Category: culture Page 3 of 11

Wolfe, Chomsky and Everett

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017

I wrote in a previous post. about the kerfuffle surrounding two scholars of linguistics and Tom Wolfe’s fascinating commentary on it in his book The Kingdom of Speech. I just read an article about the affair that had a great quote in it that I wanted to preserve on this blog so I can return to it and point to it now and again. It is an interesting article that is worth a read. The quote:

Chomsky’s theory of language, as will be evident to the reader of Everett’s piece, is on a par with Darwinism. A theory about nothing but itself about how things happen. We could leave it out and nothing would change except the air would be cleaner. Not that Everett says this, of course.

July 4, 2017 in Centralia (I had the concept wrong)

By Dad

On Wednesday, July 5, 2017

In culture, Friends

We heard when we moved here that the fireworks were just phenomenal. You might excuse us for thinking we had a view of the professional fireworks from our deck. We were completely wrong. We had a spectacular fireworks display that lasted for three hours. This little video does not really do it justice because there was much bigger stuff going off a lot of the time all over the whole valley below us. We were awestruck. It was not so much that the fireworks were amazing, even though they were. It was more that this thing went on at a frenetic pass for three hours. There must have been an explosion of some kind two or three times per second with periods of much more than that. The thing that was most mind-boggling is the level of participation amongst the whole community had to be huge because these things were going off everywhere, up and down the hills and valleys, in town close, far, on our side of the river there was even a very healthy level of participation. It was a joy to be here. Next year we have to share this with more people.

Fireworks in Centralia with Kelly 2017

By Dad

On Tuesday, July 4, 2017

In culture

Kelly comes home for the Fourth of July Kelly came home for the weekend to find out whether it is true we have the best seat in Centralia for the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. She and Lorena have been cooking and shopping up a storm. I actually have worked most of the time with a short hiatus for a visit from our friends Brent and Suzy along with their son Kevin.

In the meantime, Christian took a much needed break and is heading out this afternoon and evening to see what there is to see on Independence Day in one of those places where it all got started. Today, he had a hamburger at a restaurant owned by a semi-famous guy named Danny Wahlberg. He has not yet reported on that hamburger–probably still dazzled by the lobster roll he ate at the Park Street McDonald’s.

So, I will try to report here how it goes with that fireworks thing. It appears they shoot them off at the fairgrounds which does not seem like it would give us that much of a vantage point. We will see what we will see and if it is anywhere within viewing distance, we will put up an image.

Update (9:30 PM): The fireworks will start at the fairgrounds between Centralia and Chehalis after the Demolition Derby at 10:30 PM. Is that Americana or what? We are above the little valley where Chehalis is situated. It is truly amazing the number of fireworks being expended hear. It is like a war is going on that started up about an hour ago and has not let up even a little bit. Some of the explosions are quite a bit bigger than I ever remember anyplace else I have been and I bet we are hearing one go off two to three times per second during that time with spurts of quite a lot more. I am wondering how much activity they have down at the emergency room this time of year. I hope they are well staffed.

Boston cultural experience

By Dad

On Sunday, July 2, 2017

In culture

Park Street McDonald's (Boston's worst restaurant) We are glad for every reminder that Christian is having the best of all possible cultural experience during his summer in Boston. For instance, he ate at the Park Street McDonald’s today after meeting. Christian eats a lobster roll at the Park Street McDonald's in Boston He said that it had been suggested to him that particular McDonald’s was quite possibly the very worst restaurant in all of Boston. When you are in a new place, you need to be sure to try to find the best example of the specialties associated with that place. What did he have? He is in Boston! He had a lobster roll which seems to pretty much disqualifying factor for being the worst of anything.

McDonald’s price: $9
Famous lobster roll: $20

McDonald’s taste: like McDonald’s (decent, worth it)
Famous lobster roll: really good

China

By Dad

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017

In culture, Work

I have never really been to China yet. I have been in a lot of different parts of East Asia, but never in China proper. That includes Taiwan, Japan, Korea (South of course), Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. I was scheduled to fly to Shanghai and Shenzhen on July 3–imagine that, the Fourth of July in China, but could not manage to get the visa in the short amount of time available. I currently work on a team with distributed workers–two in China, one in Quebec, the boss in Vancouver, BC, and me. It works amazingly well. I am the only one on the team whose first language is English, but that is what we speak. I love this new job so far. There is lots of pressure, but also lots of interesting work. What more could you ask out of a job at my stage in life–interesting work is worth gold. I will be over there in the next few months, God willing. Looking forward to it.

Christian and Boston Pops

By Dad

On Sunday, June 18, 2017

In culture

Christian's picture of Boston Pops June 2017

Christian is living a couple of blocks from the Boston Pops Orchestra. He says it is really hard to get good tickets to any of the interesting performances there. Still it is cool he lives so close. He says he walks by it all the time. He took this amazing picture yesterday.

Kelly update

By Dad

On Thursday, June 15, 2017

In culture, Education, Work

Kelly's new glasses First, the important stuff: Kelly’s new glasses arrived and I think she looks just stunning with her new librarian hipster look.

On other fronts, there are lots of good things going on. She loves her work, her company, and her fellow employees. She made a great decision to stop for now at a Masters degree and get some experience. I am not sure how she could have found a better first job than the one she is in. Amazingly, she makes use intense of the things she learned during in her Bachelors degree and internship in Statistics to inform her work doing precisely what she learned studying Marketing Strategy during her Masters degree. Write now she is deep into planning and running focus groups. Before that she developed a huge (for her corner of the industry) marketing survey and then evaluated the results with statistical tools the company had never previously used. One recent new innovation she brought to the company was a better way to set pricing more informed by data and analytics than by expert opinion alone.

So, three quarters of a year in, she has started to think a little about what to do next. She will finish her first round trip of the Marketing process in the fall and really needs to get her second round trip in where she does it completely on her own, and then a third round trip to own the process. After that, she needs to decide what to do next. There is a great growth path for her right where she is, but there are other academic and work options.

Kelly’s values are not at all in alignment with the Seattle zeitgeist. There are some particular evils held in high regard that are difficult to abide and they permeate even parts of the society, particularly in places like Portland and Seattle, that historically have been less coarse and held good morals. I think that reality will play heavily in whatever direction she wants to head next.

Still, when you have new stylish glasses like these, life looks pretty good.

Christian eats a lobster roll

By Dad

On Sunday, June 4, 2017

In culture

Christian's first big Boston experience--the lobster roll Christian keeps very busy in Boston. Mostly it is work at the labs, but in his limited spare time so far, he went out and paid an exorbitant amount of money for a lobster roll. I told him it was a find investment and I would have been ashamed of him had he not done it. He lives within walking distance of a ton of museums, Fenway Park, Boston Pops, and a gazillion restaurants and coffee shops. I have to say though, I think a lobster roll is a great place to start, especially if you can wash it down with some Maine Blueberry Lemonade made with Wildflower Honey!

El Sabor de Mexico Restaurant, Chehalis, WA

By Dad

On Saturday, May 27, 2017

In Cooking, culture, Entertainment

Tacos El Sabor de Mexico Lorena and I were a little discouraged with the taco scene in the Twin Cities of Centralia and Chehalis even though we have only been here now for a couple of weeks. That has all been remedied now that we have been to El Sabor de Mexico in Chehalis to have some lunchtime tacos. Without reservation we believe the quality of the tacos was every bit as good as the ones at the one true best taco shop, Tacos Regio Monterrey, in Lewisville, Texas. That being said, we would have to give the edge to Tacos Regio because they have more of that street tacos feel that we really like. Nevertheless, that is a matter of personal taste and we truly love the home style tacos of El Sabor which are almost certainly the healthiest of the two. The tortillas are hand made, soft, corn tortillas.

We got a tip from the guys who installed the granite in our kitchen, two from Mexico, one from Puerto Rico, that this was the go-to, authentic taco house in the Twin Cities. The Mexican guys rolled their eyes when the Puerto Rican gave his advice on which Mexican food was the best even though all three agreed on El Sabor. As for those other places we tried, they, too, were irritated with the pushy, much more famous place that sells mediocre (in our opinion) tacos and makes a big deal out of the fact they do not serve chips before the meal like there is something authentically Mexican about that–there is not. Some restaurants in Mexico serve chips, some do not, and none make a big deal out of it. It surely seems they have been away from Mexico long enough to forget both what is good and what is authentic. The other place we tried in Centralia would have been a very mediocre Tex-Mex style place if it were in Dallas and we are not big Tex-Mex fans even when it is good Tex-Mex, not that there is anything wrong with that.

El Sabor de Mexico is an older building, but it was very, very clean during our first visit. We talked with the owner who is from a beautiful colonial city, not to far from Monterrey name Zacatecas. We also met her son and daughter who work at the restaurant and a couple of loyal patrons of the place from Guadalajara. It is a very friendly place and is now, just like with our granite installation buddies, our go-to taco house. It is good enough we doubt it will be displaced from that perch anytime soon.

Lorena and cultural enrichment

By Dad

On Saturday, April 8, 2017

In Cooking, culture

Lorena at Anytime Fitness in Lewisville, TX We had dear friends over for dinner last night. Whenever that happens Lorena instigates a conversation in person or on the phone that takes almost exactly the same form every time. It happened again yesterday. I love this.

I was sitting at my desk in my office in Lewisville programming and the phone rings.

I pick up and Lorena asks me “Should I do A or should I do B?” about some cooking thing.

So I ask, “What do you think would be best?”

She says, “A.”

I say, “Ok, do A.”

She says “Ok! Thanks!” and hangs up.

Some time in the following day or two she will say something to the effect that it is really good that I tell her what to cook because she can never think of the right thing.

The dinner, as always, was brilliant. Lorena talked the people down at the one true taco shop in Lewisville, Texas into giving her a couple dozen of their very thin corn tortillas when, in reality, they don’t sell tortillas. They sell tacos. But she has that Mexican Mafia thing going and is comadre with the owner of the shop. She grilled sirloin steak in strips, onions and chile morron, made her hand made salsa, sliced up avocado and mango, chopped some raw onions and cilantro, etc.

Today, she is down at the gym working off all those extra calories while I sit and type (writing this blog post and programming on the sickle cell disease project). Don’t ever try to tell me I didn’t hit the lottery when I married her.

A great video on one of the great sadnesses of our times

By Dad

On Saturday, February 11, 2017

In culture, Socialization, Technology, Work

I saw the video below that a friend posted this video on Facebook last night about challenges for millennials in the workplace. I think it says some important things that has caused me to think I need to work on some of my own behaviors. He talks about addiction to social media–on cell phones in particular and the dopamine high that is triggered. He talks about what a great disservice it was to tell children they were great when they were not great. He talks about the idea of delayed gratification that seems to be completely missing in an entire generation of young people. He talks about the increase in suicide and accidental drug overdose in that generation that is most probably a result of this. I think he is exactly right on all that. The video is truly a worth 15 minutes of your time.

It was kind of depressing though that in about the last third of the video he espouses the idea that the corporations need to take responsibility for fixing this. That is a completely different subject, but he is objectively wrong on that. The corporations might need to address the issues associated with this large problem because it prevents them from finding good, long term employees that facilitate them meeting achieving their purpose–to make money. Corporations should not be tasked with social engineering. They should, like government, achieve their purposes without meddling in peoples’ in areas where they are so patently unqualified. They really, really have competing interests with respect to what is good for individuals and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The individuals themselves, their families and, most importantly, God and their spiritual communities are the only ones who have the truly worthwhile answers to these kinds of challenges. Disinterested third parties whether they are government school teachers, coaches, bureaucrats, academics and even bad parents are the ones who trained them in this wrong thinking in the first place.

Link to video on Millenials in the workplace

They said there was interesting stuff on Google Earth

By Dad

On Saturday, December 3, 2016

In culture, House and home

Crime Fighting in Centralia I have seen some of the strange things you can see on Street View of Google Maps, but this is the first time I found one on my own. I was cruising around a small town in Western Washington looking for possible places to live and checking out neighorhoods when I found this image. Maybe we will not look on that side of town. Or, maybe, this is the side of town where we should look because the cops run a tight ship there! The bad part of this whole deal is that we will almost certainly never know what was going on here.

Thanksgiving with family (but apart)

By Dad

On Thursday, November 24, 2016

In culture, Education

Christian at the Rizos (Kelly, too) Christian hitched a ride with his friend Nathan to spend Thanksgiving weekend with the Rizos in San Diego. Kelly flew down last night from Seattle to join the crowd. We tried to figure out a way to be all together this year, but it just did not make sense. We could not be happier about the alternative as the Rizos selflessly made it all work out (again).

Kelly sent out this photo of Christian working on term papers, test preparation and homework. This is probably the last Thanksgiving he will ever have to do this. He has one more semester with a full load of classes followed by a semester with only one class, then he will be all dissertation all the time until he graduates. That is something for which he can certainly be thankful this Thanksgiving.

Lorena and I will spend some time with friends, but sometime during the weekend, we will cook a turkey–the thought of not having turkey sandwiches and other leftovers is more than we can bear.

For my kids (h.t. Trisha)

By Dad

On Saturday, November 19, 2016

In culture, Family

Trisha sent this along and it is just perfect! Kelly and Christian, please take notes.

Halloween

By Dad

On Monday, October 31, 2016

In culture

I have not been much of a fan of Halloween since I got to big to solicit candy door to door in our neighborhood when it was relatively safe to do that back in the early 1960’s. It was never a great holiday, but now it just makes me tired and kind of sad for our culture. I have to admit I still enjoy the clever, well-executed costumes some of the kids create and I love giving out candy to the smaller neighborhood kids, but it is soul deadening to watch junior high schoolers to adults exercise their fantasies–some of them, even at the low end of that age group, leaning to well beyond PG-13 ratings. Even at the surface level where the celebration seems to be about death, narcissism and extortion, it has never been, in my mind anyway, a good thing. Oh well. I will endeavor to not be a Halloween Scrooge (excuse the mixed metaphor), hand out candy and keep a smile on my face this evening.

Support and tolerance of evil behavior are not ok

By Dad

On Saturday, October 22, 2016

In Christianity, culture

The shibboleth of Christian fundamentalism is way past its expiration date. It is the go-to straw man for the unthinking pop-culture, pseudo-intellectual intelligentsia that make up the mainstream media, the vast bulk of academia (primary, secondary and post-secondary), the political class, and large swaths of the rest of America. It is almost impossible to talk about objective morality, abortion, traditional marriage, origins, euthanasia or any other topic of moral import without a self-righteous demand to account for the actions and thought of extremists who make up less than one percent of those who call themselves Christian.

I am through with making caveats. I am no more responsible for the abject immoral behavior of people who call themselves Christians but act otherwise than I am for the evils perpetuated on innocents by the likes of Planned Parenthood, New Atheists, Code Pink, PETA and the Democrat Party. Don’t ask me to account for any of that. I have my own sins to account for but these are not them. And do not expect me to just go along either. I hate ALL of this stuff because it is evil. Tolerance of evil is not a virtue.

This rant was partially motivated by my recent reads through Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It does not seem like their situation was a whole lot different from that of thinking Christians today. At any rate, thanks for reading my rant; it was actually quite cathartic.

Ode to Joy on Glock 22’s

By Dad

On Saturday, September 24, 2016

In culture, Music

I count this as a birthday gift from one of the blogs I read. The guy who writes the blog does not know I exist, but he is a fellow traveler, transplanted to Texas whose blog I visit at least a couple of times per day (h.t. Bayou Renaissance Man). To my friends in Klamath Falls, Southern Indiana and parts of North Carolina, this video needs no explanation (I did not mention Texas because that goes without saying). What is not to like about Ode to Joy on Glock 22’s, especially when Russians are involved?

Crazy coincidences and strange challenges

By Dad

On Friday, September 23, 2016

In Christianity, culture, Family

I am about to turn 61. A lot of funny little things, and I emphasize the word little, because they are of almost no importance, have been going on in my life. On that birthday theme, I found out today a guy that I have been helping get a business started in Kansas was born the day before me–the day before, the same year. In addition and very randomly, through Facebook, we learned that his daughters roommate in California is the first cousin of one of my daughter’s best friends in Seattle. There was no connection whatsoever between the two, we just found out about it after the fact. There are a couple of other non-coincidences like that about which I really do not have license to speak, but it surely seems odd that things work out serendipitously for great good for no material reason.

The other thing that just seems very random in my life is that the guy in the office next to me is one of those autodidact guys who claims he is an atheist. I called him on it–I really know of no rational person who claims they are atheist. He backed off of his statement. You would have had to been there to understand the context because my calling him on it was not really a heavy handed thing, but an outgrowth of a (relatively) thoughtful conversation. It was about as thoughtful a conversation as one could have with someone who absurdly claims, “No one has given me any good reason to believe there is a God.” That has always seemed to be a profoundly irrational claim, especially in light of the fairly recent, but very clear understanding that nothing existed–literally nothing, not even a quantum vacuum, no time, no space, nothing–then something started to exist. At the very least, that calls for some level of agnosticism. Really, there is no good reason to think there is not a God–much more so than that there is not one.

Life just seems a little surreal right now, but that is not a bad thing, just a little disorienting.

Danger in Brazil… and America?

By Dad

On Monday, September 19, 2016

In culture, Politics

My brother-in-law worked in São Paulo, Brazil for a couple years, right at the turn of the millennium. Here is an article from 2007 in Vanity Fair titled City of Fear. It talks about a very dangerous series of events that happened there five or six years after he returned to Mexico. There was a continuous string of attacks on the police that created chaos that caused a panic, shutting the city down for days with people locked in their homes cowering in fear with traffic jams everywhere until people got home. It is an interesting read about a scary situation. Peter Grant from the Bayou Renaissance Man blog makes the case that all the stars are aligning that could allow the same kind of event to happen here in the United States. In his article titled US cities are becoming much more dangerous places, he talks about how the BLM movement, the influx of illegals from many chaotic and violent places and the way the law enforcement community has had to respond to what is a no-win situation for them means some version of this kind of chaotic event could arrive in large cities in the US. Read the article. He makes a compelling case.

Update: Turns out, my brother-in-law was on a business trip in São Paulo when this was all happening. I cannot wait to get together with him and hear the story.

The Intellectual Yet Idiot: A seminal article on who is really “the problem”

By Dad

On Saturday, September 17, 2016

In culture, Politics

A brilliant article titled The Intellectual Yet Idiot, written by a guy named Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts in words something that has been in my mind as well as the minds of others, more thoughtful than my myself for a long, long time. I have written about the pontifications of the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Mark Borg, Bart Ehrman and some others with respect to subjects in which I am interested, but the people about whom Taleb writes live in every segment of our society. At some level, they are all Social Justice Warriors. Even, if not especially, our the current president of these United States fits very comfortably into this category. The article starts off like this and just gets better and better the further one reads:

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities?—?but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Update: This fascinating and fun article titled Global Warming Alarmists Promote XKCD Time Series Cartoon, Ignore Its Mistakes from The Stream perfectly makes the point with respect to global warming.