5 Stages of Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote a thesis that humans deal with death and dying in five stages - the fourth being depression and the last being acceptance.

Paul Krugman has read the plan by the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to reinflate the bubble and writes that he is in despair. I will equate his despair to depression, but I have to disagree with him. I am now in the acceptance phase.

It is over - the patient is officially terminally ill. In fact, the officials have made the patient terminally ill, now we are only awaiting the death.

By putting thousands of billions more dollars into the “toxic assets” (read: mortgages on millions of overpriced homes) the Secretary and his advisors and minions seem to think they can reinflate the bubble that just recently burst, and restore everything to the way it was. They’ve even said that their goal is to attempt to restore those “toxic assets” to their “true market value”. But what if, just maybe, those TAs were already falling back down to their true market values, and this massive infusion of cash will go in the inflator part of the balloon and flow just as fast right out the rupture in the balloon that caused the whole thing to collapse in the first place.

However, it looks certain that Wall St. will be able to profit from this. So it will be another massive transfer of money from the taxpayer to the banker.

Blogroll Changes

I’ve been meaning to winnow the blogroll list - short though it may be - and finally got around to it. Currently I am of a mind to link to personal weblogs more than mass metablogs (some exceptions for those I refer to or read a lot). Also dropped links that are now dead or taken behind a wall.

Removed:
Midnight Meandering (He took the weblog private, so it’s useless to link to it anymore.)
Nonlinear Truths (Tom Is Gone, and his weblog has been taken down.)
Freakonomics (They have enough linkers already. Plus I don’t read it all that often. Ironically, the post that is current on their weblog as I write this asserts that there is no such thing as too many posts or links, and as they add up they have increased effects on viewers. But I’m still dropping them.)
Arms Control Wonk (I don’t read this much anymore. But it is still important.)

Added:
David Pu’u Photography (Really beautiful photography, technically excellent, heartfelt, emotional, gorgeous beaches, waves and sunsets, and good people photos too.)
Charlie Stross (I’ve read about 7 of his books, and liked them all. Am waiting patiently for the next in the Merchant Princes series.)
Jamais Cascio (I first encountered him at Singularity Summit 2007. He made sense in his thinking about the future.)
Thomas Ricks (astute observer of foreign policy and military affairs)
TidBITs (This is more of a Mac news website than a weblog or metablog, but it has useful information very often and is a community I participate in, so it is included.)
Daring Fireball (observation and clear opinion)
Real Climate (The sine qua non of climate weblogs, unparalleled. And if you’re going to argue that you don’t “believe in” GWCC, just stfu and stfu. You are wrong. Do you still believe in a flat earth? And that the sun revolves around the earth? Get a grip - the science cannot be denied.)
French Word a Day (Learn some vocabulary and some culture from an American expat living in a small town in France; and she finally has an RSS feed!)
The Casbah (online radio and podcast, from KSYM in San Antonio, 80 miles west of SXSW)
Spouting Off (Mark Gold, D.Env. and president of Heal the Bay about water and especially about water quality, from local Santa Monica to worldwide)
Paul Ferguson aka FergDawg (Quid custodiet ipsos custodes?)

How Do You Remember Someone When They Have Been Erased?

I went to the weblog to do* a little clean up and organization, particularly of the blogroll.

There are a few I’ve decided to remove, and I want to add a few. While there I checked on the link to a close friend of mine who died exactly two years ago today. I wanted to read some of his words, and remember him a bit. When he died so young (49) it was a sad day for his family, and certainly it was worse for them than for me. But more sadly, it appears that the presence he had left behind on the Web has been completely erased. He had a weblog that he wrote to, including poetry, musings, observations and the glimmerings of beginnings of stories he wanted to write. Those are now all gone, and don’t even appear in the Wayback Machine. He’s also gone from LinkedIn. A google search of him turns up nothing. This is sad too. The man wanted to write and was good at it, but was always so busy with life and taking care of his family that he never really got the time to write much more than what he left behind on the web, but now that too is gone.


*(No posts lately, though many items have built up to post about. More pleasant posts to come later.)

Musical Entertainment at McCabe's Guitar Shop

I’ve been living in or near LA now for 20 years. This is a great city for entertainment, especially for music - but I always forget to check the venues I like for acts that I like.

Recently I subscribed to the email announcement list for McCabe’s Guitar Shop, an institution in Santa Monica that’s been around for 50 years. I’ve seen bands like The Cowboy Junkies (acoustic) and Al Stewart.

Last night I finally got to see an outstanding guitar player that I’ve wanted to see for decades (literally), David Lindley. And I was not disappointed. I’m not literate enough in musicology to be able to adequately describe what a virtuoso he is on stringed instruments, or how funny he is both in song and spoken word. His repertoire extends from LA folk-rock (or rock-folk) to bluegrass, to blues (John Lee Hooker style, and he does a mean imitation of JLH) to Pakistani traditional and even to atonal classical. I’m sure much it’s broader than that too. He played for us for only 90 minutes - enough for one show but probably not enough to show his various styles and influences. He played guitars, an oudh (sp?), a bazuki (sp?), a mandolin, and a long-necked mandolin-looking instrument that might have been a sitar. The room was full (about 150 people) and we all had a great time.

Surf Camp, Costa Rica

I got back from surf camp in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, exactly one week ago, and finally have my photos edited and tagged. The pictures are up in a Flickr set called Witch’s Rock Surf Camp. These are only the pictures - the text descriptions will follow in a few more days.

I spoke with a friend and former colleague at one of the big tv networks (I worked there for five years) and he’s going to help me put together a mashup of photos and videos contributed by all the guys on the trip. I’ll have that done in a couple of months and will post news of it here too.

From L to R (above): Dayton M., Fernando U., Tim D., Dan O’D, Andy L.

Give me stars, planets and a moon

Last night just after sunset we had an uncommon celestial event - the moon was just past new, Venus was just above it, Neptune was just below it, Jupiter was nearby and Mercury was low in the sky nearby. With the naked eye I could see four of the above, and with my 7x50 binoculars I could also see Neptune. Four planets and the moon all in sight all at the same time! I didn’t get a photo, but here is a good illustration from the website Earth & Sky. (Click the picture for a bigger version.)

Surf Costa Rica

I have wanted to go to Costa Rica (and other places in Central America) for more than 30 years. I want to see the places, but I also want to dive and surf. I made it to Venezuela once, but was with other people and only got to swim once in the Caribbean for a little while. (I had even taken my mask, fins, snorkel and regulator. It was a bitch to carry all that bulky and heavy stuff around for 3.5 weeks and not get to use them once.)

There has always been a small industry for dive tourism at numerous locations throughout the Caribbean, including the Caribbean side of Central America. In recent years ago an even smaller industry for surf tourism has sprung up at a few locations on the Pacific side of Central America (and Mexico).

A few years ago I found out about a then-new destination resort called Witch’s Rock Surf Camp. A neighbor here went there once and really enjoyed it. I made a reservation in 2005 but was unable to get down. Then a few months ago I got an email from WRSC saying they were having a 25% discount for one week only. The discount week happened to be the week immediately after Macworld, and a few weeks after the xmas holidays. It’s a convenient time for me to be away from work, and I could spend a little less money. (Having enough money to go has been my problem for the past 3 decades.) Coincidentally, American Airlines had a 67% discount flight to Liberia, the nearest airport, for exactly that week.

So, finally I get to go to Central America and especially to Costa Rica for a surf trip. It’s only a week, but this is much better than no time at all. And instead of spending about $2,000 (air + hotel), I’ll only be spending about $1,400. (Not including all the various taxes, fees, meals and other costs of course.)

Here is what Joe Walsh, the owner and resident big kahuna at WRSC, says about the surf spots in the area.

TAMARINDO - multiple surf spots in town. The beachbreak in front of WRSC is great for beginners/intermediates, has a sand bottom, best on mid-to-high tide. The rivermouth has lefts and rights and can be good on any tide. There are multiple reefs in Tamarindo, some are rarely surfed. There are many good peaks on the north side of the rivermouth as well, best on mid-to-high tide

WITCH'S ROCK - beachbreak with strong offshore winds making for big barrels, lefts and rights. This spot is always good unless the wind is onshore

OLLIE'S POINT - right pointbreak, sand bottom, can get quite hollow and really fun. Only accessible by boat, breaks on low tide

PLAYA GRANDE - beachbreak that is more exposed to south swells, fun rippable waves, best on mid to high tide

AVELLANAS - multiple breaks that work on low to high tide, sand bottom beachbreak, a rivermouth with some reef, Little Hawaii which is a heavier reef right, plus a couple more spots if you know where to look

MARBELLA - sand bottom break that throws big barrels, definitely the heaviest wave along this stretch of coast. Good tube rides if you know how to ride them, can get bigger than you'd think.

And to add yet one more coincidence, the Costa Rican national surf championship is happening there at WRSC on the first weekend I am in country. Actually, the surf championship happens Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I arrive late afternoon on Saturday. So I may see some of the semi-finals, and next day will definitely get to see the finals. Also, there will be the inevitable big party that Saturday night. (It will probably be really loud near my room, but oh well - I’ll have a few days to recover after it’s over.) From Joe Walsh's weblog:

The Costa Rican surf circuit, known here simply as the CNS, is hosting the Witch's Rock Surf Contest here at Witch's Rock Surf Camp January 10th and 11th, 2009. Inscriptions will be at the camp the night of Friday January 9th. I f#ck%d up and told Sebastian, the owner of Babylon, that we would host the contest party at his club on Saturday night. I did this because I was planning on leaving town on the 10th on surf tour. Then I found out that Red Bull had already purchased the advertising rights to the party directly from the CNS before the season started. I guess I didn't get that memo, probably because Larry forgot to put a cover on the TPS Report. So, as to eliminate confusion, here are the facts:
- Friday January 9th, 5pm-7pm - Surf contest inscriptions @ WRSC
- Saturday and Sunday January 10th and 11th - surf contest, Playa Tamarindo
- Saturday night - 911 La Radio, Red Bull and Witch's Rock Surf Camp present the Torneo Witch's Rock Party at Witch's Rock Surf Camp.

With a week on a good surf beach in a tropical beach town with a national contest and me with no computers to distract me, I’ll probably have a lot of pictures to upload to Flickr when I return. Departure countdown: 12 days from today 28 December.

(And right now I am coming down with a cold or flu, that I picked up from work.)

What Is the Plural of Prius?

It’s a serious question. When a made-up word for the English-speaking market sounds Greek or Latin, how does one pluralize it?

Okay, it’s not a serious question. I think we have at least a few possibilities:

1. Priuses (for English-only speakers)


2. Prii


3. Priae

This came to my mind earlier this evening as I was walking down to La Bodega Estrella for a bottle of chardonnay. In front of my building was a Prius about to turn left into its building, while oncoming was another Prius. Both were in electric drive on a residential street so they were totally and completely silent. Except for the headlights you wouldn’t have known there were there. It was eerie. Two cars passing in the night and they were totally silent, not unlike two ships in the night - and the non-metaphorial version of same.

Quantum of Despair

We went to see Quantum of Solace yesterday afternoon. I don’t check reviews - either written or podcast - but do watch the headlines of same just to get a general sense of what the professional critics think of a given movie. In this case more critics had panned the movie than had liked it, but there seemed to be votes in both directions.

I went in hoping for solace from the critics, but came out desolate, disappointed, in despair.

This movie was chase, fight, chase, character interaction, fight, chase, fight, chase, chase, character interaction, explosion... Roughly in that order, and with the character interaction approximating about 3 minutes of the first 30.

While it is certainly true that we always expect a Bond movie to be filled with action, in this movie it just went on and on. There was little in the way of story or character development, or perhaps the story and character development were just in the way of the chases, fights and explosions. It’s further true that in a Bond movie we don’t expect Bond, M, or the Bond girl to show much if any character arc, but in this movie they just didn’t show any. The villain didn’t show any either.

There can actually be some story and character development even in Bond movies. This is part of why we like the series. Casino Royale had that - a mix of story and character shaken in amongst the fights and chases, and it helped us learn about the new Bond and helped us learn about the other characters in his universe. There was story that kept us watching to see what was going to happen and where it was going.

In this movie though, within 7 minutes we knew all we would ever learn about the characters, and we knew where the story was going. Late in the movie it even got to the point where - though some of the audio was garbled and we couldn’t make out the exact dialogue - it didn’t matter because we knew the characters’ motivations and could read the telegraphy of their next actions.

As in any Bond movie there was a lot of money up there on the screen, and there were some expensive above the line people too, so this movie obviously cost a lot to make. (I don’t have the interest to look up what it cost.) So if you go to these solely for action and explosions, this is your movie.

In addition to my complaints of too much vapid action, let me also register a complaint about how the action is shot and edited. In all the fights, chases and explosions throughout the movie most of the shots were too tight and the edits too damn quick. We liked that in the first two Bourne movies, but it wore out its welcome by Bourne 3 and it’s tired now. Appeal to the producers: please ask your directors use a few more middle shots and let us watch them for a few seconds. In Slate’s review of the movie - snarkily titled 000 (read Double-Oh Zero) Dana Stevens notes that the likely problem with this movie was that the director has made mainly tearjerkers, which is not a job requirement for a Bond movie director.

And my final rant: Why use a Ukrainian actress to play a Bolivian? Were there simply no South American actresses available for that movie? Her accent in English was funky, and they couldn’t have her speak any Spanish (or at least very little).

And my last (only?) kudo? They used my All Time Favorite airplane, a Siai Marchetti SF-260 - and it was even done up with military hard points and gun pods.

(The picture linked above was the best example I could find of the airplane with gun pods. Even so, you can just barely see the barrels of the .30 cal pods peeking out from under the leading edge of the port wing. This site has a history of the SF-260, and the SF-260W or the “Warrior” variant of the basic SF-260.)

Restart

I've been working on reorganizing and reducing distractions so I can start writing again, both here and items as yet unpublished. Consider this the first in the restart.

Bailout Balls

I've been thinking lately about how these latest government bailouts of private industry compare to some in recent history. Fortunately we have the internet, and for every original thought dozens of other people have thought it at the same time.

So I ganked the graphic from Kevin Drum's blog. He ganked it and the idea from the originator, ProPublica. Isn't it amazing how much welfare money Big Business has received from Big Government when the former has had bad ideas go south? Despite their railing against Big Government that they need to be left alone...

Rockstar Scientist

Yesterday work had a guest speaker at the Haskins Lecture - Ralph Cicerone. Dr. Cicerone is the president of the National Academy of Science and shared in the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has at least a dozen other awards, but that goes with the territory.

He came to talk about Global Warming and Energy Economics. It was attended by several hundred people, and was very interesting. (It's not every day one gets to see a Nobel prizewinner*.) I'll write more about it later when I have a bit more time.

Blame It On the Democrats

Quote of the day (from Kevin Drum):

"Look, I owe the American people an apology. If I had beaten the old man you'd of never heard of the kid and you wouldn't be in this mess. So it's all my fault and I feel that very, very strongly. So this is an important election for us. Let me tell 'ya."

Who said this? Who else - Michael Dukakis. I never thought about it quite that way before. And of course in a deeply sadly ironic way, he’s right.

Cool Summer

It has seemed to me that this has been a particularly cool summer, and I’m pretty sure we’re in a La Niña year. Here in the Santa Monica Bay we’ve had spring fogs all summer long, even into late September. Also, the water never warmed up much and we haven’t gotten any good south swells. So the cool summer is here in Santa Monica, but the climate effect that causes it is probably stretching across the Pacific and probably to the southern hemisphere and maybe even to SE Asia.

Summer of Euros

In walking around Santa Monica this summer - up and down the 3rd St. Promenade, the streets around that, and the streets up to and around the beach - I’ve noticed more Europeans (both by sight and by hearing the languages) this summer than ever before. This isn’t a scientific survey of course, but I think this is true. Must be the effect of the dollar-euro exchange rate.

Scouting surf spots

I’ve been wanting to start surfing point breaks again for at least, well, since I moved here over five years ago. But it’s so convenient to just walk three blocks down and go out at the local beach break that I haven’t been sufficiently motivated to check Topanga, Sunset and Malibu.

Actually, that’s not quite true. On July 4 of last year one of the people from the Cambridge office was in the middle of his 6-week posting to the Santa Monica office. As I’ve become the unofficial surf instructor for the Cambridge office, he looked me up and I started taking him out. He caught on to surfing faster than anybody I’ve ever seen - it probably helps that he’s 27 and a very good athlete already. Because he was getting good fast I put him on the 7’0“ David Pu’u funboard and he was doing well with it. Unfortunately he didn’t heed my advice to be aware of the board’s presence and position if you get pitched off it. It ended up hitting him hard on the arm - with the sharp pointy end of the skeg and cut him open. We went to the ER and they put about 15 stitches in to close him up and told him to stay out of the water until the wound closed. (Picture will go up on Flickr shortly.) That dry spell happened to overlap 4 July - at which time we also happened to get a fantastic south swell. I decided it would be good to take him to see Malibu, which just happened to be my first time too.

Yes, despite growing up, living and surfing in SoCal nearly all my life I’d never actually been to Malibu. (Reason: Ventura County has a good point break as well as all other types of surf breaks, and frankly I just didn’t want to hassle with the crowds at the ‘Bu in the summer.) We went - and the waves were incredible. (Pictures to follow.) They were consistently 4-6’ set waves and just rolled through all the points. However, there were zillions of people out. But I digress...

This morning I left early and drove out to Sunset to check that point break. I’ve seen Topanga and it’s just not very good - bottom looks not very well-shaped and the put-in is rocky. Sunset has a rocky put-in too, but there was a south swell running today and it handled the sets and waves fairly well. (Pictures here.) There were nearly 100 people out at a place that doesn’t seem to have a lot of takeoff spots, but that won’t matter much if I dawn patrol and go out when few people are there.

Thick lips, good juice

A small south swell came through today and I got waves. I hadn’t been out in weeks - maybe two months - so I went out on the boogie board. Turns out that was probably a better choice than the stand up board because the waves had some juice, so they were fast and walled up. I saw one guy getting rides, but most of the stand-up surfers were getting creamed or just not making the takeoff.

I made 4 waves in :16 minutes, and got punished by each. On the first, I didn’t have a sense of how strong the lips were. I stayed high on the wall after the takeoff and turn, and got hit in the back of the head by the lip. It tore my hat off and I think I got a mild concussion. On the second wave I pulled into the barrel a bit lower on the face, but then the descending lip hit the nose of my board and pearled it so fast that I literally flipped, fins over my head. The water was pretty shallow and I got scared that I was being pushed down so fast that it was going to break my neck, but I didn’t hit the bottom after all. This one overpressurized my ears too. In the third wave I got el rolloed, but by then I was prepared. I got a good view looking down the barrel, which was fun - for about .5 sec.

After the first :17 minutes I didn’t get anything else for another :15, so I got out. Water temp was 68F according to LA County Lifeguards.

Batman, again

I saw the first Chris Nolan interpretation of Batman when it came out on the big screen, and again some later on DVD video. It was a fantastic story. (For those people who dismiss it by saying “it’s a comic book character”, consider that it is another portrayal of a conflicted archetypal hero character. Look at the story in that context.)

I also saw Nolan’s Memento not long after it came out and it was fantastic. It was cryptic too, but at the end one could sort of put the story together.

His new movie “The Dark Knight” opens in three weeks, on July 19. I’d seen trailers and read the description of the making of the movie included in an interview of Nolan in a story in Wired magazine. Rolling Stone has a review that is hugely laudatory as well.

The movie was shot in 70mm for IMAX, and fortunately there is an IMAX theater not far away. Nolan also eschewed digital effects almost completely, instead going with real principal photography and stunts for the spectacular scenes.

So I bought a ticket for the 12:15 (noon) show, and reserved a front and center seat. This isn’t the first showing - it actually shows at midnight:15 early the night before. When I bought the reserved ticket, the theater was already half full with reservations. So the marketing - viral and overt - has worked. But I think people are going because Chris Nolan is such a good writer and director, and Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Gary Oldman are such good actors.

PS: I’m seriously considering buying another ticket for the showing immediately after!

Movie - Up the Yangtze

I went to a showing of a new documentary movie “Up the Yangtze” about the effects of the creation of China's Three Gorges Dam. The movie is by a Canadian-Chinese filmmaker, and was financed by the National Film Board of Canada. It is about a peasant farm family who live near the banks of the Yangtze, and are being forced to move off their tiny farm and into a town as the river turns into a lake and the water rises. The oldest daughter in the family, who seems to be about 13 or 14 years old, wants to go to high school but instead has to go to work on one of the luxury cruise ships on the river that carries Western tourists who want to get a glimpse of the "old" China. We also follow a young Chinese youth (who is more metropolitan than) as he starts his first job as a greeter and host on the cruise ship. There are no grand vistas in the cinematography, but we get to see huge apartment buildings that have been emptied of their occupants as the residents were forced to move to higher ground.



The movie gives an excellent portrayal of the family, which lives in a candle-lit hut that they co-occupy with their chickens, a pet dog and a kitten. Neither of the parents can read - they are farmers - but they are sending all their three children (an interesting situation that is alluded to obliquely in the movie) to (at least) primary and middle school. The eldest daughter wants to continue school and has a goal of becoming a scientist, but has to go to work to earn money. The youth on the other hand, is an only child. The man who hires these children to work on the ship characterizes them as young and self-centered, and that seems to be a characterization shared by other adults and even lived up to by some of the youths working on the ship. (These kids' attitudes wouldn't be out of place at all in an American high school or college though.) The young girl from the peasant family is a notable exception, and is easily the most sympathetic character in the movie.

And that is what's curious. Even though this is a documentary, it seems almost like a feature movie. Except that we are deeply touched by the effect the dam is having on the lives of so many people. It is sad and touching.

Apparently the film is showing in the US only at the Laemmle's Santa Monica, but it seems to be available through Netflix.

Screenwriter's Blues

It’s 6:30 AM and I’ve been up for an hour or more. I almost always wake at least :30 minutes before first light, and have done so for decades. Usually I just lay in bed and daydream, or think about what I have to do in the coming day, or think about problems in life I have to solve. But I don’t usually get out of bed until I have to, or maybe even until the very last moment so I’ll be a little late getting to work unless I really hustle.

But my foray up to Malibu last Sunday morning at 6 AM has become somewhat of a model for what I’d like to do and can do if I just get out of bed.

So I got up at 5:30 this morning to check the surf and maybe go out. But the surf is non-existent.

I did actually check it last night shortly before dusk. It was blown out then, but even so I could still see that there was nothing underneath the miniscule wind swell. And the CDIP showed it still small this morning, so I didn’t even walk down to check. (Surfline says a small southern hemisphere swell may begin to start up late this week and into the weekend. So I may start dawn patrolling soon anyhow.)

But back to the morning.

After not going out, I got onto the computer and didn’t the normal start up chores - check email and check a few random websites. For the past couple of days I’ve been enrolled in UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program free “Open Cyberhouse“ (sic). It’s a forum where the various teachers of the various writing classes promote their classes and answer questions to interested prospective students.

Like me.

Or like me if I had any questions.

And most of the questions in the forums are frankly not very useful to anybody but the original questioner. So I watch and pick out the tidbits or quips or references that are useful.

Thus far I’ve found about two, one of which prompted this post. And that was a reference to a weblog by one of the writer/teachers, Scott Myers, who has Go Into the Story, a Blogspot blog with his own domain name. Myers apparently is a well regarded teacher of character development, and in one of his recent blog posts he refers to WGA’s podcast interviews of well known screenwriters and TV writers. This sounds interesting. And so I bookmarked both Myers’ site and the WGA site, and found my collection of bookmarks of writers’ sites and started visiting them (e.g. Kung Fu Monkey, by John August). This is inspirational, or perhaps simply catalytic for my current spate of inspiration to start writing again.

Anyway, I avoided (yet again) reading the NIST Guide to Computer Security Log Management. And now it’s 7:20 and time to get ready and then leave for work.