Polocrosse

Something for Kyla to consider...

But unlike polo, in which the ball is smacked in one direction or another, polocrosse players wield a cane racket with a circular-shaped net at the top to catch, pass, scoop and shoot the spongy-rubber ball through the opposing goal posts. There are overhand lacrosse-style passes along with bounce passes off of the ground -- one or several in succession -- that can travel between different players or be used by one rider to guide themselves around an opponent.

Hmm. Maybe too tame for Kyla. But then again, it only takes one horse to compete!

Fire Story

Thinking of Keith in his backwoods fantasy retirement, I enjoyed this article from the SJMercury about 89-year-old Jack English returning to his cabin in the woods after the recent fires.

Firefighters and English had fought to save the isolated cabin - yards from the flames, and a steep five-mile hike from the nearest dirt road. Today it remains as tidy as the day it was built, using tools carried in by backpack and mule.

Its preservation saved a unique way of life stretching back to the Civil War, when homesteaders created ranches out of the small but lush valleys of this rugged wilderness. They have since been enveloped by federal forests.

English, a professional carpenter, built the one-room cabin, with its lovely beamed ceilings, paned redwood windows and no electricity. He has a two-year supply of food, which he cooks on a Coleman stove.

"It was so smoky, you could hardly see," he said. "But it was safe. That's what I wanted. I wanted to get back here."

I liked his routine.

He awakes every day at daybreak. Sometimes he drinks tea; other times, a cup of Folgers coffee, boiled on a camp stove. His morning routine is to wash dishes, then wipe the cabin floor clean with Murphy Oil. Later in the day, he spends an hour or two in his woodworking shop, building bows. Then he might read, or garden, or walk through the forest-fringed meadow.

On alternate days, he shaves. Once a month, he walks out to civilization for a trip to the bank or to visit his son and grandchildren.

It is a four-hour trip - two walking, two driving - to the nearest grocery.

Folgers, come on! That almost spoiled it for me.

Blast from the Past

Thanks to the magic of Facebook, Dara and I had dinner last night with Straton Spyropoulos. Dara went to Walter Johnson HS with him. I went to GW with him, laboring through our first two painful years of engineering school before he went off into EE-land, and I went off into CE-land. A few of you may remember Straton singing at our wedding. He's a bit grayer, as are we all. He's been living in Seattle for 20 years and was down here on business. It was great to see him and catch up over dinner in Japantown.

Ahead of the Crowd

I see I beat the official Flying Spaghetti Monster web site by an entire month to noting the resemblance of a Dale Chihuly sculpture to His Noodly Appendage. Now you know where to get your news.

Bubblicious

From the Onion via Hal...

Congress is currently considering an emergency economic-stimulus measure, tentatively called the Bubble Act, which would order the Federal Reserve to begin encouraging massive private investment in some fantastical financial scheme in order to get the nation's false economy back on track.

"Every American family deserves a false sense of security," said Chris Reppto, a risk analyst for Citigroup in New York. "Once we have a bubble to provide a fragile foundation, we can begin building pyramid scheme on top of pyramid scheme, and before we know it, the financial situation will return to normal."

See, it's all in the psychology of the situation.

Beijing Travel Report

I have a group working for me in Beijing now, so I went out there last week to meet them. Last time I was there, I didn't see anything. This time, I managed to get a walking tour of some highlights courtesy of the guy I was traveling with, who had been there quite a few times before. Interestingly, there was a great article in the NYTimes online about all the new architecture in Beijing, and I managed to see all the buildings highlighted in it, even if some were just from a car. The interactive graphic that accompanied the NYTimes article explains a little about the design and structural aspects of the buildings, too, and is worthwhile checking out.

I put some pictures on Flickr, including some descriptions. Mom, if you want some challenging eating, check out the pictures from the night market. The one above is of scorpions on a skewer. I passed.

Artless Art Appreciation

After enjoying the few Dale Chihuly pieces at the DeYoung a while back when we went to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibition, I was interested when the review of the full Chihuly exhibit came up in the Chronicle. Apparently I am just an ignorant, shallow, tasteless moron when it comes to art appreciation.

Admirers of empty virtuosity may thrill to "Chihuly at the de Young," the de Young Museum's celebration of contemporary glass master Dale Chihuly.

Yow! Perhaps he would have fared better going with the Flying Spaghetti Monster moniker. I learned a valuable lesson on art appreciation and history, though.

Educated viewers cannot look for long at Chihuly's work without wishing there were something to think about. So they think about something else. The capacity to hold our attention, in the moment or in reflection later, is a mark of significant art in an era when mass media work hard to abbreviate attention spans so as to cut costs and decapitate questions.

The history of art is a history of ideas, not just of valuable property. Chihuly has no place in it, and the de Young disserves its public by pretending that he does.

Clearly the reviewer qualifies as a pompous blowhard by anyone's definition. But, that does it! I am just going to stick to fashion commentary from now on.

Still Irate After All These Years

Many years ago, I remember Mom telling me I was a "conservative civil libertarian." I've shed some of the conservatism, but not the civil libertarianism. I know the blog is supposed to be the no politics zone, but I thought I'd mention that this telco immunity issue is the one thing in perhaps my entire lifetime that has prompted me to write to my senator -- four separate times. It really is truly appalling, and should be for liberals and conservatives alike.

Geek Defense vs. Reality

The murder trial of local computer programmer Hans Reiser was followed closely in the tech heavy SF Bay Area. The guy's weirdness hit a certain chord with geeky types as he pursued his self-defense, what Wired Magazine called the geek defense.

In his defense, the developer of the ReiserFS filesystem took the stand and displayed himself to jurors as a classic geek: intelligent, paranoid, anti-authoritarian, socially distant and at times logical to the point of irrationality.

Whether this is truly Reiser's nature or not, the archetype is well-known in the computer programming world, and its representatives can be found in groups like the Cypherpunks, Ron Paul supporters, Slashdot users and Wired.com readers.

For the geek defense to work, the jury doesn't have to believe that the police investigating Reiser are crooked. Instead, jurors must believe that Reiser believed it himself: that the programmer started with the proposition that police == corrupt and followed it, with irrational logic, right down the rabbit hole.

How'd that work for him? Not so well. He was convicted. Oh, and today it seems he led police to his wife's body.

Other Anniversary Party Photos

What a great visit and a huge success Mom & Dad's 60th Anniversary Party at Deep Creek Lake was! My camera batteries died not long after getting there so I missed most of the action. Steven managed to get all the action though!

In the end, I managed to get my battery charged by a lovely person at Radio Shack who also has a sony camera. She brought in her charger and charged my battery for free on Tuesday - just in time to miss the main part of the action.

Here's the link to my photos. Wait until you see the Eastern Red Spotted Newt in Eft Stage I found while following a game trail through the woods.

It was great to spend time with each of you. Hugs to all.
Missy

Dog Heaven

Aurora (aka Rory) and Nia with their new pets.

The lapdog competition begins.

Phone Envy

I hate my Samsung Blackjack 2, which I got so I could read EMail and have a real Internet browser. Among my complaints:

• The Windows CE operating system (pronounced "wince") locks up giving me the mobile blue screen of death. The only cure is to remove and replace the battery.
  
• Every other day or so it decides to turn the "phone" part of itself off without warning. It looks like it's still functioning and consuming battery -- and it is -- unless you want to get phone calls or text messages.
• Thanks no doubt to the EMail software I have installed on it, it occasionally will spin up a thread that sucks all battery life from the phone.

I may have to convert to the new iPhone shortly. Or the one advertised above.