Bands Named for Places

Originally called the Chicago Transit Authority, they renamed themselves just Chicago a year later in 1969, when the actual Chicago Transit Authority asked them to stop using their name.  Led by Keyboardist Robert Lamm, Guitarist Terry Kath, Bassist Peter Cetera, all of whom also did lead vocals, and Arranger and Trombonist James Pankow, they did several successful albums.  Kath accidentally killed himself and Cetera has left the band, but they're still doing shows.

Boston is pretty much the creature of MIT grad student Tom Scholz, who invented a number of electronic gizmos and played all the instruments in a recording studio in his basement (In Watertown, Mass, which is across the river from Boston but not actually in it) to make the first album in 1974.  He got help from singer Brad Delp and added several others to do live shows.  Delp killed himself but Scholz and and many of his collaborators are still going.

Guitarist and Pianist Ralph Towner and Oboist Paul McCandless met while students at the University of Oregon, and with Sitarist and Tablaist Colin Wolcott and Bassist Glen Moore formed the group Oregon during the 1960s but didn't start calling themselves that until 1971.   Walcott was killed in a traffic accident, but the rest of the band is still going.

Progressive Rock band Kansas was formed in Topeka, Kansas in 1973, by a group of musicians who are mostly from Kansas.  They are still going although several of the original members, including the violinist/lead vocalist, have died.

Alabama is a country and rock band formed in Alabama in 1969.

America was formed by Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley, all sons of US Air Force personnel, while their fathers were stationed near London, England.  Their music is light rock and roll, most of which is written by Bunnell.   Peek has died, but Bunnell and Beckley are still making music.

Nazareth is a Scottish band that was founded in 1968.  They took their name from Nazareth, PA, which is mentioned in the song "The Weight", by The Band.  The guitarmaker C.F. Martin is based there, as is the Andretti motor racing family.  The original Nazareth, in Israel, is also purportedly the home of Jesus although there are no references to it outside the New Testament prior to about 200AD.  It was at most a very tiny village when Jesus was there.  It became a bit of a tourist trap during the Crusades, and today it's one of the largest predominantly Muslim cities in Israel.

Berlin is an American New Wave band from Los Angeles, formed in 1978.  They have no known connection with the German Capitol.

Portishead is a British band formed in Bristol, which is a just a few miles east of the tiny town the band is named for.

The Manhattan Transfer is a vocal group that is named for a novel of that name, although the group actually is from New York City.  Some version of this group has been performing for more than 50 years although none of the originals is left.

The Bay City Rollers are a Boy Band from Edinburgh, Scotland, on the Firth of Forth, which is the estuary of the Forth River, and thus not actually a bay.  They're still making music, sort of, with a great many staffing changes.  I'm not sure I've actually ever heard one of their songs all the way through as I haven't been a teenager for 50 years and have never been a pre-teen girl.

My Prince Charles Story

 By the death of his mother, Prince Charles has been elevated to King Charles III of Great Britain.  I sort of met Charles in Oct 1977.  Here's the story:

My friend Joe Ito and I were playing frisbee on a lawn on the UC Berkeley campus just North of what was then called "Barrows Hall".  (it was recently "unnamed", because Barrows himself had been strongly racist, especially against indigenous people).   We saw a huge crowd of students headed for Barrows, much larger than any classroom could possibly hold.  Curious, we joined them and we soon found out that Prince Charles was coming for a visit.  Neither of us were particularly interested, but the crowd was so big that making our way against it would have been close to impossible.  Joe and I found a place on top of a stone retaining wall and under a covered walkway leading to the building.  We sat there for about 20 minutes until the Prince's entourage walked past.  Charles himself stopped right in front of us and began talking to Joe, asking him what his major was (philosophy), where he was from (El Cerrito, just a couple of miles north of Berkeley),  how he liked UC Berkeley (very much) and then walked on.  I was sitting squeezed up next to Joe is a big, dense crowd, so I heard everything and Charles definitely saw me.  After he moved on, a zillion people including a reporter for the student newspaper "The Daily Californian" asked Joe a zillion questions, mostly about why Charles had picked him (no idea).  Joe is (or was) a short, athletic, very Japanese looking fellow with thick glasses and straight black hair down to the middle of his back.  He was planning to go to law school, although at my suggestion, he took a computer programming class, did well in it, and became enamored with APL, so he might have changed directions.  We lost touch after graduation and I have no real idea what happened to him.  He was very smart though, so unless something awful happened to him, he probably was reasonably successful.  He resembles the judge in the OJ Simpson trial slightly, and that judge is about 5 years older than Joe, comes from Southern California, and is named Lance Ito.  Interestingly, he got his law degree at Berkeley's Boalt Hall about 2 years before Charles's visit, while Joe and I were both students there.  Law students don't interact much with the general student population at Cal, so it's unlikely either of us met him, but certainly not impossible.

A Taxonomy of Drivers by Car

 I drive a lot and I enjoy it.  But there are other drivers who seem determined to spoil the experience.  I find it surprisingly easy to predict the way a particular driver is likely to drive by the type of car they are driving.  This is of course a stereotype.  Stereotypes are useful to a point.  But they are often wrong, and we need to recognize that.  That you drive a BMW does not necessarily mean you are an asshole.  But in a random sample of drivers, the correlation between BMWs and assholes is quite high.  And all of these driving issues can occur in any make of car, and there are lots of drivers in all these makes of car that behave perfectly well on the road.

Volvo: most likely to do something erratic, like change lanes without looking.  I think a lot of them are distracted by kids in the back or talking on the cell phone, or are simply not good at paying attention.   I think the reason for this correlation is that Volvo markets themselves as the safest car, and while it's not literally true, it has been at times in the past and they remain pretty good on that score.  So people who notice that they're in accidents have a slight preference for Volvos.

Since SUVs and their ilk became popular, there's a new contender for the most erratic drivers.  The Range Rover.  I'm pretty sure these are the same people who would have driven a Volvo 30 years ago, but these big SUVs have the advantage of mass.

In third place are the big SUVs from other carmakers--Jeep Grand Cherokee, GM Yukon/Suburban, etc.

BMW.  As I mentioned above, BMW drivers seem disproportionately to be assholes: cutting in line, aggressive moves, etc.  The problems rarely stem from incompetence or inattention like Volvo drivers, but from a stupid level of aggression.  I think what's going on is that BMW drivers like driving and are good at it, but they think because they're better, they deserve extra rights.  They certainly have more money.  It's frustrating, because they actually are pretty good cars.  But I wouldn't want to be typecast as one.  More than any other car, a really high percentage of BMW drivers fit the stereotype.

Audi... sort of a BMW wanna-be.  far fewer Audi drivers are assholes as BMWs, but it's a higher percentage than other cars.

Tesla.  I think lot of Tesla drivers are BMW drivers who are only driving a Tesla until BMW introduces an electric car to their liking.  (they have a couple already, but they are both aimed at much narrower market than the mainstream BMW).  In the meantime, they're in Teslas.

Mercedes: Some Mercedes drivers are like BMW drivers, others like Volvos.  Most seem to be on the competent side, but you really notice the outliers.

Big Pickup Truck.  They go waaay faster than the other traffic and they often make moves without looking.  Like BMW drivers, they're good at avoiding the accidents they seem determined to cause.  I suspect this is because they're relatively good at determining which drivers are likely to be able to get out of the way, and also they know that because their truck is so much bigger, they're safer even when they get it wrong.   A disproportionate number also have a high hatred for people who drive electric cars, small hybrids, or other small cars.  You will never see a coal roller that is not an oversized pickup truck.

Small East Asian car: this may be a person who is just learning to drive, who can't afford to drive much so their skills are poor,  or who cant see well.   I think there are a sizable number of them that grew up under circumstances where they never expected to learn to drive, and didn't learn to drive until they were in their late 20s and by then found it hard to adapt to the timing and speeds.  They drive well under the speed limit, don't take their turn at intersections, don't take advantage of free right turns, wait 5 seconds or more to move after the light changes.  For some reason people driving equally small or even smaller european cars don't seem to behave like this.

Is Jurassic Park Possible?

 In the movie Jurassic Park, a theme park promoter (played by the great actor Richard Attenborough) working with some scientists, figure out how to create real dinosaurs from DNA preserved in mosquitos, which are further preserved in amber.  The concept was created by the physician and fiction writer Michael Crichton.  Crichton had recently learned about the concept of Chaos Theory, without actually really understanding what it is, and his "mathematician" character played by Jeff Goldblum, questions whether such a thing is a good idea or not, even if it is possible.   There are many, many things wrong with the idea of Jurassic Park, and it is probably impossible.

1: They got the DNA from the gut of mosquitos, which had bitten the dinosaur shortly before they themselves were trapped in amber.   Mosquitos and other things were trapped in amber from that long ago and have survived in some sense.  But what's still there is their exoskeleton and not much else.  The chemical processes of digestion continue at some level even after the critter has died.  Eventually the acids and such are used up and only things which are harder to digest survive, but within a few hours after the mosquito ate it, the dinosaur DNA is pretty much digested, whether the mosquito is still alive or not.

2: Recent studies have found that DNA exposed to the environment and not actively being maintained by cell nuclei have a half-life of around 521 years.  That is, after 521 years, the odds of being able to extract a valid DNA sequence is about 50%.  After 1042 years, it's 25%.  After 66 million years it's about 0.0000015%.  So close to zero as to make no difference.

When Crichton wrote his book, the understanding of DNA sequencing was much less mature than it is today, but he was aware of the basic facts of these statistics.

3: When they found errors in the DNA in the book/movie, they were able to patch it using the DNA from frogs.  Weird choice.  The movie itself recognizes that birds are the dinosaur's nearest living cousins.  It is far from possible to do anything like this sort of DNA patching today, but it may eventually turn out to be possible.  But at that point, you're more or less making a new creature from scratch.

The reason they made this choice is because it's known that some frog species, when there are only females and no males, are able to transform one of their number into something sufficiently male as to be able to reproduce.  It is quite well known that fish do this and the effect has been seen by tropical fish hobbyists. 

4: The horrible whiney Jeff Goldblum character is actually toned down quite a bit from his prototype in the book.   He clearly doesn't understand what Chaos Theory actually is or anything about its statistics.  His argument is basically that we shouldn't ever open Pandora's box, because Chaos Theory is in charge.  But in this example, what's really in charge is evolution--accelerated by an opportunistic thief misbehaving.  Evolution requires astronomical numbers of individuals and years to do its magic.  There are only a few handfuls of the most numerous species on the island operating for a decade or so at most.  Not much is going to happen.  The argument he should be making is about things like bioweapons and the waste products of nuclear fission.  These things have already been produced in astronomical amounts and an incident like the one in the story will cause them to get out.  

(I never liked Jeff Goldblum very much.  His best role was in Into the Night, and he did a good job as a backstabbing baddie in Silverado.  Jurassic Park and Independence Day cemented his place as a jerk who the director imagines can be plausible as a scientist.  Actual scientists tend to disagree on the plausible as scientist part.)

(I first saw Jurassic Park in a theater with a bunch of computer hackers.  When she says "Oh, this is unix, I know this", we all did a snort take.  First of all, it's not unix, it's some goofy graphical shell that somebody implemented on top of unix on SGI hardware.   the stuff she needs to know in order to turn the park's safety systems back on are in that goofy graphical shell and highly specific to that application.  I'm sure an actual hacker put in that position could figure it out, but unix has nothing to do with it.)

Who Was Reverend Book?

One of my favorite TV shows, 2002's martyred Firefly series, had several interesting characters.  It takes place in an imaginary solar system where there are dozens of habitable planets and moons, some of which are high-tech, urban and modern, while others are rural or even backwards.  The show takes place six years after an interplanetary civil war, after which the urban "central alliance" worlds imposed a police state over all the others, but with somewhat limited reach imposed by distance.  The circumstances present many opportunities for interesting contexts for the writers to tell their stories, putting horses and space ships in the same scenes, and allowing all sorts of social circumstances to be considered.  So much more could have been done with the show had it been continued.

One of the interesting characters is Reverend Derial Book.  He had been a monk in an abbey not too far from the Persephone Spaceport--as he puts it "out of the world" for a time, when he catches a ride of the show's namesake spaceship, the Firefly class "Serenity".  He proves very knowledgeable about spaceships and many other things, especially things related to weapons, small force fighting and apparently espionage, and has an identity card which gives him surprising rights in the alliance.  All of this is implausible for the preacher he purports to be.

My theory is that during the war, he was a secret agent for the Alliance, possibly even a highly trained Operative.  After the war, he didn't want to do this sort of work anymore, but was privy to many secrets that needed to be kept.  The deal he worked out with his bosses was that he spend some period--probably five years--completely out of the world, and was prohibited from selling his expert services and knowledge, so he couldn't work as a consultant of some sort.  Moreover, he'd done sufficient bad things that he really didn't want to be in the spy business anymore, but had earned a permanent "get out of jail free" card with the Alliance.  The abbey suited him well--it fit his new-found religiosity and allowed him to be out of the world for a while, but after the five years were up, he could go back out.  He enjoyed space travel and had many skills that would be useful, so he took a ride on what appeared to be a tramp freighter, and was in fact a pirate ship, and after the first adventure, joined the crew.

His background prevents him from telling the rest of the crew what his true history is, especially since the Captain and Zoey had fought against his side in the civil war, but he's realized that his ideas about freedom and civilization are more or less aligned with theirs, and besides, it's exciting and fun for him.  Eventually, he'll probably tell the captain about his activities during the war, but probably not for a long time yet.  As it happens, he was killed by Reavers in the movie Serenity before this occurs.  I regard the events of the movie as non-canonical and perhaps even retcon, although much of the movie does extend the story of the series.  In particular, I think Book and Wash's deaths were intended to terminate the story and make reviving the series impossible rather than being a real part of the story.