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Recycled Political Observations

Someone said to me the other day: "Doesn't it frighten you that a major political party in the United States has been taken over my extremists."

I'm not proud of my answer, I think it was really low-hanging fruit but I couldn't resist. I, of course answered: "Which party?"

As expected he didn't think it was a particularly funny line and gave me an exasperated sigh coupled with a downturned slow shake of his head.

"No really, which party." OK, I was just rubbing it in at this point. Later and away from my much too seriously middle of the road lefty friend, I remembered that I had blogged about this back somewhere in the past. Today I recycle that post, in the hope that no one ever again attempts to draw me into a serious discussion about the merits of the two party system in this country.

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

-Buffalo Springfield

For What It's Worth is the song by Messrs. Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and perhaps Dewey Martin and/or Bruce Palmer depending on the version you listen to and who was caught up in the last drug bust.

Just a small digression, when Buffalo Springfield broke up after about two years of revolving bass players and the aforementioned drug busts---Stephen Still hooked up with Graham Nash of the Hollies and David Crosby from the Byrds and formed a little band, they took in Neil Young and played some music. Jim Messina and Richie Furay joined forces and formed Poco. Jim Messina eventually teamed up with Kenny Loggins.

Meanwhile back at the topic of this here post: Paranoia Strikes Deep. That was the tagline for a Nov. 9 (2009) opinion piece in the NYTimes. The paranoia being discussed is that the Republican Party has or will be taken over by an extremist right wing. Whether this has or hasn't happened yet depends on just how left or right you already are and in particular (here comes the point) how paranoid you are about such a possibility. The article can be summarized with it's last two lines:

"The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here--and it's very bad for America."

In case you missed it, the lyrics from Buffalo Springfield are:

"Something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware."

The cultural distortion is that you can't tell if the guy with the gun is an extreme conservative, a paranoid libertarian or a fearful liberal who has decided to defend his turf. That it ain't exactly clear is why paranoia strikes deep but it starts when you're always afraid.

Random Whys ? ? ?

You know those amazingly efficient people who swarm into a kitchen, skim away the invisible construction dust, put down shelf paper and manage to put the glasses in the "correct cupboard" the first time? Those people who would rather you stay out of the way and just schlep the empty boxes and packing material out to the trash.

Why didn't I marry one of those people?

How did it get to be so late that the sun is still up long after 7 o'clock. I know there was that spring forward thing and I recognize that evenings up in Shasta were often obscured by grey clouds and snow showers but this feels like I have either fallen forward several months.

Oh wait!

Why I have this panoramic view again, looking out on the bridges and cities of San Francisco Bay and the great wide Pacific beyond. Why that's the answer, nevermind.

Why are there so many flats roofs in rainy climates? From my 8th story perch, all the houses have slanted roofs. All the apartments roofs are flat. I can see the pools of rainwater as they build on those roofs, but two and only two of the maybe twenty flat roofs are pitched. The big apartment building just to the north actually has waves in its roof lake. Wouldn't just slightly pitched but enough to they shed the rain? Does this not seem like a construction no-brainer? All that sheathing, the super membranes, the sealant, caulking, flanges and tar; why not just a slight pitch?

Why not cant, I ask?

Robert Kennedy Jr. has said that using 3% of the state of Arizona for modern, high-intensity solar power would power the entire country. Now distribution is not addressed in that scenario but add the wind tunnel that is the entire midwest, the undersea turbines for nearly every coastal state and government subsidies being redirected from oil and coal to wind, sun and biomass and we have a clean solution to a very dirty problem.

And we don't have to wait ten years, a single bill in congress could turn the entire energy dependence issue around in our favor. A simple, elegant solution that benefits the American people, the environment and creates literally millions of jobs.

Why not? is the question. I think you know the "not" answer.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis*

I must begin this post with an apology to my academic friends, in particular to the linguists in that group. I will be doing a popularized take on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis today, which will not be up to the standards of rigor expected in the ivy covered walls. I do this because I have experienced two real world examples of this linguist theory in my day-to-day wanderings over the past couple of months; each time in the unspoken regions of my mind I was thinking - Benjamin Lee Whorf.

First some background. Today the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally referred to as Linguistic Relativity. The theory states very simply that the differences in languages leads to differences in both human experience and thought. Meaning that those speaking (and thinking in) very different languages actually perceive the world differently. Or stated another way, language determines your worldview. That may seem intuitively obvious but I guarantee you that is only because you heard this theory first. Until very recently the predominate linguistic view on this issue was that thought precedes language and at the deepest level all humans think alike.

Perhaps an illustration is in order. Take the statement: John broke the window. Now in english there is an agent of the breakage, that would be John. But in some linguistic cultures agents are not part of the language. Ask a member of that culture about the sentence and they are likely to report something like: the window broke. Who did it is not relevant. Wait you say, so in those cultures John is not responsible? Who's going to pay to fix the window? Well it can be a lot more subtle than that.

Try this one - The orange and blue polar bear. You see him up there at the top, right? You know he is not really orange and blue, it's the light. But what if I told you that bears like that feed at low light; in the fall and spring there are long periods of low sun creating a lot of orange light and bluish shadows. So the statement - orange and blue bear refers not only to the colors but to the observable fact that at those times of day or night the bear might well be hunting for food and therefore more dangerous to cross paths with.

A white bear is a nuisance, a orange-blue bear can kill you. Same bear, different outcome. Good to know the local language and the worldview it conveys.

Yes, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity is a lot more complex than what I have explained. Believe me I know; I had a good friend who was all but obsessed with Whorf for many years and we all heard endless permutations and applications of Whorfian thought.

Now to the incident that prompted this rumination on Mr. Sapir and Mr. Whorf. I was in the Golden Bough bookstore in Mt. Shasta doing some lazy browsing. The staff person and a customer, who was obviously a friend were having a discussion about angels. It was clear to me that they were not going to resolve their differences because despite the fact that they were indeed both speaking english, they did not share a common worldview. I also noticed that their differing takes on reality were completely influenced by how they derived meaning from their own words. As I said they did not share a language in the sense that they assigned the same meaning to the words they were using.

At one point, perhaps 15 minutes into the debate, the staffer was shelving some books which brought him into my aisle and he said:

"What do you think, are there angels or not?"

I gave my dura mater a yawning flex and replied:

"Well I am currently working on a novel in which one of the main characters is an angel."

"So you believe angels are real," said the customer.

"Another one," grumbled the staffer.

"Actually I don't think angels are real, but neither do you," I said, directing my answer at the customer.

"Certainly I do," she protested.

"Well then why do you say believe in angels? Why is it a matter of faith and not fact?"

I never did get to tell them that the reason they would never agree was because they were not speaking the same language and did not share a worldview. It sounded like they were having a discussion but their beliefs did not encompass the possibility of the other person being right.

By the way, just in case the other two people from the other discussion that got me thinking about Sapir and Whorf, just in case they are reading this. There was a correct answer to the question you were debating. It was southwest. And I know one of you thinks they said that, so you should have won the argument. But when you stand on a hilltop and point due north and say "southwest" you can't be completely right; either your finger or your voice is mistaken. But then the entire discussion was about the meaning of direction and you two will never agreed on that. So much linguistic relativity.

Did you get lost just a bit in that last paragraph? Was it the obtuse nature of my writing or was it linguistic relativity?

Coming Home?

Home - 1. a house, apartment or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family or household.

2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.

In one sense I am coming home today, that would be the the sense expressed in the first definition above. If any place can be called my usual residence in the past several years, then the Berkeley apartment qualifies. Today after 112 days of remodeling, I am moving back in. Pictures to follow soon.

Domestic affections is another thing entirely. I don't really know if I simply no longer feel such emotions or just currently have no interest in that direction. Semi-nomadic feels comfortable and not at all foreign as I had anticipated. This gives me something to ponder as I place my minimalist domestic stuff in the renewed space high up in the low clouds of Berkeley.

Remember Coming Home (Fonda, Voight, Dern) one of the first two major films that took on the subject of the Vietnam War. They both came out in 1978, less than three years after the U.S. exit from Vietnam; the other film was The Deer Hunter (DeNiro, Walken, Streep). The picture below is the one most remember from Coming Home, Fonda and the crippled veteran she falls in love with Jon Voight. The picture at the top is of Fonda and Bruce Dern, her husband; the other factor in the film's equation. I much preferred The Deer Hunter but no one would have got the reference if I titled this post - Searching for Bambi?

Nevermind, nothing to see here, move along.

And yes the apartment is nearly 100% new, so what am I bitchin' about?

M&M Monday - Elections

It's one state, two state; red state, blue state for the 2008 Obama-McCain election above.

For any ardent red-staters, this is the 1984 Reagan-Mondale election. Only Minnesota and Washington D.C. marred your boy's sweep.

And for the blue-state crowd, the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election map. Back in the days when labeling someone an 'extremist' actually was a bad thing. (Apparently they was a problem with Florida voting back then as well.)

And finally, my personal peering into the future to the 2012 confrontation between horses of an only slightly different color.

M&M Election Graphics by me

Google Art

If you haven't tried Google daily art as your cyber pencil-sharpening distraction, may I strongly recommend it. You probably use Google directly from your web browser and never actually go to google.com. If you did you would know that they change the art in and around the Google logo almost daily with different designs in different parts of the world. They honor birthdays, independence days, holidays great or small and just about anything else the logo staff down on the Google campus can come up with. Here are a few I've enjoyed in the last six months.

That one up at the top was on Cezanne's 172nd birthday (Yes, it is hard to fine the G-O-O-G-L-E sometimes).