Laotian tigers warm Vacuum packed NSA Fingerprints
“That’s a non-sequitur, Darius.” I replied. “That’s non-sense,” I thought.
Darius, nonplussed by my comment. paused. “I’m going to the golden triangle, Dad.”
“When I was a college professor, Dar, no one could escape war by going to Southeast Asia.”
“When you were a college professor, Dad, you had to dress like Dumbledore.”
“There are tigers in northern Thailand, Darius. I do not want to explain a tiger attack to your mother.”
“I’m not going to attack tigers. I’m going on a bicycle tour of Laos and a quick trip to Rangoon.”
“Be careful.”
Back in (tiger-free) Santa Barbara, Nazy had arranged an outing with the Newcomers Club - a sunset cruise on the Ranger, a 42 foot sport fishing boat that was built in 1917. Because the trip was limited to six people, I pounced on the reservation button the instant that it was posted to the website. In the intervening weeks, Nazy frequently reminded me of the need to be ‘on-time’.
“You are reminding me to be on-time?” I once asked. Incredulously. (And stupidly.)
On the day of the excursion, just before heading for the car, I read the instruction email which noted that a mobile phone contact number ‘must be provided at time of booking’.
“Oops,” I thought. “Let’s go!” I said.
We were the only newcomers who were on-time at the meeting point - the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. However, it took a while to find someone who knew about the excursion.
“They wanted the trip to begin at 4:00PM instead of 5:00PM”, Jennifer, our museum contact, explained. “But some people, including our crew, didn’t get the message.”
“These people obviously didn’t read the instructional email,” I replied. “So the organizers couldn’t contact them.”
“It was confusing..”
“I see that the boat is still here. I assume that the 5:00PM departure is still in the works.”
“We are missing one crew member, but I’ll close early and join as a crew member.”
“Have you seen any other newcomers?”
“Nope. It’s just you.”
“Why do we need three crew members to take two people on a boat ride?” I thought. And then I saw the slip where The Ranger was parked.
“Docked, Dan.” Nazy interrupts. “Boats dock. They don’t park.”
“This boat, my dear, is neither docked nor parked. It is vacuum packed.”
It was clear that the crew was needed to handle ropes at the front and rear..
“ Fore and aft, Dan.”
... bow and stern to make sure that we didn’t crash into nearby rocks or docks. Eventually, we cleared the marina and began cruising along the California Coast. The Ranger, we learned, had an illustrious history. Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart fished from the boat. More recently (2012), Kevin Costner shot a commercial on it.
After an enjoyable tour, we got to watch the crew attempt to return the boat to the designated slip. It was necessary to ‘back in’ and
“The Ranger has a small rudder and a single screw,” Tony, the Captain, explained as he tried (for the 4th time) to align the boat.
“This reminds me of our garage in Zurich,” I thought. “We had to back in to a space only marginally wider than the car. And we didn’t have any ropes. But we made it. Usually.”
I also attended another Newcomers event this weekend: a presentation on global warming. As a resident of “the left coast”, I assumed that the UCLA Professor doing the talk would bemoan corporate propaganda and greed while recommending a return to the pre-industrial age where the domesticated potato was Hi-Tech. The talk began as I had expected.
“No one can deny that the climate is warming. That is beyond dispute. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is also increasing. That too, is undeniable. But correlation doesn’t mean cause and effect. Moreover, there isn’t even a correlation. And everything you’ve heard anecdotally (hurricanes, shrinking glaciers, draught) is simply background noise.”
An audience member was skeptical: “But what about rising sea levels?”
“The sea level rose 12 inches between 1900 and 2000. Did you notice? Did anybody notice?”
“You did,” I thought.
“But climate models show a 20 foot sea-level increase,” the questioner replied.
“The climate modelers are physicists who couldn’t make it in physics. They found a rich lode of grant money in global warming. The models are ...”
“Crap?” I thought.
“ ... speculative.”
“Hmm,” I thought. “A lot of physicists turned to investment banking in the early 2000‘s where they created speculative models for derivatives trading. That worked well.”
There was, of course, one additional monumental event this week. Apple introduced the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. The 5S does away with 4 digit PIN codes in favor of biometric security. Nazy was enthusiastic.
“You just stick your finger on the button and...”
“ ... the NSA has another piece of data. It’s not enough that they capture my email, archive my phone conversations, track my web browsing history, review my iBook purchase records, monitor my toilet paper preferences...”
“Do they read your blog?” Nazy asked.
“It is so nice to be protected by a compassionate Department of Homeland Security that is assisted by highly trained intelligence professionals who constantly scan the internet,” I replied. “Scan the internet using models developed by otherwise unemployable physicists,” I thought.
And, finally, exactly a year ago, Nazy and I were visiting Ribeauville, France, completely unaware that we’d move to the USA within a few short months. I remember the sign at the local hotel: Romantic rooms for 1, 2 or 3 persons. “An excellent choice for a ‘menage de trois’” I thought at the time.
