A weekend in SoCal

I have a week of work in San Diego, so I decided to fly out here on Friday and have the weekend free to play around a bit.

It is almost impossible for me to fly three time zones on one day and teach the next day, so this makes sense from a work perspective as well.

Yesterday was Joshua Tree National Park. It is a long haul from San Diego (two plus hours) but I love the desert and had never been to this park. I got up reasonably early and got on the road by 9:30am. I didn’t rush at all and got caught in a completely inexplicable traffic jam in some little town along the way. It was a beautiful day but as I got into higher elevations it started to get quite cold. I got to the western park entrance about noon.

Normal highs in the park are mid-sixties this time of year. It is the desert, after all. When I got to the park, it was 42˚. Even the rangers were commenting on how cold it was. I was equipped for the cold but not for the very high winds. I would guess that the wind chill was in the twenties or below.

This ended my plans for walking a lot within the park. My tour was going to be mostly in the car.

Still it was a beautiful, sunny day. I did manage a short hike around a box canyon called “Hidden Valley”. Apparently rustlers used to use the canyon to hide the horses and cattle they had stolen.

Peregrinos will recognize this little sculpture. Apparently other peregrinos proceeded me.

A short but fun walk. If I stayed in the sun and out of the wind, the cold was not too bad. I drove up to the highest point in the park that you can get to by road, Keys View at 5187 feet. I don’t know what the wind speed was but it was hard to stand up. I would guess 40-50 mph. I would have had frost bite in just a few minutes. I retreated back to the car.

I left the park by the southern entrance and my GPS directed me back to San Diego by a different route from when I came. It was a dull ride until I reached this road (partial satellite shot below). It is called the “Pines to Palms Highway”. Ahh, to have the Mini for those miles and miles of hairpins.

I finally got back to my hotel at about 6pm.

This morning I got up early and went to the famous San Diego Zoo. I am ambivalent about zoos. I mostly just don’t get much out of them. All the animals just look sad and bored. As good as the San Diego Zoo apparently is, they still just looked sad and bored.

I took a few shots of the more charismatic creatures.

This last is a California Condor. The zoo played an important role in bringing them back from the brink of extinction.

Mindless and Heartless

I find it difficult to get behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Of course, I enthusiastically support their right to protest. I also agree with what seems to be the basic premise: a protest against the inequality that has grown to epic proportions in the last 30 years and highly accelerated in the last 10 years. Yes, I agree but my very next thought is, “What do we do about it?” But the “99 percenters” refuse to move on to what next. They seem to have little to offer that might work in our current political system.

That problem (if you see it that way) does not make the 99’ers wrong. Bernard E. Harcourt wrote an excellent piece in the New York Times on exactly what the seeming inchoate protest is really about.

The OWS protests led to a Tumblr site called “We Are The 99 Percent”. Take a look and you will get the picture. A right-wing blogger launched his own Tumblr site called “We Are the 53 Percent”.

This “53 percent” idea is what is known as a zombie lie: a lie that won’t die no matter how many times it is proven a untrue. The lie here is that only 53% of Americans pay taxes. The clear implication is that the other 47% are freeloaders that the brave 53% are carrying on their backs.

The simple, not to hard to understand truth is that approximately 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax. The reality is that everyone pays taxes of some kind. Especially egregious are very regressive sales and payroll taxes. Of the 47% that don’t pay federal income taxes, over 70% are the elderly (living on non-taxed Social Security benefits) and the working poor. The remainder of the 47% make a small enough income that deductions like mortgage interest and education credits eliminate their federal income tax liability.

As frustrating as this zombie lie is what really got to me is the entries on the site. The sentiment so often expressed is so mindless and heartless. Mindless because they ignore simple truths and heartless because they deny even a semblance of the social contract. Matthew Yglesias focused on one that I also find compelling.

“I joined the Marine Corps when I was 20 years old to avoid the indignity of moving back into my parents’ house.”

As Yglesias put it:

“After all, can one really credibly say that the Marine Corps is a field in which one’s success and failure is going to be determined by one’s individual effort rather than collective efficacy? …[it] would be a mighty strange kind of military in which solidarity, teamwork, and the effective operation of a large public bureaucracy play no role.”

I would go further. As so many contributors on the site insist, this man thinks he has accomplished everything in his entire life without any help from anyone else. Does he not realize that we (the 100% that pay taxes) paid for the training and salary he received in the Marine Corps?

But it gets better….

“I pay taxes, provide for my kids, and pay for the mortgage for a house that is worth 60% of what it was worth when I bought it.”

Then just a few sentences later…

“I don’t blame Wall Street because it doesn’t matter what Wall Street or anyone else does.”

And finally…

“I will succeed of fail because of me and me ALONE.”

Really? How does he explain why his house is worth 60% of what it used to be? Is this something that he and he alone caused. I’d say he fucked that up pretty badly.

No, Marine, you have been dependent on others since you were conceived (I assume you didn’t manage that on your own). You used to work for the federal government. I assume you take the tax breaks available for your mortgage interest and for your kids. I hope that expensive (but worthwhile) new GI Bill is helping you pay for college. I hope you get a great education and raise great kids. Hell, I hope you get rich if that’s what you want.

After all, the rest of us are paying for you to succeed.

You can thank us later.

In Praise of Design, Engineering, Art and Beauty

Since his death last week, there has been a great deal written and said about Steve Jobs; his life, his work and his impact on society. I have collected some of what I think are the best pieces – ones worth taking a few minutes or more to read (or watch).

First is this discussion on Chris Hayes’ new show on MSNBC called, “Up With Chris Hayes”. No, I don’t like the title either but it is one of the smartest political news/commentary shows out there. It is on from 8am to 10am on Saturday and Sunday. Here (video) is some unique and sharp commentary on Jobs from the show.

The best long read I came across comes from Wired magazine (including a nice video montage). Also, this NYT piece written by Mike Daisey, the monologist appearing in the video clip above.

All very good stuff from different perspectives. I would like to add my perspective on what Jobs and Apple have done over the last 30 years.

There has been nearly as much criticism as praise of Jobs and Apple. Much of the criticism is valid. One trope that irritates though goes like this. Jobs did not invent the personal computer, the mouse, or the graphical user interface, the MP3 player, the smartphone or the tablet. Therefore the success of the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad should be somehow diminished or seen as mere marketing genius. It is true that Jobs and Apple did not invent any of those things but the argument is specious. Jobs and Apple did not invent those things but they re-invented all of them. The genius, as is so often the case, is not in the invention but the re-invention.

There are many great examples of invention versus re-invention in history. Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. He re-invented it by adding the essential ingredient of moveable type. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line but he brought the two together along with then brand-new concepts in management (which he also did not invent) to create the Model T.

So how did Jobs’ re-invent the personal computer, the MP3 player, the smartphone and the tablet? Marketing genius to be sure. But the real genius was in the products themselves.

I could spend several thousand words extolling the design and engineering of OSX, the Mac machines and the iPhone and the iPad. Let me focus on one small example that illuminates the bigger picture.

Building a good laptop is a challenge; an exercise in compromise. Users want their laptop to perform as well (or nearly) as a large desktop machine but they also want them to be small enough, light enough and rugged enough to carry in a smallish bag. Small, light and rugged is the challenge. The traditional design of a laptop (taken from the original design of desktop computers) was to build a rugged metal frame and then cover that frame with thin sheets of plastic or aluminum. This created a fairly rigid and rugged unit but the exterior shell was prone to damage and breakage. Also, the overall unit was not very light at all and fairly bulky. A compromise.

In 2008, Apple decided to throw out this compromise and start over with the unibody MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops (video). These laptops had no internal frame. The body of the unit was built from one precision machined block of aluminum. This created a smaller, lighter and more rugged laptop than had existed before. A small but important triumph of design and engineering.

My favorite part of the story, however, is the screen. The screen is the most vulnerable part of a laptop. Most laptops (even today, 4 years after Apple solved this problem) use an internal frame for structure and rigidity and then cover with plastic or aluminum. Apple applied the unibody concept to the screen as well as the body of the laptop. The problem was they wanted the screen to be very, very thin. When they got it as thin as they wanted it was way too flimsy. When they got it as rigid as they wanted, it was way too thick and heavy.

The designers and engineers (and you can be sure, Steve Jobs) struggled with the problem. Bear in mind, they could have just put a heavy, bulky frame inside the screen and accepted the additional bulk and weight. They didn’t. They kept at it. Finally, someone came up with the idea of putting the actual display behind a thin sheet of glass. The rigidity to weight ratio of glass is higher than almost any substance in the universe. With the aluminum shell behind the display and the glass in front, they had a thin, rugged, rigid screen.

If you have a chance, go ahead and try this. Grab the upper right and left corners of the screen on a unibody MacBook and gently twist. There is a little give but you will be surprised at how rigid the screen really is. Now take a look down from the top edge. It is hard to believe something this thin can be that rigid. Now do the same thing with any other laptop. You will discover that the screen doesn’t feel nearly as rigid. Now take a look down from the top edge. It is likely that screen is 2 or 3 times as thick as the MacBook screen. Thicker, heavier, not as strong. Also cheaper to build.

The unibody laptop is a beautiful piece of design and engineering but I believe it also shows Jobs’ genius and why Apple has succeeded so well: re-invention followed by uncompromising design and delivery. Apple showed consumers that computers and music players and phones and tablets do not have to be the commodities that the rest of the marketplace assumed they were. We pay more for Apple products because they are worth more. Design, engineering and yes, art and beauty play a subtle but important part in what we buy and why we buy it. Jobs knew this and that’s why we should praise him.

Where I get all snarky on ArtPrize

ArtPrize describes itself thus:

“ArtPrize® is a radically open competition. Open to any artist in the world who can find space. Open to anybody in Grand Rapids, Michigan who wants to create a venue. Open to a vote from anyone who attends.”

Not a bad description. One might argue with “radical” since it is highly corporate but “radically open” is accurate enough. Not just “anybody in Grand Rapids, Michigan” can create a venue; only those who have a space within the well defined ArtPrize boundary.

Last year, when I help start the venue at The Hillmount, we had to borrow the address from our carriage house on College in order to officially be within the boundary. Very strict. This year the Meijer Gardens, 6 miles outside the boundary, was added as a venue. So when is a boundary not really a boundary? When the name “Meijer” is involved?

So now we are down to the Top Ten. For voting rules, please see here. Don’t be surprised if the ArtPrize site is down. It’s down quite a bit.

I saw one of the Top Ten last week and I took a look at the others today. In no particular order, here is a picture or two of each (plus a few more pieces). Each photo below is linked to a larger version, so click away. If you want to see the whole gallery, please click here.

The parking lot at the B.O.B. always has a lot to see. I don’t know why other than there is plenty of room and it is very much in the center of the City. This year, the B.O.B. has three the Top Ten pieces.

Robert Shangle: Under Construction

Ah, a guy painted and dressed and behaving like statue. A good money-maker for buskers worldwide. This is a bit different though since the artist is “performing” along with an actual statue of himself.

Here is the statue:

And here is the artist. Get it? No? I don’t either.

Paul Baliker: Ocean Exodus

I liked this one quite a bit. It is almost ruined by the fact that it is on a rotating platform like a 1956 Cadillac at the dealership.

Bill Secunda: Mantis Dreaming

Well, it’s really, really big. Looks more like “Mantis Eating”. Nice landscaping. Feint praise, I admit.

A brief interruption in the Top Ten list. We have this lovely old rail trestle downtown known, in good Midwestern fashion, as the “Blue Bridge”. It is potentially one of the best venues in the entire City. It could and should have hosted a dozen pieces, large and small. Sunshine, open sky, water below. This year, we have this:

Look at that space! It could be great. I don’t know who curated this venue but whoever you are, you failed. I can take the damned monkeys. They’re no more ridiculous than a good number of other pieces. But why oh why was the rest of the bridge abandoned?

I also wonder why we have no art in or interacting with the river. Here is the river from the Blue Bridge looking upstream through the heart of downtown.

Not a darn thing. Hmmm.

Back to the Top Ten…

Ritch Branstrom: Rusty

Once you get past the utter cuteness of the thing it’s really a pretty good piece. Really.

Mia Tavonatti: Crucifixion

Well, you can’t go wrong with Christ in West Michigan. This really is a stunning piece in a stunning location. If you feel like you have seen this piece 10,000 times that’s because you have. But this one is 13’ tall!

Sunti Pichetchaiyakul: President Gerald Ford Visits ArtPrize

Somebody is kidding here. Right? Right? Apparently not.

There is only one word for a Madame Tussauds-like statue of Gerald Ford inside a plastic box: creepy. Actually, two words: really creepy. I walked by a few hours later and they had Gerry out of the box. Even creepier. Thank god he’s not 13’ tall.

Laura Alexander: The Tempest II

Interesting piece. Since I don’t have anything snarky to say, I won’t say anything.

Lynda Cole: Rain

The only piece in the Top Ten that I would vote to win (and I did). I am a sucker for mobiles but this is a really great piece. Complexity from simple shapes. It really must be seen in person but I tried a few pictures.

Llew (Doc) Tilma: Grizzlies on the Ford

Certainly best use of space. Can you create “art” with a chain saw or is it by definition “craft”? I’m going to decline the whole art/not art debate. Charming.

The one piece I did not get a picture of is The Metaphorest Project: Metaphorest. It is a mural. Nice piece.

So after all this snark, what would I choose to win ArtPrize? Well, Diana and Hound, of course. Chuck Mack didn’t get much traffic over here on College and Cherry but we loved having her here. I got some pretty good night shots of her.

Other than Diana, I’m going with Mike Sohikian: The Veteran. A beautiful and disturbing piece.

I also really liked one of the smallest works I came across, Leslie Bolyard: Warden of Sorrow / Homage to Hieronymus Bosch.

We measure success by our definition of success. ArtPrize is successful in so many ways. Tens of thousands of people come downtown to look at and talk about thousands of works of art. Artists get seen, get noticed and a few of them win a bunch of money. We get to show off and appreciate a great American city. These are successes by I think anyone’s measure.

That said, most of the works are not worthy of much attention. Choosing the winners by popular vote is very populist and democratic but it leads to a lowest common denominator winner.

The biggest problem ArtPrize has is every single work in the Top Ten is within are very small area downtown. Hundreds and hundreds of works are never seen by enough people to garner a Top Ten award. If an artist is interested in winning a prize and can’t find a venue within this very small area, he might as well not bother. Unless ArtPrize can come up with a solution to this problem the event is never going to achieve what it could for the artists and for the folks that attend and vote.

All in all, I am going with success on most fronts. Problems remain to be solved. There’s always next year.

CB