Tatanka Part 2: A Costly Mistake

My wife wanted us to take a friend to see a Chinese art exhibit in San Francisco.  Being culturally clueless, I simply chose The Museum in San Francisco, which is the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.  Checking their exhibits online, it appeared to me that there was no Chinese art at the museum, but we went anyway.  A museum employee told us that we had gone to the wrong museum.  With more checking, it appears that we were really wanting the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.  The reason this mistake is costly is that I am now obligated to take my wife to the real location for the Terracotta warriors, which is in 西安 (Xi'an) China.  

Making the best of a disastrous situation, we went to the 17th century Dutch Masters special exhibit.  There were a large number of drawings and paintings with the highlight being a work entitled "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer in 1665.  

After getting a closeup look at many of these Dutch paintings and then wandering the rest of the gallery, I could finally appreciate the superiority of their technique.  The eyes, nose and mouth were executed to a level of realism that simply could not be achieved by the other artists, while some of the other effects involving color and dynamic range would be extremely difficult to reproduce with photography. 

The art at De Young Museum comes from all over the planet, but two items stood out for special notice that were both more than 100 years old.  The first below is a representation of the Sioux Lakota Indian Sun Dance.  The second is of Indians hunting the bison.  The horse was first brought to America by the Europeans a century before the Dutch Masters were painting.  From Fanny Kelly's book, the Indians used steel arrow heads sold to them by the English in Canada, and then there were pots and kettles sold to them by American traders.

Tatanka

For those of you who haven't watched "Dances With Wolves" five times, "tatanka" is the Sioux (American) Indian word for the American Bison.  A  week ago I cooked some bison steaks, so this post is a bit in commemoration of that experiment.

My audio listening has taken me to Fanny Kelly's "Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians".  If Fanny were alive today giving lectures and it became known to a PC gentlewoman, the gentlewoman would go into a red faced rage, followed by howling and screaming until she had successfully acquired Fanny's scalp.

Fanny was with her husband and daughter on a journey west when their wagon train was, um, greeted by Indians.  When the events were done, the men were dead except for those who somehow got away, and Fanny was taken captive with her daughter.  What the Indians couldn't take was burned.  Later her daughter was murdered and scalped.  Fanny had the relative good fortune to be taken by the chief, who was 75 years old, a cripple, and not in a position to molest her.  She initially looks forward to meeting the women, but then learns about Indian harem life where a strict pecking order is enforced through the most violent means.  The ordeal lasted 5 months and included severe hardship as the Indian group was chased by government soldiers and lost much of their provisions just as winter was setting in.

Fanny gives this analysis of the PC types from her day:

"I had read of the dusky maidens of romance; I thought of all the characters of romance and history wherein the nature of the red man is enshrined in poetic beauty.  The untutored nobility of soul, the brave generosity, the simple dignity untrammeled by the hollow conventionalities of civilized life, all rose mockingly before me, and the heroes of my youthful imagination passed through my mind in strange contrast with the flesh and blood realities into whose hands I had fallen.   ...   Truly, these pictures of the children of the forest that adorn the pages of the novelist are delightful conceptions of the airy fancy, fitted to charm the mind.  They amuse and beguile the hours they invest with their interest; but the true red man, as I saw him, does not exist between the pages of many volumes."

Here is a critique of the modern notion that the Indians treasured oneness with nature:

"Cruelty is inherent in them, and is early manifested in the young, torturing birds, turtles, or any little animal that may fall into their hands. They seem to delight in it, while the pleasure of the adult in torturing his prisoners is most unquestionable."

And here is another mix of political incorrectness:

"One fair little boy, who, with his mother, had just returned from Fort Laramie, came close to me.  Finding the squaw could speak a few words in English, I addressed her, and was told, in reply to my questions, that she had been the wife of a captain there, but that his white wife arriving from the East, his Indian wife was told to return to her people; she did so, taking her child with her.  The little boy was dressed completely in military clothes, even to the stripe on his pantaloons, and was a very bright, attractive child of about four years. 

It was a very sad thought for me to realize that a parent could part with such a child, committing it for ever to live in barbarous ignorance, and rove the woods among savages with the impress of his own superior race, so strongly mingled with his Indian origin."

We also get to learn about other juicy things, like the Dog Feast where Man's Best Friend became Man's Best Stew.  Then there was the scalp dance where Fanny was compelled to hold up a  stick with scalps on it while the warriors danced around it.  All through this, however, Fanny maintains a Christian testimony.

I certainly recommend this as a great read for anyone who feels oppressed by the world.

Strange Traffic

A Change of Scenery

Critical Scholarship as applied to Jack and Jill

For those of you who might have some doubts about the value of studying for an advanced degree in Biblical Scholarship, I have included a copy of an article summarizing scholarly analysis of Jack and Jill.  By removing the analysis from the religious setting and applying it to something familiar, it should demonstrate the degree of seriousness and rigor required by modern scholars.

Verse 1: "Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water."

Analysis:

The word "and" presents some difficulties which are not apparent to the casual reader.  There is considerable doubt in the minds of most scholars as to whether Jack was actually accompanied by Jill, in the sense that the phrase is intended to record a historical event.

In setting out upon this expedition, which was apparently undertaken for a specific purpose, or, at least, with some definite object in mind, it seems likely that Jack was stimulated to undertake this mission by a basic need for water.  Since most functions in the home involving water, such as cooking, washing clothes, scrubbing floors, and so on, are normally undertaken by the distaff side, it is widely held that the force of "and" in this context probably means that Jack set out with a strong picture image of Jill in his mind, and several existential scholars also insist that her parting words were undoubtedly ringing in his ears.

Grosskopf, in his monumental essay entitled Jackmitjilldamrotarung, takes a contrary view.  He dates this passage considerably earlier than is generally believed (somewhere between 404 BC and the 19th Amendment). On this basis he maintains that the hewing of wood and the drawing of water was exclusively carried on by women at this period, and that the words "Jack and" are a gloss by some later copyist, and did not appear in the original manuscript.

"Went up the hill" is obviously allegorical.  The ancients, although probably ignorant of Otis' First Law of Elevation ("what goes up must come down"), were well aware that the transfer of water by artificial means normally involves transportation from an inferior to a superior position(c.f. "The Old Oaken Bucket," "Down by the Old Mill Stream, " etc.).  Professor Gard de l'Eau, the distinguished hydrographer and mystic, suggests that this anabasis symbolized man's struggle to rise nearer to ultimate unity with the cosmic.  The water, he continues, has precisely the same symbolism as the crossing of the Red Sea, the Jordan, Lindberg's trip across the Atlantic, and the landing on Omaha Beach in World War II, with which everyone is familiar.

Author unknown

Learning English to learn Hebrew

The third semester of Hebrew is moving on.  This one is pushing us to do academic level text analysis of Hebrew sentences, which I suppose is ideally necessary for a theologian.  Thus, we aren't really immersed in the language, but more feeling like we have one toe in the language and most of the work involves comparisons and touches the disciplines of linguistics and semantics.  A major work that we have, the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia (BHS) is a Hebrew Bible, but in the footnotes it has a list of every point where ancient sources deviate from the semi-official Masoretic text of the Hebrew.  That can come from dozens of different documents, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and - as if this isn't enough - we have a Samaritan Pentateuch and Syriac Targums.  Most verses will have some point where a stroke is different across the 100 or so original documents, and then we have to analyze it to death.

Next, we have to start dissecting the grammar.  This is what I hated most in school, but now it is done at a new level.  Most of my vocabulary learning this semester is due to this:  "genetive", "dative", "cohortative", "inclusio", "causative", "factative", ...  They aren't exactly Hebrew words.  Hopefully three months will go by quickly.

Regarding Chechens and Caucasians

Recent events demand that I make a post on this subject, yet I fear being redundant.  Still, I am a Caucasian, and those of us who come from this region must periodically come face to face with our heritage.

"The sea called Euxine, or hospitable, is belied by its nature and put to ridicule by its name. Even its situation would prevent you from reckoning Pontus hospitable: as though ashamed of its own barbarism it has set itself at a distance from our more civilized waters. Strange tribes inhabit it—if indeed living in a wagon can be called inhabiting. These have no certain dwelling-place: their life is uncouth: their sexual activity is promiscuous, and for the most part unhidden even when they hide it: they advertise it by hanging a quiver on the yoke of the wagon, so that none may inadvertently break in. So little respect have they for their weapons of war. They carve up their fathers' corpses along with mutton, to gulp down at banquets. If any die in a condition not good for eating, their death is a disgrace. Women also have lost the gentleness, along with the modesty, of their sex. They display their breasts, they do their house-work with battle-axes, they prefer fighting to matrimonial duty. There is sternness also in the climate—never broad daylight, the sun always niggardly, the only air they have is fog, the whole year is winter, every wind that blows is the north wind. Water becomes water only by heating: rivers are no rivers, only ice: mountains are piled high up with snow: all is torpid, everything stark. Savagery is there the only thing warm—such savagery as has provided the theatre with tales of Tauric sacrifices, Colchian love-affairs, and Caucasian crucifixions." - Adversus Marcionem, by Tertullian (160-225AD)

A Fishing Story

"For man does not know his time.  Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them." - Ecclesiastes 9:12

I started swimming once a week beginning in March when the water temperature got back up to the 50's.  Now it is up to 60, so we have more swimmers and I can get a partner for weekday swims.  This morning we did 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) in the lake.  On the last leg back, I was intent on getting back and found myself tangled in a fisherman's line.  He wasn't too happy and gave me a gentle scolding for not paying attention.  I though I had enough distance between me and his boat, but the line went out a ways.  Anyway, a bit of patience allowed me to untangle and get moving.  On arriving at the shore, I found out that the lady who was swimming just ahead of me had almost swam into the boat.  We are required to swim with at least one partner and it worked out to be just the two of us this morning.  Thus, I can understand the fisherman's reaction a bit better.

There was a group of a dozen or more swimmers in wet suits all preparing to start swimming just as we were getting dry.  The leader of the group announced the route.  It would lead straight into the fisherman.

One class done, but another to go ...

The first class was the 90 30-minute modern Hebrew audio lessons.  Today I completed the 90th lesson.  These are from Pimsleur.  I have been listening to the new ones twice each time, plus reviewing an earlier one twice, which works out to 2 hours of practice per day.  Certainly a lot of progress has been made, but I have exhausted all their lessons.  Each lesson has about 5 new words, so this works out to a vocabulary of only about 450 words.  I would need about 360 lessons to get up to a sensible level at this rate.  Unfortunately, this is the end of the Pimsleur series, so I would need to find something else, like a tutor.  After today, I will continue with review at about an hour a day for another two months during my commute time, but this should be a lot less stressful than the first time through the material.

Meanwhile, the materials for the third semester of Biblical Hebrew have already arrived.  This will require an average of an hour and a half of work per day up until mid-August.  Since I can't do this during the commute, it won't conflict with the modern Hebrew review.  Onward ...

Engineers Rule, Got That?

Rummuser sent me this article entitled "What Happens When Engineers Run The World".  Since I am both an engineer and the official spokesman for engineering (note: all engineers think they are the official spokesman for engineering), I can't let this pass without comment.  The article begins by noting that 44% of high profile Islamic terrorists are engineers.  Needless to say, I am mostly honored to be part of a group that is out to change the world.  We have been doing this since the invention of the catapult, whereas modern hope & change sorts are really just a bunch of witless noobs who have been active for less than two centuries.  But I should admit that some of the terrorists did such a poor job that they really should have had their degrees rescinded.  The two highest profile terrorist engineers were Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat, both of whom weren't mentioned.  Note that they were, um, Civil Engineers, which undoubtedly explains their behavior better.

The article moves on to talk about "software engineers".  I am not at all convinced of the existence of this profession, and will note that most such folks call themselves "computer scientists".  We must keep in mind that a scientist is a degenerate engineer who doesn't actually accomplish anything, but likes to take credit for whatever the engineers actually do achieve.  But admittedly, the programmers also have a mind to change the world, just like the real engineers.  The main difference is that the real engineers agitate on behalf of Sharia Law, whereas Computer Scientists proudly fight for a utopia based on drugs, pimps and sex slave trafficking.  Then there are the softwear engineers.  We won't discuss what they do.

The Engineers Rule article is still too Anglo-centric and misses some key facts, like the Chinese leadership mostly consisting of engineers.  In Israel several of the leaders had technical backgrounds.  Undoubtedly more research is needed on this subject.  Meanwhile, I am expecting that western politicians will figure out that they can easily upgrade their status as whiny lawyers by reclassifying themselves as Polemic Engineers.

St. John's Easter Sermon

Since there were some remarks regarding the Easter Service that our president attended along with those who followed him, I thought it might be fun to listen to this.  The preacher was Dr. Luis Leon of Saint John's Episcopal Church in Washington.  The sermon only lasted about 15 minutes, which is about half to one third of the length that typical sermons require in the churches I am familiar with.

The theme of Dr. Leon's talk was that of letting go of the past.  This is something that I believe in as well, but there were a few missing steps.  That is, the message of Christianity is 1) Acknowledge sins, 2) Repent, 3) Seek a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ and 4) let go of the past.  Steps one through three are all skipped in Dr. Leon's version.

Looking at step 4), however, things get more interesting.  In Christianity, we are supposed to let go of our sinful past to live a new life leading to holiness.  We are to forgive others because God forgave us.  For Dr. Leon, we are letting go of the pain that we experienced as victims.  Sin isn't something that we have to deal with, except as it exists in other who annoy us.  And transform into what?.  The lecture transformed into rants about those conservatives who want blacks to stay in the back of the bus, immigrants to stay on the other side of the border, ...  Having just seen a bus driving along empty, the "letting go" metaphor might be more appropriate for Dr. Leon.  Today's bus is empty so a black can sit in any seat she wants except the driver seat.  This conservative has both married an immigrant and been an immigrant.  The black community has been given everything conceivable to help them succeed, except for the most important thing:  Healthy families according to God's design.  The country can't absorb immigrants when leftists are deliberately destroying the economy.  When are leftist pastors going to "let go" of leftover leftist rhetoric inherited from earlier ages?

Of course the theme was a broader one of letting go of the moral traditions and theological truths of the past and embracing what is new. This leaves me wondering if there is any religion or philosophical system - other than Silicon Valley culture - that really honors the new just because it is new.  The Bible teaches us "there is no new thing under the sun" - Ecclesiastes 1:9.  Most of the classical philosophical systems embraced a circle or repeated patterns.  Other religions assert the repetition of things as well. From what source does Dr. Leon get his sanctification of the new for the sake of newness?  And is dumping traditional morality (i.e. natural virtue, per the philosophers) for unnatural relations really anything new?

But as the Bible says:  "Not many of you should become teachers,  my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly" - James 3:1.  And so I too must start with being careful about what I teach and study hard to make sure that I have my facts correct and double and triple checked.

A Whale of a Time?

My apologies for the inadequate photo, but there is a bit of the whale sticking up exactly in the center.  The first time she popped up I wasn't ready for a picture.  After a few seconds to breathe, she went back under for a few minutes, and then showed up several hundred yards further down.  The telephoto wasn't good enough to really zoom in, and even if it was, I probably wouldn't have been able to center it quickly enough.  

Devil's Slide

Yes, Devil's Slide is the original name of the point in the distance.

This is California Highway 1 looking northward to an area just south of San Francisco where the road has a way of slipping down the mountain and into the ocean periodically.  A new tunnel was just opened, so we had to do a bit of civil engineering tourism and drive to see it.  Unfortunately, there aren't any good parking areas right by the tunnel, so I couldn't get a closeup photo.  

Per California's constitution, everyone had to get into the act on this tunnel, with the result that the final cost was $430 million and 6 years of construction.  For a two lane highway.   The cost is about 1/10th to 1/20th of the greatest tunnels, like the Channel Tunnel.  The 6 years for construction, however, was truly world class.  It was quite a sight and worth the excursion.

After the Rains

At The Cross

Cassette tapes to mp3

My wife had been rummaging through the old things in our house and located some old cassette players.  The thought we had was that it would be nice if some of the old tapes could be moved to mp3 files.  This actually proved not too difficult to do.  The recipe I used is as follows:

1. Get an appropriate male-to-male connector and route the output of the cassette play to the mic of the laptop.
2. Download Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net).  This will need an mp3 output add-on, but the software will walk you through this process.  Audacity is a fairly clean freeware program to my knowledge.
3. Insert cassette tape.
4. Fire up Audacity.
5. Hit the red record button on Audacity just as the Play button is pressed on the recorder.
6. Watch the squiggels go across the screen.  When you get tired of this, go relax and do something else until the cassette reaches the end.
7. Hit the yellow stop button.
8. Go to File->Export-> and follow the instructions for writing the mp3 file (and installing the mp3 file writing functions).

The example I have above is recording in mono mode since this is the format of the tape.  You can chose mono or stereo from Edit->Preferences->Devices->Mono.

Solyndra facility sold to Seagate

The Solyndra saga happened a few miles down the road from my house.  The idea was to set up a solar panel manufacturer in the world's most expensive manufacturing location to compete with China.  To make it work, more than $500 million of US taxpayer funds were committed.  Of course the whole thing unraveled immediately upon spending the last penny of government funds, which should have surprised no one.

The mammoth building is next to the highway and served as a monument to government waste.  As I passed the building yesterday, however, I noticed that it had a new sign up:  Seagate.  Checking the internet, it seems that Seagate decided to buy up the building and use it for a new R&D center, which really is what Silicon Valley is all about now:  Researching new products so that somewhere else in the world - with sensible labor policies - can actually build them.   The quick look indicates that there were no obvious government shenanigans on this.  It actually represents something positive for the local neighborhood.  The deal went through for $90 million for the 30 acre facility.  I suspect that land in Fremont is worth on the order of $3 million per acre, so they probably got the fancy building for the price of the dirt that it sits on.

Hebrew Bootcamp Continued

Today is lesson 57 of 90 with my Pimsleur series of modern Hebrew tapes.  I am a bit surprised at how far it has gone.  My goal is somewhat being realized, in that many of the modern Hebrew words are related to the Bible.  For example, we learn to say, "Excuse me, can you help me?" in Modern Hebrew, but the word for help, azer, is used many times in the Bible as in "Help us, O Lord" or in the name, Eliezer, which means God is my help.  The purpose of this 90 days of Hebrew lessons is to drill myself on vocabulary so that it won't be forgotten and hopefully the grammar of the Biblical Hebrew will be more natural to me.  Yesterday the amount of studying was only an hour and a half, due to too many things happening, but the average has been more than 2 hours per day.

The tapes are teaching phrases like "You are driving much too fast, can you slow down?".  But there are still things missing, like, "You are driving like a $#@%&$# maniac, are you trying to get us all killed?".  That is probably left for the "advanced" series of lessons.  Only 33 more days of this to go.  Then my last semester of Biblical Hebrew will start.

Death at Alcatraz

The story of the death of a man during the recent Escape from Alcatraz triathlon generated some chatter with our open-water swim club.  Having done the swim several times myself, it is a bit of an attention grabber.

The Escape from Alcatraz is normally held in the summer, but was moved to March due to the America's cup being held in the San Francisco Bay this summer.  Yes, the San Francisco Bay is getting crowded with sporting events.  Swimming in March means that the water is a few degrees colder, but really not that bad since it is the same as the lake where I train.  More importantly, triathlon swimmers all use wetsuits, but I swim without one, so they really shouldn't have a problem due to the cold.

Each time I did the Alcatraz swim the wave and wind conditions were different.  The last time was out to the island, around, and then back.  On the western side of Alcatraz facing the Golden Gate, the waves were full ocean sized and rough, whereas the usual conditions are smaller choppy waves in the channel between Alcatraz and San Francisco where the triathlon is held.  This time the conditions must have been quite severe, since 150 swimmers out of 2,000 were pulled from the water.  On my around the island swim, a few of us were pulled and moved, but this was due to the much longer time needed for this out, around and back event together with the changing tides.

Most Alcatraz swims are for those who are focused on swimming for their primary training.  The triathlon brings in a good number of those who really aren't swimmers, but can swim a mile in the pool.  Throwing them into the rough water with minimal open water experience will quickly put them into a panic mode, especially since there is no where to retreat to once you jump off the boat.  Add in the usual pre-race adrenaline rush, and the heart is going to be under a bit of stress.