flights

Today I discovered the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, a website that strives to address the following catch-22:

…faith tells [believers] they should read the Bible, but by reading the Bible they endanger their faith.

The SAB’s annotations flag things like

* Injustice
* Absurdity
* Cruelty and Violence
* Intolerance
* Contradictions
* Family Values
* Good Stuff
* Science and History
* Interpretation

One of the Bible stories that always bothered me is the story of God testing Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. The SAB’s annotated version of this story points out various contradictions between the story and other passages in the bible and notes the violence, injustice and family values problems in the story with common sense assesments like this:

Abraham shows his willingness to kill his son for God. Only any evil God would ask a father to do that; only a bad father would be willing to do it.

At the start of 2001, the twin towers stood confidently in lower Manhattan, Iraq was languishing in the back of the news pages (Afganistan was out of sight and out of mind) and Bush-the-younger could still get away with calling himself a “uniter, not a divider.”

The clearly-starting-to-teeter US economy was the main source of domestic anxiety, and our foreign policy was heavily focused on China.

Now Iraq, and the war on terror, have stolen the headlines for over three years. But our appetite for this is starting to wane, and the press is starting to look beyond the Middle East once again.

The May 9 issue of Newsweek featured the special report, China’s Century as its cover story. Around the same time, the June issue of the Atlantic Monthly hit newsstands, featuring the provocative headline, “How We Would Fight China” and a serious-looking chinese sailor on its cover.

The two reports make good companion pieces.

The centerpiece of the Newsweek report is Fareed Zakaria’s, Does the Future Belong to China? It’s a lightweight (well it’s Newsweek, so yeah) survey of the obvious, but still an interesting read. It spins post-1979 China as the remarkable result of nuanced and carefully-planned reforms carried out by leaders who smartly shifted Chinese policy away from communism without damaging Maoist nationalism.

The two pieces in the Atlantic are a little gloomier, as suggested by the cover headline. They focus on the chess (or go?) match an asian cold war would surely be, characterized by naval standoffs, mid-air confrontations and diplomatic catfights.

I began to imagine the plot of a war satire set fifteen years from now. Our next president, in his (or her?) second term, decides to respond to one embarassing standoff or another – and also put a halt to China’s rapidly-improving military capabilities – by waging a preemtive war. We’re several years into it, in the story I imagine, and it’s looking more and more like a stalemate.

Perhaps we’ve taken Shanghai and even Hong Kong – with the help of Japan, Australia and Singapore, but Europe has abandoned us, and the support of Singapore and the Aussies is starting to look pretty shaky.

At home in the US, things are more polarized than ever. California might as well be its own country.

On the ground in China, our troops don’t like what it feels like to be the agressors on foreign soil.

That’s the backdrop. Now I have to come up with a story.

Randomly at Lizzie’s birthday party tonight, I met Joe Jarrell, a tallented writer who has been working for my company for a while in a freelance capacity.

He recently accepted an offer to join my group as a permanent employee. I’ve enjoyed reading his work on his website. He’s interviewed a really impressive lineup of musicians and artists, and I’m excited to work with him.

Driving into the city on I-80 today, I saw a billboard for BAJobs.com touting the website’s “better interface”. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen User Experience (UX) highlighted so prominently to sell a website.

Does this mean the market recognizes the narrowing distinction between websites and software? Does it mean UX is leaving the confines of the technorati?

Both?

On Anca’s blog tonight, I came across this H.L. Mencken quote…

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”

I generally agree, but I’d extend Mencken’s definition of “uncivilized” to include the young and less educated. I don’t mean to sound judgmental or dismissive. There’s a place in discourse for people who see things in black and white.

This has been on my mind again lately, and I’ve been thinking again about Mishima’s Runaway Horses, which I wrote about (along with Yann Martel’s Life of PI a few months back.

In Runaway Horses, Isao is a young revolutionary. Passionate, impulsive and utterly sure of himself. His unwavering believe in a higher cause is his reason for being. It’s what drives him to action and ultimately destroys him.

Honda, on the other hand, is an older man who has learned to moderate his beliefs. He is a reflective, nuanced thinker. He is an observer who more or less understands what makes people tick. He also acknowledges his own limitations and his inability to fully understand anything. In a world where most things make sense, and the rest is beyond one’s grasp, who’s to say what’s right and wrong? Morally speaking, Honda is a paralytic.

The more one knows, the less one does.

On the other hand, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

hmmm

Last week was the first week of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, and there are a lot of good things to see.

I saw three shows over the weekend, including one called Pandora 88 by a German duo calling themselves Fabrik Companie. The piece was a beautiful blurring of the line between theatre and dance, staged inside a box roughly 1 1/2 times the size of a refrigerator.

It began with the children’s games of tag, hide-and-seek and charades. Then it shifted into an outer-space motif that looked and felt exactly like old school video effects I remember from TV shows I loved as a child – Zoom, Sesame Street…

Toward the end, the piece became heavier and more dramatic. Like growing up.

In its final moments, one of the characters discovered a way out, and with the help of his friend he escaped the confines of the box, through a small hole in the ceiling. He looked around nervously for a moment and then reached down to help his friend.

His friend declined, and the stage went dark.

Sunday, I participated in Bay To Breakers, a world class foot race that has morphed over the years into a kind of ad hoc parade. Some people still run the race, but many more people “celebrate” the race.

They wear costumes or nothing at all. They build contraptions for carrying and serving beer.

I travelled with my friend Jeff and a group of people whose theme was a made up pharmaceutical called Placebox (“Pla-cee-box”), the underachiever’s drug. We were semi-linked to a group of stewardesses for Mile High Airlines.

Our time for the race was in the six-hour range.

When people from most places dress in costume – for Halloween say – it’s an opportunity to take on a fantasy identity. San Franciscans see dressing in costume as an opportunity to reveal their true hidden nature.

That’s my theory anyway.

Since I’ve been back in San Francisco, I’ve completely neglected my blog. One posting every two or three weeks is not what I’m aiming for. It’s not like I’m lacking material. What I’m lacking is the proper state of mind.

As a foreigner in foreign lands, my mind was in a constant and hightened state of discovery. By virtue of the fact that I was new there, everything there seemed new to me. Even things I can empirically say weren’t new at all.

Despite a demanding client and a gruelling schedule, I was able to write something nearly every day.

The thing is, I’m still more or less a rookie when it comes to San Francisco living, and I experience new things here all the time. So, like I said, I’m not lacking material.

As evidence, I present a short list of the things I did during my first week back (a whole month ago now). All of them absolutely new to me (except Zeitgeist, an old favorite)…

Thursday (the night I arrived), I went to a Laughing Squid party at Albion Castle.

Friday, I met Blake for beer on the legendary back patio at Zeitgeist.

Saturday, I went to The Ramp with Amy for a big greasy breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs.

Tuesday, I met Blake and Jeff for a coupla pints and a hearty shepherd’s pie at The Liberties Pub.

Thursday was Cesar’s going away party at Lime.

Friday, I went to a benefit show at SOMArts Christy presented one of the solos from a piece she staged back in December. The dancer was a hip-hop specialist named Skorpio.

Plenty of material. I just need to find right mind.

I’ve been back in San Francisco for more than a week now. I’ve mainly been reconnecting with friends, eating a lot of Mexican food and trying to catch up on my sleep. And neglecting my blog.

The other day, I stepped into Urban Outfitters to browse t-shirts and jackets, and after six months in Singapore, I was completely unable to wrap my mind around the irony oozing from every shelf in the store. Between Jesus action figures, Everyone Poops and white-trash retro, everything was just a little too cool for itself.

Last night, I saw Maroon 5 at the HP Pavilion, along with throngs of teenage girls and their parents. There were a few small groups of people my own age. We were the people holding cups of beer.

Maroon 5 has one hit song, and I heard it every night I was in any club in Singapore. I mention the show because the music snobs amongst my friends will make fun of me, but I am immune to this now.

Singapore is a city without irony. It has other kinds of class systems, but you can’t be a cultural snob in Singapore.

After I’d been there a few months, I listened to one person after another, recently arrived from San Francisco (or New York, London, etc.) moan about fashion or architecture or music. I watched them roll their eyes as a cover band launched into the latest hit, and the joyful throng exploded onto the dance floor.

Before I went to Singapore, I’d been struggling to divest of my inner snob. I was hating the haters, if you will. I walk in several circles of friends, and I’d become so tired of hearing one circle judge the other because of its taste in music, television, clothes, cars…

For me, it was actually beautiful and sort of liberating to be in a place where a cultural snob can’t survive. He’d go blind from eye-rolling.

…before the last chord of Purple Rain fades, the band begins to play Hotel California, and the western mind implodes from the effort it takes to comprehend.