Vacation update 7 by Lynn

It was a grand day… I got to go to the Hawaii Temple and take in a session…and made it back just in time to pick up Paul to meet Mom and Nathan at the Polynesian Cultural Center… We went to all 7 of the island centers and saw many great musical and informational performances about the islands…had a great guide… and took a canoe ride.. and watched a fabulous big show with everything from simple hula’s to the fire eaters and fire dance…. It was great…
This morning it is raining and the waves are pounding the shore outside our door and it is very soothing… but I am getting hungry and thinking about packing up and heading south towards the airport to go home… I cannot wait to give hugs to everyone… but I am sure we will be tired after our long flight… we will be at the Minneapolis airport for a few hours waiting though…but that is part of travel…Yeah…a great vacation and then home again.

Splurge

Vacation update 6
I had been getting mild cold symptoms for a few days. By Saturday I was down for the count. I had so little energy I could hardly move, but it was travel time. We flew back to Honolulu and checked into a hotel at Waikiki beach. (I can’t recommend staying there. It is so urban, you might as well be in downtown Los Angeles.) It hardly mattered, I slept pretty much the whole two days I was there. Just as I was starting to feel better, Lynn and I drove around the island and checked into Turtle Beach resort in the more isolated north shore. This is a classy place.
Lynn treated herself and me to a massage and a skin treatment where you get your whole body scrubbed, oiled with local lotions and potions, then wrapped in tea leaves. It was a very sensual and relaxing experience. I'm still floating.

Top of the world

Vacation Update 5

Friday night, Lynn and I were sitting on top of Hawaii, cuddled into parkas and shivering. We were watching the spectacular sunset that can only be seen from top of a 13000 foot mountain in the middle of a tropical ocean. We were touring the observatories on top of mauna Kea. While watching the sunset in this rather remote place, I decided to check my cell phone, and it worked. This seemed so amazing to me that I disturbed some of my kids by calling them from the top of the world after their bedtime.
The tour guides and drivers only stay at the top for about a half hour. There is so little oxygen at that height that they start getting loopy if they stay longer. I was noticing a few weird physiological effects in myself. We descended to 9000 feet and set up telescopes and got a bunch of lessons about the (incredibly clear) night sky.

Vacation update 4, By Lynn

I got burned today as I was snorkeling on fantastic reefs and along shores with lots of wonderful fishes… and corals… and it was a great morning to be out in a raft with super powerful motors and in the ocean…very salty… and with a bright sun shining… yes I put on sun screen, but I think I should have put more on before the 2nd snorkel stop… near the Capt Cook monument on English soil here in Hawaii… lots of fun again…this lasted from 8:00am until after noon… yeah… what a life…then we had a great meal and then came back to the motel for a rest…and then I found out I was really sore… lots of red on the back of my legs and back… I wore cold wet towels for about an hour while watching to see what the hurricane in the gulf was doing… and so now we are going to play a good game of Rummikube…with Mom and Nathan and they get to get up early tomorrow while we sleep in… until later…
Lynn

Vacation Update 3

Short alphabet = many syllables

Hawaiian words seem so long and complicated. Yesterday I mentioned king Hamehameha. His name is short. Check out the name of the state fish… Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (pronounced…who moo who moo new coo new coo ah poo ah ah).
It started to make sense when one of the guides pointed out that the native language only has 13 letters in its alphabet. Like in many other cultures, Hawaiian names tend to be very descriptive, but because of the short alphabet, they use the same few sounds over and over.


Land, Air and Sea
Lynn had to buy me a T shirt with the state fish on it. The next day we went on a raft tour of the Kona coast. It turned out that this little raft had 260 horsepower and cruised at 30 miles per hour. We saw many caves carved by the wave action, and we snorkled in wonderfully clear calm waters. We even recognized and chased our favorite fish with the long name.

We were told that ideally we should tour the island by land, air and sea. We did. Today Lynn and I will add outer space to it. We will tour the observatories on the mountain.

Vacation update 2

Tuesday (at the crack of dawn again) we were at the airport to tour the island by air. The guy who runs Big Island Air is an artist. It is immediately obvious that he loves his plane (a Cessna Caravan). It has high wings for stable operation and good viewing. Everyone gets a window seat. He gives you first class noise blocking headphones, and he keeps up a fun patter as he explains everything. He even manages to remember everyone’s name and where they are from, wasting no opportunity to use that info while he talks. High class music (in stereo) is always playing in the background, and the volume comes up a little when he is not talking.

The plane takes off smoothly and flies like a dream. In the headphones it feels surreal because the flight seems incredibly smooth and quiet (like in a travel movie). As we were flying low around a spot where red hot lava was pouring into the ocean, the theme from Jurassic Park was playing. I don’t know if the pilot had full control of that or it was just good timing, but it was very effective.

This is such a beautiful contrast to a rattling smelly bus.

Wednesday morning
Again we got up early, this time to go parasailing. This one had been calling my name for the last three years. They reel you out 400 feet, then they flap their arms at you. If you ignore them they leave you at 400. If you flap your arms they reel out to 800 feet (for an added price). If you are still up for it, they reel you out to 1200 feet. Once you get out there, it feels so peaceful and gorgeous. I loved it.
Lynn wasn’t sure she wanted to go. When she finally did, she entertained everyone on the boat with her “whoo-hoos”. Her old nickname "Lynn the Grinn" still applies. She was so enthused that she bought a zillion of their T shirts and gave them a big tip.

Vacation update 1

Lynn and I had a smooth flight to Hawaii. It really is gorgeous here. The most dangerous part was letting Lynn and Ruth talk to the concierge. They got us so heavily booked doing fun things that almost every day of my “vacation” has to start with a pre dawn alarm clock.

Sunday we actually got to sleep in, after being up for 21 hours traveling the day before. Then we went to a luau with a feast fit for a king ( king Kamehameha to be exact).

Early Monday we loaded ourselves into a big diesel bus and toured the island. 12 hours of sitting in the back of a diesel bus has me prepared to bend anyone’s ear about how to design better busses. Busses cost a lot of money. It’s hard to fathom that they can’t be built to run smooth and clean and quiet like a car. After that I just couldn't be forced to drive to a restuarant to eat. If I had to tell my body to get into another motor vehicle at that time, every one of my cells would have gone awol.

Dichotomy

One way to recognize a great truth is when the exact opposite is also a great truth.

I was contemplating the fact that we really have very little control over our attitudes. The complex factors that create our attitudes run very deep. They include our culture, our heritage, our personal past, our economics, our neighborhood, our friends, and ultimately our habits. They influence even the physical structure of our brain.

I then remembered that the ONLY thing in life we really have control over is our attitude.

For a while it made me feel small.
Then I realized that we just identified a great truth.

The more I contemplate, the more I feel its power.

Send Kate energy

I've gotta admit that it shakes me up when I think I'm hearing any bad news about Kate.

We need to send lots of energy to get her blood count up and her tumor marker down. It's not unusual for the numbers to vary a little, as long as the trend is in the right direction.
Let's get them in the right direction.

Poor people

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Poverty has less to do with actual money and more to do with attitude.
This week we have heard countless radio and tv interviews with refugees from New Orleans. Some of the people talk about how they prepared and how they were resourceful when the worst happenned. Others talk about how they couldn't afford to prepare, or to leave, and they were condemmed to die because of their poverty. They didn't have anything to drink for days.

I can see that it would be hard to evacuate with no car and nowhere to go, but let's get serious about getting prepared. How much does it cost to fill a bunch of jugs and bottles with water? How about a few baggies of trail mix? A portable radio can be picked up cheap or free at rummage sales. Garbage bags would be handy. A flashlight.

There is virtually no able bodied person in America who couldn't scrounge up enough stuff to be prepared for a three day disaster. Truely poor people think they can't afford to be prepared, for storms or anything else in life. For some reason they are always unlucky. Temporarly broke people prepare for things. Eventually things go well for them.

Got Time?

Thoughts that can stand alone
But they also add up.

Life path
Each of us occupies only a tiny speck in the vastness of poly dimensional space. If you followed our journey through life, it would look like a long thread. As we pick our path toward the unknown, the thread twists and weaves its way around a zillion other threads, creating the tapestry of life.

Our job
According to many theologies, our ultimate goal is to create awareness. We are the neurons in the brain of God.
If we are the neurons, our life paths are the dendrites; the many connections to other parts of the brain.

Bored
If we know we can do something, it becomes boring and eventually we need to try something we are not sure we can do. We evolved to pursue challenges. It’s how we grow. We are programmed to pursue the path for which we don’t know the outcome.

Maybe that is why we perceive time as we do…
Our life path goes only into the future because we are programmed to steer toward the unknown. In poly dimensional space, the future is merely a place we haven’t been yet.

Secrets

Lynn told me I should write this down...
Recently another guy who is trying to build an ecological research campus wanted to explore how our two businesses can work more closely with each other. As a matter of course any businesses sharing information with each other usually sign a non disclosure document that says they won't disclose any secrets. When he handed me the document to sign, I gave him my speech...

When we freely share information about what we are doing, people want to help. They will happily give pointers and advice. They will connect you to people you need to know and will share the excitement of your project. People like to help someone be a success. To be successful, your project needs to have the right people talking about it to everyone who could help. (There is a reason why fame and fortune are intimately linked.)

When it comes to having technical secrets; I have found that there are basically two kinds of people. One kind couldn’t make use of your know-how if you personally handed them all your notes. The other kind (much more rare) could simply see the concept of what you are doing and they could work out a way to do it better. There is no sense keeping a secret from either one.

There are a lot of reasons to share (mostly) openly with both kinds of people. They can help you.

The adventures of Elwood

Ryan was left home to handle his kids alone yesterday while Amber went on a day trip. He had fresh surgery on his hand so there was some concern that he might have a hard time. On the contrary! He was having way too much fun.

He had a bunch of round and oblong wooden sticks lying around, and he had a video camera, so he and Ethan created Elwood, and they made him a star.

The adventures of Elwood is cute and cheesy. When I watched them I was laughing aerobically. Later Amber watched and reported that she laughed her head off.

Elwood is just a collection of wooden sticks, but he has facial expressions and body language that work incredibly well. He could become a cult classic.

Slow blogging time

There is something about this time of year that makes it harder to write a blog. I think everyone is busy getting in the last bit of summer. Still, some of us manage to create a gem once in a while.
This is from Rambling with Isha It is worth repeating.
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* Life is NOT a poker game. You are dealt a hand, but that is as far as it goes. In life you can pick up cards along the way. You can discard the cards you don't like. And most importantly, you can make up the rules as you go. If your hand is better for Go-Fish, great. Have a super Bridge hand? Wonderful. It's sad when someone is too busy hating their Poker hand to realize that they have a winning Crazy 8s hand.
_____________________________

Relax

It's dark just a little earlier than I thought. It's quiet. Dog lying on the floor to my left. Cat washing herself on my right. Crickets chirping all around. It's a gorgeous night with cool fresh air wafting in through the window above and tickling whatever skin I have exposed. It must be August.

Dragon

This one is for Raya. She keeps buggin me to show her the dragon.

Erika is putting screws into the wall to hold the chicken wire and the mud. We don't want it to fall off.

Half of the first layer of mud is applied.

The left wing is up. You can see the screws in the wall to hold the right wing.
I think we are going to have a lot of cool looking walls if she hangs around a few years.

Sudden understanding

That fleeting moment of clarity... Oh how I love it.
How do I get it more often?, and make it last longer?
Sometimes it seems to come from nowhere. Usually, If you pay attention, you can notice what conditions helped to set it up.

One time I was just writing about the nature of time, a gem popped out in the text and the understanding happened afterwards.

Another time, I was walking on a track in a perfect summer night with nothing to clutter my mind. Suddenly the curves of the track opened up insights into Einstein's view of 4 dimensional space-time and gravity. I never understood it before.

Alas, These little moments of clarity seem so short, usually not long enough to write it all down. How do we pursue these beautiful butterflies of thought?

It turns out to be a healthy safety valve

Deep inside the mind is a psychological process that has puzzled me for decades. Some sources say that up to 40% of ordinary people are turned on by or have fantasies about being tied up. It doesn't take much time to find out that the internet has thousands of sites that pander to such things. There are also countless manufacturers making hardware to sell for that kind of play.

With most people who actively have such fantasies, it only comes around occasionally when the biorhythms and planets line up just right. The rest of their lives they really have little interest in such things.

Why would someone want to let someone tie them up or tie themselves up?
The answer is emerging... DANGER!

Some people pursue danger. They may drive fast, climb cliffs, take drugs, etc. Experts say that the reason some couples get a thrill from having sex in unusual places is the slight chance of getting caught.

Recent tests have proven that when men are shown pictures of pretty women they are more likely to take risks. (Pictures of plain women have no such effect.)
These things feed my theory…

Built into our genes are forces that convince us to conform and behave for the good of society. At the same time (and for very good evolutionary reasons) we have smaller counter forces that tell us to rebel, beat the odds, try something different. Biorhythms and circumstances sometimes align to make those forces stronger. Like most bio-drives, if they are ignored, they just build up pressure.

Some people end up driving fast cars, where the danger can cause instant carnage and death. Some people chase fast women, where the danger is divorce, disease, etc. For those who play games where they tie themselves up, or let a trusted loved one tie them up, they might get caught, or they have some risk of being controlled by another during their play. The danger is psychologically real but physically inconsequential.

This, if done well, is a healthy and safe way to diffuse our internal biological drives to court danger. Just like swearing, it has to remain illicit in polite society or it serves no function.

Third world country

Lately, I've been consumed by learning how to import solar heating equipment. I think it must be because of the challenge of learning new things, the intrigue of working with exotic foreign partners, the ability to economically create products that seemed out of reach a few months ago.

In many ways, I'm starting to feel like we already live in a third world country. Case in point is the solar tubes I'm shopping for. 90% of them in the world are manufactured in China. The few that are manufactured in america are priced many times higher.

In a few short years we have come to accept that products designed in the far east work better than american designs. They are assembled better too. And why not? They work harder in school. I am told that 55% of their college students are engineers, compared to 5% here.

All 7 members of the politburo, the top Chinese lawmakers, are card carrying engineers. Most of our lawmakers are lawyers.

The 20th century largely belonged to america. This next century will mostly belong to the chinese.

The future continues to wax and wane.

Always in motion is the future.

If you are designing a product that will be on the market 5 or 10 years in the future, you want that product to do well in the world to which it is introduced. How different will that world be from the one we inhabit today?

Six months ago I started a serious look into the future. Apparently the teacher took my quest seriously. Every week I was introduced to another view of up and comming technologies, each more startling than the last.

I was fascinated, but the cumulative learning threw me into future shock. Within the span of an average lifetime, we are in for many deep and profound changes. Absorbing this much realization caused psychic indigestion; mild depression.
(if you are compelled to do this; for a start, google Spiritual Machines and NanoTechnology and Desktop manufacturing and Space elevator Each of these will profoundly change our economic and social environment.)
Like fire or water, these forces are equally powerful for good or evil. The net result is that we are in for very positive and exciting changes, if we don't blow ourselves up first. I'm not going to try to detail them here because it would take several in-depth conversations for anyone to even begin to believe it.

Added to these technical changes, many ancient and modern religions predict that these are the end times. Economic patterns suggest hard economic and political times in the next 15 years.

Bottom line forecast:
Be prepared for hard economic times.
Be prepared for great economic times.
Be flexible, resourceful, out of debt, close to the earth.