Just call me Admiral!

As many of you know, I like sailing, and I like sailing fast. I've had my beautiful power boat WaveGuide up for sale for more than two years now with the plan of buying a sailboat as soon as WaveGuide sells. But the economy being what it is, it's a buyer's market out there. So what did I just do? I joined the buyer's side, and snapped up not one, but two two Hobie Cat 16's, bringing my boat ownership up to three (four if you count the dinghy on WaveGuide). So with a fleet that size, you can call me Admiral!

Yesterday Megan and I delivered them up to the Cabin in the Woods. As I've noted before, the CITW is also near a couple of lakes, and what better way to enjoy those lakes than to go sailing? Here's a shot of the catamarans (there are two on the trailer) just before tucking them into my garage.

I bought the two Hobie 16's and a trailer on Craig's List last week. They looked like a pretty good deal. One is complete and more or less ready to go with lots of new rigging, while the other is disassembled, but all the parts (some new, some used) are there. I'll put them together, and we'll have some racing on Fish Lake!

Who knows? We could soon become YouTube stars!



It's more likely I'll end up in this kind of video.

Toyota and Torture

I've been struck by all the heat that Toyota is taking for its "unintended acceleration" problem. There have been at least 34 deaths linked to Toyota's accelerator in the last ten years in the USA.  Whether or not Toyota is the cause, let's assume it is. What have they done about it? Recalled something like 9,000,000 vehicles, spent 100's of millions of dollars, watched sales collapse, apologized to Congress, and suffered incredibly bad press and public outrage for weeks.

And a quick aside - Why is it that only Americans suffer this fate? Toyotas are sold all over the world, yet a quick Google search didn't find any reports of deaths elsewhere in the world. Why does Toyota hate America?

As for torture, over 100 detainees have died in military or CIA custody in the last ten years. Dozens are missing or unaccounted for. Recently released internal CIA documents could be called Waterboarding for Dummies. It's truly a chilling read. Here's a taste:

"The doctors were also present to monitor the detainee "to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress." A leaked 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross says that meant the detainee's finger was fixed with a pulse oxymeter, a device that measures the oxygen saturation level in the blood during the procedure. Doctors like Allen say this would allow interrogators to push a detainee close to death – but help them from crossing the line."  

Doctors were present!! Doesn't this violate every oath a doctor takes? Where is the outrage from the medical profession, let alone the public?? Specially designed quick-tilt gurneys, medical professionals, emergency tracheotomies were all part of the officially sanctioned waterboarding procedure. What happens with the press? The story gets buried in the blogosphere.

What's the connection between  Toyota and torture? None really, but if the numbers are to be believed, your chances of being tortured to death by the CIA are about three times that of dying in a runaway Toyota.

Avatar

Daughter Megan and I went to see Avatar 3D this afternoon. I don't remember the last 3D movie I saw, but in this one, the effects were really impressive. Not only was the scenery amazing, but there were floaty things (bugs, pollen, whatever) in the jungle that sometimes appeared to come from behind me. Truly spectacular.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that this is the most expensive moralistic cliché-ridden piece of Hollywood crap I've ever seen. It was a Western; it was a war story; it was sci-fi; it was a love story; it had evil capitalists; it had virtuous natives. Did I miss anything? Oh, did I mention the movie was long? After an hour I was thinking, "Get on with it." After two hours I was saying, "Doesn't this thing get any better?" After three hours, I was saying, "Enough already!" But I stuck it out for another 40 minutes, just to say I did it. No wonder the Academy said no to Avatar. You can too. Take my advice and save yourself the $12 it costs for a mid-week matinée.

As for the Best Picture of 2009, of the nominees I've seen, Up in the Air is my pick. It was funny and sad; George Clooney and Vera Farmiga had sexy chemistry; and Anna Kendrick was the perfect annoying recent MBA college grad. The best part is that it wasn't a predictable, feel-good movie where everything works out in the end. I liked this movie a lot. It deserved more recognition than it got.

Oscar nominations

Even though I can really enjoy a good movie, I'm not much of a film buff, and I don't really care all that much about the Oscars. But I did see a couple of Oscar-nominated films in the last few days that are worth a mention.

The first one was Crazy Heart, a movie I was totally prepared to love. I like Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and I love down and dirty country music. In the final analysis I liked the movie, but didn't love it. Jeff Bridges did a great job as a down and out whiskey and nicotine soaked C&W singer-songwriter, even singing his own songs, but maybe it was too good a job. I could almost smell the booze and tobacco and BO on Bridge's character and found it unbelievable that a classy woman like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character could ever jump in the sack with him. Megan the Elder watched the movie with me and concurred totally. I also like Robert Duvall's work, and was surprised to hear that he can even sing a bit, but this movie was in many ways a remake of Duvall's 1983 movie Tender Mercies. Crazy Heart was pretty good, but I liked Tender Mercies more.

I am a big fan of Coen Brother's movies and was anxious to see A Serious Man. It certainly was a classic Coen Brothers movie with a somewhat odd plot, quirky characters, and plenty of dark humor. As with many of their other movies, I laughed out loud at times and was well entertained, but at the end of the movie wasn't quite sure I got it.

I haven't seen enough of the Oscar-nominated films to make any educated guesses as to who will win what.  Lack of knowledge doesn't usually stop me from making my opinions known, but I guess in this case I don't really care enough.

Stuff that scares the crap out of me

Here are a couple of items that popped up in the news recently that make me wonder if there is any hope.







Check out the Army of God story here, and check out their website here.




And then every liberal's favorite conservative David Brooks writes this:

"About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

Today, another social movement has arisen. The people we loosely call the Tea Partiers also want to destroy the establishment. They also want to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution." 

To equate the counter-cultural movement of the 60's with the Tea Partiers is the height of intellectual dishonesty. As I recall, the protest movement of the 60's was ignited by the core concerns of an unjust war and civil rights. The war eventually ended and civil rights, both for blacks and women took a huge leap forward. Sex and drugs and rock'n'roll were fringe benefits. 


What unites the Tea Partiers? Taxes, loony conspiracy theories, and a racist-fundamentalist-nihilist-apocalyptic Christianity that smells a lot like the Taliban. And they all have guns.


It's hard to imagine anything good (or fun) emerging from it.




Ps. For the best-ever take down of David Brooks, read this piece by Matt Taibbi. Here's a taste:

I’m always afraid to write about David Brooks, because I worry that my attitude toward this guy is colored by certain strong feelings I have about his appearance — he just looks like a professional groveler/ass-kisser, and every time I see him in public I have to fight off visions of him home at night in his Versace jammies, feverishly jacking off with one hand while caressing in the other an official invitation to, say, a White House event, or a Harvard Club luncheon.

It was a busy weekend

On Saturday, I got up dark and early to take my boat over to Brownsville to meet Dan and the crew of Great White at 8AM to go racing in The Jim DePue Memorial Race on Puget Sound. It's times like this that I love my boat! It's about 17 NM from Elliot Bay to Brownsville, and it only took me an hour to get there. If I'd gone by car, I'd have a drive, a ferry ride, and another drive, and far more than an hour to get there.

Like the forecast for the Toliva Shoals Race, the forecast was for light winds and rain. As it turned out the winds were great, and the rains never got past the drizzle level. We had a good race, coming third across the line even though we bumped one of the marks and had to do a penalty 360. By the time the times are corrected for handicaps, we'll have finished third or fourth. Thanks to Dan for another opportunity to race!

We even got back to Brownsville in time for me to make it back to Seattle in daylight. That was a good thing because there was a lot of debris in the water which would have made for a very stressful trip back in the dark. So I got back to the dock, washed down the boat, teamed up with Megan, and headed for the Cottage in the Woods.

Weekends just don't get any better!

Thin Ice

As planned, we went up to The Cottage in the Woods armed with skates prepared to practice our moves on Fish Lake. Alas, it was not meant to be. The last week was warm and sunny, and the lake, which last week was covered with ice fishermen and skaters, had turned slushy, and no one dared venture out on the ice.

Here's the "rink" in the late afternoon sun.

Megan practicing her moves on the deck.

The spirit and flesh were willing, but the weather was weak. We had hot cocoa anyway, and had a wonderful time pretending that we'd had wonderful day pirouetting and carving graceful turns on the ice. Oh well, there's always next year.