More Madonna, Less Jesus

Joshua Tree

Is it unusual that as I get older, I liked the desert more? Last weekend I visited friends in Joshua Tree. We stayed at a dome home, swam in the indoor pool, slept out on the deck and watched the stars, took walks, and listened to quail.

joshua tree quail

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The house sits on the slops of the mountain just north of Joshua Tree park and the neighborhood, although subdivided into 5 acre homesteads the owners have built sensitive houses and left the native catuses and birds alone.

The dome home.

We went on several excursions. Our visit to the Joshua Tree Music festival doesn’t have a photos, but it’s a nice memory.

On Saturday, we had a http://www.integratron.com/6ComeOnIn/ComeOnIn.html#SoundBath at the Integratron.

No other building like it in the world.

Before she played the crystal bowls and gave us our sound bath, one of the owners told us a history of the Integratron. George Van Tassel studied Tesla’s work, and had been given instructions by an alien. He was about to turn the dome into the machine it was intended to be–lining the interior with aluminum and connecting the power source to the free energy of the earth, but he was called away from this planet and left by way of heart attack. And then, his papers and building materials were stolen and never found. All that is left is this model, built by one of his colleagues.

The copper wires lining the floor under the dome room are still in place:

Even though George did not intend for people to lay on mexican blankets and listen to crystal bowls played in a scale tuned to their chakras, he did intend for the machine to extend human life. I don’t know if the sound bath extends lifespan, but it sweetens what we do have. (Plenty of cool photos at flikr.)

Our other excursion was into town, to visit Shari Elf’s Art Queen Gallery.

Shari Elf: yes, you can believe the hype. Delightful, creative, generous, well-dressed. Visit her site, become a fan, and buy her record: I’m Forcing Goodness Upon You. We played it everywhere, over and over, as our sound track.

Art Queen gallery had two shows, one by Ann Magnuson called 30 x 30, and the other Many Mansions, both of which inspired a wordsmith like me to think and feel in new ways, which I why I like art, anyway.

Do not miss the Crochet Museum. Just. don’t.

The last night we drove down to Palm Springs and spent the night in a older hotel with a view to the south like this:

All weekend, emails from Santa Cruz had been saying how hot it was. For once, I was glad to be in the desert.

What Right-Wing Radio Talks Show Hosts Didn’t Know about Waterboarding

Oh man, this is so good on so many levels.

And I love the little toy cow that’s in his hand as a “safe word.” I found this on Alternet.

What I didn’t know about Panamanian Corporations

I’ve long been a student of the school of POCLAD and understand why absolute monarchies feared corporations. But this video makes me want to set one up myself. It just seems foolish not to. Why would a corporation pay taxes at all?

Fishrap This Week

Last week I found a copy of the latest Fishrap, the UCSC humor newspaper. Unfortunately, they had several websites, but they are gone or not updated since 2008, ditto their facebook and myspace page, so I can’t link to the story. (In fairness, you can follow them on twitter, but the timeline is innane.)

Anyway the articles in this issue are hilarious, so pick up a copy if you see it: “4/20 Death Toll Rises at UCSC: You kids get off my lawn your I’m gettin’ the hose!,” “Capitola Resident Just Doesn’t Get It,” “Obituaries: Indian Dies in Cupboard.” Not every university has a humor publication; I’m proud we do.

Family Tree vs Treesitters

“What Makes Us Human?” asks the current cover story in Scientific American. I would be attracted to this story anyway, but am particularly interested because much of the research reported was done just up the hill from my office at the Genome Project at UCSC. The author, Katherine Pollard, is using bioinformatics to study those and compare the genome sequences in human and chimps that change the fastest. Of the 1% of DNA that is different between us and our nearest relatives, what does that DNA do? What makes us human? So far, Pollard has found DNA sequences that relate to the folding of the neocortex, speech centers in the brain, digestion of starch, brain size, digestion of milk sugar of domesticated animals, and certain changes in the fetal development of the wrist and thumb.

The Genome Project is currently in the Applied Sciences building, one of the oldest on campus. It is planned to be one of the occupants of the biomedical building
across the street. This is the building that was protested by treesitters for more than a year.

I’m not in favor of Pharma or logging a parking lot. But this research is amazing. Why not do it in a redwood forest?