SWCAMBORNE

The fish have grown.

The water lilies are thriving.

The stream is flowing.

Life is good.

But, of course, there are still lots of areas for improvement.

Like what to do about squirrels in the bird feeder.

The modern art of henge installations began in 1998. During June of that year Nurit, Rebecca and I visited the original Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in England.

It was raining and we took a picture of group of tourists huddled under their umbrellas and called it umbrellahenge.

That winter Lillian and I and some loose synapses combined with a bag of potatoes to make potatohenge. The photos were terrific and we couldn’t wait to make more.

The next year David B. and I created brickhenge. We used the swimming pool to recreate how the ancient druids floated the stones to Stonehenge. We again took some great photos.

The next few years were spent discovering other enterprising hengers. Nurit and I visited Stonehenge of Maryville on the Columbia River and Rebecca and I almost visited Carhenge in Nebraska. Both of these are permanent structures and well worth visiting.

But we build henge installations. Non-permanent henges that are photographed, toasted perhaps oohed and aahed and then removed.

By far the most successful installation to date was cellphonehenge in April of 2006. It was created by Rebecca, Lillian and I and was heralded as establishing a new standard for henge installations. Click here to see the entire set of henge photo on Flickr.

New installations are being planned. It is possible that one Sunday in October 2006 we could install pighenge and laptophenge on the same day. A two-henge day! What a dream! Is it possible? Stay tuned for details.

This one is to promote Oktoberfest at Jovenes in Boyle Heights.  It qualifies because there is room on the back for a message.

“Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.”

Author Unknown

Here is an idea for anyone who has ever rented a vacation home or condominium.

Part of the reason for renting a condo rather than staying at a hotel is so that you can have the convenience and economy of doing some of the cooking. So when you arrive you go to the local market and stock up. It then becomes extremely irritating to have to buy a 16oz bottle of cooking oil or a 12oz ketchup because you know that you will use only a tiny portion of them. Somebody needs to put together and market, in Hawaii, Aspen and places between, a “Condo Condiments Pack.” It would include oil, salt, pepper, ketchup, mayonaise, mustard and something like Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. All in small sizes. The target price would be about ten to twelve dollars. Maybe some rental agents would supply it free as a builder of good will. Maybe someone like Lawry’s would take on the marketing.

Thanks to Cathe D. my barber (hair stylist?) for this idea.

This expression is taken from The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester.  He used it to describe one of the estimates for how long it would take to prepare the OED.  As I recall the estimate was 8 years and it actually took 50. Magnificently Wrong indeed.

A few weeks ago I read somewhere that if all of the ice cap on Greenland melted the oceans would rise 21 feet.

My initial reaction was disbelief. I quickly calculated in my head that it would only be a few inches. It turns out that I was wrong. Later I got some data from my Rand McNally Atlas and did the math and with worst-case assumptions I had the oceans rising 50 feet. With best case assumptions the oceans would still rise 20 feet. My friend David B., who is much more diligent than me, calculated that the rise would be 24.42 feet confirmed the data. So why was I so wrong?
First I am an extreme skeptic about global warming. I’m not convinced that the world is warming at all outside of its normal cycle. The reported rise may be the result of new instrumentation. I’m also not convinced that if global warming is happening humans cause it. And I am certainly not convinced that we should have the hubris to try and do anything about it. So it is easy to see that I was wrong about the mathematical effect of the ice cap on Greenland melting because I am looking for support for my “confirmation bias.”

There is another reason however. The environmentalist movement, that is now acting like “Henny Penny” about global warming, was the same group who were so “magnificently wrong” about DDT and about nuclear power. DDT was banned after Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring” linking DDT use to decreases in the number of birds. It now turns out that according to the Wall Street Journal a lot of the data Carson used was not correct and that DDT is the only economically effective way of controlling the spread of malaria in Africa and Asia. Tens of millions of children have died from malaria in the third world since DDT was banned.
Construction of nuclear power plants was stopped in the United States in the 1970’s as a result of “Three Mile Island”, where no one was killed and an active campus based political movement to stop building nuclear plants. The result is that the United States is now dependent on fossil fuels for 75% of its electricity while the French are making 80% plus of their electricity with nuclear power. With hindsight which policy seems to be wiser. Which policy, nuclear energy or no nuclear energy, would lower carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Which one would make a nation less dependent on imported oil?
These bad decisions by the environmental movement don’t show malfeasance, they only show that it is hard to choose policies that will stand the test of time. Cutting our standard of living now to try to affect the earth’s temperature at some point in the future seems to me to be another one of these bad choices.

If you doubt that the global warming movement is asking us to cut our standard of living read the last line of this story in the Pasadena Star News. The City Manager says that it will cost $100,000 a year to add a junior planner to make it possible for Pasadena to comply with the Kyoto protocol. One hundred thousand dollars is a cost of about $1.40 for each family in Pasadena. It means one less ice cream treat for a lot of children. Environmental conformity has a real current cost and an uncertain future benefit.

“It is a great problem to learn how to give without weakening the moral backbone of the beneficiary”

John D Rockefeller 1839-1937

Founder Standard Oil

Excellent news.  Photos are back.  Thanks to Matt G. for the much needed boost over the technology hurdle.