Art Center Car Classic 2009

Last Saturday (18 July 2009) I went up to Art Center in Pasadena for the annual Car Classic (2009). The theme this year was “Land, Sea, Air“ and the show included not only cars but also some boats and planes. The planes on the ground were a Rutan Vari-Eze and a hang glider with a rigid wing and a propane powered jet. Actually, it wasn’t quite a jet but it wasn’t quite a rocket either. I did not get a photo - just didn’t think of it. There was a flyover by some Ezes, and about 5 flyovers by some Yaks.

I don’t take nearly as many car photos these days as I once did, but there are about 50 pictures from the show. It’s surprising how much photographic situational awareness I have lost since I was a pro. I didn’t take many photos, and didn’t get many placards for identifying the cars that I did shoot.

That being said, I’m moving forward (albeit slowly) on my project to digitize many of my photos from when I was a pro photographer. I have recovered my light box so I’ll be able to review and choose transparencies to digitize, and more importantly I’ve committed some money to a digitizing service. A few weeks ago I signed up with Scan Cafe, and when I get a few hundred pictures chosen I’ll be sending this selection to the company for my first batch scan. This will be a test to see how good the service is and whether they return all my pictures in good condition. Timeliness is not a major factor as I evaluate the company and its service. However, I sure hope it is good. This could be the opportunity to digitize several thousand photos, including transparencies of all sizes from 35mm to 4x5, and eventually a smaller selection of B&W negatives.

All this won’t happen until I get a new computer though. The computer I am writing this on is only 4 years old, but it is so unable to handle the workload I subject it to that it really needs to be moved down to second tier service, as the laptop I occasionally use when I’m on the road. I’m planning on getting a new Mac Pro tower in September, when Apple releases the new OSX 10.6 operating system and possibly (hopefully!) some new Mac Pro models. But that is a topic for another post.

A Bad Week for Goldman Sachs

Just a few days after GS announces the biggest-ever bonuses to their staff, they get the following...

Matt Taibbi attacks in inimitable Taibbi style. (IMHO Taibbi is the new Hunter Thompson, because he is such a scourge to the corrupt powers that be.)

Then Frank Rich piles on in his smooth j'accuse way by equating Goldman with Bernie Madoff but worse, and explaining why John Dillinger the bank robber was such a hero to the American public during a major economic depression - then and now. (Hint: GS had a somewhat-invisible hand in both. And not a small invisible hand, but a big one.)

And then Goldman is forced to publicly admit through their attorney in the NY district attorney's office that their secret computer trading code was not only stolen and released to the open internet, but is used to "unfairly" "manipulate" the markets! Of course it’s unfair manipulation when somebody other than Goldman does it - but if they do it, well, that’s different.

I love this!

PS: Matt Taibbi is this generation's Hunter Thompson.

Big Brother

"Big Brother is watching." Today (8 June 2009) marks sixty years since Nineteen Eighty Four was published.

Thanks Mr. Orwell for the warning. Too bad we haven't done much about it.

WGA seminar: Movies That Matter

I went to this WGAw inspirational seminar today. It was useful in that it helped inspire me again and a bit, and was entertaining to watch and listen to a couple of the writers who appeared and spoke, i.e. Paul Haggis and Billy Ray. However, there was not much new material for me other than Billy Ray’s Venn diagram of screenwriters and studios, which is mostly self-evident but was humorous nonetheless. Anyway, my notes…

I attended the opening session, then sessions 3 and 1, and skipped the final session. (By then I had a headache that was bad enough to massively distract me from the discussion, and I can always watch it later on DVD in the WGA library.)

The theme of the seminar was “Theme”, finding it and expressing it. The day started with this but these professional writers generally agreed it was too difficult and too dangerous to establish a theme and then write around it. By “difficult” they universally acknowledged that if they had a theme going into a writing project then it was rearranged or redefined by the end of the project. By “dangerous” they all meant that it is impossible to state the literal theme to the studio at the beginning, and it must be slipped covertly into the story so the studio doesn’t recognize it. Also, overtly stating the theme was too heavy handed, and would be too obvious and amateurish.

Jane Anderson: Humor and objectivity will save you (when you get in a spot from which you can’t get out).
Billy Ray: Don’t think of it as art, think of it as work.
Billy Ray: If you do a great job in storytelling, THEN you will make a statement.
Billy Ray: The story’s scenes and dialogue should be loaded with subtext. This is what the actors use to act with, and it is communicated to the audience.
Billy Ray on “notes”: When people read your story and give notes, listen to their questions and their problems but not to their solutions. The solution they tell you is probably the solution to/in/from another movie.
Billy Ray: Start with a story idea, a character idea, or a theme idea.
Billy Ray and all the others: The stories you have in your head that you want to write are a much larger number and span of subjects than the studios want to make. The studios look at what is in the market right now (profitable or not) and want to make those. So currently, in Summer 2009, they only want comedies and some action movies and anything with Will Smith or written by Judd Apatow, and anything that is an existing franchise, preferably with capes. (Update: A look to McG’s wikipedia entry shows that he is currently making an update to 20,000 Leagues under the sea, with Will Smith.)
Billy Ray: They are saying they’ll never make dramas. But the business cycles, and dramas will come back.
Paul Haggis: Talked about how much research he did to construct the characters for Crash.
Paul Haggis: Also wrote the Bond movies Casino Royale, and the first draft of Quantum of Solace - but then the strike happened. He turned over the draft to the producers and they went into production. When the movie came out he hardly recognized anything in it. Robert Nelson Jacobs asked him “So who rewrote it?” and his reply was a shrug of the shoulders and they both looked at each other knowingly.






WRITING MOVIES THAT MATTER: Finding and Expressing Your Theme
Saturday June 6, 2009
Writers Guild of America, 7000 W. Third Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048

+ Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash)
- Winnie Holzman (TV – My So-Called Life, Once and Again)
+ Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop Loss)
~ Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat, Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep)
~ Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, The Last Mimzy)
~ Robin Schiff (TV – Ten Things I Hate About You)
+ Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society)
+ Robin Swicord (Little Women, The Jane Austen Book Club)
~ Dan Jinks (Producer -- American Beauty, Big Fish, Milk etc.)
- Jane Anderson (It Could Happen to You, The Baby Dance, Normal, The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio)
+ Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Breach, State of Play)
~ James Uhls (Fight Club, Jumper)
+ Nick Kazan (Frances, Reversal of Fortune, Fallen, Bicentennial Man)
~ Stanley Weiser (Wall Street, W.)
- John Sacret Young (China Beach, Thanks of a Grateful Nation)
~ Albert Berger (producer - Election, Little Miss Sunshine, Little Children)
~ Nathan Kahane (producer - Juno, Stranger Than Fiction)

9:00 am: Registration, continental breakfast
10:00 am: WRITING MOVIES THAT MATTER
A panel of experienced, produced writers will discuss in depth the stories that matter to them, and how they view their job as storytellers. Is it possible for movies to change the culture or do they just reflect it?

Jane Anderson, Dan Jinks, Nick Kazan, Billy Ray, James Uhls Moderator: Bruce Joel Rubin

11:30 am Coffee break
12:00 noon: FINDING YOUR THEME: BREAKOUT GROUPS
Three break-out groups, each led by two or more experienced writers: Choose ONE group. Panelists will engage in a more intimate discussion with smaller groups. You have two precious hours to talk to the world. What are you going to say? What matters to you? How do you allow your deeper self to break through into your writing? Explore strategies for discovering what you really want to say.

(1) Bruce Joel Rubin, James Uhls, Robert Nelson Jacobs
(2) Jane Anderson, Nick Kazan, John Sacret Young
(3) Winnie Holzman, Tom Schulman, Billy Ray

1:30 pm Lunch Break
2:30 pm EXPRESSING YOUR THEME: BREAKOUT GROUPS
Three break-out groups, each led by two or more experienced writers: Choose ONE group. Panelists will engage in a more intimate discussion with smaller groups. What’s the difference between ideas, concepts and themes? How do you layer themes into your scripts? How do you get the audience to feel your theme without having to state it overtly? What makes an audience care?

(1) Robert Nelson Jacobs, Paul Haggis, Albert Berger
(2) Winnie Holzman, Kimberly Peirce, Tom Schulman
(3) Robin Swicord, Stanley Weiser, John Sacret Young

4:00 pm Coffee Break
4:30 pm PANEL: GETTING MOVIES THAT MATTER MADE
Identifying studio execs or production companies who share your passion. How does one navigate the system while holding on to why you wanted to write the movie in the first place? Can a movie that matters still make money? Can you make a tentpole that matters? How do you get what matters to you made?

Albert Berger, Paul Haggis, Nathan Kahane, Kimberly Peirce, Robin Swicord, Stanley Weiser Moderator: Winnie Holzman

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm Wine and Cheese Reception in the Shavelson-Webb Library

NPR stories and a poem

In honor of this morning’s NPR stories on cybersecurity, a monster software company spending huge money on a third rate search site nobody uses, and poetry about economic meltdowns, a haiku:

OS insecure
a hundred mil spent on hype
loser search engine

Surf today

I have to admit this is my first day in the water since coming back from Costa Rica - nearly three months ago. Of course the January-February-March-April part of the year is about the worst in California for surf - not to mention that the water is cold... and I had just returned from warm water! ☺

But I’ve been antsy to get into the water lately, and with warm Santa Ana winds blowing offshore and a 1’ - 3’ west swell coming through (see below), there’s no better time than the present. High tide was about 6:50 am and I should have gone out about then or soon thereafter, but instead I got some work done on the computer (organizing TODO list, planning tasks, etc.). I didn’t actually get into the water until about 11:30 am, about an hour before low tide.

It was kind of closed out, and with the tide being low these close-out waves were breaking in hip-deep water, but I got a few waves anyway. I also fell off a few times because I’m so out of shape. I stayed out for about :45 minutes, and had a good time.

Some observations and events:

There were a zillion ladybugs on the beach, flying around, sitting on the sand, landing on boards and other items. They weren’t swarming as I’ve seen at Ladybug Camp in the Los Padres National Forest, but there were more than I’ve seen at any other time and place.

Also, I met a woman in the water who was congenial and a fairly good surfer for a beginner. It turns out she started a local woman’s surf group, and has turned that into a MeetUp group, so I’m going to pass the info on to a female colleague who may be interested.

​

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.