195. Summer to end of summer

Not exactly the Rocky training montage

At the gym yesterday I was thinking that we're down to the last month and a half of Greening season -- only a month until International Dragon Boat Races, which is my warm up for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The good news is that I'm on the mend. My mysterious ulnar nerve problem seems to be resolving itself, and the rest has helped my wrist. My back is slowly improving. I will not be back to full strength by the first week of October, but I should be fully functional. Given the year I've been having, that's a win. At this point I'll be happy if I end the season with all my limbs connected and my faculties intact.

I would love to start a more intensive training period for September -- I'm not happy about the strength I've lost since I've been nursing my back and nerve -- but that would be risky at this critical time. Better to take it slow now and possibly crank it up a bit after HSB.

Summertime

Today the inland (hotter) areas of the Bay Area are supposed to hit the mid-100s F; tomorrow the mid-110s -- Phoenix heat. Meanwhile I'm still sleeping under double comforters. Aside from a number of Sundays (always Sundays, so far) when the SF temp has slipped into the 80s, it has been consistently cold this summer. That will probably change soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow, but SF has been almost too cold for me this year. (Let's see what I have to say at the end of October.)

TV

I've been catching up with my TV the last several weeks. I bought (and then resold) seasons 12 and 13 of "NCIS," so I'm only two seasons behind now. The show (the show runner, I'm guessing) is very good at using its bully pulpit. At least a couple times a season they highlight some good cause related to Navy and Marine service people or veterans. Not only is it a good thing to do, but the show's audience is not going to complain, even if it does take time away from the "entertainment." It's a win-win, but you probably still have to have a show this successful to get away with it.

This week I'm wrapping up "Castle," the 8th and final season. The show has a lot going for it, but I think it's been limping along ever since Castle and Beckett got together. (I wonder if part of NCIS's success is how Gibbs has never really changed?)

The writing this season has been sloppy. There have been two episodes inspired in part or in whole by psychology experiments (including the Stanford prison experiment) but one of them makes no sense by the end of the episode when you finally know all. Aside from my trick of picking the villain by the casting, I'm usually not that concerned with figuring out Who Done It, but if you had been attempting that with the experiment episode you would have been mislead and confused.

Still, when they just let Castle be Castle, the show is as good as ever. 

Hobart Building

Something has bugged me ever since I moved to SF...

See that blank wall in the center of the photo? That's the side of the, otherwise attractive, Hobart building, that was never intended to be seen. 

Some closer views of the tower.

Before the International Style hit SF, the intersection where Montgomery ("The Wall Street of the West") hits Market was a place of beauty. 

All that remains of these three buildings is the base of the one in the middle.

First Wells Fargo took down the building next to the Hobart and replaced it with a much smaller building next to their new tower (briefly the tallest in town). 

Then Crocker Bank sacrificed the top of the building across Montgomery so they could build their own office tower at the other end of the block. 

New Crocker tower at left with Galleria in between.

Combined, these changes meant that the blank side of the Hobart was revealed and that it was also visible for blocks.

There is now a plan to rebuild atop the base of the old Crocker building -- now a Wells Fargo, housing my safe deposit box -- and this may (or may not) help by blocking the view a bit. But, short of building something more fitting abutting the Hobart, I think something could be done with that blank wall. Something matching the granularity of the Hobart tower. Maybe. Anyway, some kind of mural.

Later that same day...

Just went out for a late lunch and to take some of the photos of the Hobart building above. Stepping out of the air conditioned Bank Cafe, I got a nose full of ozone. It's already warmer -- though not at all hot -- but the change in the air chemistry tells me that the wind has shifted and we are now swimming in air from the east and north rather than the usual air off the Pacific. Besides given me a Proustian flash of past time (the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s), this means we might indeed hit the 90s in the next several days. The horror! It will be a novelty to no longer sleep under blankets until the fog returns. And speaking of weather...

Hurricane Harvey

I've gotten sucked into a Facebook discussion of Harvey (the storm, not the rabbit) and to what extent this is a sign of climate change. (Now, I'm wishing that giant imaginary rabbits might become a sign of climate change.)

Of all the obvious indications and consequences of man-made climate change, I think this is one of the worst examples to point to. Hurricanes are just too unpredictable and it would not be unrealistic for someone to point to the 1900 storm that devastated Galveston as an example of previous storms that were on the same scale. And I continue to hold my position until someone can craft a convincing argument that the other weather pattern that boxed in Harvey, and sent it meandering around Houston and then back into the Gulf, was a consequence of higher air or water temperatures. That other weather pattern is what seems to set this incident in a new category.

But someone posted a link to a counter position HERE that I think is very interesting, without changing my view. Actually I'm kind of shocked I didn't make this connection to the Houston/Beaumont area as the Mecca of the petroleum economy/society. And he doesn't even mention Spindletop, which I would have done. It really is almost too perfect.

We humans are not very good at reason, but a storm is a kind of logic even a fool understands. Some percentage of the people flooded out this time will come to the conclusion that living on this coast is not worth it. (There are supposedly about 100,000 Katrina evacuees still in the Houston area. I would love to know what kind of decisions they make now.) Even the people who decide to stay this time will be less likely to stay next time, especially as funding for repeated inundations is reduced. And companies -- even energy companies -- may be less sentimental in their decisions than the average person. 

How many more storms will it take to convince a significant percentage of the population? I don't know. And how to make the transition from making better decisions about residence placement to making lifestyle changes that reduce the likelihood for even more destruction in the future? I have no idea. I still think that's more likely to be driven by economic factors relating to electric vehicles becoming cheaper than gas powered vehicles. We are much better at making that kind of comparative decision. (Though that's the sort of decision process that led to the off-shoring of so many jobs and the Wallmart-ization, and now the Amazon-ization of the retail economy.) 

And I fully expect a large percentage of the people who flee to higher ground will continue to deny climate change. Because stupid monkeys.