Google=Stoopid?

There is a provocative article in the July/August issue of The Atlantic Magazine by Nicholas Carr called "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" The thesis of the article is that Internet use (and not just Google) rewires the brain and makes people increasingly incapable of following the long, dense, complicated argumentation that a previous technical development, the Printing Press, made accessible to a mass readership.

Myself, I think this is silly. I think indeed we may be increasingly incapable of following long, dense, complicated argumentation, but it's because everything we do is increasingly strapped to the engine of economic gain. At work, we have no time for long, dense, complicated argumentation, and so all that philosophical guff gets set aside. It's bad for our brain to neglect philosophy, though. If anything, Google is our friend, so we can get through our jobs faster, and have more time for long, dense, complicated argumentation. Google is a brain vitamin.

Today, a Google search from Saudi Arabia sent a reader to my Web Site. The Google search was "meaning of sparky to the illuminati". That search just blows my mind. It's true, my dog Sparky is a perfect dog, and that might be of interest to the Illuminati. But still, what does the search mean, exactly?

So, Google doesn't make us stoopid, but stoopid does make us Google.

You Are A Raccoon

Walking Sparky last night, just as we approached a tree, I heard claws on bark as some weighty animal lifted its ponderous self above Sparky's reach. I expected to see an alien-looking possum, but instead found myself face-to-face with an anxious-looking raccoon sitting on a branch, looking like a Cheshire Cat, just ten feet in front of me. "You are a raccoon," I repeatedly cooed to the animal, and to its credit, the raccoon didn't quibble.

"The Wizard Of Oz" - Mountain Play Amphitheatre - Mt. Tamalpais

Left: A chilly welcome to Oz on a warm afternoon. Left to right, Glinda (Marcia Pizzo), Toto (Alex the Dog), Dorothy (Sarah Smithton), and the Wicked Witch (Jessica Powell).


On Sunday, I went with Sally Forment to see the Mountain Play in the Amphitheatre at Mt. Tamalpais State Park, high on a ridgetop, in Marin County north of San Francisco.

This is the 95th season of the Mountain Play. There is one more weekend for "The Wizard Of Oz" (closes on Father's Day). Interestingly, Sally also saw "The Wizard Of Oz" the last time the Mountain Play featured it, in 1991. The Mountain Play for the 96th season, in the summer of 2009, will be "Man Of La Mancha".

Left: An a cappella singing group of Marin County high school students, "Till Dawn", warms up the crowd on a warm afternoon.

Left: "Yellow Brick Road". Left to right, Tin Man (David L. Yen), Lion (Bruce Vieira), Dorothy (Sarah Smithton) and Scarecrow (Erik Batz).


Left: "If I Only Had A Brain". Dorothy (Sarah Smithton) and Scarecrow (Erik Batz).

Left: "Merry Old Land Of Oz". The Emerald City is a friendly place to strangers!



Left: Why is this small plane buzzing the Mountain Play Amphitheatre just as the Emerald City welcomes Dorothy and her party?

Left: "Surrender Dorothy" - it's the Wicked Witch, of course!

Left: Wicked Witch (Jessica Powell), Winkie General (Michael Nurge), and the Winkies.

Left: "Jitterbug"

Left: Sally Forment and Mountain Play Artistic Director James Dunn.

In 1965, Sally danced in a production of Garcia de Lorca's "Blood Wedding" directed by James Dunn. Over the rainbow, and forty-three years later, at age 75, James Dunn still directs!

Marin County Views

Left: Downtown San Francisco, as seen from Mt. Tamalpais.

Left: San Rafael Bridge, as seen from Mt. Tamalpais.

Left: Mt. Tamalpais, as seen from Mill Valley.

Marin County Miscellany

Left: Commercial proclamation opens more questions than it answers.

Left: How do you persuade 3,000 people that they should take steps to remain hydrated on a summer afternoon? Nothing works like the power of example!

Left: A Mt. Tamalpais Lizard, aka, An Irresistable Kid Magnet, roams the Mountain Play Amphitheatre.

Left: Mud swallow nests, plus swallow, at Mt. Tam High School in Mill Valley.

"Today's Data, Tomorrow's Technologies"

That's got to be the clunkiest slogan ever, but it was emblazoned on this strange cool-looking new locomotive trundling back and forth on the Union Pacific tracks in downtown Sacramento on Saturday afternoon.

Hillary Finally Concedes

Hillary brings it to a close:

Hillary Rodham Clinton ended her historic campaign for the presidency on Saturday and told supporters to unite behind rival Barack Obama, closing out a race that was as grueling as it was groundbreaking.

The former first lady, who as recently as Tuesday declared herself the strongest candidate, gave Obama an unqualified endorsement and pivoted from her role as determined foe to absolute ally.

"The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States," she said in a speech before cheering supporters packed into the ornate National Building Museum, not far from the White House she longed to govern from.

"Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me," the New York senator said in her 28-minute address.

...For Clinton and her supporters, it was a poignant moment, the end of an extraordinary run that began with an air of inevitability and certain victory. About 18 million people voted for her; it was the closest a woman has come to capturing a nomination.

"Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before," she said.

Hillary's failure to come out four-square against the Iraqi War was what ultimately doomed her candidacy. By attempting to claim the Margaret Thatcher warrior-type mandate, and the same time trying unconvincingly to appease anti-war sentiment, she estranged herself from much potential support and opened the door for Obama to mount his successful anti-war campaign.

Good/Bad Animal News

Good news: Four scrub jays, maybe all from the same family, came to the house today to chatter and eat and raise lots of noise about, oh, nothing in particular.

Bad news: Squirrel #7 becomes defunct under some car's tires.

Fear And Loathing

Watched 1998's "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro.

Everything you always wanted to know about why you should avoid mind-altering drugs!

Still, moments of clarity stood out, particularly a simplified form of the "wave" speech, which Thompson himself felt was the best writing he had ever done (and which will ring through history!):

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Various Vignettes From Bill Bryson's "In A Sunburned Country"

Fun book!:

On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the prime minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me - first that Australia could just lose a prime minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.

Strangely enough, I remembered when this happened, in my childhood, when I was ten years old. Those were the days when the local kids and ourselves were busily setting up territories, kingdoms, and protectorates, securing minerals and gems for trade and purchase in play-money currency, and even setting up hamlets made from lumber and assorted bricks in our respective back yards. The kids next door called their domain Great Britain; I called mine Winchester; and there were satellite domains as well, like the Desert (a strip of, well, desert).

Harold Holt's abrupt disappearance (with the usual speculation about shark attacks, riptides and the like) was so shocking I instantly dubbed a portion of a plot of land, adjacent to my own Winchester, as 'Holt', commemorating this terrible event.

Then, strange stuff just seems to happen:

In January [of 1997], according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.

It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on May 28, 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance truckers and prospectors, virtually the only people out in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a mighty but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.

The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn't fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity — the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

Then in 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo subway system, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum's substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in Western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union. The group's avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.

You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world's first nongovernmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed.*

Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.

* Interestingly, no Australian newspapers seem to have picked up on this story and the New York Times never returned to it, so what happened in the desert remains a
mystery. Aum Shinrikyo sold its desert property in August 1994, fifteen months after the mysterious blast but seven months before it gained notoriety with its sarin
attack in the Tokyo subway system. If any investigating authority took the obvious step of measuring the area around Banjawarn Station for increased levels of radiation, it has not been reported.

Disturbing! But not as disturbing as some of the animals, like famous poisonous snakes, like the taipan:

At least the taipan is five feet long and thick as a man's wrist, which gives you a reasonable chance of spotting it. What I found far more appalling was the existence of lethal small snakes, like the little desert death adder. Just eight inches long, it lies lightly buried in soft sand so that you have no hope of seeing it before setting your weary butt on its head. Even more worrying was the Point Darwin sea snake, which is not much larger than an earthworm but packs venom enough if not to kill you at least to make you very late for dinner.

But all of these are as nothing compared with the delicate and diaphanous box jellyfish, the most poisonous creature on earth. We will hear more of the unspeakable horrors of this little bag of lethality when we get to the tropics, but let me offer here just one small story. In 1992 a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dove, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound. It is said that there is no pain to compare with it. The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whiplike stripes wherever the jellyfish's tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterward, emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment. And here's the thing. Even unconscious and sedated, he was still screaming.

But then, there are the tantalizing mysteries still to be solved:

The difficulties are well illustrated, I think, by the uncertain fate of the oolacunta, or desert rat kangaroo. Nearly everything that is known about this interesting creature is owed to two men. The first was a nineteenth-century naturalist named John Gould, who studied and described the animal in 1843. It had, according to Gould, the shape and manner of a kangaroo but was only about the size of a rabbit. What particularly distinguished it was that it could move at very high speeds for unusually long distances. Since that one initial report, however the oolacunta had not been seen. Enter Hedley Herbert Finlayson.

Finlayson was a chemist by profession, but devoted much of his life to searching for rare native animals. In 1931 he led an expedition that traveled by horseback deep into the interior, to the perpetual furnace that is Sturt's Stony Desert. Upon arriving, Finlayson was surprised to discover that the little desert rat kangaroo, far from being on the verge of extinction or possibly gone altogether, was both visible and clearly thriving. The animal's speed and endurance were just as Gould had reported. Once when Finlayson and his colleagues gave chase on horseback a desert rat kangaroo ran twelve miles without pause through the searing heat of day, exhausting three horses in the process. Ounce for ounce, the little oolacunta may well have been the greatest runner (or bouncer, actually) the animal kingdom has ever produced. Returning to society, Finlayson reported his exciting find and naturalists and zoologists everywhere dutifully amended their texts to account for the desert rat kangaroo's rediscovery. Over the next three years, Finlayson made further expeditions, but in 1935 when he returned once more he was nonplussed, as you may imagine, to discover that the little desert rat kangaroo had quietly vanished - as utterly as it had after Gould's single sighting in 1843. It hasn't been seen since.

No, No, Nanette

Left: The cast of No, No, Nanette: Shonn Wiley, Beth Leavel, Michael Berresse, Mara Davi, Sandy Duncan, Rosie O'Donnell and Charles Kimbrough. (photo by Joan Marcus)


Kathleen mentioned this several weeks ago, and I had forgotten to note it, but there's never a bad time to mention Mara Davi's exploits:

No, No, Nanette is based on Frank Mandel and Emily Nyitray's comedy My Lady Friends. The musical, according to press notes, is a "light-hearted tale of millionaires, misunderstood wives, bathing beauties, wanton women and flappers. Nanette (Mara Davi), a young Manhattan heiress, tries to experience life by running away to the big, bad and bawdy town of Atlantic City, only to be followed by her straight-laced, tap-dancing fiancé (Shonn Wiley), her cook/chaperone (Rosie O'Donnell), her lawyer and his wife (Beth Leavel) and her legal guardians (Sandy Duncan and Charles Kimbrough), who just want everyone to 'be happy.'"

Strut

Bad girl, bad girl, whatchu gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Police in Bucharest are looking for a busking pole dancer who performs her routines on the city's underground railway.

...She apparently performs her routines only when the train is travelling between further apart subway stations in the Romanian capital.

Her modus operandi is to play Tom Jones's You Can Leave Your Hat On on a portable CD player while taking off her clothes and dancing around a pole.

She then puts her clothes back on and passes around a container for passengers to show their appreciation for her efforts.

One passenger, George Stancu, who witnessed the act, said: "I can't say I didn't like the show but I found it unusual. There are lots of kids who travel by underground and I just don't think it's proper."

Can't Get No Respect

Maybe we should hand out Superlative Lobbyist (or SLOB) trophies to help out with the self-esteem issue:

For a group of people who apparently have so much influence in Washington, lobbyists seem to have a hard time keeping politicians from bashing them.

The American League of Lobbyists (ALL) made its second appeal this year to candidates to treat them with more respect.

“We feel there is growing frustration with this concept candidates keep pushing that all lobbyists are evil and somehow what we do is inappropriate,” said Brian Pallasch, the president of ALL.

Stardust

Left: Cover art by Fredy Wenzel.


Brian May gets his Ph.D.:

Brian May, lead guitarist for Queen and the author of the stadium anthem "We Will Rock You," was awarded his PhD this year in astrophysics from Imperial College London. Now, his first book, "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe," written with astronomer Sir Patrick Moore and astrophysicist Chris Lintott, is being released in the U.S.

Thud

Dow Jones Industrial index closes down nearly 400 points.

I love the fact that the DJI index has done so well over the last year, despite all the economic chaos, but I sure don't understand why it's still so high. It's like watching a pig-sized hummingbird zip up and over the oak trees.

Here's more:

Stocks plunged Friday, sending the Dow Jones industrials down nearly 400 points, after oil prices shot up by more than $11 a barrel and neared $140 a barrel — and wiped out investors' recent optimism about the economy in the process.

...Crude oil has seen a huge rebound this week after falling amid a drop in demand for gasoline. The jump continued Friday; light, sweet crude set a high of $139.12 in after-hours trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after settling at $138.54, a gain of $10.75 in the regular session. The surge followed a Morgan Stanley analyst's prediction that crude would reach $150 a barrel by July 4; a decline in the dollar and fresh tensions in the Middle East added to crude's advance.

Oil investors' frantic buying of crude futures made it clear that the market could make the Morgan Stanley prediction a reality. And on Wall Street, crude's soaring price intensified worries that ever-expensive fuel will lead consumers to curtail their spending on nonessentials. With gasoline at the threshold of a national average of $4 a gallon, crude's surge higher is expected to propel gas even higher — and make Americans even more reluctant to spend.

Moreover, the spike in energy prices came as the Labor Department said the nation's unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May from 5.0 percent in April. It was the biggest monthly increase since February 1986 and the rise leaves unemployment at it highest level since October 2004. Wall Street had predicted an uptick to 5.1 percent.

The number of U.S. jobs shrank by a smaller-than-expected 49,000, but that development offered Wall Street little solace given that May marked the fifth straight month of jobs losses.

Still, the sudden rise in oil prices appeared to weigh most heavily on Wall Street. The jump in oil also came after an Israeli Cabinet minister hoping to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying Israel would attack Iran if it doesn't abandon its nuclear program.

"I think the biggest concern right now is oil and it's potential for a stagflationary environment," said Bill Knapp, investment strategist for MainStay Investments, a division of New York Life Investment Management. Stagflation occurs when stalling growth accompanies rising prices.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 394.64, or 3.13 percent, to 12,209.81. It was the worst percentage and point drop since Feb. 27, 2007, when the blue chips dropped 416.02 points, or 3.29 percent, as concerns emerged about troubles in the credit market and an economic slowdown.

Broader stock indicators also fell sharply. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 43.37, or 3.09 percent, to 1,360.68, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 75.38, or 2.96 percent, to 2,474.56.

Friday's pullback came a day after the Dow jumped nearly 214 points, its largest daily point gain since April 18 and a reacation to better-than-expected sales from retailers and a dip in weekly jobless claims. The welcome economic news helped investors shrug off a more than $5-a-barrel spike in oil prices. But the advance in oil Friday made it clear to Wall Street that oil posed a serious threat to consumer spending and the economy.

What's Going On At Panama Pottery?

Left: Joe The Plumber (lower right-hand corner) says let's check this place out!

Panama Pottery was founded in 1913 by Swedish immigrants who had been intrigued by pottery during a trip to Panama; thus the name "Panama Pottery".


Driving along 24th Street south of City College in Sacramento, both Joe The Plumber and I were intrigued by Panama Pottery (I had never really noticed it before).

Left: A co-worker with Adam Bradley works on wooden sculptures. Some of these recent sculptures will be displayed at the next Second Saturday, in July, at Tapa The World, at 21st and J Streets, in Sacramento.


Adam Bradley's studio was open. The chainsaws weren't out yet, but were promised!



Left: Big kiln at Panama Pottery.




Left: Pottery-themed mural by Lou (?) Dumron.

Left: The pottery yard at Panama Pottery.


The pottery yard was open too (June sale, 20% off, today and tomorrow). Many interesting works on display were by Susannah Kelly. Joe was particularly fond of a cat's face (seen in the last photo on the Web Page reached via the link above).

Left: Colorful works by Susannah Kelly.

Left: A sunrise (or sunset?) plate.

Left: Pink rabbit.

Left: Nothing like a Celtic-themed wind sculpture for the meteorologist!

Left: Friendly pig.

Cher - Believe

A Hillary anthem if there ever was one....
(thanks to Gabe's idea)



No matter how hard I try
You keep pushing me aside
And I can't break through
There's no talking to you
It's so sad that you're leaving
It takes time to believe it
But after all is said and done
You're gonna be the lonely one, oh

[Chorus] Do you believe in life after love
I can feel something inside me say
'I really don't think you're strong enough, no'
Do you believe in life after love
I can feel something inside that says
'I really don't think you're strong enough, no'

What am I supposed to do
Sit around and wait for you
Well I can't do that
And there's no turning back
I need time to move on
I need a love to feel strong
'Cause I've got time to think it through
And maybe I'm too good for you, oh'

[Chorus]

Well I know that I'll get through this
'Cause I know that I am strong
I don't need you anymore
I don't need you anymore,oh
I don't need you anymore
No I don't need you anymore

[Chorus x2]

Circus Osorio

Here's something being erected right now on Franklin just south of Fruitridge. Looks like fun of some sort!

Roots

In the middle of routing out my sewer line last night with a rented 75' x 3/4" snake, Joe the Plumber appeared, and told me not to do it the way I was doing it. Fortunately, rather than insisting that he was right, he deferred to my approach, and instead, started to help out with the arduous work. I think there must have been a sequoia growing down there in the sewer line, there were so many tough roots.

Here's hoping the clean pipe lasts.

Edwards Says No

He's said it before, but maybe he means it:

John Edwards has ruled out being Barack Obama's running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket, according to interviews carried by two leading Spanish newspapers on Friday.

I'm now thinking Bill Richardson or Jim Webb.