Anticipation Do you remember that Heinz Ketchup commercial with the ketchup moving down the neck of the bottle in slow motion towards the waiting hamburger? They used the 1971 Carly Simon song Anticipation from her hit album of the same name. I imagine no one but Carly thinks about that song any more without thinking about Heinz Ketchup. Interesting factoid, we have all wondered our whole lives whether its ketchup or catsup and what’s up…
People Are Funny Today, after several business calls with the financing half of my little scientific R&D company team and an email to my expert witness partner explaining that I am imminently qualified as an expert in why a project financing did not get financed for a big African gas project, I decided to take a long overdue motorcycle ride on a nice-not-too-hot afternoon here in Southern California. I know that rain is coming on…
An Unimaginable Life Last night we watched a Netflix show called My Octopus Teacher. Kim had heard about it from two separate animal-friendly friends and wanted to watch it. We share the same problem the rest of the world struggles with these days. It’s less that there is nothing good to watch on TV, but rather that we all rely so much more on TV to entertain us and the array of choices is seemingly…
A Liberal Retirement This is a strange week for me. So much is strange and new in 2020 that it’s hard to calibrate strangeness, but this seems to have crossed a threshold that has caused me to want to write about it. Let’s start with what makes this a strange week. I am in an expert witness hearing all week (actually two separate hearings since one goes all week and I must listen to it…
The Arc of the Sun I just noticed as I sit here in my office at my glass-top curio table, that the sun now rises further south and thus, in the live oak tree that sits on the very top of my little hilltop here in Escondido. This is convenient for me since earlier in the summer, the sun would rise further north and shine into my eyes as I sat her, requiring me to…
Are You Havin’ Any Fun? Tonight I turned on that wonderful movie Quartet starring Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, and Pauline Collins about four aging opera singers who find themselves in the same old age home for musicians in the outskirts of London. They are struggling with their old relationships and their fading talents as singers. They struggle to agree to sing Rigoletto, an opera written by the most famous operatic composer of all…
Breathing is Overrated I have recently come to recognize that you have to breathe to stay alive. That may strike you as an obvious statement, but I think it deserves some reflection. Doesn’t it strike you as a little strange that Mother Nature endowed us with this powerful cerebellum that’s capable of relatively advance reasoning. It’s capable of all sorts of great things. It can invent important breakthrough stuff. It can conjure great and elaborate…
Tree People It is the morning of Labor Day 2020 and I am sitting in my office in my underwear (one of the luxuries of life on the hilltop where I am out of view of all prying eyes). I have just spent fifteen minutes figuring out how to fix a documentation gremlin that has plagued me. I have to send a signed grant award contract to an agency in Scotland. The first version I…
Going Bald This is purported to be the hottest day of the year out here in San Diego. My weather.com app (now owned and operated by the once-venerable IBM) tells me it is already 87 and the sun has just come up. The high is supposed to get to 109. Yesterday was the first time since their installation in April, that my Tesla Wall Batteries got a workout. The electricity grid from San Diego Gas…
Quick Like a Bunny I am getting in the habit (does two or three days constitute a habit yet?) of writing tomorrow’s story in the morning hours out here in the garden on my throughly described garden desk. I think what I like best about the view are my little stand of resurgent bonsai redwood trees. When they arrived and I placed them in the rock garden over a month ago they were immediately shedding…