Caravansarai

My wife Leslie is having her annual sale at Caravan. Everything is marked down. If you have never been to Caravan, you are missing out. She is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 5, and sometimes later.

She has never painted her windows like this for a sale and several people have asked if she is going out of business. No, she is not. It is a sale. Not sure how long it will run.

Leslie carries a wide range of women's clothes, including tops, dresses, shoes, belts, hats, jewelry, jackets and all sorts of other accessories that are too extensive for me to list. If she is not there, the lovely Juleen is happy to help you.

They got in some amazing clothing from Citron this week. Citron is my favorite company, they do the phenomenal oriental prints, she even snagged me a couple of men's shirts.

Caravan is located at 109 N. Main Avenue in Fallbrook, suspiciously close to my store, the Blue Heron Gallery. Her phone number is 760-731-4890. Pop in and see what she is carrying. You might just leave with something great. She doesn't know that I am promoting her on the website so let's keep it our little secret.

Saint Dominic's Preview

Elizabeth Warren talks to the regulators

Thank god there is one person in Washington not afraid to speak up. What a couple of putzes these guys are.

Published on Apr 11, 2013

Senator Elizabeth Warren's opening statement and Q&A at the April 11, 2013 Senate Banking Committee, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Hearing. Panelists include:

Mr. Daniel P. Stipano
Deputy Chief Counsel
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Mr. Richard Ashton
Deputy General Counsel
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

See Emily Play

The Modern World

Cat in a hot tinned box

Two places at once?

First quantum experiment in space proposed by europeans.

Quantum Illumination.

Spooky quantum action with a twist.

Quantum encryption?

Quantum entanglement.

"Repent  Harlequin," said the Tick-tock man - © James Steranko

Faster than the speed of thought.

"...Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them.
Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it. For example, objects can sometimes be said to exist in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously.
One consequence of this murky realm of quantum physics is that objects can get linked together, such that what happens to one instantaneously has an effect on the other, a phenomenon dubbed "quantum entanglement." This holds true no matter how far apart these objects are from each other. "

EPR Paradox.

   One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

    —Erwin Schrödinger, Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics), Naturwissenschaften
    (translated by John D. Trimmer in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society)

Quantum tunneling.

Live And Let Live

Fallbrook Flora

Last night it was my pleasure and privilege to attend an informal talk and presentation by the Executive Director of the California Native Plant Society, Dr. Daniel Gluesenkamp. The biologist spoke to an assorted host of sympathetic ears at a private home in Fallbrook.

I have written about Dan before, a Fallbrook native son who has gone out into the world and "done good." Dan corrected me last night, said he is not really a native species, having been actually "introduced" to the area at the age of three. I guess we have to call him a beneficial import.

We discussed a plethora of issues relating to plants, conservation and biodiversity and he clued the group in as to his official duties in Sacramento on behalf of the native landscape. There were several members of the Fallbrook Land Conservancy present and there was a spirited discussion regarding issues of both local and statewide significance, including our ever growing trail system. Dr. Gluesenkamp stressed the benefits of using local plants in the landscape and the positive role they play throughout the ecosystem.

The California Native Plant Society has nearly 10,000 members and 33 regional chapters. They work to represent the public's interest in protecting California's native plants and habitat. A 501 (c)3 nonprofit, the group was founded in 1965.

Thanks to resolution ACR 173 in the California State Assembly, the third week of April is now officially designated California Native Plant Week. Gluesenkamp explained how, due to a confluence of tectonic shifts, climate change and other unique causal factors, California has a remarkably biodiverse environment, with nearly 6000 known native plants and many more waiting to be discovered, according to the scientist. He says that we are only now starting to catalogue the many specific species that are native to our golden state.

He also points out that species are continuing to evolve, change and become in some cases extinct as the region deals with the result of global warming. Not to worry, says Dan, a very sanguine fellow, California will be a very exciting place to be in 5000 years, even if there are no longer humans around to experience it. Here's hoping that one day there actually will be intelligent hominid life forms on the planet, who knows?

I like Dan. We were talking about proposed delisting of a couple of plants in Inyo County and he says, while not referring to these specific plants ( I believe that one is a hyssop), that there are times that species do recover and do need to be taken off the protected rolls. A matter of intellectual and scientific integrity. Constructive without being gratuitously obstructive. I appreciate his positive attitude, while some environmentalists make it seem like we are in a grave and hopeless pitched battle and that the sky is always falling. Things change, it is the nature of life and we will hopefully steward that change in a responsible fashion.

If you are interested in California Native Plant Week you might want to check out cnpweek.org. If you wish to volunteer or make a donation to the Fallbrook Land Conservancy they can be found at this link. They do a remarkable job for our Fallbrook community.

If you have a chance to see this remarkable man speak, I would really recommend it. His knowledge is wide, his vision and approach is thought provoking and his good attitude and optimism infectious.

Funky On My Back

Irene Taverner

A longtime colleague is conducting scholarly research and preparing a possible monograph on the Bay Area and New York artist Irene Taverner.

Taverner (1925 - 2011) was a very accomplished and interesting painter who shared studio space with Franz Kline and cavorted with a panoply of beatniks, writers, artists and jazz musicians, including Billie Holliday, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker and Dylan Thomas.

Born in Wales, she immigrated to the United States in 1950. Irene showed her work at prestigious shows on both coasts. If anyone has paintings, pictures, information, anecdotes or any other errata concerning Taverner please email them to Greg Boren at trendmongers@netscape.net.

Bubbling Crude

From Jeannie Nuss - HuffPo

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured last month and spilled thousands of barrels of oil in central Arkansas has a gash in it that is 22 feet long and 2 inches wide, state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday.

"The pipeline rupture is substantially larger than many of us initially thought," McDaniel told reporters Wednesday evening.

McDaniel's update on the March 29 oil spill in Mayflower, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock, comes as lawyers and investigators review more than 12,500 pages of documents his office received from ExxonMobil. McDaniel sent a subpoena to ExxonMobil, seeking inspection records, investigative documents and maintenance records related to its Pegasus pipeline that ruptured in Mayflower.

It wasn't immediately clear what all the documents contain; McDaniel said his office received them just before he held a news conference Wednesday.

"More documents will be received and requested from Exxon in coming days," McDaniel said. "But now everyone's priority continues to be the cleanup efforts in Mayflower."

So far, crews have recovered about 28,200 barrels of oily water and about 2,000 cubic yards of oiled soil and debris, according to a statement from ExxonMobil and local officials.

"We still do not know how much oil was released. We still do not know the exact makeup of the crude itself, of the chemical solvents used in the transportation process," McDaniel said. "And our immediate concern tonight is with the weather..."

So Much Trouble In The World

Child is full of woe...

I have a bunch of stuff hitting me from all directions, forgive me if the following blogpost is excessively disparate. Stream of consciousness wednesday. The ag gag bills are really horrendous. Six states are now pushing separate bills that will criminalize the taping of animal cruelty.

These bills will require turning over tapes within 48 and in some cases 24 hours to law enforcement. Of course this will gut the power of investigators to conduct investigations and that's just what big ag wants. Farm staters complain that us city folks just don't get it but some of the behavior in the slaughterhouses is just plain despicable.

Of course with Monsanto now running the show, big ag and big food can basically do whatever they choose to do. The next national gmo food labeling battle should be quite interesting. "People shouldn't have this information because they will get unnecessarily worried" or some claptrap like that. Hudg sent me this primer on how Monsanto assumed control of the government.

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The iron matron, Margaret Thatcher, has passed. I never cared for her politics much but then again never liked her continental playmate Reagan much either. Interesting to hear the ire directed at her from both South Africa and Northern Ireland. A fierce defender of apartheid, she derided Nelson Mandela as a communist and treated Ireland like another british holding. Read today that she made Britain strong again, of course that is usually accomplished by preying on the weak. Bully, bully.

Some American's lionize Thatcher. Well and good. Do they realize that she was a supporter of British socialized medicine? Marxist bitch.

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I have been thinking about a subject for the last several days and that is the virtual disappearance of the underground press in this country. Huffpo wants to talk about Rhianna's boob showing or Lindsay's latest parole hearing. One of the mainstays of my youth, the Village Voice, is all about Jay Z and the latest hip hop news. It is really tragic.

Huffington Post is of course now owned by AOL and they are only serving a larger audience and I suppose giving the masses what they want. Lots of sexual titillation and a watered down liberal pablum.

When I was a kid, living in a liberal/radical home, I read Ramparts, Evergreen, The East Village Other, The Village Voice, New York, Screw, L.A. Free Press, The Door not to mention Zap, Mother's Oats and all the undergrounds. Absolutely nothing exists today to fill the radical literary void. Everything is balkanized. AlterNet is probably one of the best repositories but they spend a high percentage of their time Israel bashing and sucking Chomsky and I just can't deal.

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Did you catch the state senator from North Carolina who believes that praying to Allah is a terrorist act?

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IRS believes that it has the right to read your gmail without a warrant.

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Seasonal nuttiness.

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Tranny porn at the Vatican?

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Syrian rebels have been bemoaning the lack of support from the west in their battle against Assad. Now one of the main groups, Al Nusra,  proclaims their fealty to Al Qaeda. No thanks!

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Obama's triangulation strategy.

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The Cuban government is an authoritarian regime that sometimes act like poopieheads. China is far worse. Why can Americans travel to China and have to jump through hoops to fly to Havana? Because some cuban geezers in Florida are still fantasizing about storming the Bastille and reclaiming the old villa? Doesn't seem right that we keep kowtowing to them.

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Interesting obit at the NYTimes on writer McCandlish Phillips. Did a possibly closeted gay out a closeted jew? Fascinating wordsmith, great comments.

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Chavez protege invokes native curse.

"If anyone among the people votes against Nicolas Maduro he is voting against himself and the curse of Macarapana is falling on him," warned Maduro Saturday at a rally in Amazonas state, a largely jungle territory on the borders of Brazil and Colombia.
Macarapana refers to a 16th century battle when Spanish-Columbia fighters massacred local Indian forces. He compared opposition leader Henrique Capriles’ campaign to enslaving Spanish occupiers. "If the bourgeoisie win, they are going to privatize health and education. They are going to take land from the Indians, the curse of Macarapana would come on you," he said.

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The blog is quickly closing in on a half a million views. First person who guesses the day I crack the number receives ten bucks.

You'll Lose A Good Thing

Dionne

I think that it sucks that Dionne Warwick is going through all the financial misfortune of late. What an incredible, regal singer. You could put Dionne's talent and soul up there with anybody, including Aretha.

Heil Exxon Mobil!

Did Exxon Mobil institute a type of martial law in Arkansas after the recent oil spill? Did they threaten reporters with arrest? And why does our government always "assume the position" for big oil? I just can't wait for the Keystone XL.

Check out these links:

Grist - Arkansas town in lockdown.

Alternet - 14 Things You Need to Know About the Horrifying Arkansas Oil Spill

Treehugger - Mayflower, Arkansas "on lockdown" following Exxon oil spill 

InsideClimate News Reporter Threatened With Arrest at Ark. Oil Spill Site

http://grist.org/news/exxonmobil-spills-chemicals-in-louisiana-while-cleaning-spilled-oil-in-arkansas/

Cut-Ups

"When you cut into the present, the future leaks out..."

Stochastic twaddle and pluralistic ignorance

I must confess. I wrote a bit of gobbledy gook last week.  My paper about improving neural networks? It was all bullshit. It was actually a product of SCIgen, a program from MIT that uses random word generation to create bogus academic papers. Read more about psuedoacademia here.

If you got nailed by it, don't feel bad, I did too. We as thinking humans want to understand and the human mind creates false nexus's where none actually exist (unless you are a Jungian of course and want to talk about synchronicity and we can do that some other time.) This is the one that got me, part of my online course in behavioral economics.


What is Behavioral Economics? from Advanced Hindsight on Vimeo.

What is SCIgen? From their website:

SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. It uses a hand-written context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers. Our aim here is to maximize amusement, rather than coherence.One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to conferences that you suspect might have very low submission standards. A prime example, which you may recognize from spam in your inbox, is SCI/IIIS and its dozens of co-located conferences (check out the very broad conference description on the WMSCI 2005 website). There's also a list of known bogus conferences. Using SCIgen to generate submissions for conferences like this gives us pleasure to no end. In fact, one of our papers was accepted to SCI 2005! 

There are many random word generators.  The idea is not new. It is said that one of the dadaists, possibly Andre Breton, don't make me look it up, caused a riot in the 1930's on a Paris street corner by creating poems from words that he pulled out of a hat.

Gertrude Stein, and later Burroughs and Gysin, used a similar method with their cut up work. Random, yes, but at times quite powerful.

Here is a poem I created this morning on the random poem generator. Obviously, I have quite a knack!

Wow, love!
All moons pull misty, dead winds.

Edna St. Vincent Sommers

Angry Samoans

Blow Job

Apparently there are a few folks on the right hand side of the aisle who are intent on criminalizing what you do in your bedroom. Doesn't matter if you are married, if you are having sex with a man or a woman, a few acts are o-u-t out.

Read this Mother Jones article on Virginia Attorney General and smasher of sodomites, Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Gov. Candidate Cuccinelli Defending Law That Forbids Oral Sex. Make sure that you check out the comments, they are priceless. What is that gesture you are making, Ken?

Last month, three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deemed a Virginia anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. The provision, part of the state's "Crimes Against Nature" law, has been moot since the 2003 US Supreme Court decision overruled state laws barring consensual gay sex, but Virginia has kept the prohibition on the books.
Now Virginia attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli is asking the full 4th Circuit to reconsider the case. Cuccinelli wants the court to revive the prohibition on consensual anal and oral sex, for both gay and straight people. (The case at hand involves consensual, heterosexual oral sex, but, as the New York Times explained in 2011, it's "icky": The sex was between a 47-year-old man and two teenagers above Virginia's age of consent.)

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Great headline in the Weekly Standard. Of course, the judge said nothing of the kind.

I was reading a right wing website last night that was discussing the judges decision and made the case that contraception and sex should be activities engaged in solely by married heterosexual couples, presumably in one of the agreed upon positions. Will try to find the link.

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And who can forget this one, the law won't protect unmarried victims in rape?

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Unmarried and living together in Florida. Go to jail.

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A sodomy law is a law that defines certain sexual acts as crimes. The precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law, but are typically understood by courts to include any sexual act deemed to be "unnatural" or immoral.

Georgia got rid of its long standing sodomy law in 2003. Cohabitation is currently illegal in three states (Mississippi, Florida and Michigan).

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Martin v. Ziherl, 607 S.E.2d 367 (Va. 2005), was a decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia holding that the Virginia criminal law against fornication was unconstitutional. The court's decision followed the 2003 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, which established the constitutionally-protected right of adults to engage in private, consensual sex.

Janis Joplin & Jorma Kaukonen

Rare home audio recording of Janis and Jorma from  June 30, 1964. Jorma's then wife Margareta can be heard percussively playing the typewriter in the background, hence the name The Typewriter Tapes.

Contextually speaking

I had one of my cheap and frequent dime store epiphanies while searching for a word in the dictionary the other day that I would like to share with you. It can not be argued that the presence of the world wide web has revolutionized learning. Books are now digitized, we can instantly translate other languages, the answer to every "how to" question in the world now lies within reach of our fingertips. But are these new conduits to data always better?

Not necessarily. I will tell you one tool whose online incarnation is in some ways inferior to its predecessor and that would be the dictionary. The reason is the following and I won't belabor the point on a sunday morning. With a physical dictionary you can see the words above and below your entry. I believe that there is a great value in this, especially when considering things like latin roots. An old school dictionary allows you a contextual view that is missing in an online data search.

I reach for my New International Webster's Compact Dictionary of the English Language, International Encyclopedic Edition, Trident Press 1999. Let us pull out a word at random. Here it is, enjoin. 1.To order emphatically and authoritatively. To impose (a condition, course of action) on a person or group. It comes from the latin root [< in + jungere - join>] en-joiner n.

Now this might not have been the best word to choose but random is random after all so we will dance with the word that "brung" us. The word on top of enjoin is enigmatic, an adjective of enigma, from the greek ainissesthai - to speak in riddles. The word below enjoin is enjoy -1.  to experience joy or pleasure, to receive pleasure or have the possession of 2. to have the use or benefit of. From the latin [<in-gaudere rejoice>].

So while we have not in this case received information about our original search word, you oftentimes do, and you still get to do a little mental gymnastic exercise trying to establish a linguistic nexus or linkage between the sequential entries.

Searching for knowledge is a great way to keep mentally fit.

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I believe that I have mentioned that for years at a time we had no television when I was young. But we did have a Brittanica, a dictionary and a World Book, like most families. We also had a 10k plus volume library in our home thanks to our teacher parents. Living in a steep dutch gable garret in Syosset, my brother Buzz and I would stay up late at night, memorize the World Book and dictionary and test each other and we got surprisingly good at it. Not because we were exceedingly intelligent, but because we frankly had nothing else to do, short of banging our heads on the low slanted ceiling.

Leslie and I have not watched the tube in the past 20 years either. Let me know if I have missed anything of value, will you?

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I decided to look up dictionary in the online dictionary. Not the easiest thing to do, sort of like trying to throw a trash can away. The trash man always sees it as an empty. I wanted to look up the word dictionary because I assume that it comes from diction, which I figured was more about speaking then meaning. The following is the online entry:

Not very helpful for providing any hints of linguistic birthright or etymology. But my handy, old school Websters tells me a little bit more. It comes from the medieval term dictionarium, sounds Roman, a collection of words and phrases. But it turns out that I was wrong about diction. The first meaning is actually the use, choice and arrangement of words. The second and more familiar meaning is the manner of enunciating words in speaking or singing, from the latin dicere which means to say. So the word dictionary does have a primarily oral linguistic component, a word first being spoke before it is read, I suppose.

Perhaps the word dictionary itself is somewhat archaic and should be shelved since phonetic pronunciation and the common understanding of diction is now a mere afterthought and secondary to the book's role as a lexicon that shows the meaning of words.

Fare well this fine sunday. Your wordy servant,

Robert

Jo Jo Gunne

Idle hands, devil's workshop and neural networking in the Q context

I have been doing a bit of thinking in this regard with a few buddies at coffee and thought we could jot it down and run it all by you. Please let me know what you think.

Improving Neural Networks using SEG

Christine Perfect

Goat Reckoning

My spousal unit was going through one of her piles of stuff yesterday when she came up with these two invitations to a couple of my early parties. Both of these particular parties were from our first year hanging out with each other, our deal hadn't really been done or, sealed, should I say, until the amazing interstellar propeller party.

It was an extraordinary event that I can't even begin to recount, culminated in a massive weird bug attack, something I have never seen before or since. And that was the very night that we decided to hitch our wagons and travel down the road of life together.

I don't really know what interstellar propeller is supposed to signify. Maybe I forgot. May have been trying to invoke the ancient gods or spirits in some arcane way.

My parties used to be sort of legendary around these parts and sometimes they took a couple of days to finish. The invitation was your ticket to ride and definitely meet some great people. Think we played volleyball at this one, the time Nitza hurt her finger.

You see how crude my computer graphic skills were back then. No photoshop in those days, you sort of had to figure things out on your own, which I often did. Forget which antediluvian drawing program I was messing with at this point. I am sure that the paper tore off a roll and the edges. Drawing with a mouse was never easy.

The carnivorous happening is four months later. Leslie had now moved in and we had bought ourselves a goat, a young goat named Annabelle. I bought Annabelle to keep my arabian horse Jasper company but he chased her around and around the pasture, not real keen on the idea. In fact he would have none of it.

This particular goat did two things quite proficiently, jump and shit, sometimes in tandem. We had bought her with a purpose in mind, a goat barbecue. Or should I say, I did, my girlfriend Leslie not real keen on the idea of eating a pet. And after three of four months of fattening, our sacrifice was ready for the pyre.

I drew up this invite and invited a couple of hundred people out to the ranch. We hired a Oaxacan man to help us butcher and prepare the goat. I dug a large pit that we filled with rocks. I had to turn my head when they hung the goat from a patio structure and killed her. Never killed a friend before and never since either. Put her on a board and covered her in large agave leaves, Oaxacan style. She stayed in the pit cooking for about five or six hours. Quite tender.

It was as gross as you could imagine.

Leslie wouldn't eat a single bite. I had one bite and spit it out, sick to my stomach. Never again will I chomp on a family member.

Everybody had a hell of a good time. Except for Leslie, me and of course, the goat.

Jackie and Joey

Mark Lindsay

Comida time!

We haven't spent much time discussing my stomach lately so here goes. Saturday Leslie was away at a conference and I was batching it. Great center cut pork chops at Firehouse Broiler. With potatos and broccoli. Nice guy from Chicago, food is so much better these days. Give it a shot. All of my meals there have been both old school and excellent.

Sunday I decided to go to Rosa's for the best menudo in town. Fresh tripe in a lusty picante broth garnished with cilantro, lime and chili. Doesn't get better than Rosa's. These and all of the following shots are crappy cell phone fotos so you will have to forgive me, or not.

Brigitte came back from Cuba the other day and we met at Tekila. I ordered the shredded beef enchilada again but this time asked him to grill it and see if we could get some of that dry, crunchy texture I like. Almost. I also ordered a pork tamale that was delicious. They are really trying to push the envelope at Tekila and deliver something special and it shows.

On my recommendation, Brigitte had the salbutes (sic). They are specially marinated tacos with an extraordinary accompanying jalapeno sauce. Pickled something or other as well. Off menu, you have to ask for them. I highly suggest that you do.

She also had a simply gorgeous and equally scrumptious chile relleno. I  don't even like chile relleno's and loved this one.

Afterwards, continuing our latin theme, we had a quick stop at Northgate Market to take a look around. Like taking a trip to an exotic foreign country without ever leaving Fallbrook. I showed her the four foot chicharrones, don't even want to think about the time I attempted to eat one.

Northgate is really an amazing place. Top flight mexican bakery, including birthday and wedding cakes. Phenomenal meat market, with lengua, split chickens, pigs feet, all kinds of things you never see anywhere else in addition to a major selection of fresh salsas of every description.

The produce is usually so much cheaper than your white man grocery stores and a much wider selection. Sapotes, cherimoyas, mangos, cane sugar, beautiful potatoes. Hominy, tortillas, spices, plus the place is really very clean.

The fresh selection of cheese is incredible including really nice looking fresh cottage cheese, crema and cotija. The woman in the back sold industrial strength quantities of fresh masa.

If you have never taken a spin through the place, you owe it to yourself.

My brother Buzz in Toronto always hates it when I post great Mexican food because like New York, it doesn't exist up there. Hey you get good socialized medicine, everything in life is a trade.

Not a lot else to report, one nice sushi dinner next to Will and Helene, replete with Yama's famed sushi burrito, chopped maguro in a rice paper tortilla with a special ponzu. Hirame. Anago. Hotate hand roll. Amazing hamachi belly.

Chris at Main St. Cafe will be open soon and we will have a good breakfast place again.

I believe that Colleen and Steve have a new chef. Look forward to trying them out.

La Caseta has switched from pumpkin to their fabulous coconut flan.

Heard about a new soul food restaurant in Oceanside if you need to get your collard greens on.

I stopped off at the new Whole Foods at Flower Hill yesterday. Looked pretty typical but they did have an outstanding smoked meat counter. I bought smoked brisket and smoked pulled pork. The guy raved about the pork but the brisket was even better. Thought I brought some home but I guess I ate it all.
They also had smoked tri tip. Very addictive fare.

I parked in the new parking garage at Flower Hill. I walked passed the playground where upscale moms delighted in their precious progeny. I wandered over to the high end cheese shop, Venissimo, hadn't been there since the move, and sampled arcane swiss, finally settling on a nutty white cheddar called Quebec Vintage.

Cucina Enoteca is opening soon and I predict that it will take North County by storm, if it is anywhere near as good as its sister restaurant, Cucina Urbana.

Chef Boyardee, the real one. Ettore "Hector" Boiarde ((October 22, 1897 – June 21, 1990), name was too difficult for Americans to handle so we phoneticized it. He was the head chef at the Plaza in New York, born in Piacenza, Italy. He developed food for the Russian Army and was  awarded the Order of Lenin, for outstanding service to Russia from a civilian during war time, but the cold war put the kaibosh on his ability to acknowledge the award. Sold his brand for nearly 6 million bucks, serious moolah at the time.

Happy eating, compadres!

KJ sends the following:

Erma Franklin

The original version, sung by Aretha's sister Erma.

Friday, this that and the other thing.

3d Printed therapeutic replacement tissue

I had the strangest feeling yesterday. Wonder if it has ever happened to the rest of you. I was stopped at a light in Escondido with my foot firmly placed on the brake. Suddenly I had the sensation that I was rolling. What actually occurred was that the car in front of me moved forward imperceptibly. My brain intuited that I was the one that was actually moving. I got a sinking feeling at the top of my solar plexus as I nervously pushed harder on the brake pedal to stop the car from rolling forward. In a second I had a reality check, rerouted my gyro scope and continued forward on my way.

I had a similar experience about five years ago. Once again I lost my bearings in Escondido, on Tulip. I thought that I was moving forward into the back of a dump truck, the reality was that he backed in to me. Odd how it works. Me and my strange depth perception. He ended up paying us three grand for taking out the front of the old van.

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I have also experienced another unfortunate occurrence the last couple months, my Verizon wireless bill! For the last ten years I have had bills that run a couple hundred dollars a month for our various cell phones, mifi unit, ipad and the like. Very consistent. The last couple months they have doubled. I did some checking, my average last year was 4.8gb of data, I am topping 15gb these last three months.

Now my usage pattern has not changed at all. I am not streaming video or the like. I called Verizon last month and they said that that is what happens when you change computers, people tend to do a lot of software updating but this exponential increase was just too much.

The tech thought that perhaps it was a result of changing from the Snow Leopard to the Mountain Lion operating system on my new Mac Book Pro but that didn't seem plausible.

I called again the other day and think I have narrowed down the culprit. Not absolutely sure but I believe I  have it figured out. I live in a remote area with poor signal. I think that the excessive data use is a result of joining the icloud. The constant synching is like letting a data spigot in the always on position. So if you are in a remote location be very careful about hooking up to the cloud. I have now turned it off.

Unless of course it is something else.

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A few things to ponder. We know of digital coding as basically a binary operation, zero's and one but what happens if you go quantum? Check out this link, How the Alphabet of Data Processing Is Growing: Flying 'Qubits' Generated.

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My friend Rodrigo Bijou has co written this article with Evan Kohlmann in the Harvard Law Review, Planning Responses and Defining Attacks in Cyberspace.

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No such thing as global warming? Mojitos anybody? 1600 years worth of Andean ice has melted in the last twenty five years.

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Another thing that seems to be disappearing, freedom of speech. Environmental activist Daniel McGowan imprisoned for writing a blog post in the Huffington Post that was critical of the government.

In a statement Thursday, McGowan's lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights said, "If this is indeed a case of retaliation for writing an article about the BOP retaliating against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than ironic, it is an outrage."

Here is the apparently offending paragraph. Watch what you say or Obama and Holder are going to lock you up.

In a blog post for The Huffington Post, he criticizes the program for segregating prisoners based on their beliefs:
   

"It became quickly obvious to me that many CMU prisoners were there because of their religion or in retaliation for their speech. By my count, around two-thirds of the men are  Muslim, many of whom have been caught up in the so-called  "war on terror," others who just spoke out for their rights or allegedly took leadership positions in the  Muslim community at other facilities. Some, like me, were prisoners who have political views and perspectives that are not shared by the Department of Justice."

Three days after McGowan wrote the preceding paragraph, he was rearrested. "He just posted his thing a few days ago about all this stuff -- about his political beliefs and speech -- and they do something to him because of his post about this. It's crazy," Syan said. 

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Hate to talk about income inequality again, people get so, well you know... Randy Walters sends this along from Boing Boing.

Here's a rather graphic representation of the growth in income inequality in the USA since the 1960s; plotted on a chart where the income growth of the bottom 90 percent is represented by an inch-high bar; the growth of the top 10 percent needs a 163 foot-tall bar; while the top 0.01% need a 4.9 mile-high bar to represent their real wealth growth in the same period.

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Marco Rubio has been playing a very stupid, transparent game on immigration reform. The senator from Florida is one of the most detestable members of congress. Irrespective of how you feel about the topic ( I happen to believe that nobody should be rewarded citizenship for entering the country illegally) Rubio seems to only have one thing in mind, his own political fortune.

He released this letter to his colleagues today:

"Like all legislation of this magnitude, it should be reviewed and scrutinized thoroughly by numerous interested parties well before the first vote is taken," he wrote. He added that "defend the right rights of every senator, myself included, to conduct this process in an open and detailed manner" if senate leaders tried to interfere with the amendment process.  

I think that Rubio hates an idea if it is anybody else's idea, irrespective of the merit of the idea in question and he only really cares that he is seen as the white knight astride the immigration horse. Pure political calculus, slow play the hand until the pot gets bigger. Republicans love this guy because he is one of the rare Republican hispanics, I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the country hated him, including the non cuban hispanics. Because he is such a phony baloney.

Caveats, I've had a few...

I believe that all will agree that I am a prolific writer. Whatever I may lack in terms of literary quality is overwhelmed with my sheer volume. Last month I had 113 posts. My yearly totals are on track to break my old record unless of course I suffer a major slump or writers block, which certainly does happen from time to time.

I like words and language. I enjoy sentences and written rhythm. Placing fingers on keyboard comes easily for me, even with my hackneyed two fingered typing skills.

I state the obvious for one reason. I have been engaged in a slightly familiar ritual of late that goes something like this, upon meeting my blog readers on this here physical plane;

Me: So, how you doing? What do you think of that thing I posted the other day about purple widgets?
You: Uh, Robert, been a little busy this week, can't really say I am up to date...
Me: Hey, no sweat. Not trying to badger you. I write so much, who could keep up? No problem at all, sorry I mentioned it.

I feel ashamed for being a nudge and expecting people to always be up to date with the Blast. The reality is that I am a pretty obsessive shpieler. If you are staying with me word for word, you are probably nearly as screwed up as I am.

Now the flip side is that a lot of people want to know why they aren't always on the blast email list. And the reality is that everybody is busy and I don't want to necessarily constantly buffet people with information, especially if they aren't in a receptive mood.  I don't want to be a pain in the ass. So unless you are like Bob Degoff and tell me to make sure to send it every time, I try to spare you and lay off.

And I have to stop asking you if you are reading me. It is embarrassing for me, it is embarrassing for you and it is really none of my business. Tune in or don't tune in whenever you want. There are no tests or quizzes. I write it and the numbers don't lie, somebody is reading it.

Glad the rest of you have a life.

Jimmy McCracklin

Tomorrow with Irma Thomas. My friend Michelle sold Jimmy a piano in Oakland last year before he passed away.

market price

My Ariely class in behavioral economics referenced this actual Craig's list posting. Worth reading it and the original replies as well as the other comments on Adam Nash's blog. Is she prostituting herself? Is there a danger in introducing a market component to our social relationships? Is the man who replies the pig as one of the commenters suggests? I don't know if she is a whore or not but would say from her last reply that she sounds like a real bitch.

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful
(spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy.
I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows – lawyer, investment
banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for
MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest
way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 432279810


THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your
bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful” as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic “pump and dump.”

I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.


To the gentleman who called me a depreciating asset
Date: 2007-10-11, 8:23AM EDT

Dear Sir,

I must confess that I was somewhat taken aback upon reading your email. Indeed, it has taken some time for me to sufficiently recuperate from my surprise. Lest your confidence quickly inflate for little reason (as we know is the predisposition for Wall St. types), allow me to hasten to reassure you that the source of my surprise was neither your candor nor the accuracy of your perception. Indeed, it is your “claimed” success in light of your poor grasp of economics which has me baffled. If the standards required to meet with financial success on Wall St. have sunk so low, perhaps I should indeed “make my own money”, except for the fact that the effort/reward ratio is far too high for my liking – especially when so many of your ilk have displayed a far more cogent grasp of market realities than you have.

By now you are likely scratching your ever-vanishing hairline in confusion, so allow me to elaborate, dear man. To build some credibility I will tell you a bit more about yourself. Though you did not mention the details of your occupation, it is clear that you are an investment banker and not a trader, as any good trader would understand that human courtships are based upon a semi-efficient open market, and not an investment banking cartel. However, your inability to grasp the realities of the dating market is not surprising, given that you have successfully employed the tools of collusion and market manipulation rather that true acumen in your supposed wealth generation.

If your grasp of finance were not a minority partner with your ego, you would realize that the “outflows” associated with my depreciating “assets” are quite certain, and therefore subject to a low discount rate when determining their present value. In addition, though your concept of economics evidentially failed to move past the 1950s, advancement in plastic surgery is not subject to the same limitation. Thus, with some additional capital expenditure, the overall lifetime of “outflows” generated by these assets is greatly increased. Sad that Ashton Kutcher has demonstrated understanding of the female asset class which you, in all of your financial “wisdom”, have not.

You, on the other hand, are, given the uncertainty of the Wall St. job market, more of an inflation-indexed junk bond with an underwater nested call option. Though you may argue that you are more of an equity investment, my monetary minimums required from you do not change, and if you are unable to pay them, I will liquidate you without the benefit of a chapter 11, just as you would me.

Because your outflows are so much more uncertain with respect to mine, I require additional compensation in the form of a underwater nested call option on your future assets. I say underwater because, even taking into account the value of your junk bond coupon payment to me, the value of my “outflow” is in excess of the market price of your equity (which is quite low due to its riskiness associated with your poor grasp of finance and my existing claim upon your junk bond coupon).

I must thank you though for raising the question, despite the reputation cost of subjecting your weak logic to such widespread scrutiny. This took either considerable courage or ignorance on your part- and we’ll give you the benefit of doubt, just this once. My current boyfriend (a trader who lives in Central Park West, of course) and I thoroughly enjoyed discussing your response and we wish you the best of luck in your unhappy pursuit of that elusive market inefficiency.

Things Fall Apart

4-3-13

It is hard for an observer to miss the present day political schism and separation. We have a democrat Executive branch and Senate, Republican House and governors. Maybe the mayors are a toss up, frankly I don't know?

But there is another level of governing that is equally important and that is local politics. The school boards, the fire and water boards. I believe that these positions tend to be mostly filled by conservatives and evangelicals. Don't ask me why. Perhaps they are more committed than those on the liberal left. In any case the Republicans quickly and correctly assessed the importance of a ground up campaign and they have been amazingly successful at fulfilling their goals at the local level.

The South and the Heartland are also increasingly conservative and evangelical. And their elected and appointed officials are representing in great measure the wishes of their constituency. But there is a dichotomy or two. The GOP got beaten up pretty badly last election. Besides not particularly liking their candidates, many voters took issue with their positions on various issues.

Priebus and the National committee gave themselves an autopsy report and saw the writing on the wall. They were losing it with women and hispanics and better turn things around if they are going to score nationally again. So now we hear talk about the need for inclusion and for reaching out to traditional left wing bases and showing those bases the advantages of belonging to the Republican party. Yet it is fairly apparent to anybody watching that much of the base and many of the elected GOP leaders despise these very groups that they are trying to woo. So you get the recent statements like Michigan's Agema talking about gays living a filthy lifestyle and some of the more racist language that has been pooping up at certain points in the right wing spectrum.

The word was out before Romney even ran. Don't talk about the social issues. People are concerned about one thing and that is the economy. Big tent, room for everybody. The social issues are a loser. We preach limited government, remember? But unfortunately some people can never stop.  There are some very wonderful and well meaning people on the right that believe that for instance, abortion is murder and that it is their moral duty to protest.  They can't help themselves. So now we have over two dozen personhood amendments, abortion regulations and bills proposed and signed in North Dakota, Arkansas, Alabama that practically start at the fetal heartbeat in some cases. Going after clinics that rescribe morning after pills, throwing every roadblock they can in front of women and their doctors. Dare the feds to do something.

The right has engaged in an absolute stealth campaign, pretend not to care about the social front until you have the power and then the spiritual warfare is on.

Is that what we want? What we are headed for? Two distinct America's? Soon that is where we will be. The right will get to do what they want in their states, we in ours, they can even establish the official christian religion, like they are trying to do in North Carolina. Hope the Baptists and the Southern Methodists can work things out quick about who's boss, not to mention the Pentecostals. Figure out who's going to run the thing.

The North Carolina state constitution disqualifies those who do not believe in God from public office. The provision has been unenforcible since the 1961 Supreme Court decision in Torcaso v. Watkins, which prohibited such bans. 

Both parties are playing to their fringe. The middle ground is starting to look like the Korean DMZ. Vacant. Empty. We get Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon, the Teton Range, you take Mount Rushmore, Great Smoky Mountains and Disney World. Deal?

You can drill until your hearts content, kill the EPA,  bring back indentured servitude for all I care - just give the folks that don't agree with you ample warning and time to get out. Banish sex education, crush the sodomites, bring back the ten commandments, abolish the teaching of evolution, outlaw abortion and contraception, deport the mexicans (except the ones that are doing your dirty work) and fight against the local imposition of sharia law.

We will outlaw the eating of meat of any kind, forbid transportation by any means except skateboards and bikes.  Marijuana smoking will be mandatory and the kids will have to pledge to Gaia or no god every morning. A few unfortunate souls can work all the time, do the rest of us a real solid and support the dreamers who would frankly rather sit around and "grok."

We can always visit each other.