Hickory Wind

If I don't get some shelter.

I have to go pay a bill and I don't want to get up. It is so much more fun to while away my time on the internet.

*
Brett loaned me the Keith Richards book. Leslie read it first, I was reading Medium Raw, Anthony Bourdaine's book which was better and a touch less self absorbed than his first book, Kitchen Confidential. As a deadhead I was quite turned off by the gauche Bourdaine when he said that listening to the dead in his kitchen was immediate grounds for dismissal.

In this book he talks about being tripped out at Hot Tuna concerts and redeems himself, at least somewhat partially.

Anyway back to Keef, I have to confess that I could not finish the thing, or even start it properly, for that matter. Everything was about the bitches, or that prick Mick, or sticking a needle in your arm. It nauseated me frankly, the dopey stupidity, the misogyny, the petty smallness of this rock god.

I did like a few things. He unveils the secret of his playing - open G and leave off the top string, a secret he says he was forced to reveal, at near gunpoint, by Ike Turner. An interesting breakdown of Charlie Watts snare to hi-hat relationship, the added half beat creating the signature Stones texture. Neat stories about Graham Parsons, a very condescending tone regarding Brian Jones. He speaks fondly of a New Barbarians tour that was the worst music I have ever heard.

I also learned that if you are in a knife fight, it is always best to cut your opponent across the forehead initially, the sheet of blood causing little harm but will temporarily blind him and put an end to the swordplay.

Keef 

***

I found out last month that my father was down to three words, which he repeats endlessly in the home. Old man, old man, old man, old man, repeated mnemonically over and over like the rain man. And one other word. His wife asked me,"What does schnaim mean? This was easy, hebrew was his first language. It means time. It's time. I need to go see him and be with him. Even if it turns out to be a one way interchange.

***

Many of my friends and family are going through major changes right now, physically, emotionally, medically, financially. A few of you are under enormous burdens. (You hypochondriacs and drama queens forget it, I'm not talking about you. The people I am talking to, know I am talking to them.) I wish you the strength to endure and hope that you will share your burdens with us and those family members that love you, on a scale that everyone can handle and that things get righted soon. Things rarely stay crappy forever.

***

Something to ponder. I was recalling a passage yesterday from the book Tortoise mind that I wrote about a few months ago. They gave you a number sequence - 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17___ ... and ask you to fill in the next number. I guessed 19, which is completely in the box, and wrong in this particular instance, I might add, the actual number set in question only having the attribute and parameters of being an ever ascending number. The number I believe he was looking for was 18 or 22 or seventeen to the eleventh power. Coincidences do happen and you can't always assume.

Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera

Monday Rapidfire

Great article - Scientific American - Post office kicks FedEx and UPS ass!
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New York State slaps a GPS on worker's private car, spies on him for a month without a warrant.
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Red head  jizz no longer accepted at sperm bank.
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Floyd Mayweather is a cheap shot  punk and I hope that Manny Pacquiao one day punches his face in.
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Obese man sues White Castle because he is too fat to fit in their seats.
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A man goes to the doctor. The doctor says,"You are going to have to stop masturbating." The man asks, "How come?" Doctor says," So that I can finish the examination."
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Hospitalization for dirt eating disorder nearly doubles in last decade.
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Sheriff Joe on Obama's trail.
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Let's cut taxes for the wealthy and raise them for everybody else...
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Yossi Klein Halevi on the blame Israel game - New Republic.
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German "Pirate Party" sees gains - first online political group? - Spiegel.
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United States kisses Red China bootie, shtupps Taiwan in fighter jet deal.
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American Specialty Agriculture act screws U.S. workers too! - SPLC.
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Skeptoid on Fracking.
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Obama White House punts on open government - Secrecy News.
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U.K. scientists battle creationism - Science
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States free to disagree on stupid war on drugs - Reason.
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Wikileaks exposes cuba's ladies in white - Pravda

Mose Allison Quintet 1962 ~ Stop This World

Thanks, Smokey!

Cafe Primo

I would like to give you my two bits about my coffee group. I have been drinking coffee with a core group of friends, practically every morning for the last twenty years or so. We have been together so long that we are now on our fourth or fifth coffee shop, we latch on to a klatch and they go out of business like an espresso machine on its last grounds.

My group has stayed pretty consistent over the years although we have lost a few souls over time. We lose a few and we gain a few, and there is sort of an unspoken initiation rite that weeds out the chaff and the weaklings and keeps the thing on the up and up. We started at Charlies, and then went to Fallbrook Cafe, then Clementines and Chubby Chix and have had a table at Cafe Primo for the past five years or so. Might be one or two that I have forgotten. Woe to those that get there early and sit at our table, those not respecting our early morning authority sure to get a stink eye or two.

The original core group was Bruce the locksmith, Bob the retired plumber turned expert witness, Frank the cop (now deceased), Russ (stopped coming out to play when Frank kicked), Ron the dentist, Mike and me. WildBill figured the thing out really quick and fit right in. He is usually the first to arrive and has the duty of securing our table. Pete sells Nomads, car parts and surfboards. Tony Z occasionally makes the scene. A few others. Mike is the oldest member, but his kids took the keys away and he's a bit oversensitive, he got miffed and left the group about a year ago after somebody pissed him off. I suggested that Little Tony C. sit on a telephone book in his Escalade for a better view and he decided to seek greener pastures. Like caribou trying to survive a cold winter, you just have to step over the fallen comrade and keep moving.

The group is non denominational and probably evenly split politically. We don't talk a lot of politics but everyone is free to say their piece if they want to and nobody ever gets shut down. Some guys got bucks, some of us are poor, we don't know and we don't care. We all have a routine. Bob brings the Los Angeles Times and gives it to me when he is finished reading about his precious Anaheim Angels and I get to bring it home.

The tables sort of radiate out from ours and take their proscribed place in the natural scheme of things. The next table has about 10 to 15 years on us, retired firemen, military men and assorted good guys. The outside chairs are for the hardcore smokers, Brett and Fred, Bobbie, Denise, Krash and a few assorted schizophrenics, although they are usually there later in the day and it depends on who the cops have picked up. There is a guy named drummer boy who is always tapping drumsticks, Frank who talks to invisible demons and Lisa, and I just don't want to know what makes her tick.

We have an ex preacher in the room who drives a maserati and writes books, a woman's weekly book club and just a whole host of characters. A woman with a brain injury, an ex writer, who occasionally busses our table for us. By nine the moms and bible studiers show up and I make myself scarce. Everybody at Primo knows where they sit and knows where they stand. Warren comes by in the afternoon and holds court on the late shift and Lance has been suspiciously hanging around for far too long lately and also likes to bum my newspaper.

There is a real bonding when you drink coffee with a bunch of regular guys after twenty years. As far as I know, nobody at the table drinks any of the sissy drinks, all straight coffee drinkers. The coffee is fair there, we come for the lies, tall tales and companionship. I believe that the bakery goods come out of a package from Costco.

Stories get old but we are cordial enough to bob our heads and pretend that it is the first time again. Or maybe say 57 or number 63 when we sense an old joke or routine, like the old bowery boys did. Mike went on and on about the parking lot for the better of 18 years and we still get stories of Bob's thrilling exploits as a commercial plumber or we will occasionally ply for information on Doc's latest root canal.

Bob has bees in the owl box that he put up that the owl decided to never live in or visit. This morning we told him how to burn burlap in a smoker so that he could remove the queen. Bruce said that they sometimes got two queens. I said that was a problem because two queens would probably want to redecorate. Bill said "Or eventually adopt a black child."

The repartee goes back and forth, but with a nice slow rhythm, we have spent so mornings together that the whole group is sort of like an old married couple. And we have spent almost as much time together as an old married couple.

Maybe stop by one day for a cup.

Partisan Rant #328 or payback's a bitch.

I have been thinking about the sad state of affairs that we find ourselves in here in America and I would like to make a few comments about the Obama presidency. Whether it lasts another year or five more years, I have a sneaking suspicion that we lay dead in our tracks and that nothing can be achieved.

Why, do you ask? Because it is evident that Republicans hate this president more than they love their country. They have done nothing since his election except thwart and obstruct him on every issue and position. I have never seen a more partisan GOP. From the Issa hearings to the Solyndra investigation (a program first vetted by Bush) the clear aim of the Republicans has been to effect maximum pain on our leader at every turn. Even if America goes down the toilet, what most matters to the GOP is returning to power.

They paint him as a marxist over a health care plan that has been the aim of every democratic and progressive agenda for the last 20 years.  He is a closet muslim, a revolutionary, a disciple of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayres, he is responsible for  everything short of performing Black Masses in the Lincoln Bedroom.

The Republicans have been remarkably successful at holding the line of their complete obstruction. So, what have we learned? That if one side has its oars in the water and the other side decides not to paddle we will surely sink. The problem is that this type of spoiled and petulant behavior works both ways. If the Repubs do return the power, can they not expect the same type of resistance and behavior from the democrats? And what does this type of tit for tat behavior mean for the future of our country?

A divided population and a divided electorate means that there is no mandate. If we don't work together, nothing will get done. That means both sides will have to ultimately compromise or we will forever remain in a morass. Let the man elected to lead, lead for once and see if the sky falls in. But a republican party would rather talk about getting rid of social security and medicare and the EPA and letting people without insurance simply die.

You left this President with the nastiest and worse hand possible. You said that the markets would police themselves and the predators like Morgan and Goldman ran wild peddling their worthless paper. But it's Obama's fault because he tried to stimulate the economy you trashed and couldn't clean up your mess. Bush spent like a drunken sailor and Obama has to pay the ticket.

I would hope that Democrats have a long memory of the current brand of GOP intransigence. It will be nice to tell them where to stick it some day and give them the same back of the hand they have shown our president. But Dems are built a bit different and will probably take the fall, with the realization that making things work is more important than bringing down a presidency and exacting punishment and retribution. It is a pity that the radical ideologues on the right don't share the same sense of responsibility.

Johnny Winter - Stray Cat Blues

The naked truth

I guess one of my obsessions is with the round number thing. When I am pumping gas I tend to stop on an even dollar, say thirty five bucks on the nose. My wife takes an opposite tack, she always ends on a number like, say $32.32. She says that it makes it easier for her to check her statement and make sure nobody is monkeying with her credit card. I wonder if my strange o.c.d. with my habit of reaching for a "centiunit" or multiple of 100 is my own little quirk or is one that is shared by you folks or the greater world at large?

The reason I am broaching the subject is that this is my 503rd blog post of the year. Now a look back at the last three years shows that I have written 600 posts the first year, then 625 and finally, 650 of my little gems last year. My pattern or orderly obsession is crying out for if not 700, at least the equally permissible 675 posts for the year 2011. It will take 172 more submissions to hit the storied literary bullseye on the latter figure. If my math is correct, there are 106 days left in the year or an output of about 1.6 posts a day to reach the less lofty goal. Definitely doable but will take a little work.

Now in a normal year I would think that I could hit a watermark like this with my eyes closed and my fingers crossed. Give me a head of steam and a slight tailwind and I can shpiel with the best of them. Unfortunately, this is not a normal year. I have repeatedly hit a writer's block this year, being either disinterested in continually feeding this bloggy beast or frankly sick of my own voice.

Now I managed to suck it up and hit the hundred blog post in July and I hope that you were suitably impressed. The shame of sticking on 98 or 99 propelled me to even greater heights. But due to apathy and travel, August was my cumulative nadir for the year and September is trudging along awfully slowly as well.

So don't be surprised to see a little backsliding this year, I may end on 577 or some other odd figure equally random and un noteworthy. Or else I  rely on hopeful inspiration or hitting you with lots of music. I guess that we will see.

I saw the figure 5 in gold - Charles DeMuth (1883-1935) c. 1928
Oil on Cardboard

Move it on Over

Pinnell Gallery Show

A few people asked me to post the winning entrants that I chose for the Pinnell Gallery small painting show that I judged last week. There was a lot of very nice work and it was hard to make a decision but these paintings are the ones that ultimately made the grade.

The first painting is by William Gullette and took the blue ribbon at the exhibition. It is titled "Out at the point." It did not photograph optimally but is striking in person and notable for its strong and confident brushwork. I really like this talented artist's loose yet descriptive approach.

 My second place winner was "The Dancer" by Carlsbad's Rita Pacheco. All three of her submissions were outstanding and it was hard to make a decision but I felt that this painting was the strongest compositionally. Rita has an excellent sensitivity for values and shows nice brushwork here.

The third place award went to Chick Curtis, an outstanding artist who is what I would call a modern day tonalist. Chick's work always knocks me out. This painting is called "Mooo-ve over."

These are my three honorable mentions, Janie Kent's "Dreamy Afternoon," Brian Bateman's "Spitfire Dawn" and Vicki Gammell's pastel "Waiting to ripen." All three wonderful and competent works.

I had a wonderful time judging and hope that I get a chance to do it again. I would like to thank Rich Stergulz for giving me the opportunity.

How To Play Baseball

Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game: You can win or you can lose or it can rain.
Casey Stengel

Take the Padres, please!

The San Diego Padres have to be the most pitiful team in baseball. The new owner, Jeff Moorad, has taken a team that won 90 games last year, in fact one game from winning the division championship and successfully reversed course, with a current record of 63-87.  Only the Houston Astros have a worse record but they sucked last year as well so we will keep them out of this conversation. The Padres have lost eight of their last ten games and seventeen of their last twenty.

How did Moorad perform this Houdini like trick? He fired a very resourceful General Manager, gunslinger Kevin Towers, a man who has catapulted the lowly Arizona Diamondbacks to the top of the standings, replacing him with a young and wet behind the ears yes man, Jed Hoyer. Jed serves as the beleaguered good cop in the Padres drama this year. He gave up our star player, Adrian Gonzalez, currently hitting .340 for the Red Sox for a bag of poop including the weak hitting pheenom Anthony Rizzo and his .143 batting average. They jettisoned all the gritty, hustling players that worked their ass off last year like Scotty Hairston and loaded up on do-nothing Ryan Ludwick types who couldn't hit in the over spacious park.

They have exactly one hitter over .300, Jesus Guzman, a first baseman with no range at a position that is already crowded. The rest of the active roster is strictly Mendoza. They have the second worse team average in baseball, hitting a collective .238. So much for building the sparkling new stadium.

Hoyer and Moorad have woefully cried out about the state of the Padres minor league system but it is all malarkey. When they have a good farm raised product, e.g. Peavy, Gonzalez or Adams, he gets jettisoned anyway. Closer and fan favorite Heath Bell was recently ignominiously put on waivers. Thanks a lot, Heath, let us kick you in the ass on the way out the door, just like Trevor.

The reality is that the Padres are one of the most profitable teams in baseball, according to Forbes Magazine and that Moorad is another Tom Werner carpetbagger getting rich off of the hapless hopes and dreams of the San Diego Padres fan. Moorad is the same skinflint who cut hometown hero Randy Johnson in Phoenix, even after he offered to take a 50% pay cut.

The Padres had the lowest payroll in baseball last year, at 32 million. They were the 19th most valuable team, valued at over 406 million dollars. They had a reputed revenue of 159 million dollars. Sounds like fat city to me. Moorad has recently served notice that nothing will change, don't look for him to spend any gelt next year either.

The Padres are under the perception that fans don't really care all that much about winning and losing, preferring to savor "the Padres Experience." Give me a break. I feel like a sucker for even casually tuning in to this team of minor league scrubs. If you can't play with the big boys, sell the team to someone who can, skinflint. Petco was built under the perception that San Diego would be fielding a major league team.

If you don't know who Moorad is, he is the ex sports agent partner of Leigh Steinberg, the wunderkind who eventually went on a long binge off the deep end. Moorad has a 12%  piece of the Diamondbacks, which was apparently sufficient until he got his own team to ruin. The owner of the Diamondbacks, Ken Kendrick is apparently not real happy with the whole situation but at least now Moorad can cheer for a winner. The rest of the Padres ownership group, at least as reported in Wikipedia, is former Dallas Cowboys QB Troy Aikman, Rancho Santa Fe businessman Wayne Seltzer, entrepreneur John McAvoy, local home builder Al Baldwin, Phoenix, AZ businessman/real estate developer Jay D.. Stein, NoCal money manager Rick Berry, CEO of Save Mart Supermarkets Bob Piccinini, cell-phone honcho John McEvoy, and Panda Restaurant CEO Tom Davin. A Texas guy, an Arizona guy, a Nocal guy, one dude from Rancho Santa Fe. Maybe a summer home...

I don't go back to Lane Field, but I am a Padres fan all the way back to Westgate Park when they were a Dodgers farm club. I don't know why we always get these lousy, sharpie, big belt buckle, little dick owners. The last guy with any integrity and a pot to piss in was Ray Kroc.

If you fall for this team's brand of b.s. you will eventually get what you deserve. Nothing.

Bettye LaVette

Hebrew Jeebies

I am a bit worried about the middle east. Israel is in the thick of it in an ever changing landscape and things look like they could be quickly getting much worse. Turkey, having been spurned by the EU, is trying to now take up the mantle of arab populism, in this case promising to have gunships accompany the next flotilla to break the Gaza embargo. Could be a serious recipe for disaster. Fuses are lit throughout the middle east, the question is where the explosion will take place.

While the Arab Spring may have allowed the people of Egypt to throw off the yoke of oppression and Mubarek's dictatorship, it has also given the long outlawed Muslim Brotherhood a new place at the table and called Israel's longest standing peace treaty with its largest arab neighbor into question.

Last week, when terrorists used Egypt as a springboard for unilateral murderous attacks near Eilat, and then fled back to Egypt to meld in with Egyptian military and police, the nation was outraged when Israel fired on the suspected killers, resulting in the unfortunate deaths of some innocent Egyptians. This type of hiding behind the civilian population is often played out in Gaza as well, with the population decrying "collective punishment." Where is the sympathy for the innocent Israelis killed on the bus? Of course it is wrong for the Israelis to collectively punish but perfectly acceptable in the arab mind to kill any Israeli for the sole reason that they are Israeli. That sort of collective guilt is evidently okay.

Unfortunately, the new Egyptian power system seems quite headless at present. Egyptian commandos had to save five Israelis trapped in their embassy from a marauding horde last week. My hebrew is a bit rusty but I seem to remember the expression Bak book blip p'cock, a bottle without a cork.

It is strange that with all of the unrest in the arab world, the genocide in Syria, now blessed by their Russian handlers, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen, all over the map, they never fail to go after Israel when things look bad an they need a straw dog. I heard an egyptian yesterday talking about the need to avenge arab pride and couldn't help thinking of a half century ago with Nasser.

The third pincer is sure to be the Palestinian request for statehood, now something that I believe will indeed happen and end up going to the General Assembly. With the Islamists now arm and arm with the European and American left, it appears to be a fait accompli. A left that is quick to chide Israel but remains suspiciously silent at a host of atrocities by the other players in the region. And while I think that the timing of statehood is not necessarily acceptable to Israel, I think that it is inevitable. And after the radical islamists continue to bomb and murder and otherwise drive their unpopular neighbors into the ocean or back to Germany or Poland, the left can throw their hands up and slink away and never consider how badly they have been co-opted by a blatantly militarist and thinly disguised war strategy.

Unfortunately, Oslo is now officially dead and neither the PLO or Hamas is willing to accept Israel's right to exist with defensible border security. They will get a state and a foothold and chip, chip, chip for the foreseeable future until they can recover the whole land of Eretz Israel in its totality.

Israel is much to blame for any of these probabilities. Gaza has always been unsustainable, the avocation of jailer an affront to sensitive jewish psyches and the Likud government too willing to cede power to the right wing fundamentalists and settlers. Of course, when your very life and existence is threatened, it is hard to think about concepts like sustainability. It is funny that Israel sees itself as relatively weak strategically, surrounded by larger foes yet those very neighbors see it as a strong institutionalized power. Both sides are in an odd race to claim the greater victimhood in order to frame world opinion.

When the cork does blow in the region, especially if it is accompanied by concerted force from Iranian backed Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, or a militarized and radicalized Egypt, things are going to get ugly very quickly. The stars are aligned very oddly at present and Israel is going to be largely on its own, along with a wide swath of the american bible belt.

Netanyahu has always been a little bit too cute, weighing the probabilities with a callous eye and seemingly quite insensitive to the real suffering of the occupied. Much of which is admittedly self inflicted. The mideast needs a new paradigm. Hopefully there will one day soon be fresh thinking that breaks the players away from the continuous cycle of squalor, violence and terrorism and can provide viable solutions for all of the inhabitants of the region.

Today, Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador to the United Nations, said any new Palestinian state should be free of jews. Interesting, since approx. 1.3 million muslims live as full citizens in the jewish state. Guess it doesn't work both ways. They will be the first country to ban jews since Nazi Germany. Don't hold your breath waiting for the left to decry a muslim only state where jews are forbidden. Where is the condemnation from the progressive left regarding sharia law, a law that makes it a crime punishable by death to leave islam? Is it not a fundamental human right to believe, or not believe, as you choose?

Reunion - Dafos

Crawling Creepers

Leslie found this ginormous spider in the flower garden yesterday, bouncing along on his web like he was dovening. Grabbed the camera from the car and snapped a shot or two. He was slightly uncooperative but you get the idea. Anybody know anything about this particular arachnid species?

***

I was privileged to judge Rich Stergulz's miniature painting show at the Pinnell Gallery that will hang this month. No painting was over 8 x 10". I have judged several shows over the years and thoroughly enjoy the task and the responsibility.

I went over to the gallery mid week and made preliminary assessments, then went back the next day and gave everything another look before awarding the six final selections. It was difficult as there was a lot of nice work. Had one lady accuse me of favoritism right off the bat. Couple people thought they should have done better. Impossible job. I have a hard time with the notion of art competitions anyway. If I have learned anything in the thirty plus years I have been buying and selling art it is there is an ass for every saddle. Paint, draw, write for your own pleasure and it all takes care of itself somehow.

Saturday I attended the awards presentation and after awarding my winners, stayed back and offered to critique all of the entries. I gave out lots of critiques and I think it was appreciated all the way around. This was really neat, for me and the artists, who I think enjoyed it to a person. I broke down the works in terms of brushwork, composition and chroma, and dished out praise and criticism as necessary. Even the really accomplished people appreciated an objective view.

Afterwards one entrant said that it was the first time in 15 years of entering art shows that a judge offered to critique. I have always tried to do it and hope that I get called upon again in the future.

***

On my way to see Bruce Hornsby and Jackie Greene perform at the Belly Up tavern tonight. See you there? Postscript: Renee and I got to the coast and I realized ( after a phone call from Sheebz) that the concert was actually last night! Out about 180 simoleans. We made the best of it and had a nice dinner at the Peruvian restaurant Q'ero. I had a quail appetizer and a massive pork shoulder in the aji amirilla sauce. Renee had the hanger steak in the spicy sauce. Highly recommended.

Jesus loves nukes.

Slide - U.S. Air Force Power Point presentation

In April of 2009 I wrote a short blog post about the evangelization of the United States Air Force Academy and the whole Mikey Weinstein affair. I furnished a link to an excellent article in Harpers by Jeff Sharlat titled Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military. This was an eye opening article and I encourage you to read or reread it.

Fast forward to July of this year. Jason Leopold wrote another great article for Truthout that exposed more shenanigans entitled Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons. This article discusses Air Force officer training that used the old and new testament as primers for justifying the use of nuclear weapons. For instance, a power point presentation had a slide that contains a passage from the Book of Revelation that says "Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior."

The presentation and training had much curriculum that seems to run over any notion of a separation of church and state or a non denominational military for that matter.

A few more slides I glean from the Truthout article:


For example, in the Old Testament, "Abraham organized an army to rescue [his nephew] Lot," God motivated "judges (Samson, Deborah, Barak) to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors," and "David is a warrior who is also a 'man after God's own heart.'"


In the New Testament, citing Timothy 2:3, according to the PowerPoint, "Paul chooses three illustrations to show what it means to be a good disciple of Christ":


    Farmer--work hard and be patient
    Athlete--be self-disciplined, train
    Soldier--be willing to put up with hardship


Moreover, in Romans 13:4, the PowerPoint notes, "In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice."


"One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program, is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.


"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."

After Leopold's article was written, and an investigation was launched by the Military Religious Freedon Foundation (MRFF) the Air Force shut down the fundamentalist ethics training. Thirty-one Air Force officers decided to take a stand against what they called the “Jesus Loves Nukes speech,” part of the Air Force’s missile launch officer training. These Air Force officers approached the MRFF for help with getting the overtly Christian “ethics” training removed from the “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” class, a mandatory part of the first week of training for all officers in missile launch training at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

***

Fast forward to this week. Texas Senator John Cornyn (R -TX) has written a letter to the Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley, protesting the decision:

The Honorable Michael B. Donley
Department of the Air Force
1670 Air Force Pentagon
Washington, DC 20330

Dear Secretary Donley:

I write to express my concern regarding recent reports that the Department of the Air Force has suspended a course entitled “Christian Just War Theory.” It is my understanding that this course, taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base, was suspended and is currently under review by Air Force officials after complaints were made that the curriculum referenced passages from the Bible.

As you may know, the reports indicate that a spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command has said that the main purpose of the course was to enable missile launch officers to understand that “what they are embarking on is very difficult and you have to have a certain amount of ethics about what you are doing to do that job.” Our military services, like our nation, are comprised of people representing all faiths. However, that fact does not preclude military chaplains from teaching a course on just war theory — a theory that has been a part of moral philosophy and the law of war for centuries — merely because it has historically been predicated on religious texts.

Moreover, suspending a course like this because of references to religious texts misinterprets the First Amendment. Although our Founding Fathers rightly included language in the Constitution that precludes the Federal government from establishing an official religion, this language does not, as some have argued, protect them from exposure to religious references. The First Amendment is intended to guarantee an individual’s right to the free exercise of religion according to his or her conscience. The Air Force personnel who have taken this course for the past 20 years have been free to determine, according to their own consciences, whether they accept or reject the premises of just war theory.

With these concerns in mind, I strongly urge you to ensure that a correct interpretation of the First Amendment is applied in resolving this situation. Moreover, I ask that you provide me with a detailed report on any actions taken by Air Force officials in response to these complaints.

         I appreciate your attention to this request. Thank you for your service to the men and women of the
         United States Air Force and our nation. 


Senator Cornyn thinks that the officers need to hear the christian evangelization and then they can reject it if they wish. The Sharlat article shows the enormous pressure on military officers to toe the party line. Non believers have a hard time getting promoted and it is easier to fall in than appear to be a "bad apple"or heretic. I hope that the Air Force will resist pressure from this Senator and not go back to this type of religious proselytizing and brainwashing.

And guess what? According to an excellent article by Chris Rodda in AlterNet (Sept 8) , the malcontents are not jewish this time  - 29 out of the 31 protesting officers were christian or catholic.

Muddy Waters - Bubbly and Boo

"A blast that whirls the dust"

Bryant Park Library - 42nd and Fifth NYC

Intrepid Len, our ace correspondent from the lower east side, sends these pictures of architectural ornamentation from the city over along with the strong epitaph. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)was the first dean of American romantic poetry. A lawyer and hog reeve (the man appointed to chart the activities of his town's swine herd), he did a long stint as the editor of the New York Evening Post.

Chatter Mining

Figure 14: Global geocoded tone of all Summary of World Broadcasts content, January 1979–April 2011 mentioning “bin Laden”.

I read a fascinating article today at the BBC website about using supercomputers to predict revolution and other social movements. They appear to be extremely proficient. Scientists are data mining millions of online articles to accurately predict sentiment and trends on the street.

The paper, written by Kalev H. Leetaru, was introduced on the online peer review First Monday and here is a link. Leetaru is from from the University of Illinois' Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science.

Apparently the computer predicted Bin Laden's whereabouts to 200km, the fall of Mubarek against conventional wisdom and instability in Saudi Arabia. It is titled Culturomics 2.0, Forecasting large scale human behavior using global news media tone in time and space.

I reprint the abstract and a portion of the introduction below:

News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies. Recent literature has suggested that computational analysis of large text archives can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events. Applying tone and geographic analysis to a 30–year worldwide news archive, global news tone is found to have forecasted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, including the removal of Egyptian President Mubarak, predicted the stability of Saudi Arabia (at least through May 2011), estimated Osama Bin Laden’s likely hiding place as a 200–kilometer radius in Northern Pakistan that includes Abbotabad, and offered a new look at the world’s cultural affiliations. Along the way, common assertions about the news, such as “news is becoming more negative” and “American news portrays a U.S.–centric view of the world” are found to have merit.



The emerging field of “Culturomics” seeks to explore broad cultural trends through the computerized analysis of vast digital book archives, offering novel insights into the functioning of human society (Michel, et al., 2011). Yet, books represent the “digested history” of humanity, written with the benefit of hindsight. People take action based on the imperfect information available to them at the time, and the news media captures a snapshot of the real–time public information environment (Stierholz, 2008). News contains far more than just factual details: an array of cultural and contextual influences strongly impact how events are framed for an outlet’s audience, offering a window into national consciousness (Gerbner and Marvanyi, 1977). A growing body of work has shown that measuring the “tone” of this real–time consciousness can accurately forecast many broad social behaviors, ranging from box office sales (Mishne and Glance, 2006) to the stock market itself (Bollen, et al., 2011).


Can the public tone of global news data forecast even broader behaviors, such as the stability of nations, the location of terrorist leaders, or even offer new insight on conflict and cooperation among countries, as accurately as it predicts movie sales or stock movements? This study makes use of a 30–year translated archive of news reports from nearly every country of the world, applying a range of computational content analysis approaches including tone mining, geocoding, and network analysis, to present “Culturomics 2.0.” The traditional Culturomics approach treats every word or phrase as a generic object with no associated meaning and measures only the change in the frequency of its usage over time. The Culturomics 2.0 approach introduced in this paper focuses on extending this model by imbuing the system with higher–level knowledge about each word, specifically focusing on “news tone” and geographic location, given their importance to the understanding of news coverage. Translating textual geographic references into mappable coordinates and quantifying the latent “tone” of news into computable numeric data permits an entirely new class of research questions to be explored via the news media not possible through the traditional frequency count approach.


This study will explore how the latent tone of a large digital news archive can be visualized to understand macro–level changes in global society in both time and space. Measuring the tone of news coverage about a single geography over time, a fundamentally new approach to conflict early warning is developed that “passively crowdsources” the global mood about each country in the world. This is found to offer highly accurate short–term forecasts of national stability. Focusing on the spatial dimension and moving from the country to the city level, the geographic framing of the news is found to offer significant insights into both nationalistic views of the world and the way in which cultures and “civilizations” are portrayed by the media. Finally, mapping the geographies most closely associated with Osama bin Laden by the news media prior to his capture is found to fairly accurately pinpoint his actual location. Global news media tone that is temporally and spatially aware is found to offer an intriguing new approach to modeling the behavior of global society itself.

Ringo's Theme (This Boy)

The M.I.T. Illusion

I saw a version of this printed a few weeks ago and thought it interesting.  Squares a and b are actually the same value of gray. Hard to believe. The following is from the M.I.T. website:

Why does the illusion work?


The visual system needs to determine the color of objects in the world. In this case the problem is to determine the gray shade of the checks on the floor. Just measuring the light coming from a surface (the luminance) is not enough: a cast shadow will dim a surface, so that a white surface in shadow may be reflecting less light than a black surface in full light. The visual system uses several tricks to determine where the shadows are and how to compensate for them, in order to determine the shade of gray "paint" that belongs to the surface.


The first trick is based on local contrast. In shadow or not, a check that is lighter than its neighboring checks is probably lighter than average, and vice versa. In the figure, the light check in shadow is surrounded by darker checks. Thus, even though the check is physically dark, it is light when compared to its neighbors. The dark checks outside the shadow, conversely, are surrounded by lighter checks, so they look dark by comparison.


A second trick is based on the fact that shadows often have soft edges, while paint boundaries (like the checks) often have sharp edges. The visual system tends to ignore gradual changes in light level, so that it can determine the color of the surfaces without being misled by shadows. In this figure, the shadow looks like a shadow, both because it is fuzzy and because the shadow casting object is visible.


The "paintness" of the checks is aided by the form of the "X-junctions" formed by 4 abutting checks. This type of junction is usually a signal that all the edges should be interpreted as changes in surface color rather than in terms of shadows or lighting.


As with many so-called illusions, this effect really demonstrates the success rather than the failure of the visual system. The visual system is not very good at being a physical light meter, but that is not its purpose. The important task is to break the image information down into meaningful components, and thereby perceive the nature of the objects in view.

Carol Lindemulder

Westmoreland © Carol Lindemulder

I am pleased to announce that the Blue Heron Gallery is now carrying the works of the highly accomplished painter and nationally renowned artist Carol Lindemulder. Carol is an exciting colorist whose work is original, daring and evocative. If I could add one more adjective it might be courageous. Carol follows her own inner compass.

Lately she has been working big, truckstops, shantytowns, imagery that is edgy and slightly off the map. Her work fits in equally well in either a contemporary or traditional design setting or home.

I have been friends with Carol, a resident of Borrego Springs, for many years. I have always admired her aesthetic and choice of subject matter, which brings the traditional landscape into the 21st century. I have rarely carried the works of contemporary artists in my gallery. I can probably count them on one hand, an Ed Mell, Bill Anton, John Moyers and a Matt Smith. When Carol agreed to put some work in, I was ecstatic and decided to break the mold.

Carol is a University of California Berkeley graduate and her work has been exhibited in many shows over the years. She is a long time San Diegan with a dedicated following. She was instrumental in the founding of SOHO and has taught art and design in the area for many years. Her work is mentioned in this month's issue of American Art Collector. Here is a partial listing of her past exhibitions:

 November 2009 "Earth,Sky,Water - Color"  Borrego Springs Art Institute
June 2006 "Pure Painting", Earl /Birdie Taylor Library, San Diego 
2005 "The Art of the Flower", the Art and Cultural Center of Fallbrook, CA 
1999 “Paintings of the American Landscape”, 
Howard Mandville Gallery, Kirkland, WA
1998 “Paintings of the American Landscape”, 
Howard Mandville Gallery, Edmonds/Kirkland, WA
1997 “Paintings of the American Landscape”, 
Howard Mandville Gallery, Edmonds, WA


FEATURED ARTIST
2002 featured artist, Broadminded Gallery, Salida, CO
2001 featured artist, Village Crossroads, Santa Fe, 
New Mexico, through summer
1998 “Inside/Outside” Boehm Gallery, Palomar Community College, San Marcos, CA


TWO PERSON 
2002 “In Living Color” w/ Brett Stokes, Fallbrook Fine Art Gallery, FLBK, CA
2001 “2 Vissions 1 Landscape w/ Wm. David Marvin, Fallbrook Fine Art, FLBK, CA
1999 “New Work” w/ Geer Morton, Pratt Gallery, San Diego, CA
1997 “At Home And Abroad” w/ Susan Blanchard, Photographer, Pratt Gallery, San Diego,CA
1996 “Two Palettes” w/ Ann Templeton, Pratt Gallery, San Diego, CA


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010/2011  Borrego Springs Art Guild annual, Borrego Springs, CA
2009 "Community Show Selected Art", Borrego Art Institute, Borrego Springs, CA
2003 “12th Annual, Athenaeum Music and Arts Library, La Jolla, CA 
2002 “ Pastels USA, 16th Annual Intern’l Open, Pastel Soc. Of West Coast, Tower Theater, Roseville, CA
2002 “ Artists Council 33rd Annual Nat’l Juried Exhibition, Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA
2002 San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild Exhibition, Boehm Gallery, Palomar Coll. San Marcos, CA
2001 “ 3rd Annual Juried Art Show, Wm. D. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad, CA
1999 “ Small Is Beautiful”, Lanning Gallery, Sedona, AZ
1997 “ 32nd Annual Exhibition,” FAI San Bernardino County Museum
1996 “ Pleasures of the Garden”, Lanning Gallery, Sedona, AZ
1996 “ Landscapes”, Atrium Gallery, Northville, MI
1996 “ Old Glory, New Glory”, Pratt Gallery, San Diego, CA “


I have three of her very affordable works showing and expect to get more soon. I encourage you to drop by the gallery thursday through saturday 11 to 5 and view them at your convenience. Other days by appointment by calling 760-731-9355. The gallery is located at 113 N. Main Avenue in Fallbrook, CA. Please feel free to contact me if I can provide any additional information regarding her work.

Blue Smoke Trees

Trilok Gurtu

The King's Contrivance

It had been several years since I had seen my mother and I was seriously delinquent. Big time overdue. You are issued one mother in your life time and they require proper care and maintenance. I sensed the opportunity to rectify my filial obligations with the recent sale of a fragile object that required personal delivery to the east coast. Stone two birds with one kill.

I left early sunday morning (read 4:00 a.m.) for our nation's capitol, stopping briefly in Houston. Houston is one of my least favorite cities and is located in one of my least favorite states, Texas. I stopped in front of the George Bush Sr. rotunda and snapped a picture of the great leader somewhat tastefully rendered in bronze, complete with ivy league cardigan draped over a shoulder.

The rest of my Houston airport experience was rather mundane, I did notice an industrial strength Proactiv™ kiosk, can acne be so miserable in this part of the country that measures of this magnitude are indeed necessary?

Not much else to report about the airport. I was hungry and was searching around for a bite and after considering $11.00 street tacos, which would have been more appropriate had the street been named Rodeo Dr., settled on barbecue from a place called Real Food. Tasted like a cinnamon rub, after a few bites the awful plate went straight into the trash.

First airport I have seen with its own Fox News outlet.

***

Ceiling, Grand Hyatt

I landed in Washington D.C., rented my car and gps'd my way to the Grand Hyatt, passing through the cool Chinatown arch on H Street. The hotel was beautiful and ideally situated and I decided to get some picture taking and sightseeing in for the balance of my evening.

I walked down to Freedom Square and watched some hardcore D.C. area skateboarders doing their thing. It was really warm and sticky and there were a lot of folks outside. I think that the woman in red actually lived outside.

I made my way past the recently cracked Washington Monument on the route to my favorite memorials, the Lincoln and Jefferson. I passed the World War II, Korean, FDR and various other monuments and statues and made my way to the new Martin Luther King. It was twilight and I thought it was fantastic. The sense of pride I felt from the african americans gathered around the bust of King was tremendous. A great neighbor to Jefferson and one of the more contemporary hero's of America, I felt a lot of personal pride and happiness in seeing the tribute to the fallen civil rights leader.

After the King I walked around the lake and visited my favorite politician's edifice, Jefferson. It was lit so beautifully. I took some shots and finally found a cab back to the hotel, having severe shin splints by this time that still hurt. I logged serious miles in the capitol city.

***

The Shame

I went to Cure, the restaurant at the Hyatt and ordered a BLT and some potato wedges cooked in duck fat. The potatoes were awesome, the blt less so. It was a slab of the oh so trendy pork belly on a piece of toast with a cloyingly sweet tomato sauce. Some soggy greens. Should have used a little mayo and garlic, the dish was a serious fail in my book.

***

The next day I walked back past the mall and over to the Capitol, seeking morning light. It was calm and I was practically alone. A tourist quickly rode by me on bicycle, at least he looked like a tourist until I spotted the little wire device in his ear as he checked me out. Big police presence in these days before the 9/11 anniversary.

I drove to Maryland and concluded my business then drove to Virginia to see my older sister Liz. Liz is a very smart person who works for an anonymous alphabet subsidiary of the government. She is a master knitter and wool spinner who lives with a husband into technology and robotics and their bengal cat. She showed me how to spin wool and her specialty of knitting lace.

Liz is responsible for turning me on to several of the passions in my life, science fiction and the Jefferson Airplane being two of the ones I feel comfortable mentioning.

***

I drove up to Ellicot City, Maryland to see my mom who now lives in a home for seniors. She had been in a rather remote section of the Poconos for the last thirty years or so and life was too hard for her on her own after the death of her husband, Murray.

Ellicot City is an old quaker mill town, the site of the oldest remaining railroad station in the United States, and situated on the Cumberland or National Road, built in 1806, the first major road built west of Baltimore.

I had a cup of joe and a fritter at a neighborhood stop and antiqued a bit up the old steep and narrow streets. This is the old Thomas Isaac log cabin, built in 1780 and now situated near the center of town.

***

Driving up through Northern and Virginia and Maryland was quite interesting. The roads are very poorly engineered. They do not quite have the concept of super-elevations and crowns down and water pooled heavily in the rain. I drove past the George Bush Center for Intelligence and Langley and all sorts of other places that I had read about in spy novels. Howard County is one of the wealthiest counties in the country but what exactly do these people do? I saw lots of stores that cater to foreign speaking individuals and something about the whole set up was gnawing at my brain.

The answer of course is intelligence. I was right in the belly of the beast, the breadbasket of spydom and intelligence gathering. I asked the innkeeper in Jessup what people did for work and he said," Well, the NSA is just around the corner." I thought about the announcement I was sure that I had heard at the Houston Airport - Intemperate thoughts are forbidden and will be prosecuted. Hopefully their reach is not quite so extended yet.

***

I spent two days with mom, now nursing breaks to both legs from an unfortunate fall down an escalator. I met Jessica, one of the twins that acts as a surrogate daughter to my mother and has helped take care of her for many years. My mom has recently moved to Maryland, having spent thirty cold winters in a remote locale in Pennsylvania and just couldn't take care of herself properly anymore. Happens to the best of us. Glad she found a cool spot to roost.

The home was nice, she is happy, googly eyeing the men and alienating a couple of the women. We had a formal sit down dinner in the main hall, the food was better than expected and I watched my mom voraciously dig into the fruit cup. She was very happy to see me and it was nice to see her, she looked great but needs a wheelchair to get around during her rehabilitation.

My mom is an ex teacher, writer and high powered editor. She worked for ICM and was the rock band Kiss's first agent. Very intelligent but keeps me on guard to a certain degree. We share more in common than we probably care to admit, both having an almost obsessive need to stay emotionally connected to the people we care about.

***

I traveled back to D.C. in a light rain. I passed some cities and places with interesting names, I would have to research them later. Village of the King's Contrivance, Roaches Run. I thought that the King's Contrivance had to be 17th century but it turns out to be adopted from the name of a local restaurant.  The street names of nearby Huntington are derived from the works of Carl Sandburg and those of Macgill's Common come from the Folksongs of North America compilation recorded by Alan Lomax. Dickinson, to the west, is named after Emily Dickinson.

In the anti intellectual west, I could never imagine towns being named after poems or poets. Very nice. We tend to name our towns and neighborhoods after spanish saints, tuscan villages or whatever wine or bubbly is popular at the moment.

The other thing that always strikes me about the east is the great trees. So much forested area, quite a contrast to the densely compressed west. I made my way to Blagdon Avenue and near the Rock Creek park and marveled at the huge elms, ashes and maples. I passed the Congolese Embassy and wondered if the poor inhabitants of the mother country had any idea how their diplomats lived and how much wealth had been pilfered.

***

I checked into the Hilton at Dupont Circle, a hotel where I had experienced one of life's bottoms about 33 years prior. Dupont Circle is now a very hip and vibrant place and I went out for a long walk. I found an empanada restaurant and downed a couple and bought a book at a used bookstore, Dig Infinity, a biography of Lord Buckley by Oliver Trager. I have always been fascinated by Buckley and an interesting man I had met in a former lifetime, Steven Ben Israel, was quoted in the book. To my surprise it had a handwritten dedication on the fly to Dick Gregory.

I was hunting for a place to have a drink but ended up passing when it started to rain. I ducked in front of a Portuguese restaurant that specialized in chicken in a peri peri spice, something new to me that looked good and that I hope to try one day.

I was walking slightly in front of three young professional women and caught a snippet of conversation that I mentally filed away for the blog,"I can't wear pants to work because my mother says only lesbians wear pants to work." I stifled a chuckle.

I, being on the far side of fifty, was musing on my decided lack of hipness. I thought back to Helen's poem, the part about being invisible. Where once was a cute, hip guy with a bit of social cachet now stands a graying old man with a paunch who has no standing and can't even text properly. Who abhors lol and emoticons and the diminution of a once great language. I saw a shirt on the trip where militia was now spelled mulisha and cringed in distaste. I watched a television show in the hotel, Shedding for the wedding where people made jackasses of themselves grossly prostituting themselves for a free wedding and came to the conclusion that I was indeed living in the wrong epoch.

Of course, my long hair, blue jeans, sneakers and t-shirt are about as far off the hip chart as you can wander. I felt rather embarrassed at my slovenly state while walking with these well dressed, young movers and shakers. I remember laughing at the radio station back east when the announcer mentioned that before there was a microchip there was a microdot, whatever that means...

I made my way back to the hotel in an ever increasing rain and had my drink at the hotel bar, a very expensive greyhound with a little dish full of chex-mix. There is so much to explore in the District and I hope to return with my wife some day soon. It is my favorite walking city in the country, being an ardent lover of french architecture.

***

Washington D.C. has just won the dubious distinction of being the most likely city (or district) in the country to have an auto accident, for the second year in a row. Their drivers are legendary for their ineptitude. I can see why. The traffic circles are poorly thought out, power intoxication is not a good auger for driver competence and they are the most petulant and impatient drivers I have ever witnessed. Honk in a millisecond. Not the most sadistic, that would be Boston drivers, where they actually go out of their way to try and run you down, merely the worst.

***

Interior view, Museum of the American Indian

The next day I checked out and drove the rent a car down and parked near the west side of the White House on 7th. The sky was so clear but it was so humid that my glasses instantly fogged up upon leaving the vehicle. I walked over to the Smithsonian Air and Space and then visited the new Museum of the American Indian. A beautiful museum but hardly anything on exhibit. The staff member I talked to said that less than 1% of the holdings were on display. I quickly left, the items on display largely being contemporary.

I sauntered over to the United States Botanic Garden, always one of my favorite places to visit in Washington. I love architectural details and embellishments and the Capitol if full of great ones. These are some of the heads festooned on the ledge of the Botanic Garden.

Washington has a lot of nice gardens. I have pictures of the Obamas' vegetable garden and a very rustic amaranth and corn garden in front of the Agricultural Department done in the three sisters formation of North Dakota's Hidatsa tribe.

***

I was in the botanic garden taking macro shots of flowers when the sky opened up and all hell broke loose. Tropical Storm Lee had arrived in full epic pageantry. I waited a few minutes for the sky not to clear and jumped into the fray. I had about eight blocks to walk and no cover. I got completely soaked. I had traveled back east with a daypack and everything was now pretty much soaked. I threw my shirt in a trashcan  and stuck the least wet and smelly one on from my pack. My shoes, socks and pants were wringing wet.

I had cut it too close and would have to hustle to make my flight to Dallas. But I needed to fill the car with gas. I gps'd to the airport in the downpour but couldn't find a gas station anywhere and kept looping by the Pentagon. A security man stood under a bridge and took pictures of me going by. I was stuck in an endless loop, full of fear and loathing, the Grateful Dead's song Lost Sailor playing now on the radio and reverberating through my soul. I would never get out. I took a deep breath and finally got my bearings and headed back on fourteenth hoping to find a gas station in the city. Finally miles up I found a cash only station ran by ethiopians. I filled up and dashed back, only to find that most of the flights were now delayed or cancelled due to the storm. I finally left about three hours later, just made my Dallas connection and found my way back to the southern california heat and heap big power outage.

Early morning trash run, Capitol.