Newt was visiting here in The Valley as he does from time to time. I asked to see his driver’s license and when I looked at it I asked him how we were supposed to believe a man who lies about his weight?
Thursday, November 6, 2008
More noise on Green no one will read
IT ISN’T EASY BEING GREEN
“OK we’ve been peeing in the pool long enough. When it was just a few kids it was one thing but now that we are north of 7 billion we need to knock it off or the pool will be closed!”
Back in the 60s, hippies were preaching that we were wrecking the environment and there was a movement called going “back to the land”, as if had actually ever lived on the ‘land” in some previous life and not the suburbs most of us had actually grown up in. But they had their hearts in the right place even if raising goats for profit was really not going to pan out. My wife Margaret and I were a couple of those dreamy idealists. We moved to the country and put up a barn. We installed solar panels and composted everything is site. Margaret recycled when it was very hard to do. Our wooden-sided Morris Minor went 63 mph, got 38 mpg and we heated the house with wood and dogs (we still do). Fortunately we bought our land in the mountains overlooking Silicon Valley and not some backwater in eastern Idaho. Our scheme to raise buffalo (for what, hides?) didn’t exactly pan out. It seems they really do roam like the song says. So we got real jobs and here we are today.
Now the green revolution has caught up to where we were 35 years ago and everyone blinks with dilated eyes thinking its something new. It isn’t new but now it is more then a lifestyle. It’s necessary for life itself.
I just read an article by a leading editorialist, Paul Johnson, in Forbes. (I read Forbes because I want to see how old people think). Paul talks about the bogus global warming scam and he laments seeing newfangled power generating windmills wrecking his view. He discredits them as a medieval invention and not to be taken seriously. Of course printing was a medieval invention so maybe everything from that era isn’t so bad. It is simply beyond my ability to understand how some folks can complain that others are trying to tidy up the planet.
A big question many people wrestle with is: do people cause detrimental environment effects and if so how much? The answer is irrelevant. Slothful, pollution spewing lifestyles are not supportable on a personal or a societal level. Whether we are actually ruining the climate or not our lives are made less sustainable and ultimately less fun if we continue to pile up more patio furniture, appliances and all sorts of things that clutter out lives instead of making it more graceful. Will cleaning up the environment fix that? Not directly but decoupling from the couch and doing something more real than watching Dancing With The Stars might make a person more content.
Nearly everyone I talk to says TV is evil but they are in its grip and therefore, powerless. How did this devolve to a discussion of TV? Well TV is perfect example of an unsustainable model. It uses electricity to take control of one’s brain to stop one from experiencing actual life. TV makes you eat more and consume products you see advertised that until that point you didn’t even want (this isn’t you of course but, you know a guy who knows a guy who has three TVs or even five in a single home).
Today it seems that every topic (certainly when discussing the green movement) circles back to the economy. Who is responsible for our current state? We can blame the bankers. We can blame Wall Street or we can level our guns at the politicians. But the real culprit is much closer to home. Like Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and it is us. “Let me say that by no means am I preaching. I am as much a part of the problem as any of us but I do recognize that we individuals, in concert with classic good ol’ American Capitalism, have created an untenable situation. We are both victims and beneficiaries of all the genetic evolution and cultural predispositions to acquire stuff. Once again TV is a perfect metaphor to see how stuff is driving us crazy. It is not uncommon to see three four or even five controllers on someone’s coffee table (perhaps we should call them control centers). Each of these controllers has dozens of buttons which open ever more screens giving us options for our viewing pleasure. This array of controllers give us hundreds of options. Couple this with all the other devices like cell phones, computers, cameras, cars, kitchens and we have hundreds of buttons we can push to control…what? Well just a few functions really. We have hundreds of buttons we never use and so many choices that there is no way to make the best one. Try picking the best digital camera from the hundreds of choices. Confront an unfamiliar microwave and it will stop you dead. In a commercial kitchen where intense cooking takes place a microwave doesn’t even have a start button just a dial with a minute hand. How did we get to the point where all out cool stuff is actually anti us? The free market is merely satisfying out desire to amass stuff, a normal human response. Instead of gathering more spear points and fur blankets we surround ourselves with more horsepower and ever more complicated gizmos that seem to be complex for the pleasure of the manufacturer trying to fool us with shiny buttons. Is it any wonder that folks take home loans that they can’t pay in the future? They are just trying to find shelter.
So am I against an unfettered free market? You bet I am. The free market gave us the great tobacco conspiracy where we were free to believe the great lie from the 40s and 50’s that doctors recommended cigarettes. Or car companies that fought the seat belt and airbag laws. Exactly were we put the pin in the map to establish the rules is the job of government but without serious punishment for lying and corrupting the information the process is crippled.
To a large extent it is the borrowing from our future that has gotten us a fix. If the future continues to be more lucrative than the past you can borrow today and pay back with more plentiful money later. But if the future turns out to not be bigger but the same size, or horrors, smaller then you have basically ate yer cookies up on day one of a four day camping trip.
It is impossible to separate the perpetrators and victims. We are locked in a tarantella of capitalism and desire and there is no clear path out of this crazy dance. We enjoy a society where the market is free to sell us things we really don’t want, bundled with the things we do. A large grocery store has as many as 10,000 things to eat. Most of the things are heavily processed foods because that’s the profitable and tasty stuff. Much of it is not good for the body and a lot of it really isn’t food but extracts of food with chemicals added to change the color, texture, taste and is, in fact, artificial food. The food industry is at war with us.
How can we get out of the forest of over-choice and over-consumption and find a way to sort out the beneficial from the harmful? Well, we actually have to march counter to our genetic imperative of gathering ever more stuff. Everyone seems to agree that more things don’t deliver more happiness yet we seem to keep piling it on. Just like watching your diet and exercise we need to ask ourselves if that next thing will bring us more joy or more anxiety. We have always been told that our economy must grow, that our piece of the action should get ever larger. Growth for growth sake! But is this really true? What if we just grow to full size - and live?
GOING GREEN
Tony Perkins played host to about 600 green entrepreneurs and venture types at the new Cavallo Center on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is an old military base having been beaten into plowshares in the form a resort run by the estimable Post Ranch folks. It is very nice, in a Marin precious sort of way. The repurposed barracks with the broad lawn sweeping to the sea and the incoming sea is grand.
Chuck Reed the progressive mayor of San Jose told us about his big plans green up his city like no other city. He wants to do much more than be carbon neutral and his plan was well articulated when he spoke at Going Green. It is well worth a look. You can go to the web site and see the entire program and Chuck’s plan in particular. Chuck is so green he’s getting black and blue trying to find the money to put his proposals into action.
The conference brought folks from all corners of the green movement, except ironically the hippies who have either moved deep into woods or morphed into real people. What constitutes green anyway? Well, in the Sept 11th issue of Time Magazine Scot Case with TerraChoice surveyed products in an unnamed big box store that claimed a green component. From Time, “The results were startling: of the 1,018 products they surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. Words like nontoxic were used in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star Certified were in fact not backed up by certification. And the list of bogus claims went on. This is one small corner of the green movement and it illustrates the unregulated atmosphere we see today.”
There is both a great deal of duplication with overlapping technologies coupled with uncertainty in the markets in the green movement. Many of the green companies are hardware and personnel intense. Focusing on solar electric gives a good illustration. Making solar equipment is a long term play. Firms need at least four years of financial support and in the case of large solar arrays as much as 10 years. The solar entrepreneurs are hoping for at least part of the subsidies that the fossil fuel and nuclear industry have gotten over the years but even though the long awaited federal tax credits have been renewed it is a slim lifeline for these vital solutions.
Because so many of energy systems are large infrastructure plays it is essential that there be a floor below which energy pricing cannot fall or the companies will not mature. In the 70’s there was a solar movement. There were actually solar panels on the White House installed by Carter but Reagan laughed them off the roof and that made sense in the cheap oil era. Without a price floor, solar electric companies are reluctance to invest the money necessary to launch large array plants. As a result this business has moved to other countries. Germany and Japan are not known as particularly sunny spots but these countries along with Australia and Israel are running hard to bring ever increasing solar electric power on line.
It is unfathomable why politicians don’t get behind solar unless they are subject to skin cancer and actually hate the sun. Some folks are big behind renewing the nuclear option blindly forgetting that we never solved the disposal or dispersal problem. To pick life-killing gamma rays over life-giving visible light rays is environmentally, socially and economically inexpedient, unless you are in the pocket of these concerns. The actual cost of fuel must be totaled by adding cost of extraction, pollution and sustainability. Fossil fuels are limited, polluting, and will run out. Biofuels take tremendous amounts of machinery, land, water and processing. Wave power is very limited and has serious hardware problems. Wind is a good option but it involves big equipment with many moving parts and ever increasing environments problems of its own. Some of these mills are being designed with 400 foot blades that make a good deal of noise and don’t seem to turn when on the hottest days when peak power is required Only solar, and large desert array solar, has the potential to free us from the problems of the fuels above. Few moving parts, proven technology and free fuel forever when it is needed on the hottest days.
Bill Clinton lamented on the John Stewart show recently that if we had had the imagination seven years ago to go solar we would have a great deal less incentive to keep the oil producing in clover. We could have halved our oil imports, slashed our outflow of currency, created jobs and cleaned up the pool.
Co hosting the Going Green conference was none other than Scientific American. I was able to spend time with an old friend and one time next door neighbor from the Upper West side in NYC Bruce Brandfon who was then a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and now is the publisher of Scientific American.
Scientific American has a new magazine to go with their 165 year old one. It’s called Earth 3.0 and is all over the green topic. It brings the gravity of the SA crew to this relatively new topic. Hummm maybe Paul Johnson will consider writing a column.
Solar and large array solar is a particular area of interest to me. Scientific American had a cover story in January where there was a good rundown on the notion that we could replace all the electricity we generate from fossil fuel with solar collectors. The authors proposed that we store energy as pressurized air underground to be used to run turbines at night. In fact there are many different large array schemes which use everything from concentrating mirrors to boil water to run turbines to parabolic concentrators powering high temp photovoltaic. Different systems answer different climate considerations but one thing is sure, the best places to put the systems is in high sun areas. The problem is we don’t have extra grid capacity to ship the power. It is practical to send power high voltages from thousands of miles but we need the wires to do it. Around 700 billion might pretty much cover this…oh gosh we just spent that. Darn, just missed it. Well since we are using the “T” word we have to ask ourselves and our politicians if we really believe in the future and if the answer is yes the obvious solution is solar.
John O’Donnell most recently of Ausra a large array solar firm that is building a PG&E plant near in Southern California) brought the muscle of Kleiner Perkins to bear on this problem by securing financing from Vinod Kosla, also a speaker at the conference. John and I were recently lamenting the state of energy development and commiserating on how far we have to go to get on a sustainable energy footing. He is working on projects that will lower the sea level from its rising future. John’s figure for how much land is needed to install an array that would power the entire U.S. grid is 92 sq miles of land (a trivial amount of desert land available in America).
John makes the point that changing light bulbs is a small act and many small acts will add up to a lot of small changes. We need big changes so perhaps we should focus on changing politicians not light bulbs.
I think that it is tragically misguided that we are trying to beat the price of gasoline back. We need high gasoline prices to encourage multiple car passengers. But won’t just the rich be able to drive? Well take Europe where the cars are tiny and the people seem happy enough.
For a full account of how we can fix our economy, get out of oil jail and create millions of jobs check out Van Johnson’s new book The Greencoller Economy.
“OK we’ve been peeing in the pool long enough. When it was just a few kids it was one thing but now that we are north of 7 billion we need to knock it off or the pool will be closed!”
Back in the 60s, hippies were preaching that we were wrecking the environment and there was a movement called going “back to the land”, as if had actually ever lived on the ‘land” in some previous life and not the suburbs most of us had actually grown up in. But they had their hearts in the right place even if raising goats for profit was really not going to pan out. My wife Margaret and I were a couple of those dreamy idealists. We moved to the country and put up a barn. We installed solar panels and composted everything is site. Margaret recycled when it was very hard to do. Our wooden-sided Morris Minor went 63 mph, got 38 mpg and we heated the house with wood and dogs (we still do). Fortunately we bought our land in the mountains overlooking Silicon Valley and not some backwater in eastern Idaho. Our scheme to raise buffalo (for what, hides?) didn’t exactly pan out. It seems they really do roam like the song says. So we got real jobs and here we are today.
Now the green revolution has caught up to where we were 35 years ago and everyone blinks with dilated eyes thinking its something new. It isn’t new but now it is more then a lifestyle. It’s necessary for life itself.
I just read an article by a leading editorialist, Paul Johnson, in Forbes. (I read Forbes because I want to see how old people think). Paul talks about the bogus global warming scam and he laments seeing newfangled power generating windmills wrecking his view. He discredits them as a medieval invention and not to be taken seriously. Of course printing was a medieval invention so maybe everything from that era isn’t so bad. It is simply beyond my ability to understand how some folks can complain that others are trying to tidy up the planet.
A big question many people wrestle with is: do people cause detrimental environment effects and if so how much? The answer is irrelevant. Slothful, pollution spewing lifestyles are not supportable on a personal or a societal level. Whether we are actually ruining the climate or not our lives are made less sustainable and ultimately less fun if we continue to pile up more patio furniture, appliances and all sorts of things that clutter out lives instead of making it more graceful. Will cleaning up the environment fix that? Not directly but decoupling from the couch and doing something more real than watching Dancing With The Stars might make a person more content.
Nearly everyone I talk to says TV is evil but they are in its grip and therefore, powerless. How did this devolve to a discussion of TV? Well TV is perfect example of an unsustainable model. It uses electricity to take control of one’s brain to stop one from experiencing actual life. TV makes you eat more and consume products you see advertised that until that point you didn’t even want (this isn’t you of course but, you know a guy who knows a guy who has three TVs or even five in a single home).
Today it seems that every topic (certainly when discussing the green movement) circles back to the economy. Who is responsible for our current state? We can blame the bankers. We can blame Wall Street or we can level our guns at the politicians. But the real culprit is much closer to home. Like Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and it is us. “Let me say that by no means am I preaching. I am as much a part of the problem as any of us but I do recognize that we individuals, in concert with classic good ol’ American Capitalism, have created an untenable situation. We are both victims and beneficiaries of all the genetic evolution and cultural predispositions to acquire stuff. Once again TV is a perfect metaphor to see how stuff is driving us crazy. It is not uncommon to see three four or even five controllers on someone’s coffee table (perhaps we should call them control centers). Each of these controllers has dozens of buttons which open ever more screens giving us options for our viewing pleasure. This array of controllers give us hundreds of options. Couple this with all the other devices like cell phones, computers, cameras, cars, kitchens and we have hundreds of buttons we can push to control…what? Well just a few functions really. We have hundreds of buttons we never use and so many choices that there is no way to make the best one. Try picking the best digital camera from the hundreds of choices. Confront an unfamiliar microwave and it will stop you dead. In a commercial kitchen where intense cooking takes place a microwave doesn’t even have a start button just a dial with a minute hand. How did we get to the point where all out cool stuff is actually anti us? The free market is merely satisfying out desire to amass stuff, a normal human response. Instead of gathering more spear points and fur blankets we surround ourselves with more horsepower and ever more complicated gizmos that seem to be complex for the pleasure of the manufacturer trying to fool us with shiny buttons. Is it any wonder that folks take home loans that they can’t pay in the future? They are just trying to find shelter.
So am I against an unfettered free market? You bet I am. The free market gave us the great tobacco conspiracy where we were free to believe the great lie from the 40s and 50’s that doctors recommended cigarettes. Or car companies that fought the seat belt and airbag laws. Exactly were we put the pin in the map to establish the rules is the job of government but without serious punishment for lying and corrupting the information the process is crippled.
To a large extent it is the borrowing from our future that has gotten us a fix. If the future continues to be more lucrative than the past you can borrow today and pay back with more plentiful money later. But if the future turns out to not be bigger but the same size, or horrors, smaller then you have basically ate yer cookies up on day one of a four day camping trip.
It is impossible to separate the perpetrators and victims. We are locked in a tarantella of capitalism and desire and there is no clear path out of this crazy dance. We enjoy a society where the market is free to sell us things we really don’t want, bundled with the things we do. A large grocery store has as many as 10,000 things to eat. Most of the things are heavily processed foods because that’s the profitable and tasty stuff. Much of it is not good for the body and a lot of it really isn’t food but extracts of food with chemicals added to change the color, texture, taste and is, in fact, artificial food. The food industry is at war with us.
How can we get out of the forest of over-choice and over-consumption and find a way to sort out the beneficial from the harmful? Well, we actually have to march counter to our genetic imperative of gathering ever more stuff. Everyone seems to agree that more things don’t deliver more happiness yet we seem to keep piling it on. Just like watching your diet and exercise we need to ask ourselves if that next thing will bring us more joy or more anxiety. We have always been told that our economy must grow, that our piece of the action should get ever larger. Growth for growth sake! But is this really true? What if we just grow to full size - and live?
GOING GREEN
Tony Perkins played host to about 600 green entrepreneurs and venture types at the new Cavallo Center on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is an old military base having been beaten into plowshares in the form a resort run by the estimable Post Ranch folks. It is very nice, in a Marin precious sort of way. The repurposed barracks with the broad lawn sweeping to the sea and the incoming sea is grand.
Chuck Reed the progressive mayor of San Jose told us about his big plans green up his city like no other city. He wants to do much more than be carbon neutral and his plan was well articulated when he spoke at Going Green. It is well worth a look. You can go to the web site and see the entire program and Chuck’s plan in particular. Chuck is so green he’s getting black and blue trying to find the money to put his proposals into action.
The conference brought folks from all corners of the green movement, except ironically the hippies who have either moved deep into woods or morphed into real people. What constitutes green anyway? Well, in the Sept 11th issue of Time Magazine Scot Case with TerraChoice surveyed products in an unnamed big box store that claimed a green component. From Time, “The results were startling: of the 1,018 products they surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. Words like nontoxic were used in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star Certified were in fact not backed up by certification. And the list of bogus claims went on. This is one small corner of the green movement and it illustrates the unregulated atmosphere we see today.”
There is both a great deal of duplication with overlapping technologies coupled with uncertainty in the markets in the green movement. Many of the green companies are hardware and personnel intense. Focusing on solar electric gives a good illustration. Making solar equipment is a long term play. Firms need at least four years of financial support and in the case of large solar arrays as much as 10 years. The solar entrepreneurs are hoping for at least part of the subsidies that the fossil fuel and nuclear industry have gotten over the years but even though the long awaited federal tax credits have been renewed it is a slim lifeline for these vital solutions.
Because so many of energy systems are large infrastructure plays it is essential that there be a floor below which energy pricing cannot fall or the companies will not mature. In the 70’s there was a solar movement. There were actually solar panels on the White House installed by Carter but Reagan laughed them off the roof and that made sense in the cheap oil era. Without a price floor, solar electric companies are reluctance to invest the money necessary to launch large array plants. As a result this business has moved to other countries. Germany and Japan are not known as particularly sunny spots but these countries along with Australia and Israel are running hard to bring ever increasing solar electric power on line.
It is unfathomable why politicians don’t get behind solar unless they are subject to skin cancer and actually hate the sun. Some folks are big behind renewing the nuclear option blindly forgetting that we never solved the disposal or dispersal problem. To pick life-killing gamma rays over life-giving visible light rays is environmentally, socially and economically inexpedient, unless you are in the pocket of these concerns. The actual cost of fuel must be totaled by adding cost of extraction, pollution and sustainability. Fossil fuels are limited, polluting, and will run out. Biofuels take tremendous amounts of machinery, land, water and processing. Wave power is very limited and has serious hardware problems. Wind is a good option but it involves big equipment with many moving parts and ever increasing environments problems of its own. Some of these mills are being designed with 400 foot blades that make a good deal of noise and don’t seem to turn when on the hottest days when peak power is required Only solar, and large desert array solar, has the potential to free us from the problems of the fuels above. Few moving parts, proven technology and free fuel forever when it is needed on the hottest days.
Bill Clinton lamented on the John Stewart show recently that if we had had the imagination seven years ago to go solar we would have a great deal less incentive to keep the oil producing in clover. We could have halved our oil imports, slashed our outflow of currency, created jobs and cleaned up the pool.
Co hosting the Going Green conference was none other than Scientific American. I was able to spend time with an old friend and one time next door neighbor from the Upper West side in NYC Bruce Brandfon who was then a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and now is the publisher of Scientific American.
Scientific American has a new magazine to go with their 165 year old one. It’s called Earth 3.0 and is all over the green topic. It brings the gravity of the SA crew to this relatively new topic. Hummm maybe Paul Johnson will consider writing a column.
Solar and large array solar is a particular area of interest to me. Scientific American had a cover story in January where there was a good rundown on the notion that we could replace all the electricity we generate from fossil fuel with solar collectors. The authors proposed that we store energy as pressurized air underground to be used to run turbines at night. In fact there are many different large array schemes which use everything from concentrating mirrors to boil water to run turbines to parabolic concentrators powering high temp photovoltaic. Different systems answer different climate considerations but one thing is sure, the best places to put the systems is in high sun areas. The problem is we don’t have extra grid capacity to ship the power. It is practical to send power high voltages from thousands of miles but we need the wires to do it. Around 700 billion might pretty much cover this…oh gosh we just spent that. Darn, just missed it. Well since we are using the “T” word we have to ask ourselves and our politicians if we really believe in the future and if the answer is yes the obvious solution is solar.
John O’Donnell most recently of Ausra a large array solar firm that is building a PG&E plant near in Southern California) brought the muscle of Kleiner Perkins to bear on this problem by securing financing from Vinod Kosla, also a speaker at the conference. John and I were recently lamenting the state of energy development and commiserating on how far we have to go to get on a sustainable energy footing. He is working on projects that will lower the sea level from its rising future. John’s figure for how much land is needed to install an array that would power the entire U.S. grid is 92 sq miles of land (a trivial amount of desert land available in America).
John makes the point that changing light bulbs is a small act and many small acts will add up to a lot of small changes. We need big changes so perhaps we should focus on changing politicians not light bulbs.
I think that it is tragically misguided that we are trying to beat the price of gasoline back. We need high gasoline prices to encourage multiple car passengers. But won’t just the rich be able to drive? Well take Europe where the cars are tiny and the people seem happy enough.
For a full account of how we can fix our economy, get out of oil jail and create millions of jobs check out Van Johnson’s new book The Greencoller Economy.
Friday, April 18, 2008
TED 2008 .
I had the great privilege of attending the TED conference again this year. TED st
ands for Technology Entertainment and Design. This singular event brings together great thinkers from all over the world…and me. The text is a three and a half day conference where charismatic speakers, artists and all sorts of optimists, skeptics, believers and off the chartists come to the stage all day long and tell about their passions.
Jill Bolter Taylor is a neurologist who, in the style of a research doctor crossed with a revival preacher, told us about her harrowing experience with a brain aneurism. She was both doctor and patient and her delivery was at once chilling and uplifting. She was a standout in an outstanding crowd.
The theme this year was Big Questions like What Is Life? Who better to discuss this than Craig Venter, the genome guy. Craig both thrilled and alarmed a good many of us. He is attempting to create artificial life and some feel that his alchemy may lead to chaotic outcomes that are the stuff of horror films. Myself, I feel his defense a bit dubious when asked how he would keep microbes under control. He more or less said, just to trust him. Some, though, see him as the possible savior of mankind by developing microbes that sequester carbon or offer beneficial pharmaceuticals or new biofuels. Look him up online and you will see why he is at the center of Big Ideas.
Thomas Kerns of the Guggenheim showed us ambitious plans to put a Guggenheim Museum in every garage, that is if it is a Middle Eastern garage. There are several new museums with that brand around the world and many more planned. Who would have imagined that? Where will all the art come from…hum I guess we will
just have to make more art. That sounds like a good idea for all concerned.
Several physicists were displaying their wares. Garrett Lisi being one of them. He is working on a grand unified field theory while surfing the great beaches around the world. Since much of this work is thought experiments this is actually doable. In the April issue of Scientific American Lisi is alternately called a genius and a crackpot and that by biggies in the field. Much fun to play witness to. Well, someone is probably going to crack that Big Idea and it would be great if it is the surfing physicist.
Neil Turok is a physicist of a different stripe who holds the mathematical chair in physics at Cambridge. He’s a cosmologist concerned with the inflationary period after the Big Bang. Neil is a multiverse man. If I understand him correctly he postulates that the BB was a result of two universes colliding and instead of coming from nothing came from a whole lot of something. Neil was a TED prize winner for his promotion of science curriculum in Africa. The study of physicists (I think this would be called physicistology) who put forward these grand ideas about the nature of reality is a particular interest of mine. There are so many theories bumping into one another and we must not forget that of all the competing theories of reality only one, at most, can be right. I certainly can’t tell you which one but we have seen ideas nailed in place by Aristotle, Newton and Einstein come loose over time. As the quantum and celestial mechanics toil under the hood of the big machine we seem to lean toward righter then wronger though.
As you can see there was some pretty detailed science at TED. Robert Lang brought us back to earth then shattered our understating of a different kind of space-time continuum. He is an origami artist who, using a computer program, can take a simple sheet of paper and turn it into a near living piece of sculpture. I half imagined he was just using magic and I had to ice my brain to follow along with him. He was followed by John Knoll (the programmer of Photoshop) of Industrial Light and Magic. He showed how the marvelous special effects in the movies today are made possible using tools he is developing.
Isaac Mizrahi the clothing designer/lounge act gave a funny scattered talk about his funny scattered life. I heard one person comment that they found it strange that this fellow was at such a highbrow event. (I’ll bet they say that about me) but I find him very now, urban and highly amusing. He’s a sort of a Judy Garland crooked-smile talent but with less tragedy.
David Griffin and Wade Davis of National Geographic projected large imag
es of this nifty planet we call home. When you see nature photography made big it has a lasting impact and brings home the fact that this is the planet, this one right under our feet, is the one we are all concerned with keeping clean.
Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic but he is much more than a conductor. In fact, he is a force of nature. Here we are at TED where one of the mandates is to explore how to save the world while celebrating culture. Zander gave a riveting talk about the relevance of music and then tossed out handfuls of the words to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the 9th, to the audience. He insisted everyone sing along and, like a patient teacher, made us start over five times until, we got it right. This coincidently (perhaps) is the theme music from Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange which basically put paid to the modern world. A rich, rollicking and memorable experience.
Then Al Gore. Here is a towing figure of our time. Articulate, funny and looking like a central casting image of a world leader. We simultaneously celebrate him and lament what might have been had they been able to count the votes in Florida. He is a TED regular and his message sharpens every time he points out our clear folly with regard to our stewardship of the Big Blue Marble. Unlike some political figures Al Gore’s image seems to purify over time and hearing him is real pleasure.
Harvard astronomer Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong announced for the first time the World Wide Telescope. Fly through the galaxies and zoom to the edge of the universe. Bloglidite Robert Scoble said it made him cry when he first saw it. Hey, don’t get it on th
e keyboard, Bob! Now we have for the heavens what Google did for the Earth.
It isn’t all serious at TED although there are messages in everything. Nellie McKay is a singer who strolled onto the stage with an air of confusion, her tiny self dressed like a nice mom on her way to a baby shower. She stepped up to the grand piano and proceeded to thrash it within an inch of the wood pile as she belted, crooned, and purred her provocative, sexy and, to some, offensive lyrics (go Nellie). She wowed me but I know a couple of people who felt put upon when she skewered women’s lib. Sacred cows taste best. Well this is what makes TED what it is. Generally I am not fond of is being a fan. Bandwagons, team spirit and even yelling at kid’s soccer makes me feel uneasy but at TED I am a fan, a participant and I feel lucky to be able to be there.
Thomas Dolby heads up the house band and they play between the speakers. Other musicians and comedians are layered in as well. This offers a way to change direction and keep the synapses firing on all 8 cylinders or maybe four with battery back up.
Chris Jordan is a photographer who I first met at sea when he had the helm of a 120 foot schooner off the coast of Maine. We were sailing in the Penobscot Bay with a group of environmentalists and we were disheartened by the fact that the fisheries had been so devastated in that area. The Grand Banks had been the richest fishery in the world and now the only thing taken commercially is the lobster. Ironically this great delicacy is a kind of marine cockroach which subsists on garbage. Chris is a photographer who highlights the plight of the planet with his pictures of the material world. He takes a snippet of time, say an hour or a day and produces huge composite prints of how many plastic bags are used in a minute or how many airplane con trails would fill the skies in a given time. His work left a deep impression in my forehead.
The TED stage was decorated , festooned even with some of the cultural artifacts collected by Jay Walker (founder of Priceline). These included a page from a Gutenberg Bible, a real sputnik and various Paleolithic skulls. As you can see if you look around Buck’s I am a great believer in stuff. “Hey, Jay I’ll trade you a Soviet Space suit for your space toilet”.
The road to TED after 24 years will make a great movie one day. It was founded by a Richard Saul Wurman, a wild man who is reputedly both a loveable and an unrepentant rascal. After nearly 20 years he gave up the reigns and Chris Anderson (formerly of Woodside and founder of Business 2.0) became the curator of the event and it seems there was a falling out over some issue that left Richard feeling bruised. In a grand and heartfelt segment he came back and was warmly embraced in every respect by Chris and the gathering, including a few who had been there at the very beginning. TED is about inclusion and participation. One of the parts I found the most compelling was a simple question and answer segment about the shape of TED in the future. People had elaborate ideas on where they thought the conference should head and you could tell that the participants felt deeply connected.
After the long days with all the various breakout opportunities there is of course a party or ten each night. There were stars from The Valley as well as real movie stars (there goes the neighborhood). I was chatting with Forrest Whitaker about a new movie he is making and I think the Hollywood folk felt comfortable as no one had the bad taste to pose them for photos (much as I wanted to).
Bob Ballard the deep sea explorer (found the Titanic, PT 109 and many more) is the Galileo of underwater exploration and he took around the Big Below in his deep sea rovers. After diving to depth we spent some time in the trees with an arboreal explorer Richard Preston who spends days at a time in the tops of redwoods 40 stories in the air including climbing Hyperion the tallest living thing. He described to us the ancient ecology in these tress but he is really up in the branches because, like so many presenters at TED, he finds that his passion plugs him directly into the vibrant grid of life.
Nissim Taleb brought us his strangely compelling but annoying idea that cataclysmic events are solely the result of cataclysmic events beyond our ability to predict and that all people (except for himself) are …more or less, fools. I read his book the Black Swan and am not convinced but he persuades many and his bravado is fun to watch.
At one point there was a panel of luminaries assembled to discuss “the new media.” It was to be broadcast live by the BBC but there was a technical problem so the group just sat on the stage in front of about 1,000 people waiting for the uplink. Then someone started heckling from the audience in a heavy Scottish accent. Everyone turned to see Robin Williams giving the stage-bound panel a hard time. Up he sprung and filled the void with an buzzsaw of quick cuts that left us in tears like ‘we are here with a live debate that is not being televised, much like the last 6 years in this country”.
For me the most important presentation of the event was a surprise from the noted MIT musician/composer Tod Machover. Death and the Powers is an opera scheduled to premiere in Monaco in 2009 that Tod has composed about a rich guy who downloads himself into a computer with the idea of living forever. The staging of the opera includes a luminous library of moving, glowing books and robots running about the stage. It is a relevant topic about the near future. It is ironic that when Machover isn’t developing his opera he is working on communication tools with Dan Ellsey who is profoundly handicapped and is locked in a body with only a glowing light stick attached to his head for communication which he uses to point to his computer. With this tool he is able to compose and perform music which he did for the TED audience. So here is opera about downloading a person into a computer and in real life Tod is working on behalf of a man who he is up loading from a damaged body into life. Here they all were on stage with machinery and several people all to the benefit of a single man brought out with great difficulty by special airplane from the east. I have always wondered at the social ramifications of a great deal of effort to the benefit of a single handicapped person. Then it struck me that it wasn’t just about Dan. In fact it was about all those involved on stage, those back at home, others - who might dream about being freed from all sorts of limitations and even about me. It
was a grand opera to see Dan enjoying his ability to perform for this group of interested people. So I have a new and much less judgmental view of this process.
Over the years I have been lucky enough to have been a participant in Love-ins in the 60’s and later antiwar marches, Burning Man, Esalen and TED. These are all hotbeds of learning and compassion and amazingly none of these offer any diplomas. So after attending 23 elementary schools, two high schools and five colleges and universities the only diploma I have is from Perfect Paws a dog training school. Heck I’ll never be able to get a job.
(In the pictures for search: Bill Joy, Pierre Omidyar, Larry page, Gino Yu, David Blaine, Max Levchin, Dean Kamen, Zem and James Joaquin)
ands for Technology Entertainment and Design. This singular event brings together great thinkers from all over the world…and me. The text is a three and a half day conference where charismatic speakers, artists and all sorts of optimists, skeptics, believers and off the chartists come to the stage all day long and tell about their passions.Jill Bolter Taylor is a neurologist who, in the style of a research doctor crossed with a revival preacher, told us about her harrowing experience with a brain aneurism. She was both doctor and patient and her delivery was at once chilling and uplifting. She was a standout in an outstanding crowd.
The theme this year was Big Questions like What Is Life? Who better to discuss this than Craig Venter, the genome guy. Craig both thrilled and alarmed a good many of us. He is attempting to create artificial life and some feel that his alchemy may lead to chaotic outcomes that are the stuff of horror films. Myself, I feel his defense a bit dubious when asked how he would keep microbes under control. He more or less said, just to trust him. Some, though, see him as the possible savior of mankind by developing microbes that sequester carbon or offer beneficial pharmaceuticals or new biofuels. Look him up online and you will see why he is at the center of Big Ideas.
Thomas Kerns of the Guggenheim showed us ambitious plans to put a Guggenheim Museum in every garage, that is if it is a Middle Eastern garage. There are several new museums with that brand around the world and many more planned. Who would have imagined that? Where will all the art come from…hum I guess we will
just have to make more art. That sounds like a good idea for all concerned.Several physicists were displaying their wares. Garrett Lisi being one of them. He is working on a grand unified field theory while surfing the great beaches around the world. Since much of this work is thought experiments this is actually doable. In the April issue of Scientific American Lisi is alternately called a genius and a crackpot and that by biggies in the field. Much fun to play witness to. Well, someone is probably going to crack that Big Idea and it would be great if it is the surfing physicist.
Neil Turok is a physicist of a different stripe who holds the mathematical chair in physics at Cambridge. He’s a cosmologist concerned with the inflationary period after the Big Bang. Neil is a multiverse man. If I understand him correctly he postulates that the BB was a result of two universes colliding and instead of coming from nothing came from a whole lot of something. Neil was a TED prize winner for his promotion of science curriculum in Africa. The study of physicists (I think this would be called physicistology) who put forward these grand ideas about the nature of reality is a particular interest of mine. There are so many theories bumping into one another and we must not forget that of all the competing theories of reality only one, at most, can be right. I certainly can’t tell you which one but we have seen ideas nailed in place by Aristotle, Newton and Einstein come loose over time. As the quantum and celestial mechanics toil under the hood of the big machine we seem to lean toward righter then wronger though.
As you can see there was some pretty detailed science at TED. Robert Lang brought us back to earth then shattered our understating of a different kind of space-time continuum. He is an origami artist who, using a computer program, can take a simple sheet of paper and turn it into a near living piece of sculpture. I half imagined he was just using magic and I had to ice my brain to follow along with him. He was followed by John Knoll (the programmer of Photoshop) of Industrial Light and Magic. He showed how the marvelous special effects in the movies today are made possible using tools he is developing.
Isaac Mizrahi the clothing designer/lounge act gave a funny scattered talk about his funny scattered life. I heard one person comment that they found it strange that this fellow was at such a highbrow event. (I’ll bet they say that about me) but I find him very now, urban and highly amusing. He’s a sort of a Judy Garland crooked-smile talent but with less tragedy.
David Griffin and Wade Davis of National Geographic projected large imag
es of this nifty planet we call home. When you see nature photography made big it has a lasting impact and brings home the fact that this is the planet, this one right under our feet, is the one we are all concerned with keeping clean.Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic but he is much more than a conductor. In fact, he is a force of nature. Here we are at TED where one of the mandates is to explore how to save the world while celebrating culture. Zander gave a riveting talk about the relevance of music and then tossed out handfuls of the words to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the 9th, to the audience. He insisted everyone sing along and, like a patient teacher, made us start over five times until, we got it right. This coincidently (perhaps) is the theme music from Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange which basically put paid to the modern world. A rich, rollicking and memorable experience.
Then Al Gore. Here is a towing figure of our time. Articulate, funny and looking like a central casting image of a world leader. We simultaneously celebrate him and lament what might have been had they been able to count the votes in Florida. He is a TED regular and his message sharpens every time he points out our clear folly with regard to our stewardship of the Big Blue Marble. Unlike some political figures Al Gore’s image seems to purify over time and hearing him is real pleasure.
Harvard astronomer Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong announced for the first time the World Wide Telescope. Fly through the galaxies and zoom to the edge of the universe. Bloglidite Robert Scoble said it made him cry when he first saw it. Hey, don’t get it on th
e keyboard, Bob! Now we have for the heavens what Google did for the Earth.It isn’t all serious at TED although there are messages in everything. Nellie McKay is a singer who strolled onto the stage with an air of confusion, her tiny self dressed like a nice mom on her way to a baby shower. She stepped up to the grand piano and proceeded to thrash it within an inch of the wood pile as she belted, crooned, and purred her provocative, sexy and, to some, offensive lyrics (go Nellie). She wowed me but I know a couple of people who felt put upon when she skewered women’s lib. Sacred cows taste best. Well this is what makes TED what it is. Generally I am not fond of is being a fan. Bandwagons, team spirit and even yelling at kid’s soccer makes me feel uneasy but at TED I am a fan, a participant and I feel lucky to be able to be there.
Thomas Dolby heads up the house band and they play between the speakers. Other musicians and comedians are layered in as well. This offers a way to change direction and keep the synapses firing on all 8 cylinders or maybe four with battery back up.
Chris Jordan is a photographer who I first met at sea when he had the helm of a 120 foot schooner off the coast of Maine. We were sailing in the Penobscot Bay with a group of environmentalists and we were disheartened by the fact that the fisheries had been so devastated in that area. The Grand Banks had been the richest fishery in the world and now the only thing taken commercially is the lobster. Ironically this great delicacy is a kind of marine cockroach which subsists on garbage. Chris is a photographer who highlights the plight of the planet with his pictures of the material world. He takes a snippet of time, say an hour or a day and produces huge composite prints of how many plastic bags are used in a minute or how many airplane con trails would fill the skies in a given time. His work left a deep impression in my forehead.
The TED stage was decorated , festooned even with some of the cultural artifacts collected by Jay Walker (founder of Priceline). These included a page from a Gutenberg Bible, a real sputnik and various Paleolithic skulls. As you can see if you look around Buck’s I am a great believer in stuff. “Hey, Jay I’ll trade you a Soviet Space suit for your space toilet”.
The road to TED after 24 years will make a great movie one day. It was founded by a Richard Saul Wurman, a wild man who is reputedly both a loveable and an unrepentant rascal. After nearly 20 years he gave up the reigns and Chris Anderson (formerly of Woodside and founder of Business 2.0) became the curator of the event and it seems there was a falling out over some issue that left Richard feeling bruised. In a grand and heartfelt segment he came back and was warmly embraced in every respect by Chris and the gathering, including a few who had been there at the very beginning. TED is about inclusion and participation. One of the parts I found the most compelling was a simple question and answer segment about the shape of TED in the future. People had elaborate ideas on where they thought the conference should head and you could tell that the participants felt deeply connected.
After the long days with all the various breakout opportunities there is of course a party or ten each night. There were stars from The Valley as well as real movie stars (there goes the neighborhood). I was chatting with Forrest Whitaker about a new movie he is making and I think the Hollywood folk felt comfortable as no one had the bad taste to pose them for photos (much as I wanted to).
Bob Ballard the deep sea explorer (found the Titanic, PT 109 and many more) is the Galileo of underwater exploration and he took around the Big Below in his deep sea rovers. After diving to depth we spent some time in the trees with an arboreal explorer Richard Preston who spends days at a time in the tops of redwoods 40 stories in the air including climbing Hyperion the tallest living thing. He described to us the ancient ecology in these tress but he is really up in the branches because, like so many presenters at TED, he finds that his passion plugs him directly into the vibrant grid of life.
Nissim Taleb brought us his strangely compelling but annoying idea that cataclysmic events are solely the result of cataclysmic events beyond our ability to predict and that all people (except for himself) are …more or less, fools. I read his book the Black Swan and am not convinced but he persuades many and his bravado is fun to watch.
At one point there was a panel of luminaries assembled to discuss “the new media.” It was to be broadcast live by the BBC but there was a technical problem so the group just sat on the stage in front of about 1,000 people waiting for the uplink. Then someone started heckling from the audience in a heavy Scottish accent. Everyone turned to see Robin Williams giving the stage-bound panel a hard time. Up he sprung and filled the void with an buzzsaw of quick cuts that left us in tears like ‘we are here with a live debate that is not being televised, much like the last 6 years in this country”.
For me the most important presentation of the event was a surprise from the noted MIT musician/composer Tod Machover. Death and the Powers is an opera scheduled to premiere in Monaco in 2009 that Tod has composed about a rich guy who downloads himself into a computer with the idea of living forever. The staging of the opera includes a luminous library of moving, glowing books and robots running about the stage. It is a relevant topic about the near future. It is ironic that when Machover isn’t developing his opera he is working on communication tools with Dan Ellsey who is profoundly handicapped and is locked in a body with only a glowing light stick attached to his head for communication which he uses to point to his computer. With this tool he is able to compose and perform music which he did for the TED audience. So here is opera about downloading a person into a computer and in real life Tod is working on behalf of a man who he is up loading from a damaged body into life. Here they all were on stage with machinery and several people all to the benefit of a single man brought out with great difficulty by special airplane from the east. I have always wondered at the social ramifications of a great deal of effort to the benefit of a single handicapped person. Then it struck me that it wasn’t just about Dan. In fact it was about all those involved on stage, those back at home, others - who might dream about being freed from all sorts of limitations and even about me. It
was a grand opera to see Dan enjoying his ability to perform for this group of interested people. So I have a new and much less judgmental view of this process.Over the years I have been lucky enough to have been a participant in Love-ins in the 60’s and later antiwar marches, Burning Man, Esalen and TED. These are all hotbeds of learning and compassion and amazingly none of these offer any diplomas. So after attending 23 elementary schools, two high schools and five colleges and universities the only diploma I have is from Perfect Paws a dog training school. Heck I’ll never be able to get a job.
(In the pictures for search: Bill Joy, Pierre Omidyar, Larry page, Gino Yu, David Blaine, Max Levchin, Dean Kamen, Zem and James Joaquin)
Monday, February 11, 2008
new thoughts
I Sing The Tech VirtualPeter Friess, the director who brought the Tech Museum of San Jose back from the brink has just wrapped the four month Body World’s exhibition which brought nearly 300,000 visitors to the museum. This was a great opportunity for the people to see the old museum because it is changing and evolving into...well, we shall see. The Tech has launched an innovative new program called thetechvirtual headed up by the amazing Nina Simon. Nina and her staff using the environment developed by SL founder Phillip Rosedale (and now a member of the Tech Board of Directors) have created a virtual Tech Museum. Maybe you were busy watching Desperate Housewives when you should have been trolling the Internet so you might not know that Second Life is a virtual community with real people represented by on screen avatars. These are essentially 3 D models of one’s fantasy self. There you interact with others in an environment that is part Sim City, part video game environment and a large slice of Burning Man. It is not just a playground. IBM has one of the largest populations of peoploids there. Many folks meet in SL to have business meetings and some of these are taking place at the virtual Buck’s just like they do here in the real restaurant. What, you have still not been there? Give it a whirl. Second Life now has voice and embedded videos so you can make your virtual space look just like home… sort of.
Hundreds of thinkers and designers are creating exhibitions for the virtual museum and the best ones are going to be built in the real museum. Imagine an open source competition for the design of a museum dedicated to technological innovation. From the website, “Rather than relying on in-house designers to conceptualize and create exhibits, The Tech has launched a collaborative online platform to support a diverse community of designers, artists, scientists, and interested folk conceptualizing and prototyping exhibits. Projects are proposed and teams formed on the web at thetechvirtual .org and then proto-typed in Second Life. The Tech is offering exhibit design tutorials, design reviews by museum professionals, and the chance to see your virtual ideas become real exhibits. The Tech intends to design all future exhibitions in this way, working with outside individuals to bring their unique creative vision and expertise to the museum to create unusual, extraordinary exhibitions. The Tech launched this project in Dec 2007, and is piloting with an exhibition (to be mounted in RL in June 2008) on technology in art, film, and music. Ten virtual exhibit prototypes will be selected for development in the RL exhibition, and their creators will be invited to San Jose for an awards ceremony and exhibition opening in June 2008.” Exhibit designers are working all over the world on this project.”
One university in Australia is even using the competition as a curriculum for their design students. Another team includes a well established physicist and an 18 year old computer wiz. The physicist had been working out design parameters respecting certain of the ‘laws” like gravity and magnetism. But these are not laws in Second Life but rather dial settings it takes a kid to teach the new rules. Human emotions stay the same but all the rest of reality is pretty much customizable.
Peter believes that this will be the way the museum of the future will be designed and as we see, everything (except maybe Apple products) is heading this way. Many millions have been raised from foundation grants for this project.
One thing about SL is that every avatar has a real person running in real time. But as shops and exhibitions develop there will be robotic virtual you’s possible. If it sounds like you have fallen through the looking glass, it’s true.
WORLD’S LAST LARGE
SHARK CAUGHT
If nothing changes in the next 10 years this is a likely headline.
WORLD’S LAST LARGE
SHARK CAUGHT
If nothing changes in the next 10 years this is a likely headline.
Around 100 million sharks are caught annually worldwide. Nearly all have their fins chopped off after which their bodies are tossed overboard. The fins sell for an average price in China of over $100 a pound and are used for shark fin soup. This soup is served at fancy functions as a status symbol.
Most Chinese have no idea that sharks are being wiped out across the planet in order to provide them with the ingredient for what they know as “fish wing soup” and the people behind this awful trade have no incentive to tell them. We all love tigers, polar bears, rhinos and many other endangered species but unlike sharks these animals have vigorous support and there is a great international pressure to preserve them.
Most shark fisheries are unregulated. Only three shark species are protected but in the open ocean when fishermen are faced with a single fin from a whale shark having a street value of perhaps $6,000 it is no wonder that these fins can be seen in shops in China. Because the Chinese are becoming much wealthier, there is an ever great demand. If we can alert the Chinese to the fact that sharks are actually the apex of the fragile ocean food chain then they will be better equipped to change this practice before it’s too late. Leveraging millions of dollars of pro bono media support, San Francisco based WildAid has mounted the largest ever awareness program of its kind routinely reaching hundreds of millions of Chinese through hard hitting messages featuring prominent Chinese including Yao Ming as well international Olympians.
I have been hovering over so many good causes and have dabbled in some but I have always worried that my effort either would be insignificant or off topic from my interests. Now I can combine my love of the oceans with an awareness program that has a profound cost benefit ratio. I am convinced that we can help change a cultural viewpoint with WildAid’s campaign during the Olympics. WildAid.org
A Bookstore Curiously
Devoid of Books
At this time Buck’s “the smallest bookstore in the world” has no book for sale which meets the criteria of being written by a local author and having three flattering pages about me. That is if you don’t count that tired old wad of paper actually written by me, (Breakfast at Buck’s, you can buy it here but you can get on it Amazon. [that’s where I buy them myself] for as low as $1.22 in like new and even brand new condition (ouch!). Right now I’m the 1,096,475th most popular but if you buy a book I can shave a few points. At least I beat 16 Great Fondue Parties - a real hit I’ll bet in 1957. By this time everyone has read this tired old saw so it’s time to pick up a snappy new book. The one I recommend is Two Years Before The Mast (Amazon used $2.37 ). Well, not so new but still one of the reel gud bux. Written in the 1830’s by Richard Henry Dana it tells the true tale of a lad who was a freshman at Harvard when he convinced his parents that his eyes were tired (typical kid move) and they needed a rest so he signed on as an able bodied (but green as the grass) seaman and shipped “before the mast” from Boston to California. The book is a tale of innocence and a story of one young man coming of age in the rough, cruel and lovely place that was early California.
Many of you will have read it in school (trust me Moby Dick is still great too) but it is high time that you split the spine of this one again. Before the Gold Rush, California was known as hard service and it stretches one’s mind to take in the incredibly difficult work the seamen of that era were expected to perform. Hauling cargo through the surf, going barefoot because shoes don’t heal like feet and subsisting on a dog’s diet. The ships that plied the coast traded the goods of the east and Far East primarily for cow hides which were shipped to New England to be made into saddles and boots which came back to be traded for more hides. Early California was built on blood and bone. Down the Peninsula at that time in Woodside there was a single saw mill and a few Spanish and Portuguese farmers. The Indians had skedaddled a generation earlier and it would be a long time until all the Aston Martins showed up.
A Bookstore Curiously
Devoid of BooksAt this time Buck’s “the smallest bookstore in the world” has no book for sale which meets the criteria of being written by a local author and having three flattering pages about me. That is if you don’t count that tired old wad of paper actually written by me, (Breakfast at Buck’s, you can buy it here but you can get on it Amazon. [that’s where I buy them myself] for as low as $1.22 in like new and even brand new condition (ouch!). Right now I’m the 1,096,475th most popular but if you buy a book I can shave a few points. At least I beat 16 Great Fondue Parties - a real hit I’ll bet in 1957. By this time everyone has read this tired old saw so it’s time to pick up a snappy new book. The one I recommend is Two Years Before The Mast (Amazon used $2.37 ). Well, not so new but still one of the reel gud bux. Written in the 1830’s by Richard Henry Dana it tells the true tale of a lad who was a freshman at Harvard when he convinced his parents that his eyes were tired (typical kid move) and they needed a rest so he signed on as an able bodied (but green as the grass) seaman and shipped “before the mast” from Boston to California. The book is a tale of innocence and a story of one young man coming of age in the rough, cruel and lovely place that was early California.
Many of you will have read it in school (trust me Moby Dick is still great too) but it is high time that you split the spine of this one again. Before the Gold Rush, California was known as hard service and it stretches one’s mind to take in the incredibly difficult work the seamen of that era were expected to perform. Hauling cargo through the surf, going barefoot because shoes don’t heal like feet and subsisting on a dog’s diet. The ships that plied the coast traded the goods of the east and Far East primarily for cow hides which were shipped to New England to be made into saddles and boots which came back to be traded for more hides. Early California was built on blood and bone. Down the Peninsula at that time in Woodside there was a single saw mill and a few Spanish and Portuguese farmers. The Indians had skedaddled a generation earlier and it would be a long time until all the Aston Martins showed up.
The only real action was on the coast and the happening spot was the first capital, Monterey. Many of the buildings from the early 1800’s are still there. San Diego was just a small farming community. In San Francisco there was the Mission and one ranch and LA was miles from the coast where the downtown is today.
Dana writes in dramatic writerly prose about life at sea and the rhythm of the ship. He says that “a ship is like a ladies watch, in constant need of repair.” Imagine that just moving about required all that sail trimming and anchor setting. Each vessel was like a little country and the captain was the lawgiver. Flogging was common and in heavy weather there was no rest unless you were washed overboard or fell from the rigging. It seems amazing today that anyone could endure the life but they did because even though they were driven hard it was a large way to be, a vigorous and manly life. Until about the last hundred years young men have yearned for the sea since the first boats. Alas, since the close of the age of sail this is no longer the case.
Dana tells us the sailors were mighty homesick and mail was sent both ways. Because there was no postal system it could take months or years to get a letter and some letters chased about the seas until they became dust. Today we can Skype for free but back then one had to write a letter in long hand, then you went down to the wharf and gave it to a ship that was headed to the ocean that your sailor had shipped out for. Ships generally “spoke” to (hailed) all the ships they passed and by and by triangulated on the recipient. An amazing amount of mail found its mark. Not unlike the light from a distant star the words were frozen in time and they might finally reach the right ship to find the sailor has died. The seas hold a great many fish, and secrets.
Two Years Before the Mast puts the reader into the very rigging for a big blow of a tale. I’m not stocking it here but if you snag a copy make sure that you get the one with an afterward written by Dana when he came back in 1869. His was the only voice about what things were like in California before gold was discovered and he gets a good deal of credit for popularizing the West.
A Note on Wikipedia. In looking up a few details of the book on Wikipedia I clicked through to gutenburg.org. I had heard about it but never been there. Here are thousands of books available as text or audio read by real people or even machines. All in the public domain. So you can get Dana’s book for free with a few keystrokes.
A Note on Wikipedia. In looking up a few details of the book on Wikipedia I clicked through to gutenburg.org. I had heard about it but never been there. Here are thousands of books available as text or audio read by real people or even machines. All in the public domain. So you can get Dana’s book for free with a few keystrokes.
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