HinesSight

In the belly of the beast--a tale of hard drive hell

It's been a strange two days. I hardly know who I am anymore, or what I've been doing. I must seek clues in what I see around me. Empty coffee cup. Paper towel with jelly stains. Shiny anti-static wrapper. Screwdriver. PC card slot placeholders. Two tiny screws. Computer manuals. Receipt from CMS Peripherals, Inc. with "You bastards will die!!!" scrawled on it in red crayon. Hmmm. That's my handwriting. What's been going on?

Ah, it all is starting to come back now...my eeensyweensy 20GB notebook hard drive had become filled to overflowing with my verbiage, and those endless Windows XP service pack/security/critical/must-have-or-you-are-doomed updates. So I had ordered a mega-hunky 60GB drive from Dell, and a supposedly simple means of transferring all the stuff from eensy-weensy to mega-hunky. You know, one of those pieces of software with a name like "one-step" or "easy-link," which, I can now testify, usually turn out to involve dozens of steps (if you're lucky), or a not-so-easy journey through the gates of computer hell (if you're not so lucky, as I was).

It's interesting though, what being backed into an existential No Exit corner can do to you, when there seems to be no hope, because everything you've tried to resolve the problem leads to another problem, and the Gods of Tech Support are not dispensing the hoped-for grace. I found myself at 5:30 pm completely befuddled, ready to take a sledgehammer to the Inspiron 8200 and go back to pencil, paper, a filing cabinet, and a manual typewriter. Then, a sort of satori hit, the lightning flash of illumination that I'd rather have heal my soul, but if it can heal my computer, heck, I'll take that.

Later I'll write about how all this relates to the creative process, some interesting connections I found in a science magazine article. Bottom line: frustration is a great thing, when it leads to breaking through the barriers that made you frustrated in the first place. Nobody tries to get out of jail unless they hate being in jail.

God blesses America?

On this eve of Bush's State of the Union speech, it is appropriate to ponder the all-important questions, "Does God bless America?", and "Does America bless God?" Recently there was a letter to the editor in our local newspaper that made a daring suggestion: maybe it is best for us to humbly bless God, rather than make imperious demands on the divine--God bless America!--such as our President is wont to do.

Obviously this person was a thinly disguised neo-pagan, or perhaps even an Al-Quaida mole, because the evidence is clear that God truly does put America first among all the nations of the world. A friend recently shared with us a blurry black and white image of this evidence, which was suggestive, but I wanted more. So a little sleuthing in a great urban legend website, revealed a photo in living color that demonstrates the extent of God's blessing upon the good old U.S. of A. I'm tremendously relieved, since all this talk of war had been making me wonder whether we're about to do the right thing. Obviously this is a sign, not coincidentally, I'm sure, from September 11, 2002, that God is on our side. You need to ignore, like I have, that techno-babble down at the bottom of the page about how light filters through fabric, blah, blah, blah. Those with eyes to see, see!

30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter

In honor of my daughter, Celeste Vos, whose 31st birthday is today, I have reprised in a much more public fashion last year's birthday greeting, tenderly titled "30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter." I probably should have updated it to "31...", but the Super Bowl has started, and I really can't think of any new reasons, anyway. Now that she's past 30 (time to have children, don't you think?), Celeste has become wonderfully attentive and sensitive to her father, even when she isn't asking for money. I'm the one, this year, who didn't get a card in the mail before a birthday. Hope this weblog posting counts, Celeste--and I'll call tonight (after the Super Bowl, that is). Much love, Dad
Download 30 Reasons Not to Have a Daughter.pdf (25.8K)

Almost a fan

I was so thrilled yesterday to get some fan email! Well, almost. I suppose I should have recognized right away from the message that something was wrong, but my desperate need for praise and approval blinded me for a while. Here's the message, with my (almost) fan's name omitted: DEAR MR. HINES,
MY NAME IS...AND I AM IN FIRST GRADE. I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO COME TO OLD BETHPAGE GRADE SCHOOL NEXT WEEK. I READ YOUR BOOK, THE MONSTER'S TEST, IN SCHOOL TODAY. I LOVED IT. YOU ARE A VERY GOOD AUTHOR. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU.
YOUR FRIEND...

Hmmmmm, I thought, I really like that "You are a very good author" line. But I forgot I was going to Old Bethpage Grade School. In fact, I've also forgotten that there is such a school. Further, I can't remember writing "The Monster's Test." But, aside from these minor details, I got some fan email! It's great that a first grader would appreciate my writing so much. However, a little Googling revealed that there is a Brian Heinz who wrote a children's book by this name, so I reluctantly wrote back to the (almost) fan that he mistook the cake mix Hines for the ketchup Heinz. I also urged him to keep writing, because he has a nice honest style. Direct. Short sentences. No spelling errors. Just needs to take his finger off the Caps Lock key.

Iraq irrationality

So tell me, where am I wrong in pointing out this particular piece of Iraq irrationality? Last night I was reading a Time magazine story about Rumsfeld's war plans. Reportedly he plans to emphasize the use of special forces troops, who are to swoop in at the beginning of the war and prevent Hussein from using his chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons. Now, one has to assume that this means the special forces will (1) be able to find out where the weapons are stored, and (2) be able to destroy them after they find them.

But...isn't this just what the U.N. weapons inspectors are supposed to be doing? And hasn't the U.N. been begging the United States for intelligence about where Iraq is hiding its weapons of mass destruction? If the U.S. special forces know where to go to destroy these weapons, why can't we tell the inspectors where they are, so we can be sure they are destroyed before they are used, and not after? Logically, it seems that if Hussein really does have weapons of mass destruction, we either don't know where they are (which means lots of people may be killed by them in an Iraq war), or we don't want to tell the inspectors where they are, because Bush wants a war more than he wants Iraq disarmed (think: oil).

Marvelous spam compendium

If you aren't getting enough ads for penis enlargement and home business opportunities in your email inbox, Mark Morford has put together a marvelous compendium in his SFGate.com column. At least, I assume these are genuine excerpts from email ads. I've seen some of them, but Mark must get a lot more spam than I do. I also like his earlier piece, "Are Hummer Owners Idiots? More delightful proof positive that most SUVs are, in fact, morally repugnant. Go, America!" Apparently there is solid research to show that large SUV owners are more ego-driven and insecure than drivers of other cars. I say "large SUV owners" because Laurel drives a Honda CR-V, which is a decidedly small SUV. Therefore, we won't include her in Morford's scathing indictment. As a Volvo wagon driver, I can stand tall, morally speaking, with my fellow owners, and their "don't hug your kids with nuclear arms" bumper stickers.

Renaming Fairview makes the news

It was both scary and exciting to approach the newspaper box this morning, knowing that an article about the Fairview renaming effort, and my online poll, probably would be in the Statesman-Journal. You never know how a story will come out, after you talk to a reporter. Laurence Cruz, the environment reporter, called me yesterday afternoon after I had written a letter to the editor about the poll, and had been told by the editorial page editor that it really was a press release, not a letter. OK, whatever.

I had gotten some resistance from the management of Sustainable Fairview Associates to the whole idea of asking the general public what they thought of four proposed names, so I reluctantly had told the newspaper to back off the story. But Laurence said that his editor had asked him to write a story on the renaming, and as an old journalism major (for one semester, my freshman year) I couldn't let Laurence down. Plus, when he asked me, "Why don't you want to ask people what they think?", I couldn't come up with a good reason. So I talked to the reporter, along with Russ Beaton and Bob Lindsey.

It's a nicely written story, accessible here. Laurence did a great job weaving together the various quotes and themes. My only gripe is that, for some reason, my age had to be cited, whereas Russ' and Bob's ages are absent. Guess they are familiar quasi-public figures, whose age has already been reported. However, when I saw "...Brian Hines, 54,...", I said to myself, "hey, that guy isn't so old." As they say, Da Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. Newspaper readers have to go to StatemanJournal.com, then click on a link, then click on another link to my online poll in order to vote. A few have so far; maybe more will when evening comes, and people curl up with the morning paper.

Golden Globe awards

Having just seen Adaptation, we were pleased that Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep got supporting actor/actress awards for their roles in this great movie. Not being familiar with Cooper, I was astounded to see a old (meaning, about my age) white-haired guy go up on stage to get his award--never would have recognized him as the largely-toothless good old southern boy orchid hunter he played in Adaptation. One of the best lines in this movie, or at least one of the few lines we remember: "It's what you love that matters, not what loves you." So, pursue your passion, and don't worry about all the rest. Like, how the world responds, or what people think of you.

One of the things we love is the HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. It won the best comedy or musical series on TV, as it certainly should have. Larry David, the star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, had the best thank-you speech, by far. Seemingly spontaneous (but probably planned, to some extent) and short. Paraphrased... "This is a sad night for the Golden Globe awards. [pause for effect] But a great night for Larry David. There's going to be some good loving from my wife when we get home. It's pathetic that I have to win an award to get some sex." And..."I want to thank my parents, who taught me that when you have the chance to offend someone [pause]...you should take it. They just never knew that I eventually would be able to offend people on such a grand scale."

Richard Gere, on the other hand, did one of those "I'm shocked; I never expected to win tonight" riffs. Then he pulls out a big sheet of paper and says, "But my wife gave me a list of the people I should thank." Hey, Richard, I'd be much more inclined to believe your utter surprise at winning if you didn't have such a detailed list ready to be pulled out of your pocket. And he went on, and on, and on. "I want to especially thank...special thanks to...and now I want to thank my special..."

By the umpteenth special thanks, it was the non-special thank-yous that were standing out. I couldn't help but think that Gere is a Buddhist, whereas I suspect Larry David is probably just about the type of guy he plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm: sort of endearing, but a real pain in the ass. Yet David gives a short, funny, self-deprecating, and humble acceptance speech, while Gere rambled on way past his allotted time, filling the airwaves with his not very interesting observations about whatever it was he won for (oh, Chicago, that was it).

The poor award winners who came after Gere and the almost equally verbose Rennee Zellweger (also in Chicago) kept getting the "shut up now" music played for them, undoubtedly because the producers had to make up for the lengthy Gere/Zellweger speeches. So I guess the moral might be, humility is as humility does, not as humility says. Give me a natural Larry David over a pretentious Richard Gere any day.

Thanks, "Stop Densification" supporters

Laurel and I greatly appreciate the donations we've received recently in response to our "help, we need more money for the Stop Densification in Spring Lake Estates Committee" letter. With the help of other concerned neighbors, we're doing our best to overturn the initial approval of the Oak Drive partitioning request. Well, Laurel is doing most of the real work; I mainly help with the typing and other clerical chores. Friday, Laurel went down to the county planning department and picked up the partitioner's response to our appeal.

Fortunately, it still looks like we have the facts and the law on our side, but you never can tell how a hearings officer will rule. Laurel has reviewed the partitioner's response, and she still finds all sorts of errors, omissions, and misinterpretations of well/hydrologic data. So that's great news, because it means that the well data Laurel and our hydrologist, Malia Kupillas, have submitted is valid--as we knew it was all along.

Next, Laurel will respond to the partitioner's response to our appeal. Then, I think, they get one more crack at what Laurel says. We'll keep you posted on how things go. Hopefully, if we win this appeal, no one else will try to cram more houses into Spring Lake Estates than this area was designed for. If we can stop this environmentally harmful partitioning, we just might be able to stop other people from trying to make money at the expense of our natural resources, and the livability of this area.

Happy Birthday, dear sister!

click to enlarge
Carol Ann, this is a public online cyberspaced weblog birthday greeting from your brother, all the way from Salem, Oregon to Castries, St. Lucia. In other words, like always I forgot to mail a card so it could get there in time, so I have to say "happy birthday" electronically. Well, at least this is a refreshing change from email, or those "Blue Mountain" sorts of cyber-greeting cards.

Hey, I went to some trouble to find an old photo of us, scan it, and touch it up. I love how you are looking so adoringly at your brother. Of course, that also could be a look that says, "I'd be having a much better time on this trip if that little jerk brother of mine wasn't along." Your bobby sox are so '50s. And the shorts... Actually, they're just about the length you see on the cool street kids these days, except they needed to be about six sizes larger. I, on the other hand, have got down that poised left-thumb-hooked-in-the-corner-of-your-pocket look, and the cocked-head "what, me worry?" expression (I was a huge Mad magazine fan at that time, so this phrase naturally comes to mind). My quasi-shaved head is right in modern fashion, but those rolled-up jeans are a bit too retro for 2003.

Uncle Connie looks dapper, as he always did. And I like how Mother is sweetly clutching her uncle's arm. If she was alive, she probably would hate to have people see her stomach look a bit, um, protruding. But it was probably the light. Or we can always cite her oft-expressed explanation: "it's the Lewis stomach." Can't do anything about heredity, that was her eminently scientific (and wrong, in this case) opinion, which she held as strongly as her many other firm opinons.

As the cliche goes, "you're as young as you feel." Hope this photo, and my birthday greetings, make you feel as young as you want to feel. A few margaritas won't hurt either. Much love from Brian, Laurel, and Serena.

Feed the PollMonkey, and help rename Fairview

I had a good time yesterday learning about PollMonkey, and setting up a polling page where people can express their opinion about which proposed new name for the Fairview sustainable development they like best. Econia, Pringle, Ekone, Terramore--these are the candidates at the moment. Be sure to take the poll, which is at www.brianhines.com/renamefairview.htm As I say on the web page, email me if you have any comments on the names, or want to suggest another name. On January 27 the members of Sustainable Fairview Associates, who include Laurel and me, are supposed to choose a new name for the project. This is your chance to put in your two cents (inflation probably should have raised the ante on this cliche, so put in your two bucks), and feed the PollMonkey. Since January 27 isn't far away, and I'm pretty sure that HinesSight is not regularly read by everybody I've told about this weblog (gasp!), you may also be getting an email from me about this poll. Sorry for the duplication, and I'm also sorry that you can't vote twice--PollMonkey won't allow it. Or, at least, he's not supposed to.

Laurel's letter--she's published!

Now we finally can stop running up to the end of the driveway each morning, grabbing the newspaper, anxiously scanning the opinion page for Laurel's coyote letter. Today, right there smack dab in the middle of the page, is her letter to the editor. Laurel was spurred to write after we heard some distressed-sounding coyote calls late one night, seemingly coming from the property of a neighbor who has been threatening to set traps/poison to kill the coyotes who supposedly are threatening the feral cats that he and his wife like to feed.

Of course, leaving food out for cats is bound to attract coyotes, so there is an easy solution: don't feed the cats, and other wildlife. I staggered out with a flashlight, half asleep, to look for the source of the coyote calls, but that Wil E. Coyote shut up as soon as I had completely woken up 100 yards or so down the path. So, it probably wasn't caught in a trap after all. But it could have been, so the letter was written. Good going, Laurel!

AAA, and the middle way

The channel 2 evening news last night had a poll that showed the three-year income tax increase narrowly ahead. Amazing. That would be one of the great voting surprises in Oregon history, if the measure passes after all the pundits had pronounced it dead on arrival. We've mailed in our "yes" votes; everyone else, do the same. Hopefully, the normally apathetic people in our formally great state are being aroused by the painfully clear consequences of inaction--of letting state-funded education, health care, criminal justice system, and so on, go down the tubes into a morass of mediocrity.

Along these lines, I've been thinking of social action in terms of AAA: apathy, arousal, apoplexy. Apathy is the all-too-normal state of most people, uncaring and uninterested. On the other hand, apoplexy is the all-too-common state of those whose social concern is limited to displays of anger, self-righteous indignation, and simplistic soapbox slogans. In other words, the listeners of conservative talk radio, and the watchers of conservative television commentators. Michael Savage, who I listen (briefly) to on KXL in the late afternoon when I want to make sure my heart is still capable of pounding, and my brow furrowing, is the most egregious example of maniacal railing at the top of your lungpower with minimal substantive content.

The middle way is the state of arousal, which has an appealing, and quite appropriate, sexual connotation. Here we are intimately involved with social problems, or other sorts of problems. Our sense of justice is fully awake and aware. We are eager to demonstrate our love of the Good. Now, any middle state has connections with the territory on either side, so apathy and apoplexy will inevitably manifest at times in the mind of the aroused social activist. Certainly Laurel and I find ourselves at times tipping over the edge, joining forces with the ranks of either the apathetic or apoplectic. Our causes--coyotes, lot partitioning, groundwater quality, improving the management of sustainable Fairview--sometimes wear us down into "what's the point?," and sometimes fire us up into "this must change, NOW!"

On the whole, though, we manage to stay in the middle way--aware, active, and aroused. Life is too short to do anything else.

Soulful science

For an interesting, if dense, scientific consideration of soul, consciousness, and Platonic truth, read "Morality at the Planck Scale," a chat with Stuart Hameroff. Reading this Metanexus posting, I recalled that Hameroff is the anesthesiologist whose work Roger Penrose cites in his equally dense (and much longer, being a book) "Shadows of the Mind." The basic notion of these brilliant guys is that teeny-tiny microtubules in the brain's nerve cells are small enough to involve quantum effects at the teeniest-tiniest level of physical reality, which is the Planck scale.

This means that there is a connection between us, our brain, and the cosmos, the undivided whole of the quantum world. The great mystery to consciousness researchers is how something physical, the brain, seems to produce something nonphysical, consciousness. But Hameroff says that he calls himself a panprotopsychist (yeah! I'd join that church), which entails "the notion that whatever gives rise to consciousness is implicit and exists inherently everywhere in the universe." Including the quantum realm, which connects with our consciousness, or soul if you like, through those microtubules. Hameroff suggests that "the soul could be a particular distributed pattern in fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale." Well, maybe the Church of Panprotopsychism isn't going to attract many members, if this is the Creed: "We believe in soul, a particular distributed..." The Lord's Prayer has more of a ring to it.

Garden Poet needs a weblog, don't you think?

I got to know the Garden Poet, a.k.a Keith Ecklund, when we hired him to do some extensive landscaping on our previously unpoetic yard. Whereas another prospective landscaper was going to prepare a detailed computerized plan, showing every detail of what they planned to do, Keith basically showed us the landscaper's equivalent of the proverbial business plan sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin, a very sketchy conceptual outline, and said "trust me."

We did, and we ended up loving his work. I enjoyed looking out the window and seeing Keith perched on the seat of his idling tractor, calmly pondering the seemingly chaotic piles of dirt he had been bulldozing around. Then, still planless, aside from his inner vision, he would put the tractor into gear and set about on the next phase of his artistic creation. We never had much of a clue about what he was doing until it was done; then we liked it (usually).

Keith just sent me some HinesSight-stimulated thoughts that beg to be posted for wider consumption. Keith says that he has thought about starting his own weblog many times, but gets cold feet. I think he needs to get a footwarmer. Anyone who can write, and think, like this is a born blogger.

Positivity appreciated, feedback welcomed

I've already heard from some new HinesSight viewers (well, almost all the viewers are new, actually), who said some nice things about our humble weblog--especially the photo of Serena, which seems to be the favorite post so far. Some problems also were pointed out, and I'm trying to fix them. I'm slowly learning some of the tricks of the trade of the Internet, such as "don't reduce the margin of Word files unless you want some browsers to see what you've written as a teeny-tiny one-word column that stretches on for near-infinity." No, I didn't mean to do this with the "Stuck at Lake Partway" piece, if you've tried to read it in its original incarnation. Hopefully it is more readable and printable now.

I've also been told that there is some weirdness on the Home page with the AOL browser. My not-particularly-charitable response is, "Anyone who chooses to use AOL, you get what you deserve." In the early days of AOL I had some horrible experiences trying to get rid of their software after I had installed a trial version. Sort of like RealPlayer now, except even worse. You think it's dead and gone, but it keeps popping up even after you thought a stake had been put through its sinister undeletable software heart.

New sexual anxiety: length matters

Length of the index and ring fingers, that is. I learned this last night, watching a Discovery Channel program about the differences between men and women (I know, I know...you'd think, at the age of 54, I wouldn't need such education). One experiment with boys and girls was highly encouraging: they dumped a bunch of $100 bills from a balcony and filmed a group of young boys and a group of young girls separately trying to catch the bills before they hit the ground.

The boys caught six bills, and the girls caught zero, nada, zilch, which goes a long way (or, at least, some way) toward explaining the income differential between men and women. Men catch more money falling from high places. The girls basically ran around in circles with their hands up, having a great time and giggling like crazy but doing a terrible job at getting ahold of the bills. Of course, now that I think about it, the girls may have realized that the experimenters weren't using real money, while the stupid boys actually thought they were going to get $100 for taking part in a PBS special.

Regardless, the program went downhill for me when they started talking about the importance of the length of a male body part that has been found to be closely linked to sexuality, the ring finger. For more info, consult this TigerBunny article (don't ask me what TigerBunny is; I just go where Google sends me). Generally, men have a ring finger that is longer than their index finger, while in women the ring and index finger tend to be the same length. The average ratio for men is .96 (index finger length divided by ring finger length). Laurel and I ran to the ruler as soon as the show was over. Laurel was a perfect 1.00. As for me, I found that you can fudge the results if the line at the bottom of your finger is ill-defined (as is the case with me), but I tried to be as honest as possible.

On both hands, I got a ratio of .975, which puts me only .025 away from the female norm of 1.00, instead of the male average differential norm of .04 (1.00 minus .96). God, I feel like such a wimp! Where are those email ads for ring finger lengthening, now that I know I need this to be a real man, and, I assume, to please women (oops, I mean a woman) as a real man does.

However, when I looked more closely at the TigerBunny page, I saw that men whose ring finger is longer than the index finger are: (1) more fertile, (2) have higher lifetime reproductive success, (3) are more aggressive and assertive, and, wait a minute!, (4) have a greater proclivity toward homosexuality/bisexuality. Guess I'll hold off on that index finger lengthening plastic surgery. Anyway, I'd be interested in learning your own ratio, if any HinesSight reader is man or woman enough to share this vital statistic. For purposes of scientific research, a brief summary of your sexual inclinations, along with the finger ratio data, would be most appreciated.

Trusting truth

Here's a question: if we had a choice between knowing the absolute 100% truth about existence, or remaining with our current beliefs, what would we do? I posed this question during a talk I gave in Seattle last year, and I remember being met with a lot of quizzical faces (which isn't unusual for me when I speak, but I don't necessarily consider this to be a bad thing; if an audience is looking quizzical, at least they aren't asleep).

It's a good question, though. Most of us believe in God, somehow or other. And most of us believe in life after death, in some form or another. Each of these beliefs is comforting. But what if both are wrong? What if the cosmos lacks any sort of divinity behind it, and humans are just a bunch of material molecules hooked up in an intriguing fashion that gives us life for 70-80 years, or whatever, and then we die, and that's it. One life that is purely physical. There's no God who cares about us, and there's no meaning to all this living except what we each decide to ascribe to it.

Now, I don't really believe this is true--that life is meaningless, Godless, and a one-time deal. However, it could be, and that's a scary thought. So, I'm not sure what I would do if I was given the choice of knowing with complete certainty what the cosmos is all about, or remaining with my comfortable beliefs, which, even though I have doubts about them, still give me something to hang onto when the darkness starts to close in.
The concluding chapter of my book about Plotinus addresses this theme, particularly at the very end. In the course of writing "Return to the One," I had to think a lot about faith, and what it means to make a leap of faith. The chapter is called "Stuck at Lake Partway," and that sure describes my spiritual progress.

Along these lines, I'm looking forward to reading John Horgan's new book, "Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality." He wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education that addresses some of the themes in this book, including the limits of both faith and skepticism. Horgan says that at first he looked at Zen Buddhism as an efficient garbage-removal system that clears out all those beliefs and assumptions that prevent us from seeing reality as it is. But then, pondering how a box of garbage bags become garbage itself after the last box is used, Horgan realized that "every garbage-removal system generates garbage."

Truth and untruth. Faith and skepticism. Reality and unreality. There has got to be something more than these warring pairs of opposites. That must be what we're looking for. What is neither garbage, nor the garbage of not-garbage. The first one to find it, let everyone else know.

Bowling for Columbine

This was last night's enterainment at Salem Cinema, where the newly installed seats add a lot to our viewing enjoyment. Plus, you can drink a cup of decent coffee and eat some almost-healthy popcorn (probably truly healthy if you get the brewer's yeast option). Last time we went, before this, the owner made a nice little speech before the movie about the new seats, and how much she appreciated everyone's support over the years, and please turn off your cell phones, but if you don't, everyone in the theater should feel free to scream at you when the ringer goes off, followed by, "Thank you, and enjoy your movie."

Now, Michael Moore poses a lot of questions about why this country has so much gun violence, and other similar countries don't--even those, like Canada, that have jillions of guns. He doesn't force answers on the viewer, which is to his credit. Laurel and I came away feeling that the answer lies somewhere in the American culture, a culture where it is unusual to feel the sort of warm closeness that you get at Salem Cinema. The Canadians interviewed in the movie all thought that this country is really weird, which it is. We lock our doors and are afraid of so many things that Canadians don't worry about.

So, what is with all this "God Bless America" stuff, and "this is the greatest country on earth"? God must bless Canada, Japan, Britain, and Australia more than the United States, because there aren't nearly as many murders per capita in those countries. There's a lot of anger and paranoia here; we're on edge; we don't trust our neighbors; we expect that everybody else should think and act just like us, or there is something wrong with those other idiots. We shoot first and think later.

Leaving the movie, Laurel and I couldn't help but recall how eager some of our neighbors are to shoot any coyote that wanders onto their property. This is the attitude that fosters gun violence toward humans, as well as animals. Got a problem? Simple, kill it. Don't try to live with it, or adapt to it. Just kill it. Moore showed how the United States has done this in southeast Asia, in Panama, in Nicaragua, in Kosovo, and now in Iraq, and who knows where else next. Hey, I'm in favor of war when war is the last resort, but our country often sees ware as the first resort. And then we wonder how high schoolers learn to wage a shooting war on each other.

Whew! Made it by ten days

Man, what a relief, to be ahead of the curve by ten days. Yesterday's Living Section in the Oregonian had a fairly extensive story about blogs, a.k.a. web logs, which this here thing is. So if I hadn't decided to start HinesSight on January 2, I'd be behind the curve right now. Instead, I'm ten days ahead of the (Oregonian) curve. Of course, I'm years behind the weblog pioneers, so from that standpoint I'm way behind the curve. Well, I guess I'm right where I'm supposed to be, which is preparing to send out emails letting folks know about HinesSight.

The Oregonian article has some nice quotes from bloggers about why they blog. I can relate to most of them, based on my vast ten day experience, during which I basically have been blogging to myself (haven't gone blind yet, and it's so much fun). My own "why I blog" reason, so far, goes something like this: usually I share only parts of myself with people, figuring that if they saw the whole Me, they'd freak out in some fashion ("I didn't know Brian thought that...or did that...or believed in that; gosh, now I don't know what to think of him"). Well, a weblog along the lines of the title of the Oregonian piece--"The World According to Me"--gives you the whole shebang, the blogger from top to bottom, inside to out. OK, not completely, because total transparency is just too much for most people. I don't even want to know everything about me, so I can't expect others to want to.

Still, it is liberating to start breaking down the divisions between friends, and acquaintances, and co-workers, and neighbors, and relatives, and everyone else. Let it all hang out so the world can see it--that's blogging. It forces you to decide what is most important each day, or, at least, what pops up to the surface of your consciousness that you want to share. It makes you think about what you're experiencing, and how the various parts of your life fit together. So...we blog on.

Minority Report

A great movie, absolutely, and our most recent DVD entertainment. I can only wish that I live to see a future in which you get to drive cars up and down the sides of buildings, as well as on futuristic freeways. And I loved how Tom Cruise, et. al, controlled computers with their fingertips. If I could control this damn crash-a-holic Windows XP piece of crap operating system with a sledgehammer (hmmm...not a bad idea, now that I think about it) I'd be happy. I enviously noted that throughout the entire nearly three hour movie the sophisticated computers seemed to work flawlessly. Undoubtedly Microsoft was not part of the "Minority Report" future.

My main gripe with the movie was its lack of attention to deep philosophical questions, which, I guess, I also would leave out of a flick if I wanted it to be a commercial success. Time travel usually is considered to be impossible, if this means changing the past so it alters the future. Yet here the future was foreseen, and the cops ran off to prevent murders that were definitely going to happen, unless they intervened, so they couldn't happen. Maybe I dozed off during part of the movie, but I never got how this really was supposed to work.

In the first sequence, Cruise is desperate to stop a forecasted murder, and barely gets there in time. Now, he wouldn't have been so anxious if he knew that his prevention of the murder was as destined as the murder itself (which doesn't make sense, of course; how could two alternative futures both be destined?) So it seems, from the "pre-cog's" dialogue, that we have a choice about the future. We don't have to act in accord with our destiny. At least, this is what she keeps screaming at Cruise when he faces his own forecasted future, "You can choose! You can choose!" You'd think that one of the only three people who can see into the future would know what she is talking about.

But, if Tom Cruise can choose his future, and step away from murder, why can't the other people who get arrested for murders they haven't yet committed? I never understood this. Maybe Tom is special. Or maybe the precogs have caused a lot of innocent people to be arrested. Whatever, it was prescient of the moviemakers to anticipate Bush's Iraq policy so perfectly: "We know that you are going to use weapons of mass destruction in the future. So we will attack you now, to prevent you from using them." Except, atacking Iraq virtually guarantees that if Hussein does have such weapons, he will use them. Which proves the U.S. right, I guess, sort of like Miss Cleo saying that if you dial her 900 number you will learn your future: "A large charge will soon appear on your phone bill."

Plotinus and coyote-control

It's nice to make connections between various aspects of your life. Here I am just now, editing my Plotinus (3rd century Greek philosopher) manuscript, and I come across a passage wonderfully apropos to our efforts to stop the killing of coyotes in our neighborhood. This bit is about Plotinus' attitude toward meat-eating, but I think he would be equally (if not more) aghast at the idea of killing an animal just because it is doing what comes naturally to it, and isn't harming any human. The quote in italics at the end is from Plotinus' Enneads, the collection of his writings.

Excerpt from “All is Alive” chapter of “Return to the One”:

“Plotinus refused to countenance the oft-heard rationale for meat-eating: ‘Animals are not like us.’ He considered this to be a shoddy bit of philosophizing. If humans are entitled to pursue happiness, one of the inalienable rights enshrined in the United States constitution, then why should other living things be denied their own right to seek well-being, insofar as it is possible? Humans differ from animals and plants in what we are capable of doing and experiencing, but all life is able to do and experience something. So one should be cautious about denying the good life to any form of life.”

Suppose we assume the good life and well-being to be one and the same.…For whether one considers the good life as consisting in satisfactory experience or accomplishing one’s proper work, in either case it will belong to the other living things as well as us.…Why will it not seem absurd of him to deny that other living things live well just because he does not think them important?…If pleasure is the end and the good life is determined by pleasure, it is absurd of anyone to deny the good life to other living things. [I-4-1]

Canine perfection

Canine Perfection, the Sublime Platonic Form of Dog--Serena! (serenely posing near the headwaters of the Metolius River, with Black Butte in the background)

Defragmentation, if it was only so easy...

Had to skip posting yesterday, due to a lengthy defragmenting process on my cranky computer. If you have never watched SystemWorks defragment a disk, consider adding this to your list of life's to-dos. Observing the process is strangely addicting. You start with a colorful map of your computer's amazingly fragmented hard drive, bits and pieces of files stuck here and there, all over the place. Then, through some mysterious process, the All-Knowing Optimizer goes about reshuffling those bits and pieces into a neat and tidy coherent system. Dot by dot, you watch (for hours, in my case) your computer change from being all split up, to getting it's hard drive act together.

If it was only so easy to do this with my own mind. Where's that Optimizer of human consciousness? I've been looking for it most of my life. Sometimes I feel as neatly ordered as my computer is at the moment, but other times I'm as scattered as my hard drive was yesterday morning. Anyway, now that my Windows XP system should only be crashing frequently, rather than often (isn't Microsoft great!), I feel confident enough to begin publicizing HinesSight more widely to family, friends, and acquaintances (which will be easy, since up to now only my sister knows it exists).

New name for "Fairview"

The sustainable Fairview development needs a new name. I gather one hasn't been chosen yet, though various alternatives have been suggested. Not surprisingly, I'm still attracted to the names I shared with other investors many months ago: "Terramore" and "Terros," with "Terramore" being my current favorite. I'll admit that Terros resonates too closely with "terror" for today's anxious times. I'm probably the only SFA member who likes Terramore, but that's OK. Diversity is what we're all about. It just has that wonderful Arthurian ring; plus, you get the generally recognizable Terra, followed by an interesting play on words--"amore," or love, and more, implying that this Terramore place gives you...more.

Few of the other suggestions I've seen do much for me. Except, "Econia Village," or Econia something-or-other. It's a little bit Balkan sounding ("We now introduce the Ambassador from Econia"), and a little bit Utopian sounding ("Econia, where nothing is wasted, and everyone is happy all the time"). However, a big plus is the "Eco" beginning, which suggests this place is something ecological. And it has a connection with the Native American Ekone word that has been considered, though this is a minor consideration, in my opinon. I don't like "Ekone." It sounds flat and weak to me, and doesn't conjure up any meanings, as Econia does.

Genesis World Energy: breakthrough or fraud?

I vote for fraud, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Genesis World Energy claims to have made some sort of amazing breakthrough in fuel cell technology, such that you will be able to hook up their gadget and power your whole house with just a wire to the electrical box and a garden hose. If that sounds too good to be true to you, you're in agreement with a bunch of skeptics in some newsgroups who consider Genesis World Energy a fraud in the making. Here's an excerpt from their website. I smell "pyramid scheme" and "techno-cult." But, hey, I'll also be one of the first to buy their system if it really works.

The Genesis Team
Genesis World Energy is a technology development, production and supply consortium whose key members have spent much of their careers developing pivotal technologies for defense and space programs. Their contribution ranges from defending the world's nations from nuclear holocaust, to taking man to the moon and exploring the depths of space.

In September 2000, a plan to create a new, practical source of energy out of the hydrogen and oxygen in water was put in to motion. By early 2001, a team of over 400 visionaries from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including science, technology and engineering, was assembled to crack the scientific and technological breakthroughs necessary to make this technology possible. This team of dedicated men and women who have very diverse ethnic, religious and political backgrounds were able to set aside their differences for the common benefit of mankind. With a focused mission, they accomplished what no one else has — the ability to harness an unlimited source of energy from the molecular structure of water. An achievement that will change the face of energy as we know it.

But it isn't the recognition, fame or fortune that motivated the Genesis team to pursue this challenge. In fact, they desire to remain in the background, letting the technology receive the attention. Rather, it is their passion to make a positive difference in the world that compels them. To provide the world's people with access to a low cost, abundant energy resource. To protect the earth's natural resources from depletion and pollution. And to invest in future generations through the support of educational, environmental and charitable causes, and the perpetual advancement of this technology.

Call it fate or divine inspiration, but the Genesis team knows that every aspect of this journey came together by design. From every team member and each successful milestone, to the amazingly short development process — this scientific breakthrough is nothing short of a miracle.

Brian's manuscript reading

click to enlarge
Over Christmas I did a complete reading of my 450 page "Return to the One" manuscript to a wonderfully attentive audience. No one budged from their chair, asked for a bathroom break, or even made a sound. Many thanks to my daughter, Celeste, for lining up most of these folks. She's known them since she was a little girl, and might even be able to still remember their names.

Stephen Hawking and me

Watching the "60 Minutes" piece about Stephen Hawking last Sunday, I came to realize that Stephen and I have a lot in common. To wit, I've read every page of "A Brief History of Time" and so, I must presume, has Stephen. The reporting was that millions and millions of copies of this book have been sold, but only a few dozen have actually been read (a slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not by much). "This is a book," said a minister with a sense of humor, "that you buy and put on the shelf, never to be looked at again, like the Bible."

I've also read Hawking's new book, "The Universe in a Nutshell," from cover to cover, so this must put me in even more exalted company. However, since evidently I like to read books that few other people read, the disturbing implication is that I like to write books that few other people would want to read. This isn't new news for me. It just reinforced my resolution to keep my writing as simple and straightforward as possible.

I've finished my initial attempt at rewriting my first book, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder." I took out a lot of unnecessarily complex stuff, and toned down the preachiness and moralizing. Now, I'm making my way through the 450 pages of "Return to the One," my new book about Plotinus's spiritual/mystical teachings, trying to look at the book afresh through a typical reader's eyes.

It's pleasurable, in a painful sort of way, to take out a pen and cross out passages that I labored to write, and rewrite. This bears not a little resemblance to spring cleaning, when you peruse all the beloved crap that has accumulated in your house and summon up the guts to start throwing it in the garbage can. The first few tosses, you wonder "But maybe I should keep this..." Soon, though, it feels better to get rid of what you don't need, than to hang on to it. Same with writing.

What's sustainable?

The Buddhist conception is that everything changes, continously. This rings true for me. The earth is changing; society is changing; the people around me are changing; I'm changing. Nothing is sustainable, in the sense of unchanging. The best we can do is flow with change, to manage it as best we can inside and outside of ourselves. So, when I look at the colorful maps of Sustainable Fairview in the master plan, this doesn't look like anything real to me. It's a static picture, not a dynamic unfolding.

Those of us responsible for the development of Sustainable Fairview should spend some time pondering this question: Isn't this project is as much about flows of human interactions and communications as it is about flows of water, energy, building materials, and all that? Sustainability is a vibrant way of life, not an architectural/engineering blueprint. It's the inner essence, not the outer shell. This is what I'm looking forward to enjoying at Sustainable Fairview, not lifeless roads, buildings, and infrastructure. These physical entities merely are part of the means to the end of genuine sustainability.

Coyote debates

There was some good coyote debating going on at the Spring Lake Estates board meeting at our house last night. Laurel and I appreciated the concerns of the sheep-raisers, but we weren't convinced that shooting coyotes is the solution. Tim Jaskoski correctly pointed out that much research shows that killing coyotes does nada to reduce the coyote population, long-term or even medium-term. Some people have the anthropomorphic attitude that coyotes go up to the body of Joe Coyote, shot by an angry sheepowner, and say, "Ooops. We've got to get out of this neighborhood. Look at what happened to good ol' Joe."

Actually, research suggests that the more likely inner dialogue is, "Oh boy, Joe is finally out of the way. Now we can all move up a level toward the Alpha Coyote status we've been hankering for." At least, this is the male attitude. The females think, "Oh my, I've got to have more coyote babies now to keep our numbers up. Better get breeding."

Tim made a nice mini-speech about the seriousness of killing wildlife just because they inconvenience a few people. Heck, deer inconvenience our garden plans. Does that mean we should feel free to kill them whenever they eat a flower in our yard? People move to the country, then they expect it to be as tame as the city. Look around, people. There are deer, and coyotes, and poison oak, and things that go bump (and hoot/howl) in the night. It's wildness that makes rural life different than city life. As someone who likes nature to be natural, I just can't understand why anybody would move out to Spring Lake Estates, and want to keep everything mowed, trimmed, sanitized, and wildlife free. Doesn't that sound like the city, which we all wanted to escape from?

Backhoes are beautiful

Everyone in Spring Lake Estates should extend a huge "thank you!" to Craig Snively and his backhoe. With the help of several neighbors, Craig and company enlarged the "emergency" spillway on the right side of the dam, which currently is pretty much the main spillway--with the trickle tube partially blocked. So far, it looks like the water is flowing out faster than it is flowing in, which is a good thing, obviously. If the reverse happens (water coming in faster than it goes out), grab your shovels! (or, better, Craig's backhoe)

13 Conversations About One Thing

We watched this movie on DVD last night, and ended up with the familiar art film feeling of, "Ah, that was interesting, though not particularly pleasant; now we're even more confident that life has no answers, as if we didn't know that before." It is always refreshing, though, to have a movie end with all the loose ends still flapping, rather than tying them up tidily like Hollywood usually does. And the theme, happiness, can't be beat. Who ever gets tired of trying to figure out this happiness thing?

Having written a book called "Life is Fair" (published non-commercially in India, and hopefully someday commercially in the good old USA), naturally I perked up whenever the theme of life’s fairness came up in this movie. Mostly, it was agreed that life is a crapshoot. Stuff just happens, and you can’t do anything about it. The physicist guy, played by John Turturro, was hung up on cause and effect, so I suppose he would have said that life is fair. He didn’t handle the effects that he caused very well, though.

The only person who stayed happy throughout the whole movie was the positive-thinking guy, the man who accepted everything that happened to him with a “gee, isn’t that great!” attitude. He, of course, irked his co-workers, and apparently had a string of 1-2 year jobs that ended when his permanent state of happiness made people around him miserable. Go figure.

The Hines’ recommend this movie, though you probably shouldn’t see it if you’re seriously disturbed about the seeming meaninglessness of life. “13 Conversations” will confirm your suspicion that the evident surface of life doesn’t make much sense. You add up everything apparent that you’ve done, or has happened to you, and the total won’t begin to equal your current situation. So, either life truly is unfair, or the fairness isn’t obvious from analyzing one life alone. I lean toward reincarnation—the effects of actions in past lives—as explaining life’s seeming unfairness. But the bumper sticker explanation, “shit happens,” has a lot going for it too.

Synchronicity, surely

One mere minute after posting the "13 Conversations" message below, in which I pondered questions about happiness, I opened up an email from my sister that contains the answers. Well, maybe. Carol Ann thought this column by Mark Morford from SF Gate.com sounded like me, maybe because it is titled, "Resolutions For The Damned For 2003: More veggies, louder orgasms and, of course, defy ShrubCo at every possible turn" Yeah, as a verbose vegetarian liberal I'm in favor of all three, so she's right. Most of the piece will irritate Bush-lovers, but the ending bits of advice hold true for everybody, I'd say.

Sustainable Fairview overview

We're looking forward to being part of the progress of Sustainable Fairview in 2003, and beyond. Here's an overview of the project, excerpted from the recently completed draft master plan. If you aren't familiar with Sustainable Fairview, whose name, blessedly, eventually will be changed to something better, it's worth taking a few minutes to read this summary.

I (Brian) have never been that much of an environmentalist, even though I'm married to a fanatic recycler, tree-planter, and defender of wildlife. Periodically I manage to take our tin cans, glass, and cardboard to the local drop-off site, but that has just about been the extent of my commitment to saving the earth. However, my involvement with Sustainable Fairview (we're members/investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates, the group developing the property) has helped to open my eyes to the Green side of life. Later I'll try to remember to share some eco-books that have also broadened my vision.

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