Nate's First Trip to the Redwoods

Here's something we've learned about parenting. You'll do yourself a big favor by giving up on being too goal-oriented. At least, for all the little things that don't really matter. Life with kids is a lot more enjoyable if you can stay flexible about plans.

We made reservations several months ago to stay overnight in a cabin in Little Basin. Until recently, Little Basin was Hewlett-Packard's private corporate campground. It is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, just down the road from the giant redwoods of Big Basin. A couple of years ago, Little Basin was purchased by the Sempervirens Fund and the Peninsula Open Space Trust with the intention of transferring the property to California state park system. But, since the state isn't doing so well budget-wise, Sempervirens and POST are holding onto the property for a while.

It has turned into a de facto private campground. Private and still unknown to a lot of people, but don't take it to imply exclusivity. Anybody who makes even a small donation to either of these worthy organizations can make a reservation to camp there.

A few days before our trip, as we were making lists of things to pack, Frances started to ponder the cold, hard truth about going camping during one's first trimester. "How far is the walk from the cabin to the nearest bathroom?" We decided we should cut back to a day trip.

On Saturday morning, we headed up the winding road to Big Basin. Nate looked a little nauseous at times and Frances looked a lot nauseous, but I'm happy to report that we made the entire trip with no episodes of vomiting.

Our plan was to eat lunch at Big Basin, walk Nate through a grove with the biggest trees, then drive over to Little Basin to have a look around. Nate loved the walk through the redwood grove. He liked exploring the bases of giants -- the burnt-out "caves" and gnarled roots -- but he was just as excited by climbing on the split-rail fence along the path. He was totally unimpressed with the height of the redwoods. When I pointed out the tallest tree in the forest, he pointed excitedly at a nearby drinking fountain.

He also kept asking where the playground was. We were in a park, after all.

Nate was clearly in need of a nap after the walk, so we decided to head home. Because of the winding roads, poor Nate just couldn't nap on the way home. He had a long, noisy meltdown, but we all survived it.

I was disappointed that we didn't even get to see Little Basin, but not too disappointed. I still remember fondly all the trips my family made to California's amazing state and national parks when I was a kid, and I'm gratified that we can give the same gift to our kids.

Pondering the magnificence of nature, and also pooping:

Frances and Nate posing in the hollow of a giant redwood:

Strolling on ahead:

Daddy and Nate. Note that I was holding a poop-filled diaper for about half of our nature walk:

Nate climbing through a cave in the base of a redwood:

Confrontation: Did Aikido Help?

This morning was the first time since I've started studying the self-defense art of Aikido that I faced a confrontation where I might have to physically defend myself. So, did studying Aikido help?

The situation: I pulled my car up to the air pump at the local gas station to check my tires. Just as I'm getting out of my car, a guy in a lowrider car, covered in prison tattoos, suddenly appears about 25 feet behind me, swearing at me: "F---ing asshole!", over and over again.

He backs his car up, gunning his engine and screeching his tires, and darts in alongside my car. It's hard to understand what he's yelling, but it sounds like he's chastising me for using the air pump without buying gas. (I hadn't bought any gas, that day, but I buy gas there all the time.)

Here's where I think Aikido helped. First of all, no, I didn't even consider doing some awesome technique on him; that would have gotten my ass kicked. Instead, with that blend of instinct and conscious thought that we try to develop in our training, I just made sure I kept a safe distance from him. I was aware that the car behind me could trap my escape, so I backed towards the back end of my car. Most importantly, I remained calm. I didn't get a big adrenaline rush, just the same relaxed posture with loose shoulders I've been working on lately.

But I'd only give myself a B on how I handled the situation because I did one thing that could have provoked him. I wasn't quite sure if I he was angry because I had cut him off while he was driving up to the air pump (I'm pretty sure I hadn't) or I had just happened to wander into the path of an angry man. I said to him, "Go ahead. You can go first." on the not-too-well-thought-out theory that it might disarm his anger a little. The problem was that I couldn't keep my eyes from squinting, just a little, in "you are a crazy-ass person" mockery. The smart move would have been to say absolutely nothing and show absolutely nothing.

I got in my car and drove away. This left me exposed to an attack while I was getting in the car. I did wait until he was occupied with unscrewing the cover on his valve stem before I approached my car door, and I kept my eyes on him. I'd like to say I timed it that way intentionally, but I hadn't. Perhaps the smarter thing would have been to walk over to the gas station office where a bunch of other people were standing.

Besides actual training in the dojo, it helped that I've been reading the Aikido Journal blog. They've had more than one article, some written by macho guys like former Army Rangers, pointing out exactly why it is dumb, very dumb to get involved in a fight that you can avoid -- you can get badly hurt. It's not worth it. In this case, about three minutes later, the guy was gone, my tires were checked, and I was peacefully getting on with my life.

Good Caltrain Cop / Bad Caltrain Cop?

I was perplexed when I read Caltrain board member, Jim Hartnett's response, in a Daily Post article about Caltrain budget problems, to the supposed problem of high ridership demand from bicycle commuters:

Caltrain board member Jim Hartnett said yesterday that the agency should consider banning bikes after a bicycle advocate called on the agency to continue making more room for riders.

"I am concerned that we are never going to meet (the demand)," said Hartnett, a Redwood City council member. "We have to consider whether or not we should continue to provide that service."

You have scads of loyal customers who want to make daily use of a product you're providing, so instead of ramping up and accommodating them, you threaten to stop providing the product? Good thing there are more sensible views among the board members:

Later in the meeting, Executive Director Michael Scanlon said that the board should consider charging a fee for bikes to board Caltrain.

Well, at least sensible to a heartless capitalist like me. Scanlon will no doubt get a lot of flak for suggesting the fee -- which made me think -- maybe Hartnett was playing the part of bad cop, setting up an unthinkable scenario to make the fee idea look a little better. It would fit right in with another drastic scenario floated at the meeting: to not just reduce, but eliminate, weekend Caltrain service.

P.S. If you're not familiar with the Daily Post, it's a free newspaper that started showing up in local coffee shops about a year ago. It looks eerily similar to the Palo Alto Daily News, and it turns out it looks similar because it was started by the same folks after they had sold the Daily News. Normally, I'd link to the Daily Post story online, but, against all expectations, Silicon Valley's newest newspaper prints its stories on paper only. The publishers say they aren't going to put their stories online unless they can make money off of it. I begrudgingly respect that.

Compost Cube

Here's the compost bin I built last weekend. I wanted a design I could throw together quickly since the only time I could work on it was during Nate's naps.

I used galvanized brackets, normally used for framing houses, and a bunch of deck screws to hold together the sides, which are three-foot redwood 2x4s.

Next, I stapled chicken wire around the frame.

And you've got yourself a compost bin ... also handy as a holding pen for curious children.

How The Feds Print Money

A few years ago, a co-worker asked, "You know how they talk about the government causing inflation by printing money? Do they literally mean that the government prints that much money?"

I didn't know the answer, but I knew there's no way the Federal government literally fires up the printing presses and cranks out enough paper currency to cause significant inflation, not with most money existing only in computer databases. It would have to involve injecting money into those computer databases, but how?

The answer is that there is a special division of the Federal Reserve called the Federal Open Market Committee which directs its "open market operations". The U.S. Treasury, an official branch of the government, issues securities, Treasury bills and the like, on the open market where anyone can buy them. The Federal Reserve, quasi-independent from the government, buys and sell securities right along with everybody else, but unlike all the other buyers and sellers the Federal Reserve is allowed to buy them with money that it creates from nowhere. When someone at the Federal Reserve sits down at a keyboard and enters money into the Open Market Account, the Federal government is "printing" money.

For the Federal political establishment there are advantages of this process: it's indirect and obscure, it can be claimed that it is not a government activity, and it keeps the prices of Treasury securities attractive even when the Treasury is issuing more and more of them.

So, why am I posting about this topic now? Normally, open market operations concentrate on buying and selling short-term securities with the goal of helping to keep key interest rates at target levels. Normally, inflation creeps along at the fairly slow year-to-year rate that we're all used to, slow enough that you can find economists that will argue that open market operations did or didn't affect any particular stretch of inflation.

However, in its March 2009 meeting, as yet another government response to the current recession, the Federal Open Market Committee made an unusual decision to purchase $1 trillion in Treasury and mortgage securities, including long-term securities that they normally don't deal in -- this was a clear-cut instance of the government "printing" money to purposely cause inflation (although the Federal Reserve uses the word, liquidity, rather than inflation).

Talk Is Economical

Ever since this recession hit, I've felt the need to shore up my rudimentary understanding of Economics. If for no other reason than to deal with the staggering amount of bullshit economic punditry that is bombarding us all lately.

I've found a wonderful podcast called EconTalk, hosted by Russ Roberts, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Roberts has a consistently interesting line up of guests, mostly (but not all) economists. The interviews are free of jargon and academic pomposity, but not dumbed down like NPR's "Planet Money". The episodes cover a wide variety of topics from the workings of the Federal Reserve to third-world economic development.

The most interesting episode so far was Roberts' interview with Nassim Taleb, author of two books that I keep hearing about on various blogs and science podcasts: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

In the interview, Taleb makes a radical claim: the mathematical analysis that economists hold up as evidence that Economics is a science is based on shaky ground since it all presumes that human economic behavior and economic events, such as discoveries of new technology, conform to normal statistical bell curves. "Fooled by Randomness" lays out Taleb's case that economic phenomena don't behave in nice, statistically predictable ways.

Taleb argues that Economics should be regarded as pragmatic or moral philosophy, not a science. I'm reserving judgement on his claim until I get a chance to read his books, but I find some comfort in it. I don't know about you, but I've always gotten the impression that economists never agree on anything and can never fully prove any of their claims -- maybe Taleb has figured out why that is.

Zoo Day!

We've been meaning to take Nate to the San Francisco Zoo but there have been a lot of rainy weekends lately. So, we jumped at the chance to go with Frances' mommy group. Nate was really into seeing all the animals, and excited just to be walking around with mommy and daddy.



Here are a few photos.