Field Notes from a random walk through life

The cows are back

Behind Stanford in the area known as The Dish, every winter, somebody brings in cows to graze. I have read in the local paper that the last people to graze their cows said It is impossible to make money grazing. and quit - or, atleast threatened to quit. But, the cows are back. Usually, there are only trees, parallel cow trails along the steep hills and impossibly green grass. 

 But once again, there are seemingly very happy cows.

Watching the Olympics and thinking about New Stories

The other night, some friends came over for dinner and part of the conversation revolved around how our myths or stories no longer fit a new reality. Mankind - well, the USA and Russia for sure, and probably Britain, France, and China - have the ability to detonate enough nuclear weaponry to destroy mankind and yet we continue to act as if that were not the case..

I remember reading an article about two traditional Afghan villages getting in a Hatfield-McCoy fight sometime after the Afghans drove the, then, Soviets out of Afghanistan. The feud had been going on for many years in a cold war sort of way. To patch things up, the daughter of one family - let's say Delbar (meaning sweetheart) Durani - was married to the son of the other family - let's say Fariad (meaning outspoken) Mamadzai. 

A couple of months later, Delbar did something that pissed Fariad off and he beat her. Now Delbar, who had perhaps been too coddled as a child, did not like being beat up. The second time Fariad beat her, she snuck away and returned to her village. This put the Duranis in a bind, they either had to take Delbar in or return her. If they returned her, she would probably continue to be beat up; if they took her in, then the Mamadzais would be dissed.

They took her in and the feud was renewed. But this time, both families had AK47s and rocket grenade launchers. This time, the fight was short and lethal. The majority of the men of both villages were simply wiped out. The rules hadn't changed, the stories they built their lives around hadn't changed but the equipment had. The old ways no longer fit the new reality.

So, I sit here watching the Olympics and thinking about how every contest is a zero sum game. This high ideal - this lofty gathering is for somebody to win - for some nation to win. And that means somebody - some other nation - has to lose. And I thought how much that reflected almost everything in our modern world. 

Everything is about winning. I read recently that most people would prefer to make $100,000/year if everybody else was making $80,000/year compared to making $150,000/year with everybody else making $200,000/year. Think about it: we would prefer to make less - be able to buy less - if it was more than the next guy. 

And that led me to thinking about how much different it would be if the Olympics were about cooperation rather than conflict. What if cooperation were the ideal. What if everybody doing better were the ideal.

How about a bobsled contest in which a gold medal would only be awarded if the average time of all the competitors were were no more than 2% higher than the fastest competitor. In other words, to win a gold medal, the fastest guys would have to make sure the slowest guys went faster. How would that change our story of what a winner is?  

 

A walk in the sun

Today it stopped raining for awhile - and the sun came out. In our backyard, all kinds of plants are starting to bloom. The jade tree or crassula argentea - or crassula ovata - that Michele got from her mother's front door stoop:

 

A hybrid cymbidium we got from somewhere,

And almost all our fruit trees.

 

The area where we live is part of the Town of Portola Valley but, because the roads are so narrow and sub-standard, the town will not maintain them. So we have a private maintenance district that is run by a Homeowners Club that is supported in part by the residents and by an allowance from the Town.

Last weekend, we cleared an old trail to the next road over. So, when the sun came out, Michele and I went for a walk on the newly opened trail.

Past all kinds of mushrooms that I am sure are deadly,

the giant wake robin or trillium chloropetalum or, as Michele calls them, just trillium,

and - of course, because it is February - there are acacias everywhere.

 

And vibrant moss on everything including the benches.

Finally, at the top of the trail, is a view of Stanford and Palo Alto.

 

Gays in the military 2: Obama as a Jedi master

Now, General Ray Odierno, the commanding general of the U.S. forces in Iraq, says that he is OK with gays serving in the military. (Seeing here giving Stephen Colbert a haircut.)

 

It is like the Chinese water torture (enhanced interrogation?) - only in reverse - every week some new commander comes out saying that they are OK with gays serving in the military.

Generic News

I don't watch much Network news, I drop by to hear a Kieth Olbermann rant occasionally, but I do watch the BBC every once in awhile and this seems to really fit.

The U.S. military, Afghanistan, and change

 

NATO soldier training Afghan in the proper use of a rocket propelled grenade launcher - something I would not have expected they would need. 

Yesterday - or maybe the day before yesterday - we - that being the coalition forces or ISAF - bombed and killed , by error, a group of Afghan civilians and General McCrystal apologized. Personally! On Afghan National TV. This is the general who is accused of stonewalling the friendly fire killing of Spc. Pat Tillman and of abusing detainees in Iraq!  

And he was put there after firing the last commander, General David McKiernan. Firing a commander is pretty unusual in the Army and this was even more unusual because McKiernan was a classic Army commander who came up through the ranks in Armor. For at least the last 60 years, Armor has been the preferred path to promotion in the Army. Sort of like being an aircraft carrier guy in the Navy.

Then the Armor guy is replace by a Special Forces guy - or snake eater as they used to be called. And now the snake eater is apologizing for killing Afghans. The same day, the new Afghan governor - or mayor - moved into Marjah before the fighting even stopped. He came with a lot of money, is backed by the Marines, and supported by U.S. State Department personnel. 

This is an amazing change of attitude. A sea change in the culture of the U.S. Military and the Army in particular. This is a huge bureaucratic organization that is totally changing in the middle of the dance. It is like General Motors changing to manufacturing only compact cars in 1995. (BTW as an example of how hard that is - The General just hired - as an consultant - the CEO the Obama administration forced them to fire last year.)

The military has gone from measuring success by high body counts, to courting the local  loyal jurga. I am astounded! And delighted at how serious and sincere the Obama Administration and the United States military is - even though I am still not convinced we should be there.

Gays in the military: Obama as a Jedi master

A week or couple ago, Jon Stewart was on the Bill O'Reilly show - The Factor to the consignetti - and O'Reilly asked Stewart how is President Obama is doing, so far? Stewart answered that he wasn't sure if  Obama is a Jedi master playing chess on a three level board, or if this is kicking his ass. He then went on to say that it is complicated.

It seems to me that in the matter of gays in the military - atleast - Obama is playing it like a Jedi master. First the Chief of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, came out in favor of letting open gays serve in the military saying I have served with homosexuals since 1968. Everybody in the military has.,

then General Colin Powell came out in support.

Now, General David Petraeus

has come out in support. It just seems to be spontaneously happening. But, of course, it isn't spontaneous. But it is happening. My guess - and my hope - is that by summer, DADT will be history.

Watching the Olympics and thinking about the Fall of Rome

During some some history of the West class, probably sometime in highschool, we studied Rome. One think I remember is how Rome's constant wars bankrupt the state and left the populous too poor to buy bread. To keep the people from rioting, the government gave out free food and held games to keep them distracted.

I remember wondering Why do they have all those foreign wars? and how does it bankrupt the state? At the time, I understood that looting was making some people rich - like Caesar and his fellow Centurions. And it was also making them powerful. Later - much later, like last week - I began to realize that there were other people making money by making roads that went to Gaul or Hispania, armaments, and war support equipment.

Money that could have been spent to make Rome stronger, making Rome a better place to live, was actually spent to make Rome only look stronger. Money that could have been spent on schools or aqueducts, was being spent on the greatest army the world had ever seen and a wall in England.

So I sit here, watching the Olympics, thinking about all the money we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. All the money we will spend on Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next year and into the foreseeable future. I have heard the arguments for being in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are alway presented in an vacuum. Nobody ever says Should we spend the money on drones for Afghanistan or schools for Los Angeles? Should we build more F22s or start rebuilding our infrastructure?

President Obama has signed legislation lifting the cap on government borrowing to $14.3 trillion except for Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps; and I am beginning to wonder how this is different from the Roman Senate handing out bread and putting on games in the Coliseum?

Death Valley Wildflowers

According to the Desert Wildflowers website, http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/mnp.html:

Feb. 11, 2010 Death Valley park reports: This week’s storms have brought more rain to Death Valley, which increases the chances of a moderate wildflower bloom this spring.

Moderate wildflowers! Cooome on. It has been raining a lot in Southern California and I expected that this was going to be a great year for wildflowers in Death Valley. Like 1982. Or 2005 when even the roads had water in them.

The whole bottom of the valley was filled with water,

and there were flowers everywhere.

 

I just love this rant from Mathew Yglesisa - almost every word is perfect....and it is so true

No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition

To recap a bit of history, back in the early days of the Bush administration a man named Donald Rumsfeld—deemed one of the worst secretaries of defense in American history by John McCain—was running the Pentagon. He had a guy working for him named Marc Thiessen as a speechwriter. This was all when George W Bush was president, one of the worst in history. In addition to Bush, Rumsfeld, and Thiessen there were other dimwitted and immoral people in charge of running the government. One thing that dimwitted and immoral people do when under pressure is decide that lashing out with a kind of dimwitted and immoral violence is going to help them. Consequently, they got the dimwitted and immoral idea that they ought to torture people with techniques they got out of techniques the US government has developed to train soldiers in torture-resistanc

This was a bad idea, so they were warned that it was a bad idea. Instructor Joseph Witsch told a Pentagon working group on interrogations “The physical and psychological pressures we apply in training violate national and international laws … I hope someone is explaining this to all these folks asking for our techniques and methodology!” They established a Behavioral Science Consultation Team at Gitmo that was told “Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low.”

But Marc Thiessen and his friends aren’t very smart and they are very immoral. They love inflicting violence. So they went ahead and tortured. One technique they used, waterboarding, bears a great deal of similarity to the so-called “tormenta de toca” from the Spanish Inquisition. Since the Spanish Inquisition is famous for its cruelty, sometimes critics of the kind of dimwitted cruelty beloved by Marc Thiessen and his pals point out the similarity. But Thiessen doesn’t like this comparison so earlier today he called me out for making it, observing:

Apparently, Yglesias has not bothered to read Courting Disaster. If he had, he would know better than to make this ridiculous argument. Even a basic review of the facts makes clear Yglesias is completely uninformed.

Courting Disaster is Thiessen’s book, and if he wants me to read it he’ll have to force water down my throat to induce the sensation of drowning. But having summed that up, we come to Thiessen’s big point. It turns out that during the Spanish inquisition, in addition to the basic “water cure” elements beloved by Thiessen they also used “Sharp cords, called cordeles, which cut into the flesh, attached the arms and legs to the side of the trestle and others, known as garrotes, from sticks thrust in them and twisted around like a tourniquet till the cords cut more or less deeply into the flesh, were twined around the upper and lower arms, the thighs and the calves.” So you see, it’s totally different—when Thiessen and friends were running the show, they did tie people down to boards (like in the Spanish Inquisition!) and they did pour water on them (like in the Spanish Inquisition!) but in the Spanish version they used the cords to cause additional painful torture whereas in the more refined Bush/Rumsfeld/Thiessen era the water torture itself was deemed sufficient!

And that, my friends, is the advance of civilization over time.