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

72. Election night 2016

Previous - 71. Election 2016 + Alice

After voting

I'm trying to avoid the news. By habit, I clicked on The Chron's website and saw that the Presidential election was close in key states... the way it's looked all along. I'm going to ignore it tonight while I still can.

My assumption all along has been that Trump would win. I hoped to be wrong, but that would surprise me. The worst part is that I think it may be necessary for Trump to win. People who think more-or-less like I do aren't going to make allowances for Trumps constituency until we are forced to. The question is, will this be too much for the American experiment in democracy? 

On the other hand, another question is how will Trump deal with the visibility and inherent problems of holding a really impossible office. This could turn out to be a "Be careful what you wish for" situation. I've always said you had to be crazy to want the job, now we get to see how a crazy person handles it. The historian in me is curious.

And is there a way to achieve some kind of synthesis from our current dialectic? Can we find a way to peacefully find a middle ground or will we follow the example of the Roman Republic and descend into a cycle of violent swings from one extreme to another? Frankly, I don't see how this has a happy outcome.

And here's a really depressing thought: It could be best that it isn't the side with all the guns that comes out of this election feeling cheated.

Post Script

I still don't know the outcome, still avoiding all media. As influenced by the Roman Republic as the Founding Fathers were, they were also the children of the Enlightenment so they neglected to include the Roman institution of Dictator in our constitution. When the Roman people went nuts, or the military situation was especially dire, the Senate would appoint a Dictator to reestablish order. And it usually worked... until Caesar came along and it didn't. We may get a chance to see if this was another of their mistakes, like the 2nd Amendment -- though I still don't see how anyone can interpret those words the way they are currently interpreted.

Next - 73. Aftermath + retirement

71. Election 2016 + Alice

Previous - 70. A new book

Link to Table of Contents

Preparing to vote

I spent a large portion of Sunday working through my Voter Information Pamphlet & Sample Ballot. At least I have an easy choice at the top of the ballot, but the rest is a total mess. I like my candidate for U.S. Senate and State Assembly. I have to vote for Pelosi, my U.S. Representative. I refuse to vote for my City Supervisor but can't really vote for the person running against him either. In the other races I have to choose the lesser evil -- as at the top -- or follow endorsements for the minor offices with candidates I've never heard of. Such is democracy. And that's the easy part.

Next we come to the State and City Propositions. There are 17 State Propositions but I've only voted (yes or no) for 13 of them -- the others I either can't make sense of or I could go either way on. Then there 25 City and BART or School District propositions where I've voted for 22. 

I'm proud to say that in a number of these cases I've voted against my inclination because the Proposition would set a bad example or cause problems in addition to what it's intended to fix. In some cases it's really hard to know if voting yes or no would reflect my true opinion or achieve what was possibly intended. And of course they throw all these Propositions at us because our elected officials can't do their jobs and settle this themselves. In some cases I'm hoping I'm sending a message about what I really want or don't want, but in other cases I'm not sure what message, if any, I'm sending. 

And if Tuesday goes as I expect, no one will be paying much attention to these local issues anyway.

A Century of Wisdom

I'm up to Chapter three and now Alice and her young son are in a camp -- though a very nice one where she continues to perform on the piano. 

Back in Prague she was raised in a quintessentially bourgeois-Jewish family with Franz Kafka as a close family friend. Most of her immediate family escaped to Palestine on the last train out of Czechoslovakia. She, and her husband and child, remained behind with her mother for what seemed like good reasons before Munich.

What do I mean by "quintessentially bourgeois-Jewish family?" They were well educated, very musical, well connected, involved in trade. Her mother was raised Orthodox, her father was a merchant. A year or two ago I would have thought nothing of this, but now I can't help viewing them -- along with Primo Levi's family in Turin and Oliver Sacks' family in London -- through the eyes of Dostoevsky and Ford. Thus I have to ask, To what extent were the Jews hated for being ur-bourgeois as opposed to being religious. (Sorry for the German prefix to a French adjective.) 

I know this sounds far-fetched, but stick with me a moment. I've never paid much attention to what anti-semites were saying, going all the way back to that Austrian red-neck Morton covers in A Nervous Splendor. So what do I know? First, there's Fernand Braudel's argument that the origin of European capitalism is intertwined with the history of the Jews displaced from Iberia after 1492. Then there's an account I read a long time ago of anti-Jewish riots in the south of Germany back in some earlier century. (Sorry I can't be more specific.) There was a pattern to the violence against the Jews back then: The wandering Jews would settle in a community and offer credit. Things would be fine for a time but then the economy would go south, and when the local Christians could no longer keep up with their payments, it would be discovered that some Jew or other had tricked a Christian into smuggling a wafer (the body of Christ) out of a church and giving it to the Jew who then proceeded to torture it. The Jews implicated were attacked and the rest of the Jewish community fled. 

Now this sounds completely nonsensical, of course, but what I read into it is that religion was just a tool the locals used to attack people they had a grudge against for economic reasons. Dostoevsky and Ford are not blatantly antisemitic, but it is clear in both The Brothers Karamazov and Parade's End that Jews are a part of -- and possibly a symbol of -- the bourgeois values they see as undermining the natural, Tory order. And, with Braudel in mind again, this is not wrong. (Mann is less interested in this line of reasoning -- Naphtha not withstanding -- because he was raised in an equally bourgeois, though, gentile, family.) 

I really don't want to do the research -- read antisemitic writings of the time, and Nazi dogma -- but I'm curious about how much the Nazis were opposed to other aspects of bourgeois life like science and technology and the importance of merit vs birth. 

A Faustian history of WW2

It would be impossible to pick the strangest section of Part 2 of Faust, but the battle section right after Faust returns to Germany from Greece would have to be in the running. If we accept that Faust (with Mephisto's assistance) represents the bourgeois spirit, then you can almost see this passage as an allegory for the Allied victory in both theaters in WW2. Wait, stay with me for just a minute...

The Allied victory was based largely on technological/scientific magic: The Bomb is the most obvious example of this, but there's also crytoanalysis, radar (by the end of the war radar sets small enough to fit in artillery shells), and the by then routine magic of modern industry with the exploitation of coal, oil, and everything else that can be mined from the Earth. 

And it's worth remembering that deception played an important role in both Faust's battle plans and in the Allied battle plans (the British at the 2nd Battle of El Alamein and the American crossing of the Rhine being two good examples.)


Faust - Part 2 - Act IV Scenes I-III (Headland:Battle)

FaustNow, powerfully, streams pour on streams,10725

Sweeping from gorges with redoubled gleams,

A river now throws up an arching veil:

Pours over the rocky level in a tide,

Runs foaming down, on every side,

And, stepwise, hurls itself into the dale.10730

What use their fine, heroic resistance?

The vast wave roars, and fills the distance.

I shudder myself at this wild waterfall.

MephistophelesI can see nothing of these watery lies,

They only serve for fooling human eyes,10735

I delight instead in wonders that befall.

In companies, their men plunge down,

The fools imagine that they’ll drown,

While free to breathe, on solid ground,

With swimming strokes, they run around.10740

It’s bewildering them all.

(The Ravens return.)

I’ll praise you to the noble Master: but see,

If you’d like to display your own mastery,

Hurry to the glowing smithy,

Where the dwarf folk never weary,10745

Hammering sparks from steel and stone.

Ask for, once you’ve chattered first,

A fire to shine: sparkle, and burst,

The finest that man’s ever known.

It’s true that far off lightning flashes,10750

And stars that fall in sudden dashes,

Can happen any summer’s night:

But lightning in the tangled bushes,

And stars that fizzle in the rushes,

They’re not such a common sight.10755

Don’t trouble about my command,

Ask first, then afterwards demand.

(The Ravens fly off. All takes place as ordered.)

Darkness cloaks the enemy!

Their footsteps meet uncertainty!

Everywhere are wandering flares,10760

And those sudden blinding glares!

It’s all beautiful indeed,

Now some noise is what we need.

-Source

Next - 72. Election night 2016

70. A new book

Previous - 69. When cities work

Link to Table of Contents

Alice Herz-Sommer

I may be reviving my Regieren blog soon, but not quite yet. The reason is the latest book for my book club, that I started reading yesterday,

A Century of Wisdom: Lessons From the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor 

by Caroline Stoessinger, Spiegel & Grau, 2012

I have to admit I didn't think this title sounded promising, but, as usual, it's a mistake to generalize about people, even Holocaust survivors. That at 108 she sites the Stoic Epictitus as a guide to life, in particular his statement, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has," quickly won me over.

Philosophy

Being me, you can't just drop this quote into my mind without it having consequences. (Yesterday I only read the Forward by Vaclav Havel and the Prelude by the author.) When Epictitus enters my mind he brings along his buddies Epicurus and Diogenes. After a tasty lunch,  I started thinking about Epicureanism -- in the academic, not the popular, sense.

Being cheap, I have a natural affinity for the principles of Epicurus. The cafes I frequent tend to have decent (veggie) food at reasonable prices (and usually good WiFi.) Even my favorite Burmese place has comparatively cheap prices (it's location half way to Hawaii helps with this.) My regular pizzerias are not places I would take an out-of-town visitor devoted to sampling the best pizza. 

A purest Epicurean (a vegan to my veggie) would opt for even simpler and cheaper cuisine. In fact you could probably make a philosophically Epicurean argument for Fast Food. But what's the point of living a life spent trying to elude cravings you can't easily satisfy? If you are that keen to keep disappointment and longing at bay you should probably opt for suicide as the perfect (and simple) way to avoid all future problems. I can't believe Diogenes never suggested this, so this probably isn't an original notion. 

And speaking of the most famous Cynic, while a modern Cynic would probably be a dumpster diver, I think she would have the sense to prefer dumpsters behind upscale restaurants. 

Need + meaning + story

But all this was yesterday and I had almost forgotten about it when I ran into an article written by the Dalai Lama today on Facebook. (Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded.) I think this is completely true, though I would like to add a Victor Frankl note and add the importance of meaning. While being needed can give a life meaning -- in either the superficial sense of having a reason to get up in the morning, or the more profound sense of the suicide bomber who wants his death, and therefore his life, to have a meaning to some cause or other -- this relationship between need and meaning is not always present. (And this sense of meaning for the suicide bomber connects back to the philosophical advantage of death vs all the contingencies of life.)

But in addition to "need" and "meaning" there is also my old friend "story." Riding the bus this morning to my favorite breakfast place -- while thinking about all this -- I noticed an advert on the side of a bus for the latest TV show by an English actor (Hugh Laurie) who recently wrapped up a long run on another, very interesting, show ("House").  I could come up with a list of other actors who have made similar transitions recently, but why did they have to leave good shows with established audiences? I would argue the reason is that the long running shows had run out of compelling stories. The material had played out, like a vein of gold in a mountain.

What people (and we may as well say Trump supporters, since that's what we're really talking about), want is to be needed, for their existence to have meaning, and to participate in a compelling story. I still hope they will be satisfied with scaring society to the point that society is forced to address these social requirements, but this is the same level of hope I have that the California drought will end or that all the people in my building will suddenly compost their waste properly -- more of a wish than an expectation.

Next - 71. Election 2016 + Alice

69. When Cities Work

Previous - 68. You will + Game 7

Finally a shot of the refused left flank of that new building going up on Bush. This facet of the building preserves natural light (and views) for both the neighboring Russ building and the new structure.

The Green Door building

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that no one else, writing about city planning and the urban experience, would ever choose this building as an example of the city at its best, but all those straw-men would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

The chief virtue of this building is everything it has going against it. On the Bush street level,

My building of interest is the small structure housing the market. Note that it is dwarfed by both the residential building on the right and the parking garage on the left. 

In this view you can see that, in addition to the market, there is also a small restaurant and a fairly famous bar named The Tunnel Top.


...it lies a block too far down a recently gentrifying street and a block too far up a hill from one of the City's highlight intersections -- where the Union Square shopping district meets Chinatown's tourist extension at the Chinatown Gate. (There's an odd, but ingenious, three block Chinatown finger or limb or root that taps into the Ghost world right at the heart of the French Quarter, across from Cafe de la Press. The real Chinatown starts at Sacramento and extends north but also east and west. Grant street south of Sacramento is Chinese only in the buildings facing Grant itself.) But back to my building of interest...

On the Stockton street level,

This is the view looking down on the lower level of Stockton from Bush. Note the Green Door Massage sign to the right.

This is the view looking back down lower Stockton toward Bush. Here you can see the Stockton tunnel that runs under Nob Hill, below both Bush street and upper Stockton, to the real Chinatown.


...it faces a huge parking garage and anchors one end of a block of opportunistic businesses that thrive (I hope) in old buildings in a zero status location on the edge of a good neighborhood.

The south section of the block: (I'm ignoring what will be a CVS pharmacy if they ever finish work on the place) The red awning belongs to an upscale hotel and bar.

Boba Guys is a popular new addition. There's always a line.

Mana is a pretty decent taqueria.

This story has to start with The Green Door itself. Trying to find some background I found THIS, even better, instead. I think I would like Katy St. Clair. With that as an appetizer, here's my understanding of the layout of the building, but first a little about the unique geographic character of the structure. 

Even in San Francisco it's unique to have a building with street access to one street on the third floor and street access to another street on the ground floor. And then there's the civic stairs next to the tunnel that connects the Bush and Stockton sidewalks. As near as I can tell (without bothering to get a massage), the third floor is divided between the bar, restaurant, and market. The ground floor is divided between the salon, photography store, shoe repair place, and the massage parlor. I assume most of the massage parlor is on the second floor.

This is probably the best view of the building. The small arch on the right leads to the pedestrian walkway through the tunnel and also to the stairs that lead up to Bush. A year ago I would have said the stairs/urinal, but this is one of the places they've used this special paint that caused urine to bounce back onto you if you releave yourself against the wall. To my surprise, it has been effective... though not perfect.

The shoe repair place (decent for simple jobs) shares an entrance with the massage parlor. A friend of mine took all her new paintings to the photography business in the center to have professional images made for submitting to gallery competitions. While waiting for the photographer to finish with the painting so I could put them back in the van, I noticed the interior of the salon on the right which is stylishly white and clean, as you would expect.

So seven business operating in this one little, old building in a questionable location. While I said the location is off the beaten path, there is still decent foot traffic especially down on Stockton where three busy bus lines stop. Still, I think the main advantage for business in this block is reasonable rents due to the age and condition of the buildings, and that no business with options would opt to settle here. These are the kind of buildings Jane Jacobs had in mind when she claimed shiny new developments are not supportive to city life.

But remember I'm also the guy who always wants to find a way to sneak around Jane Jacobs' rules. That so much can be packed into this single block (ignoring the Bush street addendum for the moment) suggests that really tiny zones of below market rate commercial rents could make a big difference in a city. A city, or a non-profit, could conceivably organize and sponsor something like this. The less desirable the location, the lower the rents would have to be. The more businesses the better. Call it a commercial incubator if necessary, though it would be better if successful businesses could persist at the same location for an extended period. 

Postscript

It turns out the name Green Door, and even the porno Behind the Green Door, are probably a reference to a song from the mid 1950s. Here's "Green Door."

Next - 70. A new book

68. You will... + Game 7

Previous -  67. Music & TV

You will...

Today I ran into a piece in Medium about the 1993 AT&T "You Will" ad campaign. See HERE. Some of these are right on the nose while others are laughably off, like reading a book by seeing a video of the book with a machine turning the pages.

This is interesting enough, but I immediately started thinking about the kind of cautionary video we could send back in time to warn the people of 1993 of what was coming. Here are my first thoughts:

• People standing in long lines to buy an iPhone. 
• People texting while driving, while walking into traffic, while walking into a mall fountain. 
• Anthony Weiner sexting. 
• A room full of people looking daggers at someone having a loud and inane conversation on their cell phone. 
• Someone giving credit card information to a phone-sex operator. 
• Someone in a remote or awkward location repeatedly saying, "Can you hear me now?"

2016 World Series

Yes, I'm incorrigible. Last night I watched the final three regulation innings of the seventh game of the 2016 World Series and at the same pizzeria -- even from the same seat at the counter -- where I watched the seventh game of the 2014 Series. I was pulling for the Chicago Cubs, who finally won in the 10th inning, but that's not what I want to write about. No, I want to emphasize a point I made after the 2014 game, so I'm going to do a bit of compare and contrast.

Last night the Chicago manager pulled his starter with two out in the fifth inning (I think he was too quick with this move, but there may have been indicators or match-ups I'm unaware of). In 2014 Bochy pulled his starter in the second and replaced his long reliever after the fourth. So Madison Bumgarner entered the game for the Giants at the beginning of the fifth with a one run lead on two days rest after winning game five. Jon Lester looked to be following the Bumgarner play book when he entered the game with two out in the fifth with one man on base and a four run lead, also on two days rest after winning game five. The difference here being that Bumgarner pitched a complete game two days before while Lester only pitched six innings.

In 2014, Bumgarner proceeded to shutout the Royals for the rest of the game. Last night, Lester only lasted three innings giving up two runs (plus the runner he inherited from the starter).  So the Cubs brought in their Closer, Chapman, who only managed to get four outs vs giving up two runs leaving the score tied at the end of regulation. The pitcher who finally relieved him, gave up yet another run in the tenth inning. This is what you expect to see in a World Series game seven. Everyone is tired and the pressure is beyond anything they've ever faced before. This is also the perspective you need to understand how amazing Bumgarner's performance in 2014 really was. A couple strong innings, after pitching a complete game two days before, would have been something any good pitcher would have been proud of. Four shutout innings to close out the game and the Championship is just crazy. 

It would not surprise me if that turns out to be the most amazing sports performance I will ever see in my life. 

Next - 69. When cities work

67. Music & TV

Previous - 66. Freakish weather

Cable Car Museum

I have a little less than two hours to kill before my annual doctor's appointment, so I'm at the nice little cafe across the street from the Cable Car Museum, where I tend to visit only when I have a doctor's appointment (it's in a geographically awkward location on my hill). I would have to describe the decor here as '50s funky. There are models of pre-Century Series U.S. Air Force fighters hanging from the ceiling. There's an old style, metal, roller skate -- the kind with a key -- sitting on the counter where you pick up your drink order. The music is popular tunes from the '50s and '60s -- "Neon Cowboy" was on a moment ago and I've heard a couple Sinatra hits -- and, and I don't really blame them for this, I just heard my first Christmas song of the year. There's also a PBY model hanging from the ceiling, but WW2 was such a part of the '50s, I don't have a problem with that. ("Blue on Blue," a song I didn't remember but recognize.)

My intention was to continue working through my Medium folder but, for the first time ever, Medium seems to be broken and I can't access any of their links. There is something especially poignant about being in a place with a '50s theme while suffering the disappointment of not being able to access the Internet... frustrations of the future we never imagined. Flying cars, yes (and thank god that hasn't happened); space stations, sure. ("Do You Know the Way To San Jose," I would never have guessed, back in the day, I would know San Jose as well as I do.) 

TV

I think I mentioned I was starting "Rizzoli & Isles." I made it into the second season but didn't finish. There were two reasons -- that I was aware of -- I decided not to finish the season before returning the discs. First it was getting to be too much like "Criminal Minds" -- too much rape and violence against women. ("These Boots are Make For Walking.") Second, given the disturbing nature of the A stories, the B stories were becoming disconcertingly frivolous. I guess it was supposed to mitigate the sick content, but it just struck me as being inane. 

("Age of Aquarius" and I recognized it after the first couple notes.)

But watching "R & I" had reminded me of things I loved about "Castle" and when I returned the "R&I" discs I found a dirt cheap copy of the first season of "Castle" and bought it. Re-watching it I'm noticing additional weaknesses in "R&I" by comparison. Seeing the "R&I" victims before they died never stopped bothering me, but watching "Castle" I couldn't help noticing how much better the cinematography, use of music, and general writing is. Even the music over the closing credits is wonderfully crafted. By comparison, "R&I" is just sloppy.

Next - 68. You will + Game 7