84. Absalom

Previous - 83. Chairs + Democracy

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Absalom

Since I've been thinking in terms of "nations" reaping what they've sowed, first in the case of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, now in the case of the U.S. of A; it struck me just now that the same applies to the American South. If the whites of the South had suddenly come to the conclusion that their Peculiar Institution of slavery was not only doomed, but wrong -- if they had done the "right thing" -- it would not have been justice. The ordeal of the War of Northern Aggression was the least they needed to pay.

I can't think of a more oddly told tale than Absalom, Absalom! I'm 133 pages in and so far the story has been narrated by one character we know nothing about to another character we know nothing about. Perhaps these people are part of Faulkner's greater tale set in these parts, I wouldn't know, but coming in just here is like joining the boating party in Heart of Darkness at the last minute, perhaps as the house guest of one of the others but not knowing anyone else.

Postscript

Alas, it seems that those introductory 133 pages were merely to set the stage for the next 40 some pages of letter(?) which I'm now in the middle of. Curiouser and curiouser.

Next - 85. HOA + Venting

83. Chairs + Democracy

Previous - 82. I've decided

Chairs

A long time ago I wrote about my fondness for the oak cabinetry and tables in the Peet's on 4th Street, opposite Whole Foods. The only thing I didn't like were the chairs that were made of a wood that looked almost like a cheap plywood.

I was reminded of this because this new Peet's (on Market) and another location I peeked into the other day, have a new style of chair I really like. I would describe it as being inspired by Eames chairs, 

Well, now that I look at the Eames originals, the resemblance is not that close, but they are closer to this than to the standard wood cafe chairs they had before.


...or at least by Mid-century modern chairs. Here, the chair wood seems to be more refined than the counters and other fixtures -- the reverse of 4th Street. 

Political philosophy

One good thing about the election of Trump is the way it is provoking political and philosophical debate on government in general and democracy in particular. I'm reading an interesting article in The New Yorker that has got my philosophical juices flowing.

It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians.... 

A more practical suggestion came from J. S. Mill, in the nineteenth century: give extra votes to citizens with university degrees or intellectually demanding jobs.... 

Estlund coined the word “epistocracy,” meaning “government by the knowledgeable....”

Since I've advocated licenses for both procreating and voting, I'm not unsympathetic to this notion except that I view the people Mill wanted to give extra votes to as a huge part of the problem. People with university degrees often have no clue what life is like for the common man. That's part of the reason we have consistently ignored the economic fate of the working classes since WW2. First blacks, who had been employed in war industries, were abandoned and then everyone was left to sort out the consequences of the David Ricardo inspired off-shoring of American jobs starting in the 1970s. The notion that workers could be re-trained and educated to take more intellectually demanding jobs ignores the fact that this is not an option for many. And this ignorant cohort is precisely the source of support for fascist movements.

The economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has made the case that democracies never have famines, and other scholars believe that they almost never go to war with one another, rarely murder their own populations, nearly always have peaceful transitions of government, and respect human rights more consistently than other regimes do...

I wish this were true but I question this conclusion. What data is it based on? The history of "democracy" is pretty thin and short. Athens was quite fond of war and their optional invasion of Syracuse is a fairly exact analogue for our invasion of Iraq. Venice was more of a plutocracy. The U.S. and European democracies have started or participated in any number of wars against 3rd World countries. Not to mention U.S. wars against Mexico and Spain. 

Like many people I know, I’ve spent recent months staying up late, reading polls in terror. The flawed and faulty nature of democracy has become a vivid companion. But is democracy really failing, or is it just trying to say something?

This is the key question. As little as I like the treatment, I can't help thinking this is a necessary ordeal if we are not to go the way of the Roman Republic. It would be very disagreeable to have to one day acknowledge Donald Trump as the Savior of the Republic, but it's not impossible. What would be worse however is if he failed to create a fairer economic playing field for the working classes of all colors.

Next - 84. Absalom

82. I've decided

Previous - 81. Veblen + Barton

Accent wall

Back at the Bank Cafe -- the Pine Street Peet's was still closed on Black Friday, also I remembered that the WiFi is better on days like this when many people are away. It's so quiet here I got one of the nice chairs in the window. Interestingly, the guy taking my iced tea order seemed to remember my usual order without noticing I had been absent for close to two months.

I've decided to de-accent my accent wall... maybe. The thing is I have this eleven year plan to repaint my apartment and still can't decide on colors. What to do? If I paint the accent wall the same color as the rest of the room it will be a little easier to visualize how some of the colors I'm considering will look. Maybe. It could also be that I'm bored and looking for something to change. 

My plan (as of an hour ago) is to also paint the window trim the same as the wall to see how that will look. Since I still have leftover paint from when I originally painted the room, this won't cost me anything and I will even be using up paint that isn't getting any younger. I'll use a paint pad again, so I won't have to move much furniture or clear much of the room. 

The accent color seems to work better (for me) in the bathroom, so I'll leave that alone. I could take this opportunity to raise the storage unit in the bathroom up off the floor, which I've thought about for some time. Eleven years is a long time to wait to make a change. Maybe I should consider using really crappy paint next time so I don't have this longevity problem.

Stockton street

They have returned almost all of lower Stockton to pedestrian usage for the holiday shopping season. I walked up it last night on the way home from the train station after Thanksgiving diner at a friend's. There are still a few areas fenced off, and too much of one block was taken up by infrastructure for what must have been a concert earlier in the day, but, assuming that was temporary, this will be a nice addition for the next month. 

Holiday horrors

Dear Goat, someone just walked past the window here -- on the way to the epicenter of the Union Square shopping district -- in Christmas themed sweater and pants. Did he choose those clothes? Did someone pick them for him? And if the later, what was the motivation? Humiliation or festive blindness? 

Machiavelli

Today I ran into a BBC article about Erdogan's toddler diplomacy with the EU. He threatens to send millions more Syrian refugees to Europe if the EU doesn't let Turkey join. I call it toddler diplomacy since it seems to be the equivalent of a child pounding on the door and threatening to set your house on fire if you don't let him in. 

Since Erdogan is no fool, I suspect the intended audience for this diplomacy is domestic rather than foreign. "See, we are forced to turn our backs on the West (and to get rid of all the refugees who are annoying us) by the EU itself." But that got me thinking.

I try not to think too much about Syria because I can see no obvious end-game there. The more successful the Kurds and other anti-ISIS forces, the more nervous the Turks get -- a dynamic we are already starting to see around Mosul in Iraq. There is a fairly obvious solution to all this, but it has always seemed a remote possibility. But if Turkey turns its back on the EU it could turn its back on NATO at the same time, and that would open up the possibility of it resuming its previous status in both Syria and Iraq. The only thing stopping it would be Russia and Iran. 

When it comes to Russia, Turkey probably has a fair amount to trade -- and Russia has little more to gain in Syria and probably can't afford to do there what the U.S. did temporarily in Iraq. If I was a member of NATO or a country in the Caucasus, I would be a little nervous. 

So what you end up with is just like old times: Russia & Turkey & Iran jockeying for position while Europe tries to manage them all. While that scenario ended in world war back in 1914, much has changed since then, the main change being that European nations are not currently at each other's throats.

Since I'm engaging in wild speculation and prognostication here, let's go even further and suggest that the Euro Zone -- in my opinion the dumbest thing nation states have done in all of recorded history -- will fall apart and the EU will either fail with it or be re-envisioned in a less coercive and more cooperative way. Regardless, I find it hard to imagine Europe resorting to the nationalism that led to ether World War. If that is true, then Turkey, regardless of how much the West doesn't like its policy, gets some lee way as a counter to both Russia and Iran. 

At present, the U.S. is in the awkward position of needing to support Iran -- as the Shia counter to Wahabi fundamentalism. (Does Putin realize he's doing what we can't in Syria?) But if Turkey entered the game then Turkey could be a more acceptable alternative, though even then we might need to lend support to Iran as a counter to Turkey. 

This is where I fall back on my amazement at chess masters who can see so many moves ahead. But then even Bismarck was eventually undone by a fool who couldn't see ahead at all.

Next - 83. Chairs + Democracy

81. Veblen + Barton

Previous - 80. Medium + Nostalgia

Status symbols

The other day someone reported to me that my cell phone wouldn't accept messages, I confirmed that this was true. Today I went into the new AT&T "Flagship" store next to the Powell Street cable car turnaround to address this issue. It wasn't quick, but the person who was helping me did get it sorted out. 

One of the reasons it took a while is that this person had very long fingernails which made tapping on her various screens, or on my keypad, challenging. I managed to refrain from telling her why she had long fingernails -- at least why Thorsten Veblen thought she had long fingernails. At least I had something to think about while she was navigating a myriad of screens and tapping away, without being able to use the tips of her fingers.

According to Veblen, long fingernails are a classic status symbol -- they announce to the world that you aren't expected to do physical labor (because you can't.) The fashion started with the idle classes, was then picked up (as is the usual case) by the underclasses and finally made it's way to the working classes. It's been too long since I read Veblen, but I'm pretty sure high heels and men's ties fit into this same class of status symbols.

Barton

My book club met over the weekend and one of the clubbers mentioned that her father had served in WW2 on a destroyer that sank in the Pacific. I restrained myself (surprisingly) from immediately asking the name of the destroyer, and then forgot about it. Today I finally remembered and sent her an email inquiry. Turns out her dad had been on the USS Barton. 

I would have been interested -- and probably would have known something about -- any destroyer sinking of the Pacific War, but the Barton is particularly interesting. I've already told (my version) of the story of the (naval) Battle of Guadalcanal, one of my favorite stories of the war. Every account of the battle is confused because, even at the time, everyone was confused and very tired and the whole battle was like a fever dream with a body count. But one aspect of the battle has at least one reliable eye witness and that is the sinking of the USS Barton by the Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze. The reliable witness is Tameichi Hara, captain of the Amatsukaze, who published Japanese Destroyer Captain about his war time experiences. What are the odds that I would run into someone who had a family member who participated in that battle? 

On the other hand, I think there are great stories (which for me really just means that you can't describe the battle without including a bunch of back story) pertaining to at least eight major sea battles of the Pacific War. And I'm sure I could come up with stories for additional battles if I really thought about it. Though what really puts the Pacific War in a class by itself is that it even has eight major sea battles (and you could at least double that number if you include the less-interesting-to-me battles.)

Researching the Barton, I discovered something I didn't know, that several of her sister ships had been built at the Bethlehem Shipyard here in SF -- what is now known as Pier 70 -- where I've worked a number of events now. The Benson class destroyers were similar to, and precursors of, the better known Fletcher class.

As always, this leads me to marvel at American production during the war years. The Benson and related classes (don't ask) included 52 ships built from 1938-1943 at shipyards all across the U.S. Which sounds impressive until you read that the Fletcher (175) and related classes (58+98) totaled 331 ships. And each one of these ships had its own story.

Some of my favorite books about the Pacific War were written from the perspective of a particular ship. Now these ships were famous because of something they did or because they took part in famous battles (and many of them ended up getting sunk), but telling the longer story of the ship rather than the short story of a battle is much more interesting and revealing about the wartime experience. The books I read about the USS Washington, Enterprise, and Indianapolis were good, but my favorites were the ones about the little escort carrier USS Gambier Bay and the even smaller destroyer escort USS Roberts. The Roberts was a truncated destroyer, a mini-Fletcher -- a pony serving with horses. It had similar guns and torpedoes and depth charges, only fewer of them. It wasn't as fast or as seaworthy. It was intended to free regular destroyers from convoy and anti-submarine duty for which they were over qualified. DEs and CVEs were ingenious improvisations that could be produced quickly and in quantity by the same commercial shipyards that turned out hundreds of Liberty Ships. But they were also war winners. 

The Roberts and the Gambier Bay were written about because they took part in -- starred in -- the Battle Off Samar in 1944, but you would be making a mistake if you jumped ahead to that part of the book, as what is most interesting is how these little ships were turned into ships of war by green crews and a few officers and old Navy hands. You find the same, self-sufficient, floating community-unto-itself that you find in Moby Dick or the Patrick O'Brien novels. Each of the hundreds of warships build before and during WW2 became its own little war-making world. Of course with the USS Washington the real war was with the USS South Dakota, not the Japanese, but that's another story.    

Next - 82. I've decided

80. Medium + Nostalgia

Previous - 79. Backpack + Base isolation

Medium

I'm back at what I'm now thinking of as the Psych-ward Peet's on Market. Because all the seats at the counter facing the sidewalk were taken, I'm upstairs at the counter in the balcony, which looks across at the Phelan Building. What's odd about this is that I'm probably looking into the windows of the Medium offices as I progress through my backlog of Medium stories -- only three more to go!

There are two problems with reading these pieces in such an asynchronous style. First, I read too many pieces at a sitting which doesn't give me time to ponder before I move on to the next thought-stream. And second, it's pointless to suggest edits or make helpful observations about pieces that were published months ago. It's like thinking up clever comebacks, the next day, to statements made at a party the previous night. 

Nostalgia

I'm still re-discovering the music of the '60s and late '50s. I was disappointed in the absence of Brazilian music in the "Top Hits..." videos, so I hunted around for music by "Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66" and the Gilbertos. I'm amazed how well this music has held up. I may like it even more than I did back then. 

The best thing I've found is an album from 1965 (I think), called "Getz - Gilberto" featuring Stan Getz on sax and Joao Gilberto, with a bit of Astrud Gilberto thrown in as well.

What I had forgotten about Brazil 66 is how much they covered Beatles hits. These TV show videos are very much of the time.

In the mid-60's I was still playing trumpet in my school's band and Herb Alpert was my favorite trumpet player. I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that Alpert was married to one of the singers (Lani Hall) in Brazil 66 and facilitated their success.

Still, the two songs I've run into with the greatest nostalgic punch for me were ones I included links to before: "Route 66" (the TV show theme) and "A Summer Place" (the film theme.) They really do take me back to the early '60s in Boulder, Colorado.

Next - 81. Veblen + Barton

79. Backpack + Base isolation

Previous - 78. Kant + Music + Wisdom

Little black backpack

I was thinking today that my small black backpack may be one of the best purchases I've ever made. It's rare when I'm out of the house and don't have it with me, most usually when I'm going to the gym or to work. I bought it in 1993 when I bought my first PowerBook Mac laptop,

I spotted the backpack at a MacWorld booth that year. It is custom designed for that particular laptop, with a well padded area at the back for the computer, and special pockets for essentials like 3.5" floppy disks. When I stopped using the PowerBook a few years later, I also stopped using the backpack. 

But when I bought my first netbook I dug it out of storage and resumed using it. That old PowerBook is also in storage, but the hard drive is dead so it's not getting revived. After the netbook, came my current Chromebook. Both of these little machines fit in the outer flap, not in the main part of the bag and never in the padded area intended for my PowerBook. 

Besides the usual daily use, this backpack has held all my essentials on my train trips -- the padded area holds underclothes, the main pocket toiletries along with books and documents. I even wear it for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass so I have room for more bags and water. There are undoubtedly fiendishly clever backpacks on the market now that would make me green with envy, but I'm not aware of having any unmet needs, and I'm amortizing the hell out of this purchase.

Structural engineering

Speaking of fiendishly clever, a new building in Berkeley was written up recently in the Chron that uses a new method of base isolation to protect the upper floors from earthquake damage. Even after reading the article (this is probably behind a pay wall) -- actually two of them -- it still took me a long time to figure out how this system works. The ground floor looks normal, it has to be because it abuts a neighbor on one side, and the retail tenant on that floor actually occupies both the new space and the one next door. But everything above the ground floor rests on four large columns -- not on the edges but more toward the center of the structure. The columns include a dish like surface that the upper part of the column can slide around on in the event of a quake. If it were totally frictionless -- which it isn't, of course -- the top part of the building would not move at all in a quake until the end when it would slide into the low, center point of the relocated dish. 

This is a sample of the dish that moves under the top of the building. I'm unclear what the puck in the center is, possibly an abbreviated version of how the building actually sits in the dish?

This is one of the four actual comumns. The yellow beam is marked to show how much it can move but the gray band of sealant above the beam is the actual dividing line between ground floor and floating upper building. During a quake the lower yellow band on the column would move right and left relative to the upper yellow band, which should stay relatively still.

Besides the seriously expensive columns, the tricky part is running in utilities given that the building parts can slide a foot in any direction. Also, there needs to be a gap around the part of the building that doesn't move, so that surrounding buildings that are moving don't run into it. There's a massive band of sealant between the two parts of the building that will probably have to be replaced after a quake. I would have done that part differently, using something more like a door sweep. But I know there would be problems with that too.

In this particular building the seismic measures are a curiosity (the structural engineer's office is in the floating part of the building), but a system like this would make real sense when you had to take into account large weights like brewery tanks or wine vats. (Of if you wanted to prevent a potentially dangerous chemistry lab from being shaken.) You wouldn't need to spend effort securing each tank or vat since the entire floor would be isolated from the quake. 

Next - 80. Medium + Nostalgia

78. Kant + Music + Wisdom

Previous - 77. YouTube + Alice

Link to Table of Contents

Not exactly karma

I hate it when you sneer at something and then realize you are doing the very thing you just sneered at. Today it was "Retail Therapy." I was walking past the upscale Crocker Galeria where I noticed the sign suggesting that this was the place to process your trama. I sneered... just as it occurred to me that I was in the process of doing two errands that were not at all necessary and that I would have put off indefinitely a couple weeks ago.

It occurred to me weeks ago that I would have a much easier time seeing pens sitting on the black-stained counter above my desk that holds my computers, if I had a white pen. Good idea but low priority. Today I sought out and purchased a white pen. I've been wanting to replace more of my lights with LEDs for a long time, but they are expensive, I have few lights, and the compact flourescents I have last a very long time the way I use them. But last night, in the first step of this retail therapy chain of events, I purchased an air cleaner online -- now in transit -- so I have a "good" reason to try to reduce my electrical overhead by a few watts (five, I think). So after my stop at the stationary store, I hit my hardware store for a new LED lamp. I can't wait to test out my new toys. (According to the the date I wrote on the old CFL lamp I replaced, it has been in use for over seven years. I'll probably move it to an HOA common area fixture the next time a light burns out.)

Five watts doesn't sound like much, but then I use very little electricity. My refrigerator consumes the most power and I've considered replacing it with a new, more energy conserving unit, but I'm not sure I can really save that much and my current unit still works fine. The thing is, my power bill is already so low that these little improvements won't really make much of a difference. I'm just doing this to please myself.

It could be that the real reason I'm thinking about this now is that last night was our first "cold" night. Soon I will need to turn on my space heater, (I have indeed) that's the only time I use a serious amount of power. In a normal year though, I only run my space heater for three or four weeks and then only during the evening. Enough to double my power bill for a couple months, but since the base usage is so low, it still doesn't amount to much. Many people pay more per month then I pay per year. I once calculated that it would take centuries for me to amortize the cost of replacing my windows with better insulated ones, even if it cut my heating needs to zero.

That bastard Kant

It occurred to be me this morning that it is not Utilitarianism but rather a sociological interpretation of morality that stands in opposition to both Kant and Utilitarianism. And this is because a sociological interpretation has no foundation at all in reason, moral laws are simply arbitrary group rules that bind people together and exclude non-group members. 

Fundamentalism -- regardless of the religion -- is simply the formation of a new, smaller group without seeming to break the rules of the larger group they are breaking away from. My favorite example of this is the ultra-Catholic group Mel Gibson's father belongs to. As I understand it, they are such "good" and "pure" Catholics that they are forced to contradict the Pope. This is all amusing until the fundamentalists start blowing things up.

Ohhh... It occurs to me that you can hypothesize something like a Sociological Strong Force that holds these groups together until they get too large and then can spontaneously "decay" into smaller, again stable, groups. Cool.

Chemistry/physics question

Why is it that titanium, in the form of white titanium, and mercury both reflect all frequencies of visible light but mercury reflects the light in an orderly fashion while with white titanium the reflected light is diffuse? 

"Top Songs" of the '50s and '60s

I clicked on something different in YouTube and then spent the past two nights listening to popular songs from my formative years (1952-1970). How they select the songs to include is a mystery. (I had no idea Eddie Fisher and Rosemary Clooney were so big the year I was born. And how have I never heard of Joni James? It's also interesting that Tony Bennett's tone got richer over the years.) It would be impossible to produce a really complete collection unless you had hours rather than minutes for each year. Country music is short changed and the TV theme version of "Route 66" is ignored (the Nelson Riddle instrumental version. I would try to get the Nat Cole vocal version of the much earlier "Get your kicks on Route 66" on my list somehow), and the late '60s seems to be especially bad as music got more and more diverse -- almost nothing of the San Francisco bands and no Led Zeppelin! 

But the late '50s and early '60s are surprisingly good. I've always been a fan of instrumental songs and it seemed like virtually every year from '57-'62 had at least one good one. "A Summer Place" is probably the instrumental song I recall the best, but there were others including "Canadian Sunset" which I had forgotten until I heard it again.

I had originally gone with '54 as the beginning of my formative years, but after listening to music from '52 and '53, I realized I knew some of this music just as well. I have the edition of the National Geographic from the month I was born (such a different world) but listening to the "Top Hits" from the year I was born turns out to be just as revealing.

One thing that surprised me was how much of the Everly Brothers was included in this series. They were never popular in my family and, reading more about them, I'm sure it's because they were originally from Muhlenberg county, Kentucky, so my mother would have dismissed them as hillbillies. I hadn't realized their influence on artists that followed, like Paul Simon and even Lindsey Buckingham -- who even toured with them at one point. 

I don't think my mother ever realized how fond I became, as early as my college days, of Bluegrass music. Ironically, Muhlenberg county is the subject of one of my all time favorite Bluegrass songs, "Paradise." 

There's also almost no Jazz included in these collections, which I can understand since Jazz has rarely been mainstream. 

The visuals that accompany the music varies from contemporary TV, to the bands playing their hits much later (disconcerting), to neo-Ken Burns photo montages to my favorite -- shots of 45 singles sitting on a turntable so you can see the recording label and related information. I would have done them all this way so you would also get a bit of history of the music industry. Of course I would also have added a note if either Ahmet Ertegun or Clive Davis had been involved in any way.

Getting back to instrumental songs, I can't think of many that have been "top hits" in recent years or even decades. When I started writing this, "Europa" was on the "radio" here at my favorite pizzeria -- their fondness for Santana may be a reason I like the place. I can think of (and have written about) some other guitar god masterpieces that would be on my list of hit instrumentals, but I can't think of anything similar to the orchestral pieces I mentioned above. Maybe music from special movies like Star Wars or The Godfather. Vangelis's music for "Chariots of Fire" might be the last music (I can think of) to crossover to become a radio hit? Not at all sure of this. (I just found a list of the most popular movie music but the page was so media intensive that it crashed my computer. So I'm sticking with what I think I know.)

A Century of Wisdom

Finally finished the book! She, either Alice or the author or both, chooses not to dwell on Alice's feelings about Judaism except to emphasis again her fondness for Spinoza's God who is but isn't particularly interested in us. My first thought when I opened this book and read her quote of Epictitus was that Alice is probably the one and only Survivor I could have asked my question, If you could snap your fingers and change history so that the Holocaust didn't happen, would you? In fact, I would never ask the question, but I do wonder what she would answer. 

Next - 79. Backpack + Base isolation

77. YouTube + Alice

Previous - 76. The New Financial Distric

Link to Table of Contents

Same ole, same ole

Despite liking the space and having a pretty good veggie sandwich, I'm back at the Market Street Pete's because the WiFi on Pine was almost as slow as at the Bank Cafe. Too bad.

Trying to process the Trump election while reading a book about the Holocaust is either a bad or a very good idea. Still not sure which. But it certainly does get me thinking. 

A lot is being made here about Clinton winning the popular vote. Fair enough. But the difference is still tiny and I don't actually doubt Trump's claim that he could have won the popular vote if he had campaigned more in California and New York. But it's really even worse than that.

Trumps core constituency are the people who feel disenfranchised, left out of the New Economy and the New Values of our Brave New secular world. Many of these people don't vote at all. I would be willing to bet that if everyone was forced to vote, the popular vote would be way in Trump's favor. 

And it isn't just white men who bash gays or women or Jews or any other "privileged" group they feel they have social permission to attack. This is something people -- mostly, but not entirely men -- of color can participate in as well. Hate does a surprisingly good job of bringing people together.

By coincidence, I was rereading something I wrote about Ayn Rand in my previous blog (here) that is worth rereading with Trump in mind. It would be so sad if Nietzsche was again to be used to make the world an even worse place.


Which brings me back to... The Brothers Karamazov. I bet you thought I was going to say The Magic Mountain. Start with Lizaveta (who Google doesn't even include in the list of key characters). I still maintain that she represents the Russian, Orthodox Christian, ideal of goodness in the novel, so of course she is raped by Fyodor and then dies giving birth to Smerdyakov, who represents the new man unrestrained by traditional values. He longs for, but lacks the opportunity to participate in, bourgeois success. The new, Godless, Russia (Foyodor) rapes and kills traditional Russia (Lizaveta) and spawns Smerdyakov the striving man without values or restraints.

Crash Course Philosophy

I've been watching this series of videos since they started and am having so much fun. I don't remember how many of these courses I've followed so far, several literature ones, history, parts of the chemistry one, and some others. What seems to be different about Philosophy is the community of philosophy nuts in the comments. Like me, most of the commenters are watching not so much to learn something new but to participate in a conversation about topics we rarely get a chance to talk about. Sometimes it seem like half the comments for one episode are in anticipation of what is coming next. We went nuts in anticipation of Kantian ethics -- how often does anyone get a chance to say that? The shear number of Kant puns was something to see.

I accused us of acting like fan-boys and got the usual hostile internet response, which is actually pretty funny. About the same thing is happening on another YouTube channel with military history, the difference I think is that military history seems to be a more common interest in the world at large. (When guys geek out about military history I always think of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy, but I can't think of a philosophical equivalent.) That there are so many people out there who know and care about Kant (and are so eagerly anticipating Nietzsche) is a pleasant surprise. 

The problem with the Crash Course Philosophy series is that it is not going into the detail we would like. And the presenter just had a baby so it's unlikely that he will jump in with a user-requested extension of the course. Our only hope is that sleep deprivation will drive him to reconsider the very nature of our perception and existence. 

YouTube travel

I also use YouTube to live vicariously though others, something that saves me a lot of trouble and expense. I'm subscribed to one couple traveling around the U.S.A. in an RV, a couple building their Tiny House, a couple sailing around the world, and, as of last night, a second couple also sailing around who just completed a transit of the Erie Canal -- something I've thought of doing -- and are currently stuck on the Hudson due to engine problems with their sailboat.

I suspect (but it would be great to know for sure) that as many people watch these videos and think, "Wow, what a lot of trouble and expense" as think "Now that's something I want to do next." This is especially true, I think, for the Tiny House series. What a lot of work it is to build (yourself) even a tiny house. The guy is an electrician, which meant that he was qualified to do all the electrical work himself, but he also took the opportunity of being his own client to add every electrical feature he had ever imagined. The house is wired like a space ship. I can't help but think how I would do it all differently, and more simply, but the thought of doing all the work he's doing also makes me think, just, no.

I fantasize about gutting my apartment and starting fresh -- a much simpler task than building a Tiny House -- but the thought of how much debris would go to the dump and of how little of an actual improvement it would be in the end, makes me sure I would never actually do it.

A Century of Wisdom

As was the case with Musicophilia (obviously) and Doctor Faustus, A Century of Wisdom is largely about music. With Doctor Faustus in mind, it is particularly interesting how important Beethoven was to Alice -- even in the camp.  Especially in the camp. While Doctor Faustus is about the "taking back" of Beethoven's 9th, A Century of Wisdom is about the survival of the 9th even under the worst circumstances. 

I'm close to the end of the book now and there has still been no mention of religion as such. It seems that music has taken the place of religion in Alice's life -- something that makes much more sense to me personally. Religion frequently uses music -- from Bach to chanting -- for it's own purposes, but one has to wonder which has primacy in this relationship. (Another question I would like to ask Temple Grandin, besides how she visualizes music, is if her appreciation of music was similarly affected by the sheep dip chemical reaction that killed her religious feelings?) 

This is awkward, but there's something else one needs to say about Alice's experience of the Holocaust: For almost everyone else, life in the camps terminated, or at least suspended, their "normal" life. Alice and, to a lesser extent, Victor Frankl lost their freedom, but not their avocations or even their vocations. Their lives, in the most important sense, continued in the camps. And this was especially the case with Alice. Even in the camp she continued teaching and performing. After the war, while living and teaching in Israel, she didn't talk about her past -- to the extent that most of her students had no idea that she was a Holocaust survivor. In the book we at least get an account of her experience and of how she tried to protect her child from the reality of his situation (which reminds me of the plot of Life Is Beautiful, though I never saw the film). 

She claims that, after the war, her reasons for not speaking of her past were that she didn't want her son to remember, and didn't want any special consideration, but I have to wonder if she also felt a sort of survivor's guilt, not just at having survived but at having had such a freakishly mild experience of the Holocaust. In her place, I would not have wanted to compare experiences with survivors from other camps.

Does this matter? Yes and no. Her experience and her insights are as valid as anyone else's. But when you consider the questions posed by The Sunflower, I would include her in the class of people who would be in no position to forgive because they hadn't really been there. This is a little unfair, as I said, she lost her freedom and also her mother and husband, but she didn't have to face the full brutality of the camps. She had glimpsed the "elephant" but didn't actually come face to face with it.

Next - 78. Kant + Music + Wisdom

76. The New Financial District

Previous - 75. Life + History

Another Peet's

As a change of pace, and because I needed to go to the P.O., I'm at a different location of Peet's today. I've only been in here a couple times, when I was in a rush, but had been thinking I should check it out again. We are in the heart of the old Financial District -- what was known as the Wall Street of the West. Though, technically, that was Montgomery street and we are half a block east. But this space is adjacent to the old Pacific Coast Stock Exchange (now an expensive gym.) 

The reason I'm writing about this is the change in the food available now in this area. Previously it was, from my perspective, pretty vile. You might be able to get lunch at a reasonable price, but for a vegetarian the options were limited and the quality sub-par. Not anymore.

It seems that almost every block has some sort of juice stand. The Plant - Cafe Organica, an upscale and high quality local chain of organic cafes, now has a location at the corner of Pine and Montgomery, a half block away from me at the moment. And this Peet's -- taking advantage of its location and the little space to the side that isn't an alley or a courtyard, exactly, but that does have seating -- shares it's space with a business called "Specialty" that allows you to walk up and order lunch off some computer displays while using those little radio-puck thingies to let you know when your order is ready. Or you can order online. The options for veggies, even vegans, are enticing. (He says without having tried any of them yet.)

Now the truth is that when I eat in this neighborhood I either eat at Caffe Bianco -- an old school place I love -- but the food is mediocre at best, or Bun Mee -- my favorite Vietnamese sandwich place. I may have to reconsider this with these new options in mind. 

So can we agree that not all the changes wrought by the current wave of young tech people are evil? Probably not. My guess is that locals incensed by Trump will take it out on the tech bros since they are the only target at hand. And here's a related conundrum: Because tech buses stopping in a neighborhood has the effect of raising local property values and rents, the anti-change forces are arguing for one central pickup location for all the buses. But it is estimated that that would reduce by as much as 50% the number of people riding those buses and put them back in cars clogging all the roads and freeways. 

Since "it will increase traffic" is the battle cry of the anti-change people fighting any new development, they find themselves caught with no good alternative. Either the people with good jobs outside SF get to continue to ride their fancy buses in peace, or everyone else gets to deal with more traffic. I predict the whining will be endless.

Next - 77. YouTube + Alice

75. Life + History

Previous - 74. Going to the dark side

Life goes on

The world may be going to hell but I just had my favorite vegan breakfast at the Pork Store and now I'm having tea at Coffee to the People, so life is good for the moment. 

Leaving home this morning I ran into the owner of the lower level unit, she was overseeing the dance of vehicles in our alley as four or five cars and trucks pulled out into the street so that the van with her new carpet could get back to our building. For some reason, the people doing construction next door work even longer hours on Saturday than on weekdays. Sometimes, and this was true yesterday as well, the alley is blocked even after the normal quitting time of 4pm. My latest plan for "landscaping" our back yard is to put down tarps and observe how they drain until the construction is complete next door, or until I have a much better idea when we can schedule a delivery of 60 bags of gravel and not run into an alley parking jam.

Speaking of construction, yesterday I walked past a guy finishing some newly replaced cement on a Grant street sidewalk. The rest of the sidewalk there has an unusual pattern and he was doing a skillful job of matching it. The reason I noticed him was that he had brought his dog to the work site. The dog was lying comfortably on a blanket the guy had laid out on the sidewalk adjacent to where he was working. Nice gig for everyone concerned. 

Not again!

As if things weren't bad enough this week. Walking past Union Square on my way to breakfast this morning I was shocked to see the big Christmas tree is already up and decorated. I'm interested to see if we will get our subway construction zone streets back for the shopping season -- as we always have in the past. Now that they are working on the station, I don't think they can just cover everything up with fake grass for a few weeks. Hope I'm wrong. 

History!

I just ran into something amazing on Medium. This relates both to the Holocaust and to the subject of the Faustian/Mephistophelian character of the Jewish bourgeoisie. I'm amazed I've never heard about this. HERE's the link. Only think what Goethe could have done with this story. Or Dostoevsky. 

Next - 76. The New Financial Distric

74. Going to the Dark side

Previous - 73. Aftermath + retirement

Link to Table of Contents

After the election

I probably know some Trump supporters but I don't hear much from them. I do know many people on the other extreme and I have to say that it is interesting to see how they are responding to the election results. The Kumbaya faction is itching for a fight, just like the Trump supporters. 

My Burkean conservative bias should be familiar to anyone reading this, so you shouldn't be surprised that I find this amusing. We all want The People to speak up for themselves and decide policy until The People disagree with us. Granted, Trump supporters are still a minority of the population, and a substantial percentage of those supporters are simply sexist men (and women) who won't vote for a female pack leader, but still, there's a very large number of people that Progressives would like to disenfranchise here.

And they don't see this as a problem.

A day later

People on the left continue to grow more shrill. There's no doubt in my mind that the most extreme, like the anarchists trashing Oakland every night, didn't vote for Clinton. The logic of being irate when the candidate you didn't support loses is Trumpian, when you think about it. 

I continue to think this was actually about the best outcome we could have gotten -- the worse alternatives being Cruz, Pence, or Rubio. The lesson I hope someone is noticing is that the Parties need to regain control of their nomination processes. How do we get back to the smoke filled rooms where everything was decided? No sane party would have nominated either of these people. They both have too much emotional and legal baggage. Since my Representative is the Queen of the Democratic money machine, I may actually writer her a letter. 

This also got me thinking about revolutions in general, since both sides are so eager for a fight. I know not everyone is a history buff, but have they really not noticed the results of the Arab Spring? Can they really not see that revolution almost always makes things worse?

And that got me thinking about the American Revolution -- the great exception. Or not, because the purpose of the American Revolution was really to maintain the status quo that existed in the Colonies. Technically they were part of the United Kingdom and subject to the the King, but they were mostly self-governing. Not much changed after the Revolution aside from having no one to stop their exploitation of the Midwest or trans-Appalachian area. It wasn't really a revolution in the social sense. It was more like a band of pirates deciding they could ignore the Pirate King and do as they pleased. (Maybe I should teach U.S. History during my retirement. Lesson 1: "Our slave owning, pirate Forefathers.")

La Boulangerie de San Francisco

I had my favorite bread pudding breakfast this morning. What I previously referred to as "the 2nd best French bakery cafe," has finally reopened one of their locations in my part of town following the reorganizing and renaming of the business after Starbucks' decision to close down La Boulange. 

The location near me is about 80% identical to the way it looked before -- the pastries look and taste about the same -- but, so far there is absolutely no signage, for reasons I can't imagine. You'd think they would at least have temporary signs up pending their final signage, but no. And they've been open for at least a week as I happened to walk past and noticed they were back about a week ago. Whatever. The price for my bread pudding was a little higher, but it had always been a steal. And the portion was smaller, but it had been almost too large before, so I have no complaints.

However, they are no longer the 2nd, but the 3rd best French bakery cafe, as another wonderful bakery has opened up in the interim. Since the 1st and 2nd bakeries are not convenient to me, and since the 3rd is still quite good and now, again, only five blocks away, I don't have any problem with their not ranking as high. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the new #2 is located in the same upscale neighborhood where the old #2 started, Pacific Heights. (I just checked and b. patisserie opened a couple years before La Boulange was shuttered.)

A Century of Wisdom

Not sure if this is the best or worst time to be reading a book dealing with the Holocaust. In chapter seven we learn that it wasn't until Alice was quite old and had moved to London to be near her son that she started studying philosophy at the University of the Third Age -- a sort of Cambridge extension program for the elderly. She seems to have been mostly interested in Spinoza, though Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are also mentioned. Alice had the advantage of reading the latter two in German but I don't know if she could read Latin. 

Spinoza is an interesting philosopher. And it doesn't hurt that I imagine he and Hume with sling-shots sending little thought missiles against the glass windows of the edifice Descartes had built. It's curious that, today, his thought is best known through the derivative writings of Mary Baker Eddy, but at least she didn't abuse his ideas as so many did with Nietzsche. 

Spinoza's writings are also not inconsistent (to put it as passively as possible) with pantheism, so, again, a reason for me to approve. Because he is was also a child of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora that Braudel associates with the development of western capitalism, I probably should read him again. I'm not sure if it is his ideas or his Jewishness that causes him to tend to stand alone in the history of modern western philosophy. It is obvious how you connect people like Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Hegel to people before and after, but I can't really think of a disciple of Spinoza. (Wiki suggests Santayana and Wittgenstein, but that isn't until the 20th century.) 

Wiki also records the following, Baruch de Espinoza became the first secular Jew of modern Europe.^[58] This alludes to his having been expelled from his Jewish community but never having converted to Christianity. This is interesting as, at least so far in the book, nothing has been said about Alice's faith during or after her time in the camps.

Her biographer claims she continued to attend classes into her 104th year. I believe that would mean she studied philosophy for around 20 years -- impressive. It would be interesting to know what classes she took over that long period of time. Toward the end was she revisiting favorite subjects or still looking for new things to learn? And what is it like teaching a class of students with that level of familiarity with the subject? Could be heaven, could be hell.

Next - 75. Life + History

73. Aftermath + retirement

Previous - 72. Election night 2016

Aftermath

All the people who wanted change (the Bernie Sanders enthusiasts) and who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton (who was just as bad as the Republicans) are now upset. And all the liberal/progressive organizations are swarming like fund-raising flies.  

Acts of God

The other day I was having lunch with a friend at BrainWash when a crazy person walked up and sat at one of the tables on the sidewalk (we were inside). After sitting there for a while, he got up, picked up his cafe table, and threw it into the near lane of the (busy) street. The table broke into pieces and he walked away down an alley, kicking things and making more noise. 

Several of us retrieved the shards of the table which the bus-boy took inside. They now have one fewer table outside. No one called the cops since that would just be a waste of everyone's time.

Thinking about this today, it occurred to me that this guy was a bit like a dust-devil -- a common phenomena in Arizona where the heat, independent of any other weather event, causes small, tornado like winds that can do minor damage to cars or lawn furniture or the like. It's just something that happens and you can't do anything about it but clean up after.

Cantonese

This morning I was sitting waiting to get my blood drawn for tests and listening to the Cantonese being spoken around me. As I understand it, syllables have a different meaning depending on the pitch. This makes me think that Cantonese could be a great analogue for QED with the syllable being an electron and the pitch representing its energy state. I still have no idea how you would represent QCD with sound, though I'm sure it would sound interesting as quarks (for instance) have so many different qualities.

But what I was noticing this morning is that it must not be the absolute pitch but rather the relative pitch that determines the meaning. There was a woman with a particularly high (and annoying) voice and other people speaking in lower ranges. 

Spacetime is relative, but, I think, in either QED or QCD energy states are absolute. But recalling what Oliver Sacks wrote about people with absolute pitch, it shouldn't be too hard for those people to create a code where words (or phrases) had a different meaning at different pitches. Now that would be a tough code to break, and you could use it over any phone line or even on radio or TV.

My Medium retirement plan

The delight of a steady supply of content. That sentence should be a sub-head but I don't usually do that so, there it is. 

Today, once again, I spent the bulk of my afternoon in the Peet's on Market trying to catch up on my Medium backlog. So, nothing new, except that it occurred to me how great it was to read through so many pieces on so many subjects. I'm still months behind, and therefore out of sync, but couldn't help responding to some of the military articles. With the physics and astrophysics articles I could restrain myself, but I really wanted to chime in from time to time. There was just so much great content to consider. 

At some point I'm going to have to stop doing my greening work. I'm feeling better than I did last year, and keeping in shape all year round will undoubtedly prolong my "career," but I'm already starting to deal with turning 65 next year and I have reason to believe that I won't be getting any younger. 

It's very French (and very optimistic) to use le petite mort to mean orgasm and not sleep. For me the months between October and April are le petite retirement. I'm still doing my HOA work; I'm still keeping in shape for next summer; but I have to acknowledge that at some point in the future this is going to be my life. 

Today I read about QCD, controversies concerning both dark energy and dark matter, plus several other topics, and I had lunch at Bun Mee where I savored my favorite crispy tofu Vietnamese sandwich. I can do this.

Next - 74. Going to the dark side