petebrunelli

Author: petebrunelli

  • Take That!

    Hey! Someone finally had the balls to throw a shoe at George Bush. My money was on Helen Thomas, but I’ll take what I can get. I didn’t expect Bush to have an epiphany. I don’t expect him to even spell epiphany. But you gotta love his titanic-like refusal to acknowledge that it was more than an isolated incident. The journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at Bush this morning, should get a Pulitzer. Here’s an unsurprising quote, courtesy of the NYT: “A statement from Mr. Maliki’s government described the shoe-throwing as a “shameful, savage act that is not related to journalism in any way.” Really? It happened during a press conference, it was the act of a journalist, and it was reported globally. There’s more than one way to file a story, old boy. Oh yeah, if that wasn’t enough, it spurred massive demonstrations of support in the streets of Baghdad. Sounds like journalism with a capital J. If there was any doubt about how close Bush and Maliki are in their complete disdain for reality, read that quote a few times.

    Frank Zappa once said: “You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream”, and sometimes you need to throw a shoe to get your point across. And sometimes it is like throwing a shoe at a brick wall. This particular “wall” is twice as thick and twice as dumb as your average wall, but a wall none the less. If only ol’ Bushie was as quick with the foreign policy comebacks as he is with the shoe jokes. What a different world we might be living in today.

  • Happy Festivus

    Every year it gets harder to really celebrate “the holidays”. I’m all for any good reason to get together with family and friends, but something (me, probably) really has changed. Part of it is probably that the “Thanksgiving rule” for when to start Christmas music commercials has gone the way of the dodo. I heard the first one of the year back around Halloween. Fuckers. If you remember “Hey Now” Hank Kingsley (played by genius actor Jeffrey Tambor) from the old Larry Summers show, then you know where I’m coming from on that. Fuckers.

    Anyhow. These things happen. It is a time for the kids, and I spoil the kids in my life pretty well. Not all the time, but around the holiday season I can get away with it under the banner of holiday cheer. I’d like to wish the best everyone who I won’t get to see over the next month or so. I do that most of the year anyhow, but this time with feeling.

    So gather ’round the aluminum pole, air grievances, explore the feats of strength, and don’t feel like you are beyond marking your own holiday tradition. Speaking of which, my pal Nate sent me a link to his pal (my iPal on Myspace, etc…) fossilapostle and his groovy new holiday sensation: Zappadan Ain’t it funky now?

  • Last Guy Into The Pool

    Yeah, no kidding. It is the night before the election, and NOW I am writing a blog entry. Better late than never.

    I’m a closet election whore. I follow the races, but I also believe that there is a lot of misinformation and psyops at work in every campaign. As I explained to my nephew over the weekend, the presidential race is usually a case of making two guys with a lot in common sound like they are polar opposites. He is a typical 14 year old, just realizing that politics could possibly effect his young life at all, and he has fallen into the “pro gun” one issue voter trap. I say trap because being a one issue voter can, IMO, be dangerous. I’m pro gun, but I would also like to be able to *afford* a gun! I’m watching the economy tank, and thinking that with all of the warrantless wiretapping, habeas corpus revocation, indefinite detentions, extreme secrecy in the executive branch, signing statements, and this incredible stretch of last minute assaults on consumer and environmental protections, I’ll take my chances. We also had a little rap about how the power to make gun laws resides in Congress, and that if the president really had that kind of control then Bush would have revoked Roe-v-Wade during the six years he had Republican majorities in both houses.

    So with that I’ll make my case for the workplace metaphor as it applies to the current major candidates for the office of President of the United States: If you think about it, you either currently work, or used to work, with a dead ringer for one of these people.

    Take Ol’ Hate Talk Express John. McCain is the guy who really hasn’t done anything in recent memory, but keeps ramming his “experience” and tenure down everybody’s throat. Question anything and you get the spiel about how long he has been at the company/organization and how you have a long way to go if you want to be heard. inveterate pontificators like this are less common as the number of employees with long tenure falls off, but they are out there. I’ve worked with a few of these guys, and I am in no way interested in four years of it. Like McCain, they are bad enough as middle managers. Make them president and they become unbearable. These guys are bitter over being passed over for so long, and if they get the big chair they will be reminding everyone who made their shit list.

    I’ll stick with the “we are not anything like George W. Bush, at all, ever” party, and go on to Sarah Palin. This is wayyyy too easy, and too common. Some ditz in a skirt who gets elevated to a major position while many many many more qualified women are passed over. You could probably name a dozen more qualified Republican women if you had 15 minutes and a piece of paper. The horror that was Gale Norton was a disaster in a cabinet post, and her resume makes Palin look like a stenographer. These people engender massive resentment among the rank and file, if not on day one, then by the end of week two. Once someone with real credentials is heard saying “slept her way into the job” it is all over. I have worked with, and continue to, some amazing women. They have the whole package of tools in their profession, work hard, and usually work harder than their male counterparts. They have to. I’m not sure what, other than shameless self promotion and religious zealotry, sets Palin apart. But she is the kind of person who has about 30 seconds left on that 15 minutes. Those clips of her “answering” questions by randomly joining nouns and verbs until the red light comes on will haunt her forever. Also, she won’t stop making them.

    I’ll leave the presumptive next president for last. I’ll go all metaphorical on Joe Biden first. He has a good story, a good haircut, a tragic tale, a massive track record of public discourse in a very exposed position (Senate), and he kind of blathers on. (Sidebar: He’s the Senator from freakin’ DELAWARE! What is that about? I’m from Connecticut and Delaware doesn’t even register on my radar screen.) This would be the “windbag with skills” guy. Sure, you don’t want to be trapped in an elevator with him, but the guy is a vault of useful information. You jut have to pick it out of the noise. He will whip out the experience card if threatened, but otherwise he would rather tell you about his weekend. Lemme get this straight: He’s been in the Senate since 19 and 7 freakin’ 2, he’s a cath-a-lic, and the McCain campaign has turned up NADA of dirt on him. This guy is the teflon fog. I’ve worked alongside two people like this and while they may seem out of it sometimes, they can take the lead if they have to. Nobody wants to see the number two take over, but there are many worse choices.

    I’m leaving Obama for last because I don’t know if I have worked with anyone of his caliber, but I’ll say up front that I have worked with some big brains before and the main drawback is that they can be either aloof or unpredictable. That doesn’t mean that the decisions are wrong, it is just that they might bypass the “explanation” phase. That can be fixed, and I think that the form will hold out that he will have someone good at explanations (any guesses on chief of staff?) right by his side. He has done an OK job of explaining his positions while on the campaign trail. I hope he keeps it up if he becomes President.

    Sure, I’m in the bag for Obama. The alternative is too horrifying to contemplate. It reminds me of the nightmare scenario that people talked of avoiding back in those relative halcyon days between January 2001 and September 2001. Cheney/Bush. That warmonger control freak in the big seat and the brain dead cheerleader as veep. Remember that? That’s what McCain/Palin reminds me of. The reciprocal of Bush/Cheney. After 9/11 it was more fashionable to worry about Darth Cheney in the big chair, but it wasn’t always that way.

    So there it is. Bob Barr? OK… he is the smartest guy to not make the majors. You want a maverick? Check the box score on Barr. He’s like the former Fortune 500 CEO that you run into on the street and he is running a taco truck. Sorry Libertarians. I love ya, but it is tough love.

    I’m going to start a small series of posts as the election plays out. Have a good Nov. 4, and be sure to vote.

  • Beijing F(SM)OG – Part 2

    When I travel I am kind of a nut for air pollution and atmospheric stuff. Sandy thinks I’m nuts, but when we visited LA for the first time I was like a kid in a candy store. From being able to smell the “burning tire” signature as we come over the basin rim from the north (before becoming desensitized about 2 minutes later), to seeing that big, fudgy, textbook inversion over downtown… it was pretty damn cool. Coughing up a big black chunk of LA’s finest when we pulled in to a rest stop in Joshua Tree… less damn cool.

    (Warning: Air Pollution Geekery Ahead)

    So China was something I really looked forward to. First, the flight to Beijing meant flying over the North Freaking Pole. That was worth it right there. Then came the air quality nerdvana experience. Some people taste fine wine… I taste air! In Beijing it was pretty straight forward: very forward sulfate acidity, dark nitrate overtones, and a lingering punch of particulates that just won’t quit! The deal with China is that their air pollution is not urban, like we are accustomed to in the US. Theirs is regional… and often continental. Huge areas of the country are smothered in smog. There are a lot of sources, but one that might be missed is charcoal.

    Air pollution sources can be aggregated and into an “inventory”. You develop one by trying to account for the different activities that contribute to pollution. Fossil fuel combustion is easy because fossil fuels are a well-managed commodity. It gets used in electric power generation, transportation, industrial applications, and home heating, to name the big ones. The “Beijing Plan” was to cut back on transportation and electric generation, and try to restrain some manufacturing emissions. We could argue that cutting back on electricity and transportation while hosting the olympics is a bad idea, or impossible, but who would listen? In the US we cook our food primarily with electricity or natural gas. We have a lot of infrastructure to deliver that energy to our homes. Very little of that infrastructure exists outside of the modernized central Beijing. When you are talking about a population of 15 million, a huge amount of them are on the outside looking in on electric and gas stoves. What you see is the “charcoal man” with a wheelbarrow full of these fuel cartridges that are about the size of a coffee can. That fuel is the core of the typical Beijinger’s kitchen. They fit into a concrete, metal, or ceramic “stoves” and generate the blast of concentrated heat needed for traditional wok cooking. Cooking fuel can be a huge factor in air pollution. It doesn’t sound like much until you do the math, and try to feed about 10 million (I’m being kind) people from charcoal burners. All of those storefront, neighborhood, night market, and fly-by-night food joints… they are not cooking with gas. They are cooking on charcoal, coal, or maybe wood. This is the definition of an “area source”. A power plant or factory is a “point source”. Regulating point sources is effective if you don’t have massive area sources. Beijing has massive area sources.

    So while the “Beijing Plan” is well intentioned, it is (IMO) a complete waste of effort. A lot of pollution is “secondary”, meaning that it forms in the atmosphere as opposed to being emitted directly. Secondary pollutants are notoriously hard to reduce because the starting materials are so abundant. Ozone is the king of secondary pollutants, and as the Chinese know so well, ozone is the primary constituent of smog. It forms when volatile organics (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) combine under UV light. China has all three in SPADES, brotha. You could shut the whole country off, cold turkey, and you would still have plenty of smog for quite a while. To their credit, the Chinese government did *something* to try to mitigate their air pollution issues. But it is basically window dressing. The underlying air pollution sources have not been attenuated.

  • Beijing F(SM)OG – Part 1

    …statement by the committee [IOC] president, Jacques Rogge: “The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution.”

    I find this patently offensive. Even if I hadn’t spent two weeks in China last year, and seen this “fog” firsthand, it would reek of bullshit. But I was, and I did, and ambient air quality is my bag, baby. Fog is a dew point event, relative humidity vs temperature to be specific. The gray miasma that you see enveloping Beijing, and don’t get to see enveloping the other regions of China, is not just smog, it is beyond smog. It is a heavy cocktail of all the major air pollutant groups, and it can and does have devastating effects on living creatures.

    All of the public information regarding air pollution monitoring in China suggests an extremely cynical approach. They only monitor for coarse particulate matter (PM10), they don’t monitor fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfates, or volatile organics. When their PM10 measurements let them down, they either moved the monitors to cleaner areas, or simply shut them off. When asked if they planed on improving their air monitoring, the response was “Yes, after the olympics”. What is ironic is that most air pollution monitoring gear is very low-tech by modern standards. Heck, they Chinese actually make some decent air monitors that are used in the west.

    I don’t want to be misunderstood on this. I am pro-China, in that I see the potential for their role as a positive force on the planet. The people I met in China were genuine, warm, and giving. Their culture is rich and diverse. Their food is astonishing if you can find the real stuff and stay out of tourist joints. But damn, there is a strong undercurrent of purposeful foot-dragging and feigned ignorance that undermines the current state of their culture. That is largely a government function, but it permeates the culture at large. Big Bother is not a derogatory concept in China. More bluntly: Beautiful people, diverse culture, shitty government… just like the USA!

  • I’m back

    I’ll be posting a few blog entries soon. I’m also looking at a potential teardown of the http://petebrunelli.com site, so I’m not positive that they won’t conflict. But hey… it is just for my own fun anyhow…

  • Some interesting music afoot

    I had the luck of seeing Michael Manring perform with DeManIa at The Center for the Arts Natick (MA). I have heard a few of the other recordings of Manring in a group setting, and they are all solid stuff. This band really has a different sound, and I found out that percussionist Christopher Garcia is one heavy cat. He is so heavy that he doesn’t even know he is heavy at all. He is actually a testament to loving music and working your butt off to pull off what you hear in your head. His playing is sublime. I had the chance to catch Michel camilo and sit about 7 feet from El Negro Hernandez’ left foot, and this was even more of a mind bender.

    See pics here and I’ll expand this post later.

  • A visit to the Far East (or far west as it turns out)

    Sandy and I visited China in October. We were there for over a week and a half and it was a mix of local guides and riding around in a tour van, and off the path traveling. We started in Beijing, moved on to northern Hunan province, and then ended in Xi’an. I’m going to put up a small gallery of pics and maybe some video clips, and I should be posting a link in the next few days.

  • Status of Project Ragged

    I have concluded that I need to step it up on my photo essay on Ragged Mountain. I was working on a simple iPhoto export, but I think I want something micer and I don’t like modifying Apple bloatml code. Blame my flitation with iWeb for this. I’ll hack something better together with my usual gaggle of semi-wsiwyg tool and the word will have to wait. I’m hoping to have something up soon!

  • Zappanale 18

    Over at the DOOT! Blog I have a nice crop of photos and some day-by-day rundowns of this year’s Zappanale, in Bad Doberan, Germany. It was a really fun weekend and I had a lot of time to socialize, take photos, some video, and very little time to just relax. Enjoy the entries on the DOOT! blog and I’ll have something cool for this site very soon.

    PEACE!