Cease to speak, that I may speak. Shush now. -Bono (Ps 46:10)
Renee and I went to Portland last spring. I’d like to share my itinerary and a few thoughts along the way. Please join me.
First stop was Woodburn for the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. While festive and pretty, the tulips were a bit shy, and we were about 8-10 days premature to see the acres and acres of blooming tulips of multiple variations. We ended up walking a little bit, taking some silly pictures, buying a gift for Doris, and having lots of fun breathing the cool and fresh air. That was probably the most delightful part for me: standing in the wide valley, a slight breeze blowing by, the imminent blossoming of millions of flowers a few short days away. It was like birth, only we experienced the contractions, not the actual birth. But the birth would have been fun . . .
As we were leaving the valley, we stumbled into Mt. Angel, a beautiful little German town surrounding an enormous cathedral, in the shadow of a large abbey on the hillside. It looked like a great place to take a silent retreat for a few days.
Next, back to Portland, where we checked in to our hotel RIGHT ON THE RIVER! My wife booked a beautiful room at the River Place hotel, which is right off the dock and next to that trail that runs for miles along the river. Really nice. After we unpacked, our stomachs told us it was time for dinner, so we trekked down to Salvador Molly’s for a multi-cultural culinary experience--and to try their Great Balls of Fire, which are locally world famous, and have appeared on The Travel Channel’s Man v. Food. To get on the wall, you have to eat five of these infernal orbs, so, just to be crazy, we ordered one to see how hot it really was. I’m not one prone to exaggeration, but seriously, this was probably one of the hottest things I’ve ever consumed. I burned. Just burned, from my lips all the way into my stomach, it warmed me for the rest of the evening.
The next morning, we went for a long walk along the river and over to the Market, which was fun . . . rainy and cold, but fun. We are finding that Portland has weather that makes people think of Seattle; in other words, when people think it’s really crappy and rainy in Seattle, they are really thinking about Portland. About halfway through this rainy day, we were wishing we were back home in Seattle. We spent the afternoon warming up in the hotel’s spa. That was fun, but like a St. Bernard, once I get hot, I am miserable, so I’m not the best spa companion.
Next, off to the 2009 NPC Vancouver Bodybuilding & Tanji Johnson Fitness Competition to see Renee’s trainer, Tanji, and watch some of the women Renee trains with compete in the figure competitions. It was quite entertaining. I can’t remember another occasion in which I felt skinny and fat simultaneously, but there I was, sitting in the fourth row, feeling both, watching the greased and ultra-tanned flexitudinous competitors parade across the stage for two hours.
I got over the fatness quickly following the show, when we drove back into town and found a little gem called Rogue Distillery & Public House, an Oregon tradition and quickly drowned my sorrow in the Kobe beef sampler platter, followed by the Kobe chili. That made it all better.
Sunday was a big day. We started it off by worshiping at the house of Voodoo Doughnut near the Burnside bridge, where, on a tip from both Anthony Bourdain and Timothy Pynes, we tried the Bacon Maple Bar offering sitting innocently behind the counter. A simple enough design: a raised elongated doughnut, topped by maple glaze, under two strips of bacon. It was exquisite, truly ingenious, and captured all the smell and taste of a pancake breakfast--all in a compact size that fits in the palm of your hand. The first bite was nearly as delicious as the last. I will return, Voodoo Doughnut . . . I will return, and I will ask you to put an “s” on the end of your name.
With the taste of maple still lingering, we made our way over to Powell’s City of Books, which is really the best book store in the US, or darn close: used and new books right on the same shelf--genius. It truly is a city, and we parted ways: Renee to cooking and babies, me to Literature, History, and Psychology. I found an awesome book on geometry, a used Portable Jung, and Yalom’s classic, “Love’s Executioner.” Renee found Anthony Bourdain’s debut, which she read aloud on the way home, Shakespeare’s Kitchen, and a Dorothy Parker reader.
Finally, we made our way out of town, with one last stop: a little breakfast joint temptingly named “Gravy.” OK, if you’re going to name your restaurant “Gravy,” you had better make room for me, because I want some, and I want it now. I mean, come on, it’s GRAVY! Naturally, we had to try a biscuit with gravy, and it was but in all honesty, I think I’ve had better in a small roadhouse off the highway in Stapleton, NE. But they did have an awesome beef and pepper hash, which turned in to three meals for my little sidekick (Renee) and me.
Back to Seattle for some sunshine! All-in-all, a great weekend.
I bought my wife a white elephant gift this past Christmas. The perfect white elephant gift--strange, useless, absurd . . . yet all of those qualities somehow eluded me when I made the purchase.
You see, there is nothing like inadvertently buying a white elephant gift. It all seemed reasonable and perfectly sound at the time.
But then again . . . when I opened the box (I had been awaiting its arrival for several days), a strange feeling started to fall over me . . .
. . . I had been taken by a huckster.
Worse: I swallowed it . . . hook, line, and sinker.
This changed the barometer of my short drive home. Instead of bringing my wife something beautiful, exciting, and useful, I fully realized that I was delivering a manifestation of absurdity.
There's nothing like having a lot of pride in your overall intelligence and worldly wisdom, and then opening up a box and realizing that you are just a pitiful fool, like everybody else. Yes, it's painful. But it's a good pain, like a root canal. There was something rotting beneath the surface that needed to be re-routed or extracted. Or maybe I just stepped on a thorn that made me stumble off my path enough to ensure that I didn't fall into a hole. God (or even the natural law of the universe) has a way of prodding us so that we may avoid destruction. Something about life always struggles to keep us alive.
But let's be real: I will inevitably fall into that hole, limping and cursing the thorn in my toe.
Anybody who buys for their wife a shiny new set of yoga toes will surely not be astute enough to avoid such a calamity.
Yeah, you heard it right: yoga toes. Go check it out for yourself. They have their own domain. Go . . . and don't be afraid to buy your wife mini-vibrator up-sell.
http://www.yogatoes.com
Wow.
This little gem from Wiki. I like the counterargument. Yes, it's dubious.
Project leader Bonwick said, "Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans." Later he clarified:
Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 litre of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information.[10] A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2128 blocks = 2137 bytes = 2140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2140 bits) / (1031 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg. To operate at the 1031 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc², the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x1028 J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x1021 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x106 J/kg * 1.4x1021 kg = 3.4x1027 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.”
This claim is dubious, however, since the energy calculation is based not only on the storage capacity but also on the maximum possible calculation rate of 1051[12], reducing the calculation rate to, say, 1040 operations per second on 2140 bits would reduce the energy required to 1.2x1017 J -- perhaps enough to boil a small lake, but not the oceans. operations per second. Since the energy requirements are directly proportional to the calculation rate
****
Really, wouldn't we all want Moore's Law to continue forever?
1. Jeff Bonwick (September 25, 2004). "128-bit storage: are you high?". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2006-07-12.
Great thought out of one of the books I'm burrowing through (be it ever so slowly):Technical obsession is like an unlit, ever-narrowing mine shaft leading straight down through the human mind. The deeper down one plunges, the more fabulous, and often the more remunerative, the gems or ore. But the deeper down one plunges, the more confined and conditioned one’s thoughts and movements become, and the greater the danger of permanently losing one’s way back to the surface of the planet. There also seems to be an overpowering, malignant magic that reigns deep down in these shafts. And those who journey too far or stay down too long become its minions without knowing it--become not so much human beings as human tools wielded by whatever ideology, industry, force or idea happens to rule that particular mine. Another danger: Because these mines are primarily mental, not physical, they do not necessarily mar or even mark the faces of those who have become utterly lost in them. A man or woman miles down, thrall to the magic, far beyond caring about anything still occurring on the planet’s surface, can sit down beside you on a park bench or bleacher seat, greet you in the street, shake your hand, look you in the eye, smile genially, say “How are you?” or “Merry Christmas!” or “How about those Yankees?” And you will never suspect that you are in the presence not of a kindred spirit, but of a subterranean force.***I think this is why I'm going back to school. Fear of becoming weirder and out of touch with real life.
A few thoughts from T.S. Eliot on this snowy Sunday in Colorado:
The endless cycle of idea and action,Endless invention, endless experiment,Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,But nearness to death no nearer to God.Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuriesBrings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
[Warning: This message may contain some negativity. I typed this in a moment of sadness and disappointment. I don’t wish to disparage any candidates, really, and this comment applies across the board. I also realize I jeopardize my standing as a Christian for not mentioning either Jim Wallis, Brian McClaren, Pat Robertson, or Jim Dobson--somebody is bound to feel jilted.]
It looks like the election is shaping up to be quite a downer. There’s a strong possibility we will end up with the worst possible candidates from each party. Just another disappointment in a string of events that makes me lose all hope for the greatness of this country. Can you hear the national anthem in the background . . . waning? I guess what bothers me is that the people who are passionate about making a difference--on either end of the political spectrum--don’t stand a chance. Voters view them with suspicion, so we normally end up with the “safe” candidate, who will ensure the status quo, or worse, continue to drive this train into the ground.
Listening to these candidates spew out their rhetoric is almost comical, if it weren’t really happening. They can literally talk for hours and say absolutely nothing substantive. It’s quite a skill. There’s no use in complaining, really. One can be active about making choices or passively complain that whatever has fallen into one’s lap is their fate.
So, I thought I could get on the ticket in a few years by following the cues of masters of this art. I’m trying to boil this down into a couple of easy steps, what I like to call, “How to garner votes among the masses.” So, without further adieu, my list:
1. Choose a vague platform attached to an intangible notion; for example, "change." If you choose a clever enough word, other candidates will latch on and claim they are the true [intangible notion] candidate.
2. Promise to "fix" all the key issues of the day; for example, "We're going to fix healthcare, global warming, racism, employment, and end this war in Iraq!"
3. Make no provisions on how you would fix any one of these issues which have been broken for years.
4. Don't tell anybody that by "fixing," you mean throwing a bunch of money at the problem.
5. Don't tell anybody the source of that unlimited font of cash.
6. Don't mention any issues that the other party finds key in implementing as ways of fixing your key issues, such as securing the border, stopping illegal immigration, reducing our reliance on foreign oil, reducing the tax burden, protecting the unborn, increasing the strength of the American military, establishing fair export laws, keeping jobs in the U.S., and much more. How can each party ignore every issue the other party is talking about? Why is Hillary a racist and Obama is sexist? Have these issues even been mentioned on the other side?
7. Draft Hollywood into the service of your campaign. Americans will believe anything a celebrity tells them, because they so pitifully stupid they can't recognized that a multi-millionaire Hollywood elite has about as much in common with the average voter as a life-long Washington politician. Both experience a drastically different world than the average voter.
8. At all costs, avoid your own voting record. Never talk about what you have done, but what you will do, even if it’s 180 degrees from what you’ve done in the past. Accuse your opponents of “negative attacks” when they remind voters of your actions.
9. Pander like you mean it. Promise healthcare to seniors, schooling to the young, more money to the middle class, subsidies to big business, welfare to the unemployed, continued funding to the U.N., deregulation to industry, increased protection to government workers, jobs for all citizens and citizens of other countries, funding to harvest embryos for their stem cells, utopia to environmentalists, family values to evangelicals. Nobody would think of putting two and two together . . .
11. Never mention that a strong national identity and defense makes any of this possible.
12. How many ways can you slice a dollar? Apparently, there’s enough to go around, without cutting programs or raising taxes . . .
But alas, it’s too late for 2008. I’ll go and pinch my nostrils closed as I cast my vote in November, voting, once again, for the better of two mediocre choices.
This comes from somebody who tells everybody else to stop blaming the President for their problems. I’m caught up in this and I realize that I want my candidate to win, and if not, I’ll blame all my problems on the next president. Ugh.
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*One candidate said he would fix global warming. I guess he can fix the weather, solar flares, and finally put an end to the cola wars.
