my sandbox

So way back when (maybe 3 weeks ago?), Victor and I went on a little wine-tasting jaunt, and I’m just now getting around to blogging about it.

Here’s our route:

Stop 1: Cline winery. The whole field trip was instigated by the fact that we belong to the Cline wine club, and we had just moved in the past 3-4 months, and our quarterly wine shipment was about to get sent out, and they didn’t have our right address. So we decided we might as well go up there and straighten it out and, you know, drink some wine. Cline has a separate little room for club members where you can taste whichever wine you want, rather than the schlock they have out for the sweaty masses (their schlock is actually very good, and I’m sure the masses are perfectly lovely. But it’s not every day that I get to be exclusive, so I’m playing it up). The reason we’re members of Cline is because their wine is really freakin’ good, so we were happy to sample several of their selections while there, and picked up our wine shipment in the meanwhile. They emphasize Zinfandels, but I particularly favor their Small-Berry Mourvedre, which is fruity, chocolatey, and tobaccoey, all in one. Like bundling a cigar and a chocolate bar together with a fruit rollup, and smoking it. Not that I’d do such a thing.

Stop 2 was Taft Street Winery. This has been a favorite of ours in the past, but on this visit we realized that the reason why it was a favorite was because of the Guy, and the Guy was gone. The Guy used to pour whatever captured his fancy, and tell you all about whatever it was, how it was grown on the rocky slopes so you could taste the mineral, yadda yadda. He was super chatty, and he picked out the good stuff to pour and he wanted to teach you about wine more than he wanted to monitor how much wine you were getting. This is probably why he’s been replaced by a robot. The robot only poured what’s on the tasting menu, which wasn’t very good, and she used the little pour spouts that measure a stingy little pour, and she didn’t say anything interesting. She just said what she’d been programmed to say, like “This would go great with grilled meats.” Which is pretty much what it says on the back of the bottle.

Saddened by stop 2, we moved on to stop 3. We like the wines at stop 3, but they’re kind of expensive so we just go there recreationally, and pay our $5 tasting fee without purchasing anything. Stop 3 is Sunce winery, and they have a Bocce ball court. The first time we went there, with Victor’s brother and his friend Susan G*****, we played Bocce, and they had just had a special event there so there was leftover food, so we ate some of the leftover food and finished off the wine in the bottles that had been left out for the event. So that was fun. The wine was still good, but there were no freebies, and playing bocce by our lonesomes under an overcast sky seemed uninviting, so we just tasted and went on our way.

Stop 4 is actually a restaurant. It’s Sooze’s wine bar and cafe and it’s in Petaluma, where we used to live. It’s one of our favorites: maybe 6 or 8 tables and a small bar, really intimate. Sooze’s is cool because they have half-price glasses of wine from 4-6, their wine list is well-chosen (I’ve not had a wine there that I haven’t liked), and the food is really good. We started with some oysters and something steely and white that I can’t remember the name of (I knew I should have written this post earlier). We had a bowl of olives, then I had the seared scallops with a pea-roasted garlic puree, that were just out of this world. I can’t remember what Victor had. Victor, what did you have? Anyway, for dessert we both got the molten chocolate cake, and I got a dessert wine recommended by the waiter, a Zinfandel that didn’t quite stand up to the dessert, so that was a little disappointing. They used to have this excellent Rosenblum “Rosie Rabbit” dessert wine that was excellent, like, I don’t know, sucking on rubies or something (maybe a more useful description would be, an intense berry jam flavor nicely balanced with a hint of acid), but it’s apparently gone.

Then we walked around a bit in the ol’ Luma, and Victor drove home, cause he wasn’t all drunk like me. Sometimes, Californ-I-A is aaallllright.

Dear blog readers,

How do I prevent Victor from putting his dumb motocross, NASCAR and surfing movies at the top of our Netflix queue so that my movies never move up, without doing something underhanded and vengeful like changing the password to our account?

-Kelly

P.S.  I love you, baby!

New England White by Stephen Carter.

This is Carter’s second novel, though he’s written a bunch of non-fiction books:  he’s a law professor at Yale.  I really liked his first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park and so I actually did something I rarely do:  I bought his 2nd book in hardcover within days of its release.

The premise of New England White, that of a murder mystery set among the black upper class against a backdrop of academia and politics, is similar to the first novel, but whereas The Emperor of Ocean Park featured strong characters whose identities stood up to the heavy themes of race, politics, morality, and family relationships that permeated the book, the characters in New England White just seem like carelessly drawn props.  He doesn’t really seem like he’s exploring any new territory.  This would be ok by me if the mystery itself were interestingly plotted, but I’m on page 400 of around 550 or so and the plot is dragging where it should be gathering speed for a climactic ending.

So, unfortunately, my impetuousness in rushing out to buy this book was not rewarded.  But, read The Emperor of Ocean Park:  it’s really good.

And, on the topic of reading, I just got a library card today and got out two books:  The Ruby in her Navel by Barry Unsworth and The Divine Economy of Salvation by Priscilla Uppal (yes, I only looked at books in the U section.  I should have gotten something by Leon Uris to round it out).  The first book is “a story of love and intrigue in the 12th century”.  The second book has something to do with nuns and girls’ boarding schools so I expect it will have predictably lesbian overtones.  But the author is Canadian, which for some reason is an obscure point in its favor in my way of reckoning, and it got lots of good reviews.

Last weekend Victor and I went banding in Yosemite.

We stayed with our buddy Bob, at his gracious and well-appointed field house in Groveland. The house’s main attraction was its large stone porch. Over the course of their field season many person-hours were logged on that porch by Bob and his field crew, and we did our best to boost the number during our visit.

This is a fairly typical scene.  Bob’s the one sucking down the beer; Ben was a member of Bob’s field crew this summer working on a willow flycatcher survey:

Of course, sitting on the porch was not in fact our primary mission. We banded some birds as well. We joined interns Craig, Bucky, Lanaye, and Jordan at Crane Flat and banded there for six hours. One of the highlights that day was a Lazuli Bunting:

When we band, we set up ten mistnets in established locations around the stations. We make a circuit to check the nets once every 40 minutes, and we extract whatever birds we come across as we’re doing our checks. That day, we had a rather impressive 23 birds in one net at the same time: it was pretty busy.

Here’s what a mistnet looks like:

I think I was taking a Lincoln’s sparrow out of the net in this picture but I’m not quite sure. Here’s what a bird caught in a net looks like:

Once we get the birds out of the nets, we bring them back to our banding station in small cloth bags. We put a band on each bird (unless it has been recaptured, in which case we record the band number) and determine the bird’s age and sex, along with some other data. The data goes to The Institute for Bird Populations, where Victor and I used to work. The data are used to estimate survivorship and productivity of the species that we catch: in other words, researchers at IBP can examine trends in populations of these birds with the banding data collected by folks at this station and around 500 others across North America.

Anyhoo, Victor went out with the interns the next day to Gin Flat, which is a higher elevation site. I hung back at the house cause the site was a hike-in, so we weren’t able to bring Arty (dogs are not allowed on trails in the park) and I didn’t want to leave him tied up outside all alone. But, the star of that day’s banding was a Williamson’s sapsucker, which I was sorry to miss as he’s a fairly impressive specimen:

So, there you have it.

Victor has been taking pictures of his clients at work. Here’s a sampling of the fine animals that frequent his establishment.

By the way, Victor has been elevated to the status of Manager-In-Training at Planet Pooch, after only 3 short months. He will assume the mantle of manager when the current holder of the position departs to run their new location in San Jose. Hurray for Victor!

Yesterday, at 4:42 am, half-awake, I felt the bed shake.  A fairly sharp jolt, then a second or two of gentle undulation.

I asked Victor:  “Did you feel that?”  No response.  “There was an earthquake!” Oh.  OK, Victor responds groggily.  Clearly thinking that I just had a dream or something.

I peeked at Arty, laying at the end of the bed.  Sound asleep.  I began to doubt my own senses, as the common “wisdom ” seems to hold that animals are sensitive to these sorts of things, and since last time I felt an earthquake (summer 2006, when Victor was in Alaska) Arty got all freaked out.

Victor rolls out of bed at around 6am.  From the living room I hear:  “Goddamnit!  GODDAMNIT!”  He comes charging back into the bedroom.  “You were right!”

“I know,” I respond, “What are we talking about, now?”

“The earthquake!  There was an earthquake!  It’s on the news!  Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I did wake you.  You didn’t seem to believe me.”

“No, I mean, why didn’t you wake me while it was happening?”

The quake was a 4.2 at its epicenter near Oakland, where 1400 households were without power for  a spell.  Nothing major; mostly just stuff falling off shelves and whatnot, but folks there reported that it felt pretty strong, and less undulating than your average quake.  Poor Victor was pretty disappointed that he missed out on another earthquake.  Ah well.  Our former boss seems to think that a big one is coming, so maybe Victor’ll get to experience that.

I’m a commuter, and I’m a typical bad commuter who drives my car, both ways, without carpooling or any such mitigating what-have-yous.  My round trip is around 59 miles/day, around 48 of which is highway miles.

A couple of weeks ago I started driving around 60-65 mph instead of my usual 75 miles per hour, just to see what sort of difference it made to my fuel efficiency.  My 1991 Honda Civic Wagon had been getting 34 mpg, but under this new regime it’s been getting 40 mpg (based on n=2 fillups).  Nice!

I computed how much I’m saving in gas per month:  the car is pretty much only used for commuting, and I drive 18 days per month, or 1062 miles.  Figuring an average gas price of 3.40/gallon, I was spending around 106.20/month on gas.  Now I’m spending around 90.27 on gas, a savings of 15.93/month.  Not bad.

So I got to go home early today from work.

First, we had a fire. This is the second brush fire in as many weeks that has come close enough to the Center to necessitate the stationing of a Fire Marshall on the premises to evacuate us in a timely fashion should the need arise. So we were on tenterhooks most of the afternoon, ready to grab our personals and go.

Then, in an anticlimactic sort of fashion, the power went out. It may have been cut by the fire department, but we didn’t get any warning if it was. After wandering around for a minute or two, the assistant director said, “I give up. Everyone just go home.” So I did. Yay!

Right now, according to weather.com, it is 68 degrees F in my town of Pacifica, CA.

In Pleasanton, which is 30 miles due east of here, it is 102 degrees F.

Granted, visibility here in Pacifica is about 100 feet or so.

Nonetheless: w00T!

Scott comments:

How does it work for you, Kelly? The more people that have believed something for more time, the more chance it has of being true? So your version of Pascal’s Wager should be to become a faithful member of whatever religion currently holds that title, and, should the demographics shift enough during your lifetime to make the title-holder switch, you should too?

How about Scientology? Many, many more people believe in all that bullshit than actually believe in the FSM. (Only the mentally ill actually believe in the FSM, right?) By your reasoning, that means that Scientology is ten thousand times more likely to be true? Xenu and all?

Please.

See, this is why I so rarely start these sorts of debates. People get huffy, and it’s all very stressful. I’m only going to write about nice things, like berries and dogs (nice dogs, anyway), from now on. :-)

Scott, I don’t really think of it as a sliding scale. I’m not talking about particulars here, or about the nuances of individual religions. I’m just talking about the existence of God, just one big question, a question whose significance has had way more impact on the way we are today than the FSM or Scientology.

I’m not talking about *believing* in God, either, and I’m clearly not advising people to join any religions. I think you are misapplying my reasoning by implying this. I’m talking about suspending disbelief. It’s not a wager: I’m not trying to hedge my bets and I don’t advise others to do so either. I’m just leaving the door open a little wider for God than for the FSM.

I guess the reason why I resist lumping God in with the FSM is because I think that the mindset of viewing a belief in God as a fanciful, addlepated notion has led a lot of atheists to be, in my view, excessively scornful of *all* organized religion and of all people who believe, and dismissive of the good that a belief in God can provide for people. Of course I’m aware of the fact that many unjust deeds have been done in the name of organized religion, but I don’t think these misdeeds merit blanket condemnation of belief in God. Nor do I think that all believers deserve to be lumped with people who believe things that are manifestly contradicted by empirical evidence, or who believe things that justify evil deeds.

Last Saturday Victor and I went on a hike on nearby Sweeney Ridge. We were ostensibly going to look for burrowing owls. Bob and Rodney, our erstwhile co-workers, are coordinating a statewide burrowing owl survey and asked us to check out this area, which apparently had burrowing owls historically.

We didn’t see any burrowing owls. It was foggy, and windy, and everything’s grown up with coyote brush- there’s no habitat. But we did find plenty of berries. The blackberries are just starting to be ripe, here, and the thimbleberries are in full swing.

I think thimbleberries have a really unique flavor, and given the fact that they’re pretty ubiquitous in these parts I’m somewhat surprised that I don’t see them around more in local cuisine, you know, “pork tenderloin with thimbleberry-port reduction”, that sort of thing. We didn’t eat the sage: that’s just an inedible garnish.

Some households find that one television per person is simply insufficient for their needs.

Victor and I are finding that one computer per person is insufficient for our household.

We have a laptop, which Victor has set up in a semi-permanent, ergonomically friendly workstation in the living room, and a desktop, which I use, in the bedroom. But, when I’m doing things that don’t require much concentration, I don’t want to be exiled to the bedroom. I want to be able to be in the living room, where the action is. So, sometimes there are turf wars over Victor’s laptop, from which we’ve concluded that we need an additional laptop. Not that we’re getting one any time soon. Still, how sad is that? How many computers do you need in a 750 sq. foot apartment?
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Rodney comments:

Ok, wait a minute here. The problem is that you have glossed over the meat of the issue in blithely referring to “the sheer frivolity of comparing the question of the existence of God to that of unicorns and FSMs.” To some of us, (me anyway)there is nothing frivolous about that. I see no reason to grant Jahweh any higher credibility than unicorns or FSMs, and that’s precisely why I’m uncomfortable identifying as an agnostic. When you say you are an agnostic, people regularly interpret that as meaning you hold open the door for *maybe* beleiving in GOD. But noone thinks you’re saying you *maybe* believe in unicorns. Jahweh get an implied priority.

Oh, Rodney. So young, so impetuous. Never fear. I fully intended to return to the unicorn/FSM/God question: I was leaving it aside “for the moment” so as to keep my opening salvo short and to the point. Arguing by dismissal is a cheap tactic and I certainly would never treat my esteemed adversaries with such disrespect! I am, in fact, shocked that you would think such a thing. But, your objection does afford me a convenient segue into the topic.

So your stance, if I understand it correctly, is that yes, indeed, the likelihoods of the existences of a Judeo-Islamo-Christian God, unicorns, and Flying Spaghetti Monsters are all approximately equal. Well, see, I do think this stance is frivolous. Do you really feel that this God that we’re talking about, this God that is the basis of three religions that have profoundly shaped western civilization for around 3,000 years, that this God can be dismissed in the same breath as an intellectual prop fabricated by some graduate student? Now, I’m not saying that 3,000 years of backstory means that you must, lemming-like, go along with 89% of the rest of the population of this country and *believe* in God. But, surely you must recognize the difference here between these two hypotheses?

I guess what I’m saying is that, out of respect for the rather large majority of thinking, reasoning, good human beings who believe, I’m willing to go to greater lengths to keep my mind open about the existence of a personal God than that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I think the collective belief of millions adds up to evidence that I’m willing to consider despite the fact that it’s not empirical.

Update: Ugh… now that I’m looking back at this post I see that I completely talked around your point in my eagerness to get in that stuff about why I think parallels between the FSM and God are frivolous. Sorry. I think you and Jim make similar points about not wanting to be called agnostics because you feel the word incorrectly identifies you. I think I address that point somewhat more directly below.

And Jim comments:

I think that your lampooning (and distrust) of atheists (like me…that’s right, i’m not afraid of the label) is a bit unfair. Would you label yourself an evolutionist (assuming that you’re comfortable with the evidence for biological evolution of the Darwinian sort), even though there are alternative (albeit rather unlikely) explanations for how all of this living stuff came about? For similar reasoning, I am more comfortable with the label ‘atheist’ than ‘agnostic’. To me, calling myself an atheist means that i find the likelihood of the existence of a personal god so small that i’m not going to invest much of my short time here on this planet in seeking him/her/it out or living my life as if he/she/it existed. I would call myself an agnostic only if I truly were on the fence…that is if i found the likelihood great enough to waste much of my time on it. I guess this all really stems from spending so much time on biology/probability theory/statistics where nothing is certain, but where one can still feel reasonably confident of certain things given the weight of evidence…

I see two different points to address here; the first is a semantic one. You call yourself an atheist, as I understand it, because you wish to differentiate yourself from fence-sitting agnostics who allow a larger probability of God’s existence than you are willing to concede. This I understand. But as I see it, you’ve made an implied choice here, to be lumped with those atheists who allow no possibility of God’s existence. I feel that the latter stance is, in fact, less rational than the stance of allowing a larger margin of doubt about God’s existence, and so, getting back to the point of my original post, I sometimes wonder why folks such as yourself choose to affiliate with people who arbitrarily discount one hypothesis without sufficient evidence to do so.

The second is your argument by analogy with the evolution/intelligent design debate. I can, and do, feel reasonably confident that alternative hypotheses to evolution are false, because there is overwhelming observable evidence in support of evolutionary hypotheses. But, I don’t think that the analogy holds perfectly when transferred to the question of the existence of God, because there is no concomitant overwhelming physical evidence as to the non-existence of God. Therefore, I’m uncomfortable calling myself an atheist, even of the type that you define.

Here in Pacifica, the hottest month is the month of September, during which the average high is 71 degrees.

This means that it’s a comfortable temperature for drinking port in the evening all the year round. Huzzah!

The microplane grater. So smooth! So efficient! So nice to use! Using a microplane grater is like eating cotton candy, only without the part where you throw up on the Scrambler afterward.

I do not have permission to use this image, which comes from here. If my use of this image makes you feel mad or even the slightest bit litigious, let me know and I’ll remove it.

So some atheists will respond to the argument that they’re arbitrarily rejecting one hypothesis of many by allowing a slight degree of possibility that God exists. They’ll say that they’re willing to give the God hypothesis equal weight to, say, the notion of the existence of unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster hypothesis. But they’re unwilling to be called agnostics, even though they admit that the hypothesis that God doesn’t exist is impossible to definitively disprove.

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the sheer frivolity of comparing the question of the existence of God to that of unicorns and FSMs. I wonder, why does the label “agnostic” carry such a stigma with atheists? Some people object to being called agnostic because they don’t want to seem wishy-washy. Agnostics are fence sitters. You’re either with us or against us. Democrat or Republican! No room for a third party here. So does that mean it’s better to make confident pronouncements about questions whose answers you really just don’t know? If that is the case, the next time I ask an atheist for directions I will take the answer with a grain of salt.

We went down to Carmel/Monterey to celebrate my parents’ 40th anniversary. Here are some pics of the time we had. My parents are so freakin’ cute it makes me want to barf.

Me with a wine glass, number 893 of a series.

Travis’s blog-friend was apparently in Monterey at the same time and saw the exact same harbor seal as us. We didn’t get any good deals on shirts, though.

Victor mit knob:

This picture is from the day that Arty grew to giant size and destroyed much of San Francisco. Captured here during an introspective moment.

Fort Funston, San Francisco’s premiere dog walking venue, is mere minutes from our apartment, but because it’s in San Francisco we’ve had a psychological barrier preventing us from checking it out. Well, we’ve smashed that barrier and have just returned from our second jaunt in three days. Arty is a much better dog off leash, and although we’re not above breaking the law, it’s always more relaxing to take him to places where the man doesn’t frown on him roaming free. The vast majority of other dogs at Fort Funston are unfettered, and generally those dogs that are on leash are phlegmatic when it comes to being approached by boisterous young whippersnappers. It’s a happenin’ doggy atmosphere, a place to see and be seen. Victor has already run into a couple of his clients from Planet Pooch.

Fort Funston has the added bonus features of ocean views and abandoned WWII bunkers and batteries. Here’s a couple of pictures (sorry about the poor quality; it was cloudy out on Saturday):