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31 Dec 1998Lest we forget: the SOCET SET team:
19 Nov 1998Read The Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger). Great story, but a bit too histrionic, too much hyperbole. Also I had the nagging feeling he was mimicing Into Thin Air (both books started as magazine articles in Outdoor magazine). 15 Nov 1998Saw a production of Sweet Charity. Not the same without Shirley MacLaine. But still a great musical ("Big Spender: The Minute you Walked in the Joint" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now"). I read that this play is based on Fellini's "Le Notti de Cabiria". 12 Nov 1998The Simpsons: A campaign ad in a mayoral race: Mayor Quimby has turned the Springfield prison into a revolving door hotel, releasing scores of convicts, including two-time felon Sideshow Bob. Vote for Sideshow Bob. 4 Nov 1998Saw "Cats" on TV. Not too impressed, but then TV has a way of sucking the life out of any play. Homer Simpson: Trying is the first step on the road to failure. 25 Oct 1998Read Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne). Verne must be one of the most creative people in the world: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Around the World in 80 days; from the earth to the Moon. This was 80 years before the "golden age" of science fiction! The Center of the Earth is a bit dated by todays standards: The characters are very shallow; and it is overly scientific). The Center of the Earth includes a "runic alphabet" that is the code that leads the protagonist to the journey. A precursor to Lord of the Rings. 22 Oct 1998Read The Silent Angel (1952, Heinrich Bool), one of the few German novels Ive read (Parfum; Zauberberg, Budenbrooks; The Tin Drum). This novel is a stark, elegant, focused novel about a soldier in the first few months after WW II in Koln. He paints a picture of hunger, rubble, and love and kindness. The author is a nobel prize winner. Read a biography of Henry Moore (1896-1976), british sculptor. Following my rule #15, he is very egotistical and ambitious. Many of his contemporaries were envious of his success. Frank Zappa's recording studio is called "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen". 17 Oct 1998Forty years old today. Tee-shirt slogan: "24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? " 11 Oct 1998Song by Linda and Robin Williams: "Man is tinder, woman fire, and the devil is a mighty wind". Read High Fidelity (1995, Nick Hornby) british romance/comedy. Lots of great music mentioned: Long Tall Sally, Mony Mony; Route 66; Do You Love Me; In the Midnight Hour; La Bamba. Watched The Lonliness of The Long Distance Runner. Absolutely fantastic B&W british movie about ... what. Alienation? Non-conformism? Rebellion? Coming of age? A rebellious teen is persuaded to join the high school track team. He trains and trains and becomes an outstanding runner. At the big meet, he is leading the long race, but with a few hundred yards remaining, he stops and lets the other runners pass him. 30 Sep 1998Neat quote attributed to Da Vinci (somehow I doubt he said it) Art lives from constraint and dies from freedom 29 Sep 1998I like the US constitution, but I think it is missing some key provisions: Secession When a territory joins the United States, it is a voluntary process. Likewise, there should be a process to leave the union. Perhaps the Civil War could have been avoided if the constitution had such a provision. Privacy Explicit rights to privacy need to be incorporated in the constitution. The fourth amendment (which protects "persons and properties") goes halfway there, but needs to be clarified. I envision rather broad protections including: government cant spy or wiretap, consenting adults are free to do what they want inside their homes, government cannot spy on people, people can choose their own medical treatment (or refuse treatment), birth control freedom, and government can't divulge information (tax, social security, etc) about citizens. National ID Card Lots of Americans are opposed to any kind of National ID system. Personally, I am in favor of such a system. We already have a de facto system with our Social Security numbers. Most modern countries have national ID cards: they are essential for the efficient processing of taxes, social security, immigration, etc. The real privacy issue is not whether you must have a card, but whether the government can randomly stop you on the street and demand that you show your card. Freedom of Information Yes, we have the Freedom of Information Act, but this right is too important to leave to a mere statute. The same concept should be in the constitution. Also, every legal proceeding (hearing, etc) should be public … exceptions for national interest (e.g. trials on suspected spies) should be very narrowly construed (e.g. the trial transcript should be published, with just the few items relating to national interested removed). Immigration The constitution was written a couple hundred years ago, before airplanes and before neighboring countries existed, so it grants citizenship to anyone born in the USA. Instead, citizenship should be granted only to children of citizens (or to people that legally undergo the naturalization process). Freedom of Thought The first amendment is pretty strong, but in recent years, many laws have been passed that make it illegal to have certain thoughts. For example, Yahoo prevents the sale of Nazi memorabilia, because of the threats of lawsuits. Hate crimes criminalize the act of disliking classes of people. (Granted, today you can only get convicted of a hate crime in conjunction with another crime. But how long until you can be prosecuted merely for saying you hate a class?). People should be free to think anything, to say anything, and to hate (or love) anyone. Gender Equality Remember the ERA? It still it has not passed. I’m not suggesting that women be declared equal in all ways; nor am I suggesting that they work in submarines or as longshoreman. All I'm saying is that women deserve equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. If a firefighting job requires that the applicant lift 100 lbs over their head, fine, but at least give women the opportunity to apply for the job. And if they get it, give them the same pay. Labor Rights Most of the civilized world recognizes broad workers rights these days, including: the right to form a union; the right to collective bargaining; the right to strike; and the right of the workers to insist that management engage in good faith negotiation. These rights are in many modern constitutions around the world. Gun Rights The second amendment needs to be clarified. Can anyone own a gun? Or only people in a militia or National Guard? What sorts of guns? My personal opinion is that rifles should be permitted to everyone (except kids, loonies, and felons), but not handguns. In fact, I would make rifles mandatory in every home, like in Switzerland. Taxation There are no limits on the amounts or kinds of taxes that the federal government can collect. Like prop 13 in California, new or increased taxes should be subject to very stringent review, perhaps even a direct popular vote. Debt The federal government can spend more money that it has (after all, it owns the mints :-) Perhaps the government should be limited to spending within its means? If so, we would have no national debt. A provision could be made for emergency situations. Political Freedom The first amendment has protections for freedom of speech and assembly, but in the 1950s McCarthyism still managed to throw people in jail just for being members of the communist party (ostensibly because they advocated the violent overthrow of the US government). Then in 2003 a grad student in Idaho was thrown in jail (later acquitted) for merely hosting a web site that suggested that Israel was evil and that arabs should work against Israel. Surely it cannot be a crime to suggest the violent overthrow of governments of foreign contries? How could we speak out against a Hitler or Mussolini or Pinochet? The constitution should make it clear that ALL speech and ALL political opinions are protected, unless they explicitly advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. Term Limits Election Reform is a complex topic, but most states have term limits, as does the President of the US (after Roosevelt's 4 terms). Federal congressmen should too. Electoral College Made sense in 1776, but obsolete now. Control of Military The military should be under civilian control … that is in the constitution and should stay that way. What is not in the constitution is the notion that the US military cannot be used against US citizens. This is the "posse comitatus" principle, which is a federal law (circa 1870), but should be in the constitution. There are some exceptions, such as governors calling in the national guard to help with natural disasters, or the coast guard doing drug seizures, or border patrol. Scope of Federal Government The original constitution contains a very explicit statement (the tenth amendment) stating that the Federal government was limited in its activities to only those jobs explicitly listed in the constitution (military, patents, post office, interstate commerce, etc). The original 13 states insisted upon this amendment before they would sign the Constitution, because they did not want the federal government encroaching on states rights (e.g. defining and punishing crimes). This limitation has been disregarded since about 1933, when FDR's new-deal government pushed through tons of legislation (well-intentioned to recover the economy). Much of this legislation was not permitted by the Constitution (e.g. funds for artists, the Conservation Corps, etc), yet the Supreme court denied challenges. The amount of legislation passed by the federal government since 1930 is staggering, and much of it goes beyond the authority of the Constitution. Obvious examples include the NEA, NPR, hate crimes, flood relief funds, NASA, scientific research, subsidies to farmers, and so on. Don’t get me wrong: I'm not opposed to the above expenditures, I just think that they should be authorized and funded by the states. Many federal laws for criminal acts (murder, kidnapping, etc) simply duplicate existing state laws, but the federal laws are passed just for political reasons. There are three ways the federal government gets around the 10th amendment: First: The fed government issues regulations that states must follow if they want to receive federal funding. For example, the Federal government collects taxes from taxpayers, then passes a law that says: "we'll give the money back to the states for schools, but only if the schools have wheelchair ramps", or "we'll give the money back to states for libraries, but only if the libraries exclude certain material from their internet computers" or "we'll give the money to states for highway construction, but only if the gas stations carry unleaded fuel". Naturally, all states want to get this money: If they don’t take it, the money just goes to the other states that do agree to the regulation. The Federal government argues that this does not violate the 10th amendment, because the regulations are not mandatory: states voluntarily adhere to the regulations, as a condition of receiving the money. But this is a sham argument: The Federal government is indirectly imposing laws on the states that are outside the Constitutional limit. The Federal government should not be collecting taxes for these purposes, let alone having "strings attached" to the laws. Schools, libraries, and road building are state responsibilities, not federal. Second: The fed government passes laws that are related to interstate commerce. These relations are often very tenuous. Third: The fed government passes laws related to interstate activities (such as interstate kidnapping). Pardons The presidential pardon is used, not to remedy injustices, but as a political tool (Clinton pardoning Puerto Rican activists to support his wife's NY election; Ford pardoning Nixon; Clinton pardoning whitewater figures; etc). Pardoning should be abolished, and the function left to appeals courts. Public Service Many countries require young adults to serve their country for 6 months to 24 months, usually before or after college. This helps develop a real sense of citizenship. Declaration of War The president, a single individual, should not be allowed to initiate any significant offensive military effort, or commit US troops to serve in overseas peacekeeping missions (Somalia, Vietnam, Bosnia, etc). The constitution already says that only Congress can declare war, but presidents have been side-stepping that for a long time. Perhaps the constitution could clarify and strengthen congresses role. Detention I added this item in 2003, after the 9/11 disaster. The US government has jailed several US citizens, without charging them with a crime. It turns out that the government can put citizens in jail for an indefinite period of time, using a "material witness" law: the government simply has to persuade a judge that the alleged material witness may flee the country. Clearly this is wrong. If the person is suspected of a crime, charge him with a crime. Otherwise, he does not belong in jail. If he is merely a witness, he can be detained, say, at most three days. 23 Sept 1998Every Star Trek episode has these three elements: (1) A conflict between individuals; (2) an explosion; and (3) a deadline or countdown. 22 Sept 1998Read two children's books by Graham Base: Animalia and Eleventh Hour. Eleventh Hour has a cool puzzle in it. I solved many of the clues, but could not solve it. I was weak and looked at the answer key in the back of the book. It was the mice! It reminds me of a similar puzzle book "Masquerade" by Kit Williams (1979, England). The author buried a valuable, solid-gold statue somewhere in England, and the book contains clues to its location. I borrowed the book from the library, but it is very inscrutable: I can hardly guess at the clues, let alone the final answer. When the book was first published, no one was able to get the answer. After 2 years, the publisher printed some hints. The person that finally recovered the statue was a cheater, apparently: an acquaintance of the author's former girlfriend. Williams wrote a second puzzle book, based on outstanding marquetry illustrations. The book was untitled and the puzzle was to find the title of the book. Some people call it "the bee book" because there is a a honeycomb with bees on the cover. The site http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A533800 says the title is "Bee on the Comb". I doubt many people solve this one either. 20 Sept 1998Great art is not fulfulling a desire, it is creating a new desire. - Louis Kahn, architect
The author's father was a jerk, and the reader pays the price - Book review. 14 Sept 1998Revolution is only three missed meals away
We are only a few hundred years out of caves Variants on "the veneer of civilization is very thin". 7 Sept 1998Watched Ken Burns' documentary on Lewis and Clark. Top quality, just like his documentaries on the Civil War an baseball. I like the fact that the filmmaker is totally absent: when interviewing historians, all you see is the responses, never the questions. Contrasted with "news" shows like 60 minutes where the celebrity interviewer gets as much screen time as the subject. 5 Sept 1998Watched Eisenstatd's Alexander Nevsky on Bravo today. Classic Russian B&W propaganda from WW II (set in 1242?). Russia defeats agressor Germany. Battle scene on the lake is very famous. Very explicit morality tale "Women will love/marry men that fight hardest. Cowards dont get laid". Two heros Vasily and Grimlov. Vasily freely admits that Grimlov fought harder. 4 Sept 1998Campaign ad for governor: "Integrity [or character] is doing the right thing when no one is looking". Cant find out the source of this aphorism. 23 Aug 1998Clinton gave his speech last week about the Monical Lewinsky scandal. I don't think that he should go to jail, but if an employee behaved that way, he should be fired. And he lied under oath. Most companies hold their employees to higher ethical standards than that. But he has no boss: no one to fire him. Hey Willie - you got your mojo working tonight? - From Primary Colors 17 Aug 1998Finished The Horse Whisperer (1996, Nicholas Evans). An imitation of The Bridges of Madison County (macho loner, lonely housewife, adultery). Silly lines "He smelled of leather and functional soap". "And she arched ... and felt in her loins...". The ending is too maudlin and contrived. I've never liked books that involve adultery: I don't know whey it bothers me: Normally I can read about any unethical or immoral behavior, and it is just a fictional character in a book, so no big deal. 16 Aug 1998Read The Challenger Launch Decision (1996, Diane Vaughn). It turns out that the underlying cause of the failure was very complex. It was not a simple case of NASA management ignoring the advice of engineers in order to meet the launch deadline. Lots of data was available, but no hard data on the one critical topic: How the solid rocket rubber rings would perform in cold temperatures. Roger Boisjoly (the Morton-Thiokol engineer that tried to stop the launch) is certainly a hero, standing up to management for his principles. He ended up suing MT after the debacle for retalliation. When I was in Heathrow airport last month, I spend an hour waiting in the first class lounge. In the next couch was Gillian Anderson. I didnt talk to her, because it looked like she was trying to avoid unwanted attention. 13 Aug 1998Found out more about the catchy musical theme for Hill Street Blues tv show: It is by Mike Post. Amazingly, he also did some other catchy tv them songs: Law & Order, and The Rockford Files. The mystery is why he has not published any pop tunes, or movie scores? 12 Aug 1998Read Independence Day (1995, Richard Ford). Great book. Dense, detailed, humane, compassionate. Much like John Updike: heavy east coast atmosphere, the aging self-conscious male. ... [she might call] with bitter accusations that I have not been forthright in every conceivable way. I may not have, or course, forthright being a greater challenge than would seem, though my intentions are always good if few. and If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present quoted from Wittgenstein, Tractatus (6.4311) 4 Aug 1998Trying to decide what my next furniture-making project will be. A furniture book has a stunning table, based on an early 1800's design concept. The circular table is 6 pie-shaped pieces. The table expands and contracts to two sizes. The smaller size is simply the pie pieces together in a circle. When expanded, the pieces move outward radially, and 6 rectangular leaves fit between them to make a shape nearly like a circle (with a hold in the middle). A mechanism under the table rotates to move all the pie pieces together, uniformly. The modern piece in the book updates this design by putting the metallic mechanism on top, and featuring it: Gorgeous brushed stainless steel and copper. Also read about a Periodic Table http://www.theodoregray.com Thomas Gray (some famous scientist) built it: It is a large coffee table in the shape of the periodic table of the elements, with about 100 small wooden pigeon holes (each with a removable lid), each hole containing a sample of a single element. Very, very ingenious. Many elements are difficult to obtain, but he had lots of connections, and got labs and scientists to donate the rarer elements. 25 July 1998A joke: An airplane in flight. Pilot announces "we are going to crash in five minutes". A woman passenger stands up and shouts "Is there any man here who can make me feel like a real woman?". A tall, handsome man stands. He walks towards her, unbuttoning his shirt. He hands it to her, "Here, iron this". From David Letterman's top ten list of rejected rock song titles: "We're gonna rock some of the night, but then we have to go to bed so we can get up early for work". 8 July 1998Read The Stone Diaries (1993, Carol Shields). Poignant, bittersweet, a celebration of the commonplace. Not comic, not tragic - just a vivid view of an everyday life. Two phenomenal quotes: Flett, Daisy (nee Goodwill), who, due to historical accident, due to carelessness, due to ignorance, due to lack of opportunity and courage, never once in her many years of life experienced the excitement and challenge of oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry, cigarettes, oral sex, pierced ears, Swedish clogs, water beds, science fiction, pornographic movies, religious ecstasy, truffles, Kirsch, jalapeno peppers, Peking duck, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, group therapy, body massage, hunger, distinguished honors, outraged condemnation, who never drove a car, never bought a lottery ticket, never, never (on the other hand) was struck on the face or body by another being, never once perched her reading glasses (with a sigh) in the crown of her hair, never (for fear of ridicule) investigated the possibilities of plastic surgery or yoga, never gave herself over to the kind of magazine article that tells you to be good to yourself, to believe in yourself and to do things for yourself. Nor, though she knew she had been loved in her life, did she ever hear the words ``I love you, Daisy'' uttered aloud (such a simple phrase), and only during the long, thin, uneventful sleep that preceded her death did she have the wit (and leisure) to ponder the injustice of this. and Now there's a woman who made a terrific meatloaf, who knew how to repot a drooping rubber plant, who bid a smart no-trump hand, who wore a hat well, who looked after her personal hygiene, who wrote her thank-you notes promptly, who kept up, who went down, went down and down and down, who missed the point, the point of it all, but was, nevertheless, almost unfailingly courteous to others. 1 July 1998I have a theory about Hollywood: I notice that many male roles are filled these days by semitic-looking gents. My theory is that Semitic producers are trying to make their look more common, more trendy. Paul Reiser, Steve Gutenberg, D. Schwimmer, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Alan Brooks, J. Seinfeld, Jason Biggs. I'd probably do the same thing: If I was a producer I would try to promote math nerds. 13 June 1998Read Last Orders (1996, Graham Swift). Fantastic book about some English drinking buddies taking their friends ashes to the seaside. Very touching, no sex or violence. Although it does violate my windfall rule: They win a 33:1 longshot horse race bet at the end. Odd thing at the end of the penultimate chapter: It ends in mid-sentence, and I cannot tell if it is a printing error or a deliberate choice by the author. "That your own daddy ...". 8 June 1998Saw a great TV commercial for The Gap (Khaki Swings) where they freeze the action (dancers in mid-air) and rotate the camera around the subjects, and then resume the motion. Stunning. Clearly, they had an array of synchronized cameras around the dancers. No wonder many commercials are attractive: They have a $300K budget for 30 seconds worth of film. Some 2 hour movies have smaller budgets. 5 June 1998Read "The Shape of Life", another book on evolution, but this one actually grabs the bull by the horns and tries to explore the mechanism of how a new species can arise from an existing species. The bottom line is they are still not 100% sure, and research is on-going. Clearly a beneficial mutation is an alteration to the DNA that causes the embryo to grow differently, or longer, or stop sooner, or whatever. The book emphasizes two kinds of mutations: those that affect the actual product of the DNA, and those that affect the timing of the embryo's development. I'm envious of the researchers that will be working in this field in the future: Lots of big breakthroughs ahead. 3 June 1998Listened to Olu Dara's CD "In the World". Very, very nice, especially Okra and "Your Lips". The latter song has a riff that he hums (repeated about 3 places in the song) that is so inevitable. One of those things that defines a great tune: Once you hear the piece, on every subsequent listen, you just cannot wait for that inevitable riff to arrive. Choruses to pop songs are like that, and the refrains in great classical music. Read about a neat computer algorithm problem, arising from genetics: One way to re-construct the tree of life is to measure the differences between two species (such as measuring how different their mitochondrial DNA is) and then to build the tree based on these many single-valued differences. If A-B difference is larger than A-C, then A and B's common ancestor must be before (older) than A-C's common ancestor. Furthermore, the time from now back to the common ancestor is proportional to the mitochondrial DNA distance. This algorithm is difficult, and slow. I don't recall the name of this problem, but I think it has a name. One issue is that there is no one "right" answer: The best you can hope for is to optimize the result, kind of a least-squares thing. 2 June 1998Got some books on architecture: the stained glass windows by F. Lloy Wright are outstanding, especially from his Robie house (in Chicago?). 28 May 1998Here is a famous poem, Invictus (Willaim E. Henley) that my friend Alec Beyer has memorized: Out of the darkness that covers me Black as the pit from pole to pole I thank whatever God made me For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud, Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloodied but unbowed. ... It matters not how striat the gate How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. 24 May 1998My sister-in-law is working on a project supporting the Apache helicopter. The have tee-shirts with the slogan "You can run, but you'll just die tired". Another Ode of Horce that is good: 3.5 "The Example of Regulus" about noble self-sacrifice of warrior Regulus: refusing to be ransomed, instead choosing to remain a prisoner of Carthage, because too many Romans were not fighting hard (hence, losing battles) since they know ransoming was available. 19 May 1998Read "The Unknown Shore" (1959, Patrick OBrien). His second book, the last one before the Aubrey/Maturin series. More tragic and dark than the other books, but again he based it on a true story, and so had little room for humor. 12 May 1998Read The Golden Ocean (1956, Patrick OBrien). OBrien's first novel, pre-dating his Aubrey/Maturin series. This was a great book: funny, adventurous, a great buddy-story. The author says the book is based on an actual circumnavigation in 1740. 28 April 1998Saw "The Pirates of Penzance" on TV, 1982 with Kevin Kline and Linda Rondstadt. The tune I most recognized wias "I am the model of a modern major general". The most memorable thing about this production was the set design: Filmed all indoors, with somewhat surrelistic or artificial appearance, to a nice effect. 26 April 1998Read some Odes of Horace (tr David Ferry, 1997). Latin, 65 BC to 8 BC. Very earthy, reminds me of Whitman. For God's sake Lydia, tell me why are you so determined to ruin Sybaris with Love, the way you do? Why doesn't he ride anymore? Why does he act like he's afraid to go into the Tiber. or ... the time we have is short, cut short your hopes for longer. Now as I say these words time has already fled backwards away - Leuconoe - Hold on to the day And the final phrase, in latin, is Carpe Diem, which may be the source of that famous idiom. It happens less and less often, now, that you wake up to hear the sound of gravel thrown against your shuttered windows in the night ...
It's very seldom, Lydia, now, that you can hear a lover out in the dark complain: O Lydia, Lydia, why are you sound asleep while all night long I suffer in the alley
Out there in the night you'll moan that all the young men Prefer the lustrous ivy and lustrous myrtle to the withered leaves that winter's companion the cold wind causes to scatter and scrape along the alley. And another famous one (1.3) The breast of the man who was the first to dare to go out in a little boat upon the waters must have been made of oak and triple bronze ... Audacious at trying out everything, men rush headlong into the things that have been forbidden ... Audacious Daedalus, wearing forbidden wings tried out the empty air. And Hercules went down to the underworld, broke in and entered. No hill's too steep for men to try to climb; Men even try out getting up to Heaven. Is it any wonder, then, that Jupiter rages, Hurling down lightning, shaking the sky with thunder?
21 April 1998That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead! 20 April 1998Comments from Sydney Opera House contest judges on Jorn Utzon’s entry: The drawings submitted are simple to the point of being diagrammatic. Nevertheless as we have returned again and again to them study of these drawings, we are convinced that they present a concept of an opera house which is capable of being one of the great buildings of the world. Yes, and it took 10 years to build and cost 10x (!) the original cost estimate.
Joke: My grandmother said that if you stare at an attractive woman long enough, you will turn into granite. She was only partially right. One of the prettiest things in my house is a glass jar filled with root killer: copper sulfate, one of the prettiest blue crystals you will ever see. 15 April 1998Went to the Belly Up tavern and saw Dar Williams (opened by Ron Sexsmith). 12 April 1998Quotes from HBO tv show From the Earth to the Moon “When it gets very dark, you can see the stars” and “ A solitary cloud can block the sun”; and The mind is not a vessel to be filled, ... it is a fire to be lit. The last they attribute to Plutarch. Someone worked hard on the quotes. 10 April 1998Read a biography of Dalton Trumbo. He spent 11 months in federal prison for refusing to answer congresses questions about his communist party membership. Great story about his prison time: When he was in prison he roomed with an illiterate moonshiner from Appalachia. Dalton wrote letters to the man’s wife and read her letters to him. She wrote “I went to the dentist and they pulled all my teeth out, against my wishes. Now my mouth is all scrunched and I’m afraid you won’t love me anymore”. The moonshiner had no reaction, but Dalton used poetic license andd wrote to the wife “I didn’t marry you for your teeth, and I don’t’ give a good god damn if you have teeth or note – I’ll still love you”. The wife then wrote back the most beautiful love letter, filled with relief. 8 April 1998Heard a nice opera tune on PBS: “M'appari, tutt'amor” from Martha by Flotow (tenor aria). 6 April 1998Read Mutiny on the Bounty (1932, C. Nordhoff and J. N. Hall). First book of a trilogy (the others were Bligh’s navigation across the pacific in a 23 ft boat with 17 men, and the Pitcairn Island settlement and conflicts. Great, great non-fiction (although the third book is mostly conjecture). 31 Mar 1998Read Riders of the Purple Sage (1912 Zane Grey). One of those eye-opening situations where Im familiar with a derived work (Riders of the Purple Wage – a 1960s science fiction story) and later in life realize its source is an older work. A classic old-time western: pre-dating Louis L’Amour. Lots of cattle, horses, sagebrush and chaste love. Not very friendly to Mormons. 25 Mar 1998Watched a great episode of Star Trek Voyager. Neelix becomes suicidal after a near-death experience where he failed to see the expected ancestors that should be greeting him. He is redeemed when a small girl asks him to tuck her into bed. Right up there with my favorite STNG episode where Picard lives the life of a dying planet. 20 Mar 1998Heard a story on Garrison Kiellor’s Writers Almanac radio show: There was a female journalist who living France and wrote a monthly column for the New Yorker (called dispatches from Paris). She wrote the column for 35 years and never used the pronoun “I”. Reason: Her editor rejected her first column and told her “I’m not paying you to hear what you think, I want to hear what the French people think”. Probably apocryphal. 15 Mar 1998Read Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System The First 100 Missions (D. Jenkins). Turns out the Shuttle is a total failure in nearly every regard, when measured against the original goals:
8 Mar 1998Read Rites of Passsage ( 1980? (Booker prize winner) William Golding – author of The Lord of the Flies), a sea-faring book send in the 1800s, not unlike Obrien’s series. A great passage on making love to a woman: We wrestled, she with a nicely calculated exertion of strength that only just failed to resist me. I attacked once more … I struck her topsls … I called on her to yield … I bent for the maincourse … We flamed upright … she did yield at last… rendered up the tender spoils of war. And a funny passage: … and the battle - I beg your pardon! As the epitaph goes “wherever you may be let your wind go free, for holding mine was the death of me” – battle raged … Another funny thing is the way the author shifts into latin or greek whenever he has something vulgar to say, exactly the way Charles Darwin used when discussing intercourse, or homosexuality. 6 Mar 1998Watched Johnny got his gun (1971). Very spooky movie. The ending was different than I recall in the book: in the movie, after they finally figure out that the patient is asking to die, they refuse and he is left to suffer eternally. Maybe that is how the book ended. Dalton Trumbo directed this, as well as wrote it. Im glad he finally had some redemption after the horrible blacklisting he went thru. 22 Feb 1998Talk about courage: Saw one of my bosses (Dr. Lasley) at an Old Globe play last night: he was alone (and seats on both sides of him were occupied) so he must have a solo ticket. Not many people have that kind of guts. 20 Feb 1998Saw Strictly Ballroom: Outstanding movie. Funny, poignant, inspirational. All without sex or violence. A life lived in fear is a life half lived. 18 Feb 1998Read some poetry by Pablo Neruda (Viente Poemas de Amor, 1924). I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. The whole stanza My words rained over you, stroking you. 17 Feb 1998Read “I, Etcetera” (Susan Sontag). Did not like. Yet she is so famous for her essay Illness as a Metaphor. I have never read that, and I assumed it defined the five stages of accepting a terminal illness (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – parodied hilariously in The Simpsons), but in fact those are from “Death and Dying” by Ross-Kubler. 15 Feb 1998Read The Origin of Species by Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (1859 Charles Darwin). What a book. So complete, so readable, so ground-breaking. Certainly will go down in history as one of the most important books of all time. Freud, Einstein are great, but did not write a milestone book. Watson and Crick did. To be sure, Darwin did have a competitor that published a similar theory at the same time: Wallace: a great story: the younger Wallace sent his draft to Darwin for review, and Darwin became alarmed and realized that he had to finally publish his own book. They published simultaneously, but Wallace graciously ceded priority to Darwin. 7 Feb 1998Read In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje): It was a … custom of the East. Whenever the royal gong struck, the court of the Moghul prince Akbar remained frozen at whatever they were doing. It was the whim of a monarch during which time he moved among his retainers and subjects to study their dress and activity. Movement meant execution. He walked into kitchens, armories, bedrooms, Puzzle I should be able to prove: Prove that a * b = x * y (where a and b are segments of one line chord; and x and y are segments of the other chord. But I cannot.
3 Feb 1998Read The Forgetting Room (1997, Nick Bantock – author of Griffin and Sabine) I thought about Morandi, who painted the same jars and cups for sixty years. (Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964). In fact I liked this better than Griffin and Sabine because this book had an ending. 31 Jan 1998Read The Great Ape (1997, Will Self) has the phrase “happy, shiny people” meaning carefree, greedy, shallow yuppies. But certainly the phase pre-dates this book? Also: I think non-representational painting has finally gone the way Levi-Strauss predicted, `a school of academic painting in which the artist strives to represent the manner in which he would execute his paintings if he were by any chance to paint some.'" 30 Jan 1998Watched The Third Man (from the novel by Graham Base). Great quote: Switzerland, in 500 years of democracy and peace produced no great art; yet Italy during the renaissance – filled with war and strife – produced Michelangelo, DaVinci, and Bellini. The music is a puzzle: Zither music. Repetitious, annoying zither music, that has nothing to do with Vienna or WW II, but somehow became famous. 26 Jan 1998Found a new print I must get: Lily and Rose by John Singer Sargent.
25 Jan 1998Read Into The Wild (1996 Jon Krakaur). Great author, who also wrote Into Thin Air (Everest). 21 Jan 1998Read The Discovery of Heaven, which includes a theory that sleep (in land-animals) is a hold-over from the time when animals first crawled out of the ocean onto land, and sleep was a kind of hibernation in the chilly night, until the sun warmed up the land to temperatures approximating the ocean. [2006: Similar theory about fear of snakes: hypothesis is when early mammals were evolving, they were competing with early snakes around the world, and mammals learned to fear snakes as competitors and carnivores; this fear has remained with us to this day]. 17 Jan 1998Read How the Irish Saved Civilization (Thomas Cahill), which describes how Irish monks were responsible for preserving critical Latin and Greek books during the period 500 to 800 AD when barbarians were burning libraries across Europe. I guess not many books were preserved in Byzantium? |
