearby Solana Beach. 

I don't see a need to whitewash our racist heritage. Niggerhead in Texas or Nigger Nate right here in good old San Diego County, our crude and base language serves as an excellent legacy and grim reminder of a not too distant past.

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postscript - A San Diego County historian took me to task for not mentioning UCSD founder Roger Revelle's pressure on La Jolla to rescind the anti-semitic deed restrictions or risk not having professors and for not requiring Scripps researchers to sign loyalty oaths. His nemesis was a prominent attorney from the prestigious Gray, Cary, Ames and Frye law firm named Jim Archer.

In the early 1950s, Revelle had criticized the La Jolla Real Estate Brokers Association’s restrictive property deeds. “You can’t have a university without having Jewish professors,” he warned. “You’ll have to make up your minds whether you want a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You can’t have both.” Neither Archer nor the property owners of La Jolla were happy with his stance and as UC President Kerr later said: “Archer was a terror when his sense of patriotism was aroused.”

Thanks and duly noted.

Pretty Girl Why / Buffalo Springfield

beautiful evening, sunday.

My mom called today.
Your dad, he looks good.
Mom, he said he had never met me before.
Ya, but he looks good.

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Ain't No More Cane On This Brazos

Chad Mitchell Trio - Recorded in 1963

Mideast Chess

Fischer - Spassky, Game 6 - Reykjavic, 1972

Benjamin Netanyahu's recent announcement of plans to build 1100 new homes in the Har Homa settlement beyond the green line of East Jerusalem shows how disingenuous he really is about securing a two state solution with the Palestinians.

I do not blame the Palestinians for their end around and recent declaration at the United Nations. If I was in their shoes I would probably do the same thing. Netanyahu, a master of sophistry and end game strategy knows that he has the upper hand and that he can talk forever and never have to cede anything to the people of the West Bank and Gaza. He is not an honest broker or partner.

This so called position of strength is of course, totally illusory. Israel's actions only cement their position as a world pariah, further antagonize the Palestinians and their neighbors and makes the region more dangerous in the long term. It is in Israel's best interests to get out of their current role as occupier and jailer and fashion a contiguous state with which the Palestinian people can live in with pride and self respect. The status quo is simply unsustainable.

I heard Netanyahu try to downplay the building the other day..."they build their houses, we build our houses..." The reality is that building a settlement in the middle of a large arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem is both foolish and needlessly provocative.

And if Netanyahu has his way there will be nothing left for the Palestinians at all. The Israeli government needs to put themselves in their foe's position and craft a solution that serves the interests of all the parties in the region. These little games of the Likud and their far right religious allies only make the already remote prospects for future peace even less attainable.

Homer & Jethro - 16 tons

Monochrome

Nobody's fault but mine

More black lung, please.

The GOP is increasingly looking more and more like the anti human, corporate stooge party. From the HuffPo:

In the realm of mine safety, the  (new house) budget would prevent the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from tightening coal dust regulations to curb the number of miners suffering from black lung disease. For over a decade the labor department has been working to lower the amount of respirable coal dust legally allowed in a mine's atmosphere, a move the coal lobby has opposed. The Republican budget would stop any such rule changes in their tracks.


"It's something that's certainly needed," Tony Oppegard, an attorney and mine safety advocate, previously told HuffPost when discussing the MSHA rule. "And the coal industry is crying about it."


In a statement, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, made no apologies for blocking the rules, saying that the budget plan would help to "invest in people by freeing them from stifling government regulatory burdens that replace productivity with paperwork."


"By spending tax dollars strategically," Rehlberg said, "we can balance critical funding for programs that actually help people and families with the real need to rein in government over-spending."

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House Republicans once again are threatening to cut funding to National Public Radio. I was listening to a great story about the Brooklyn Dodgers on KPBS this morning, thinking how wonderful it was to have a news source without a corporate agenda. Of course it is a threat to the right, who see liberal bias behind every lamp post like Don Quixote. I think that public radio is a great forum for so many non political programs that I enjoy, it will be a shame if they are finally able to kill and defund it.

***

Libertarian godhead Ron Paul was on defense last week after he was confronted with the fact that one of his principal aides had died sick without health insurance, about 400k in the hole, a debt that his mother now is responsible for and is passing the hat around to cover. The aide had a preexisting condition and couldn't get a policy. Paul thinks that mandatory health insurance cuts into America's freedoms.

Campaign Manager Kent Snyder, the "driving force behind his election campaign" was only 49 when he died from viral pneumonia in 2008.

At the debate Paul said,"That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody ..." before he was cut off by the wild partisan applause. Paul explained later that Snyder was never denied care at the hospital.

What makes it doubly tragic is that Paul is too stupid to see that we all are going to have to pay for the unpaid medical bill, in the form of higher premiums for the rest of us.

***

I got to pull for the Milwaukee Brewers in the playoffs. When was the last time Milwaukee smelled a division title, the 1950's with Aaron, Spahn and Matthews? They are due.

***

Why is my wife making me eat all this cantaloupe?

***

I am actually sick as a dog tonight. Felt lousy for two days and it is getting worse. No picnic in the best of circumstances, I am a real pain when I am ill. Had to see my tax guy this morning and ran over to La Especial Norte for chicken soup but even that couldn't do the trick.  Hope that I can turn it around soon. Started out as a head cold but getting more and more like the flu. Too much stress of late.

***

Of course I have friends who are really sick. My friend S told me today that she has skin cancer of the leg that the insurance is refusing to pick up because it is not on her face. Nasty squamous carcinoma. She is going to lose a chunk. Why the hell won't the bastards cover it? Wishing her the best. M has a gluteal cyst that is no fun either and has turned into a fistula. These are truly the glory years, aren't they?

***

Read practically any 18th and 19th century book and you would realize that any person the north side of fifty is positively ancient so I guess we greybeards should all feel lucky.

***

The Blast would like to send condolences to my good pal Michael Loughlin, in regards to the death of his brother Robert, the New Jersey artist who was run down crossing the street to take care of some kittens in North Bergen. He was a very famous painter and picker, responsible for "the brute" which I show at left. Loughlin is survived by his partner of 31 years, Gary.

Bears - Quicksilver Messenger Service

Blind woman tasered

Cops behaving badly

Jurors call bullshit - Los Angeles Times.

FBI calls Bullshit, too. WaPo

 "You see my fists? Now they're getting ready to fuck you up." Fullerton cop charged with murder.

Police brutality, New York Edition.

Don't forget Gardena.

Rocky Mountain Style.

Even the lady cops get in on the fun.

Cornfed Justice.

Tasered in the Showme state. "We wanted to keep him from getting hurt..."

Eve 2012 Barry McGuire

Ida Griffin thought you might like this and sent it over.

Manny G sends over this one.

And Hudgins gives us Mr. Beam.

Drug Test

One of the favorite narratives of the right in this country is that welfare recipients are a bunch of shiftless alcoholics and druggies. If you don't win the game in these parts, you are a degenerate loser with a capital L. Never mind that the majority of relief goes to the elderly and dependent children. By all means blame those degenerate stoners.

Unfortunately the facts don't quite line up that way. A few weeks ago South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was forced to recant a soundbite she had been repeating ad nauseam from her bully pulpit, "at least half of the welfare recipients in her state had tested and were shown to be high on drugs." She was pushing for mandatory testing. She said that she had been told that out of hundreds of job applicants at the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation owned by the U.S. Energy Department, half had failed a drug test. Jim Giusti, a spokesman for Energy Department, said that in actuality out of the workers hired over the past few years, less than 1 percent had failed a test. Additionally, only new hires -- not applicants -- have to submit to testing in the first place.


"I've never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you're given good information," Haley told Jim Davenport of the Associated Press. "And now I'm learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something."

Gee, really Nikki? Rather than take responsibility for her scapegoating and slander, Haley chose to dig in. Haley told AP she'd used the anecdote "a million times" to promote drug-testing for the jobless. "It is the reason you're hearing me look into whether we can do drug testing," she said. And while her claims are now known to be bogus and Haley has promised not to repeat it, the governor said she still wants drug tests tied to jobless benefits and a revamped job training program, according to AP.

Haley dug in: "We were on the site. There were multiple people in there. And that comment that they made had a huge impact on me," Haley said. "It is the reason you're hearing me look into whether we can do drug testing. It's the reason you hear me focus so much on job training," Haley said. "Somebody can't say that and it not stick you in the gut." And "now they're all backing off saying it. And they know they said it.," Haley said. "But now they don't have the backup."

Haley is also bumping into her commerce department after more of her falsehoods were uncovered.

***

Drug testing for welfare applicants has been mandatory in Florida since July and the results have been quite surprising.

From Carl Hiaasen: After Republican Governor Rick Scott and his GOP majority legislature pushed for the program, angering civil libertarians who see it as contrary to the fourth amendment, The Department of Children and Families reported that since July, when the drug-testing program started, only 2.5 percent of welfare applicants have failed.

By contrast, about 8.9 percent of the general population illegally uses some kind of drug, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.This substantial disparity in favor of the unemployed is not an anomaly. Thirteen years ago, the Florida Legislature funded a pilot drug-testing project targeting poor residents who were receiving temporary cash assistance from the state. Of the nearly 8,800 applicants who got screened for drugs, fewer than 4 percent tested positive.

This little exercise has cost the taxpayers in Florida about 2.7 million dollars. Where is the big investigation? The only people happy are the testing companies. Certainly not the patrician set, who will have to look for some new scapegoats in the sunshine state. Carl Hiaasen has offered to pay to administer the same piss in the cup test to the 170 congressmen in the Florida Legislature. One or two guys have accepted but the wise majority are keeping their mouths shut. Don't hold your breath.

Hiaasen qualified his offer by saying he'd pay for the legislative drug tests only if all lawmakers took them together at the start of the legislative session in January. "That way when the crazy stuff starts to happen a month or two later people won't just automatically assume that they're all stoned," he said. "The reality will set in that these people ... actually don't have any drugs in their system and they're still acting this way."


If you want drug tests, lets take it to the statehouses, the corporate boards, across the board, hell all the way to the Supreme Court. Chief Rehnquist had a prescription pill habit for years and nobody uttered a peep. Serious Jones, you think all those rulings of his are actually legal? He was whacked out of his gourd. Rich or poor, time to belly up to the urinal and see what you've got.

Judy Henske

This is the definitive and earliest recording of a song written by West Virginian Billy Edd Wheeler. It is a coal miner's lament. The song was covered by a lot of people, The Jefferson Airplane, Richie Havens, We Five, Gram Parsons amongst many others. I first heard it recorded by the Airplane, sang by Signe Anderson, who based her stylistic interpretation on the amazing Henske's. Grace sang it with Marty when she joined the band.

Out of all the female singers of the sixties that never got the acclaim they deserved, Judy goes to the top of the list, notwithstanding the fact that she mentions Fallbrook in one of her songs.

June Tabor

My little runaway.

Jim called me yesterday to ask if I was getting religion all of a sudden? Guy can't even post a little Mormon Tabernacle Choir without people thinking he is going off the deep end. It is okay to like gospel and spirituals without feasting on the whole religious enchilada, isn't it? I guess I did invite it, asking those so inclined to invoke a prayer for my friend.

I apologize for the dark and depressing tone that the blog has taken of late but it has been that kind of month. Two friends' father's dying, friends with diagnosis of lymphoma, valley fever and multiple sclerosis, lots of good friends going through the shit right now. Many back surgeries in my world, too. People, we are falling apart.

Yesterday I decided that it was time to visit my father, who lives in a geographic location that can best be described as extremely inconvenient. About six or seven hours each way, depending on how beat up I want to feel at the end of the journey.

I got up at 4:30 and left at 6 in the morning. Thought I had it nailed when I made Glendora in an hour ten Then I hit a solid wall of traffic and didn't get to Pasadena for another hour. Did my normal pitstop at Whole Foods and listened to a mixture of oldies music and sports radio on my way up through the Grapevine.

Once you get to the bottom of the Grapevine and into Kern County everything changes and you truly enter another land. Radio turns into god and country and lots of it. Maybe an occasional rap or hip hop station. The rock stations out in the great beyond are pretty unlistenable as well. Never gets out of the macho, alpha, Aerosmith, Maiden groove. I hadn't brought much music and only had Dylan cd's in the car and they started to make me feel ill after a while.

Kern and Tulare counties and the whole central valley for that matter is extremely polluted. The air is horrible, there are pesticides everywhere, the breadbasket of our nation a fetid corporate swamp. I looked at rows and rows of grape vines covered with dust and dirt and wondered what kind of vintages could ever come out of such a shithole.

***

As I believe I have mentioned, my father is suffering from dementia and it appears to be accelerating somewhat. His wonderful wife, my stepmother, is dealing with it as best as she can but it is not easy. He is in a home, using up the limited (two year) long term care that they had allotted for the possibility. The reality is that he could live a lot longer than that, he has the constitution of a horse. That would not be necessarily a good thing.

My stepmother is shouldering my father's burden largely by herself, the rest of the children scattered to all points of the compass and maybe not having an excessive amount of interest. Barbara and Buzz have their hands full with my mother. My stepmother threatens to drop my dad off at my doorstep one day.

***

He brightened up when he saw me yesterday afternoon. Shela had brought him home from the facility to see me. He was laying down in bed and I helped him put his shoes on. Couldn't quite put his finger on it, didn't know my name, but he was sure that he recognized me from somewhere. His mnemonic incantation of "old man, old man, old man, schnaim" is now repeated as an ever present but quiet mantra. I hugged him and smiled and talked to him about the details of our life together, in hopes of piercing the cognitive chasm of unfamiliarity. I spoke in english and hebrew, hoping to break through some long distant mental chamber. Nothing worked. It was still nice to be in his presence. He is sweet in his dotage, maybe a bit nicer than when he had full control of his faculties. I love him and feel incredible sadness at what he has become.

It is difficult emotionally to see a father or a mother reduced to this, especially a man as brilliant as my father. The visit drained me. Everything that has come down the last couple weeks has been wearing on me and I got a wild hair and decided that I had to cut and run. My soul needed air. Like right now. I began to drive the few hours to Yosemite and commenced my journey to get lost in the wild. It is what I  do to recharge, works in the Sierras, works in slick rock country and the navajo reservation. Kauai as well when I can afford it.

I drove up the south entrance to Yosemite, past the Mariposa Grove, the old resort Wawona and through the tunnel and into Yosemite Valley. The tunnel is pretty awesome because the rocks are sweating and it's very wet and moist in certain spots going through the tunnel.

I had not been to Yosemite for ages and it was stunning. Last time I entered from Lee Vining. I had been told not to expect water in either falls at this late time but they were both running nicely. Gazed at El Cap and Bridle Veil and hiked around a bit. My legs were sore from hammering an accelerator all day and the muscle behind my right knee was bulging and taught like a sprung cable. Coupled with the thin mountain air and my current cardiac conditioning, I sort of limped and lumbered up the trails to the falls in a bit of pain like an old man.

I was walking in the meadow when I saw the bear. He was limping along himself, hunting insects or grubs. I don't think that I have ever seen a bear in the wild. He seemed like a good sort, happy to solipsistically amble along in his own company. A few rangers came by, one with a microphone that amplified the bear's utterances, somehow being connected to a transmitter. He told me that it was rare to see the bear at this particular location. This bear is named orange -36. He is a black bear and about eight years old and has a leg injury of some kind. Bears are solitary creatures after the age of one or two and this guy weighed about 300 lbs. We moved back so that he could cross the boardwalk and to give him space. The ranger estimated that he was about 20 yards away.

I walked over to the stately old Ahwannee Hotel to look at the large Gunnar Widforss watercolors and see if there might be a room cancellation. There were not and I was advised there was no other vacancy in the park. This was problematic, as I wanted to take some twilight photos in the park. But these were not the least of my problems. A notoriously poor planner and packer I had no gas, underwear, food, water, toothbrush, hairbrush, clothes, cash. Heart medicine for one night. No overnight bag. Nothing. And to make matters worse, I hadn't checked the camera battery and it too was on e.

I had the light bulb realization that I didn't really care. I would sleep in my car if I had too, I have certainly slept in worse places. I had a coat. I was content. The untouched beauty of the iconic national park had given me a little respite from my funk and all of my friend's medical travails. It was all good and I had even seen a bear.

I coasted the thirty or so miles out of the park, passing a very confident coyote striding the other way at one point. I made my way back to a filling station in Oakhurst and found a cheap hotel. Managed to find a restaurant and bought a steak with plastic. I got up early this morning and drove back to my stepmothers, saw my stepsister's kid Bennett, and then went to see my father in the home. He seemed out of touch with his surroundings but no worse for wear and we had a nice visit. He mentioned that he didn't believe that we had ever met.

It took all day to drive back. I can't believe that I ended up in Yosemite but I almost drove to San Francisco and that is even farther. BigD had his first chemo today. Took four attempts before they could remove a sufficient amount of bone marrow from him. I don't envy my friend. I have been there and many get cut down just by the constant invasion and attrition. Of course my bud is tough as nails. If anyone can beat this it is him. 

I stopped in Bakersfield and bought a painting on the way home. Took forever to get back.

Next time I bring my wife with me and we get a nice room and stay a couple of days. Bring provisions and a toothbrush. The proper photographic equipment. Want to drive out to Glacier Point and hike a bit more and explore the area. I had forgotten how wonderful Yosemite truly is. Next stop Yellowstone.

Black Peter

A friend or two I love at hand...

Life is a bittersweet affair. If you live long enough you get to see the people you love get sick and sometimes die. Unless you are lucky enough to go first.

I had been dreading the call. My great buddy BigD told me that he needed to talk to me about something. I was nervous and decided to wait a while and not call him back. Didn't want to deal with it.  BigD had undergone a kidney transplant, a need necessitated by a polycystic kidney condition that had vanquished a few of his family members already. He had been having problems with the anti-rejection drugs. I was hoping that it was not medical, hoping it was a squabble with his wife or an unfortunate financial plummet.

But it was not to be. One of my best and oldest friends called yesterday and let me know that he has a B cell lymphoma. I am not sure if it is the diffused large cell type, not knowing a lot about the particular disease. I just did a check and see that half the people with the disease get cured. I hope that my friend is one of the lucky ones, he has three children and a nephew that he needs to see grow up. Hell, Tony lived with CLL for twenty years.

It is going to be trickier for BigD, because of the compromised immune system that he has been dealt but I think that he can pull through. He is one of the toughest people I have ever known, along with being one of the most talented, smartest and most tech savvy. Loves cars and gadgets. Has had and driven the best. Pioneered experimental polaroid camera techniques. Brilliant and always ahead of the curve. Chemo starts for my friend this week.

***

BigD was a college roommate who I first met while following the Grateful Dead. He had a sony D-5 and was enough of a tech geek to make friends with Healy, Chubbs and Pearson and plug straight into the board. We made little pilgrimages around the country together, seeking maximum fun and contact. D followed the band to Europe, Alaska and points even farther than I did.

We both had BMWs and tended to operate with a certain degree of style. He is a tough guy from Chicago and we hit it off really well. I wrote a few term papers for him at UCSD and he detailed my beamer. D was a film major and rode his fancy italian road bikes for the school bike team. He worked at the bike shop and loved north San Diego county. What was not to love in those days. Girls, frisbee, waves, it was close to heaven on earth.

We had a third member of the triad, Jeff. Somewhere along the line Jeff left the gang, finding honest work and maybe religion and his own unfortunate brush with mortality.

Rick Griffin loved to hang out at our Cardiff pad and called us the three musketeers or the fabulous furry freak brothers. We lived on the high point at San Elijo overlooking the prized Cardiff Reef surf spot. Lots of party, an occasional nitrous tank, we certainly took elevation to its own new height.

***

My boss Lou used to tell me that you were lucky to have five real friends that you can count on in your whole life. He might have been right. D is certainly one of those five. After thirty five years of friendship, tempered in the holy fire of the Swing Auditorium in February of 1977, I know that he is one of the handful of people that I can always count on. Patient tech support, confidante, sometimes marital or life counselor, faithful friend. In spite of all of our inherent weaknesses and limitations and the vagaries of life, we always found time for each other, in person or on the phone. He had been telling me recently that we need to have more fun together. Vegas or another crazy trip to Amsterdam.

***

I have faced my own mortality far many more times than most. I wasn't supposed to live past fifteen, once was pronounced with three days left on the planet and rode past a few other supposed death sentences. Fools. Didn't you know only the good die young?

If I was to take my leave of this planet tomorrow I could go without regrets. A painful separation from the woman I love and who has given me so much, but the confidence to know that she could find her way on her own if she had to. That would be my only regret. Because I was one of those lucky people who made hundreds and thousands of friends and loved the people in my life deeply. In the final analysis, it is people that make this human experience, at least for me. And dogs and cats, of course.

I could take leave of this earth because I don't have children that I need to see grow up. I can't imagine the pain of missing that. That is the pain that BigD is facing in his battle with this wicked beast. The loss of my sister tore my heart apart, the loss of contact with your progeny would certainly be at least as terrible.

***

If you are a religious sort or have some little in somewhere that you don't like to talk about, utter a prayer or a blessing for my friend and wish him a speedy recovery.

Mine eyes have seen the glory.