#59 travels in southern California

Good morning.

            Kathy and I spent a few days in southern California (February 12-20), in Los Angeles and San Diego.  There were definite high points and some low points.  A few notes and places to put on your "to visit" list if you're in the area.

            On several occasions I have drawn a distinction between a trip and a vacation.  This distinction may exist only in my mind, but there it is.  A vacation is when you relax, read, walk, poke around, but have no set itinerary and make no big plans.  A trip is when you travel to places to see and do as much as your energy and time allows; a trip tends not to be as relaxing as a vacation.  When Kathy and I have taken a brief break from winter, often to Florida, that is a vacation.  Be warm, see green, do little.  That was the plan for California.  Things did not go according to plan, primarily because of the weather and because Kathy had never been to Los Angeles and San Diego (other than to fly through them en route to somewhere else).  So we planned things to do for most of the trip.  To be more accurate, Kathy planned things to do and I was happy to go along with her plans.  So we had more of a trip than a vacation.

On the way from the Los Angeles airport (LAX) to my second cousin Pam's (who was kind enough to house us in LA), we stopped in Venice Beach for lunch.  An interesting cultural experience.  We ate on the roof of a beachfront hotel, all of which was set up for drinking and eating.  We were amused that all along the perimeter as well as the interior were propane gas heaters; there must have been 50 of them.  They must cost a fortune to maintain and operate, and they struck us as rather silly when there is a constant breeze off the ocean that surely blows all the heat up and away.

            One high point of the visit was staying with Pam.  I had not seen her for a dozen years or more.  She wins one of our infrequent "greatest host" awards:  she was a gracious host, provided wonderful food (she loves to cook and she's outstanding at it), and we had fun conversations with her.  Before she retired, Pam was an assistant LA County coroner, and with prompting from us, she regaled us with some extraordinary stories.  We were also pleased to see her siblings and their spouses and hear what's going on in their lives.  What was also a delight was meeting a (second) cousin (once removed), a guy I looked up after my cousin Mae died.  I collected from Mae's belongings a number of family photographs, some from the late 19^th century, that were of Mae's family members (Mae and her husband had no children, but Mae had sisters who did).  Rather than throw them away—the archivist in me wouldn't allow that—I looked up her nieces and nephews and found a great-nephew who was excited about the photos and letters.  He joined us (along with Pam and her siblings and spouses) for dinner one night and later expressed appreciation for the chance to meet cousins he had never known existed (including Pam and siblings—we were all cousins).

            The places we most enjoyed visiting in Los Angeles were the Getty (the new one) and the Huntington (art museum, library, and gardens).  The Getty collection is marvelous; so is the facility itself, nestled in the hills.  I'm sure it would be a very pleasant place to visit on a sunny, warm day.  Unfortunately, the day we were there it was windy, overcast, raining, and cold (for LA).  The restaurant offers superb food (it's pricey).

 

            The single most interesting episode of the trip was a talk that we stumbled on by accident.  One of the pieces in the Huntington collection is Gainsborough's "Blue Boy," which even those who have no interest in painting have certainly seen.  The painting is nearly 250 years old and is undergoing conservation.  Part of the process is public:  the conservator had the painting on an easel and under lights in one of the larger galleries and was working with Q-tip swabs, her back to us.  There is also a set of interactive cases explaining the process.  When the conservator had completed her work for the day, she gave a talk to those of us in the gallery (perhaps 20 people).  She described the process she is going through to examine the painting (x-rays, ultraviolet light, an MRI-equivalent) and to remove varnish and dirt accumulated over time and from previous efforts at conservation.  She uses a high-powered surgical microscope (a machine about the size of a double-door refrigerator, differently shaped) to scrutinize the condition of the paint, and explained how she fills in where paint has fallen away and the different strengths of the varnish removers and chemicals she uses.  The goal is to keep as much of Gainsborough's original paint as possible (which is most of it), so in essence she goes over the painting stroke by stroke, flake by flake.

            What she's learned was interesting as well.  It was clearly a used canvas; there's a painting of a man on it, underneath the Blue Boy, which Gainsborough had started but painted over.  There was also originally a dog sitting at the boy's feet, but Gainsborough changed his mind and painted it out of the picture.  (You can see the dog in the x-ray, above.)  The conservator speculated that he had in mind the use of the Blue Boy as an example of his portraiture to prospective clients, and they would be less impressed if there were a dog distracting from the portrait.  (The dog is still there, of course, under the paint, but they will leave it covered up because that was Gainsborough's intent.)

            The entire process of conservation and restoration of this one painting will take her over a year.  I asked her about the other paintings in that particular gallery (of which there were 12 or 15 large portraits dating from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, to say nothing of the other galleries in the building and on the grounds):  would they need work as well?  She laughed and said she would not be bored (because yes, many of them do).  She is the only conservator at the Huntington; she told us that the Getty and the LA Museum of Art also have conservators working on their collections.

            One of the members of the crowd asked her what training she had had for the position.  She told us it was art, art history, and chemistry.  She recalled that when she enrolled in the chemistry class, composed almost exclusively of pre-med students, the instructor had said to her, "honey, you're in the wrong class if you're an art history major."  Needless to say, she stayed in the class.

            Unfortunately, we ran out of time at the Huntington, after the garden walk and the conservation talk, but we did get to the library.  Amazing volumes on display:  a Gutenberg bible, an original of Audubon's book of bird paintings, a Shakespeare First Folio, and a Beowulf, among many others.  Along with thousands of other books on shelves.  The displayed volumes included explanations and related books/documents that were interestingly instructive.  I wish we could have stayed longer.

            I have mixed emotions about both the Getty and the Huntington.  Great fortunes built great collections, but often those fortunes were built on the backs of people who labored for little while the owners made millions.  Huntington (nephew of Collis Huntington, the railroad baron) made his money in railroads and real estate; I will give him credit in that he and his wife set up a trust that donated their entire estate and collections to a non-profit institution to serve the public.

            Although I'm not that big a fan of natural history museums, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County was well worth the visit, and we only took it in because Pam's brother-in-law recommended it.  We thanked him later.  What was of particular interest to me was the large collection of gems and minerals the museum had on display; I had no idea there were so many different minerals and rocks, many with very strange names.  Given that I just inherited a collection of minerals and rocks from Mae, I was impressed with how much I did not know about them—and still don't.  (The museum also had one of the best-organized and clearly-explained exhibits of dinosaur skeletons I have ever seen.)

            Another recommendation we were glad we received, from my friend Jane Phillips, was to visit Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.  Not a lot to say about it, but the collection of sea creatures is fascinating and makes the Aquarium well worth a visit.  I wouldn't usually go out of my way to visit an aquarium, but we very much enjoyed the time there.  Some critters there I never dreamt existed!

            In San Diego we stayed in an Airbnb near the ocean, although it was cool enough all the time we were there that the beach held no allure.  We had dinner with a first cousin (once removed) and her husband and their two boys and a nephew living with them, all three boys about Elliott's age and all three my first cousins (twice removed).  Linda and David were wonderful hosts, and we spent the next (chilly) day with them and two of the three boys at the San Diego zoo.  The three boys were amused at me trying to explain how I was related to them.  The "cousins removed" concept is hard to explain!

            We enjoyed the time with Linda and David and the boys, but we've decided we just don't need to do zoos any longer.  The meerkats were cute, but the big cats were pacing and one of the polar bears was neurotic (he/she was swimming/diving in the same circle the entire time we were at the zoo, so much that his/her paws had made marks in the rocks where they landed).  It appeared to us that some of the quarters for the animals and birds are, by modern zoo standards, too small.  Our views are clearly in the minority, however, as the zoo was packed even on a relatively cool and somewhat overcast day (at $56 for the day for adults).  My cousin was kind enough to get us free passes, fortunately!

            We took the cable car ride in and over the zoo.  My stomach does not like cable cars.  I look up and see my life hanging on one steel cable that could, at any time, snap.  And surely it will snap when I am in one of the cable cars.  So I try to look pleasant and take in the scenery while my stomach is doing flip-flops and all the while I'm trying to figure out where I'd land when the cable snaps.  Of course nothing happened—although we did read in the news the next day that a cable car system at SeaWorld (in San Diego) had mechanical failure and some patrons were in the cars for five hours; they had to be lifted out by cherry picker.

            A place to put on your list in San Diego is Balboa Park.  It's a wonderful collection of museums and gardens and, like the Getty, had an excellent restaurant besides.  A list, which you can skim:  Mingei International Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Air & Space Museum, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego History Center, San Diego Mineral and Gem Society, San Diego Model Railroad Museum, San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego Natural History Museum, The San Diego Museum of Art, and Timken Museum of Art.  There's also a large zoological building with a lot of plants, which we visited.  The park is spacious, well-designed (with a different vista around every corner), and the buildings date mostly from expositions in 1915-16 and 1935-36.  It's more than a day's visit, but that's all we had.  The Timken is a small art museum, the only free one on the grounds (admission to the park and all but one of the gardens is free); it has a nifty little collection (maybe 50 oils?) for people who want to glance at (mostly European) art of the last four centuries—and not see any more.  If you want more art, you either buy the 1-day pass to all the museums or pay whatever the charge is for the San Diego Museum of Art.  We wished we had more time there; we didn't get to many of the museums.

            Also part of the park is an area where local artists of many different media do and sell their work.  Of course we purchased a few things; Kathy bought a necklace (we won't talk about carrying coals to Newcastle) but, more important, we got two small flamingo prints!  Those who have visited our house know the significance of that purchase.  (We also got wonderful photos of flamingos at the San Diego Zoo, but Kathy's not as excited about printing and hanging them as she is about the artist's prints.)

            The low points of our trip were, simply put, traffic and weather.  As for the first, I could never live in LA because I am allergic to traffic congestion.  There is much of it in LA.  When added to the fact that the metro area is so spread out, getting from one place to another means a lot of time looking through your windshield.  When we had dinner at Pam's sister's place, we had gone first to the Getty (which took over an hour), then an hour from the Getty to dinner, and then (only) 35 minutes to get back to Pam's.  The two other cousins at that dinner each had an hour drive home.  Likewise when we went to Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory, it was over an hour drive to get there and an hour and 45 minutes to get back (in a traffic jam on the freeway).  Worst, we spent four hours driving to and from Malibu and Topanga State Park; the freeways had stop-and-start traffic on a Saturday.  We spent 2 ½ hours at lunch and walking in the park versus 4 hours of driving.  That is a bad ratio.

            I spent more time driving in LA in 5 days than I've spent in the preceding 5 months.  Maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.  With all due respect to my friends and relatives in LA, I will take our weather over their traffic.

            I have to confess, too, that I'm just not comfortable driving on a freeway with 7-8 lanes in each direction and (when it's not congested) cars going 65-70 MPH and not far apart from one another.  It's the "small-town" bumpkin in me, I guess.  I tended to leave a lot more space between me and the car ahead of me—which simply provided an opportunity for other drivers to dart in.

            As for the second, the weather, one can hardly blame it on anyone, but it did not give us a warm winter break from Minnesota.  I am not sure the temperature ever got to 60° and much of the time it was windy and overcast and drizzling or raining.  We had a few period of sun, or at least part sun, so we did get to walk in the Huntington gardens and the days at the zoo and Balboa Park were fine (albeit cool).  There were several times, however, when I was colder in southern California than I would have been at home in the snow and cold.  Even when I had four layers on—undershirt, shirt, fleece, and windbreaker—I was chilly.  On several occasions I put the liner back in my windbreaker, making it the winter jacket I wear when it's 10-20 degrees (and the one I wore to the airport when we left).  It was mostly when I had the lining in that I was not cold.  So there's no guarantee of a warm winter break in southern California this early in the year.

            That's it.

Warmly (now that I'm home),

Gary

#58 rocks & minerals, intelligence, fate, beliefs

Good morning.

            Rocks R Us.  My late cousin Mae bequeathed to me her rock and mineral collection.  She and her late husband Stan were avid rock hounds (Mae's term) and collected minerals and so on from around the globe.  Even though I know almost nothing about rocks and minerals, I had always admired the collection, and she responded by giving it to me in her will.  I had no idea the magnitude of the bequest until we hauled it all over to our house.

            Kathy and I are now surrounded by boxes and bags of rocks and minerals.  Hundreds of pieces, gems (not likely valuable), rocks, minerals of many colors, geodes, and the like.  They vary in size from a grapefruit to a piece that could be mounted on a ring.  Many of them are beautiful; Stan was skilled at tumbling and polishing.  Others sort of look like items I would have picked up on a random beach.  Given their experience and expertise, however, I imagine that none of them actually fall in that category—presumably there's something interesting or unusual about all of them and I just haven't the training to perceive it.

            So in the midst of a modest effort to declutter our house, we substantially increased—overnight—our collection of stuff.  I have reached no conclusion about what to do with all these rocks.  If we had a spare wall on which I could build shelves, it would be fun to display them, at least for a time.  We have no such wall, so I puzzle over what to do.

            (Of course the rocks are not the only things that came to our house.  My brother and I were her sole legatees, so split the tangible property evenly.  As a result we have a couple more paintings to hang on the wall (for which we have no space), a couple more vases, liqueur glasses, etc.  So much for decluttering.  Elliott, who has been helping us sort through Mae's belongings, just shakes his head because he realizes that someday all the stuff I'm accumulating will come to him.  More accurately, from his perspective, he will face an avalanche of material goods.  And I may have to start making Brandy Alexanders for company because among the bottles of liquor I inherited came a bottle of white crème de cacao.  At least I can ensure that the liquor will be used.)

            If any of you have ideas about tasteful uses to which one can put rocks and minerals, I'd love it if you'd tell me.  (One thought is that we can put the larger pieces in our flower boxes.  Kathy has decided that she can make pendants with some of the smaller polished pieces of amethyst.  But there is much left over after those two uses.)

* * *

OK, this is a little bit of tooting my own horn, which I generally dislike in myself and others, but I have to say this is an email message that made my day.  After Nils Hasselmo died, I was in touch with his widow.  She at one point wrote back to me that "I heard so many stories from Nils about you, and he would often read sections of the missives you wrote.  He loved his former and current interactions with you.  You were one of the stars of his life, and he told me that many times."

I told her that I was glad that I contributed in some small way to the quality of life of someone else.  It's not always easy to be sure that that is what you are doing.

* * *

            As I've affirmed here before, I am a firm believer that intelligence—however defined—is partly and significantly heritable.  At the same time, I agree with Bob Grant's contention that "IQ can't capture the breadth, depth, or variety of human intelligence," the title of his editorial in TheScientist.

            Grant maintains that neuroscience will eventually figure out the basis of intelligence, a concept that right now is amorphous and may not yet be captured well "by the pointed calipers of science," and he correctly inquires whether "proxies of intelligence—such as IQ tests—really capture the phenomenon."  It will ultimately be useful to parse the biological, environmental, and social components of intelligence with finer instruments than we have now, but there may be other aspects of intelligence less susceptible to the lens and the caliper.

            First, Grant argues, we should take into account specialized knowledge; it has "played a pervasive part in human economies and societies for millennia. As our species transitioned out of hunting and gathering and began to settle into a more sedentary lifestyle, carving off a specific slice of the human intelligence pie became valuable. Scribes, wheel makers, boat builders, and bakers could not only trade on their acquired knowledge and skills, they were afforded special status in their communities. That segmenting of human intelligence continues to this day." 

            Important as special expertise drawing on accumulated knowledge may be, I think Grant lands on a more important point:  "traits such as honesty, kindness, and civility are born of an even more fundamental intelligence, something that is missed by IQ tests."  When we live in a world that has become increasingly impolite, confrontational, and untruthful, the attributes of honesty, kindness, and civility are "a strength, capable of making society more inviting, inclusive, and peaceful.  Although being dishonest, for example, might net a human short-term gains, the breakdown of factuality and honesty weakens the very fabric that binds together our institutions and our civilization."

I suspect that Grant is correct when he speculates that intelligence, under scrutiny,

begins to look less like a uniform quality that each of us possesses to a greater or lesser extent and more like a diverse human trait with a spectrum of variants. Sure, we need brilliant people exercising their cerebral cortices in order to explore space, combat disease, and increase our understanding of the laws that govern our universe. We also need pilots, lawyers, and roofers. But if attaining lofty intellectual heights or maintaining specialized knowledge and skill sets is not paired with progress and thoughtfulness in the ways humans treat each other and our planet, it makes our species seem, ultimately, kind of dumb.

I could not agree more.  And Grant's editorial reminded me again of John Gardner's assertion that

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

* * *

            Sometimes fate or chance plays a larger role in our lives than we expect or realize at the time.  Elliott discovered a message he sent to a friend on January 30, 2014, his first semester at Moorhead State:  "I am irritated that my drawing class is forcing me to paint for my next assignment. I signed up for drawing. There is a quite separate painting class. If I gave a s--- about painting I would have signed up for that instead."

            Now he's an excellent painter and, I believe, only rarely draws.

* * *

There was a thoughtful and thought-provoking short editorial in Aeon recently about belief without evidence—by, of all people, a Goldman Sachs executive (who has degrees in philosophy and economics), Francisco Mejia Uribe.  Uribe introduces us to an 1877 essay by a Victorian philosopher almost no one has ever heard of, William Kingdon Clifford.  Clifford argued, Uribe reports, that "''it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.'"  Uribe contends that while Clifford's view may have been exaggerated at the time he wrote, over 150 years ago, "reality has caught up with Clifford."

Clifford offers "three arguments as to why we have a moral obligation to believe responsibly, that is, to believe only what we have sufficient evidence for, and what we have diligently investigated."  One is the elementary

observation that our beliefs influence our actions.  Everyone would agree that our behaviour is shaped by what we take to be true about the world – which is to say, by what we believe. If I believe that it is raining outside, I'll bring an umbrella. If I believe taxis don't take credit cards, I make sure I have some cash before jumping into one. And if I believe that stealing is wrong, then I will pay for my goods before leaving the store.

Rather obviously, if your beliefs are wrong (about matters more significant than whether it is raining or how to pay for a taxi ride), your survival could be at risk.  Moreover, those erroneous beliefs could also put others at risk for harm (one example that comes to mind is the anti-vaccination parents who put their children's' health and lives at risk).

            Uribe maintains that while Clifford's stance may have been extreme in 1877, it isn't anymore.

The most natural objection to this first argument is that while it might be true that some of our beliefs do lead to actions that can be devastating for others, in reality most of what we believe is probably inconsequential for our fellow humans. As such, claiming as Clifford did that it is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence seems like a stretch. I think critics had a point – had – but that is no longer so. In a world in which just about everyone's beliefs are instantly shareable, at minimal cost, to a global audience, every single belief has the capacity to be truly consequential in the way Clifford imagined. If you still believe this is an exaggeration, think about how beliefs fashioned in a cave in Afghanistan lead to acts that ended lives in New York, Paris and London. Or consider how influential the ramblings pouring through your social media feeds have become in your very own daily behaviour. In the digital global village that we now inhabit, false beliefs cast a wider social net, hence Clifford's argument might have been hyperbole when he first made it, but is no longer so today.

Clifford's next argument is that believing things without adequate evidence makes people gullible:  they are sloppy in what they believe so can believe almost any nonsense that comes across their screen.  "'No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character.'"  Uribe says that what this means is that we become "easy prey for fake-news pedlars, conspiracy theorists and charlatans."  And as we harbor and spread beliefs unsupported by data and information, the social cost can be high because public policy is affected.

The final argument Clifford made is that "we have the moral responsibility not to pollute the well of collective knowledge."  Again, while his claim may have been exaggerated in his time, Uribe suggests that "reality, once more, is aligning with Clifford, and his words seem prophetic. Today, we truly have a global reservoir of belief into which all of our commitments are being painstakingly added: it's called Big Data."  Algorithms based on data collected from all corners of the web lead to decisions both private and public predicated on what may be garbage.  "Add the wrong ingredients into the Big Data recipe, and what you'll get is a potentially toxic output. If there was ever a time when critical thinking was a moral imperative, and credulity a calamitous sin, it is now."

What I tried to instill in my children was the need to triangulate—look at multiple sources when confronting a questionable claim—and consider the source (while it's not infallible, research reports from credible institutions such as reputable universities, for example, usually bear up under examination, even with caveats).  I think Elliott has taken those lessons to heart (and was also taught them in his research methods and statistics courses in our Department of Psychology) and I try to remember them as I read the multitude of news items that come before me.

The challenge for Clifford's adherents is that many are not taught the skills needed to assess the veracity and accuracy of what they read and hear.  One of the holy grails of university-level education is to instill "critical thinking" in graduates.  One would hope it's also an aim of K-12 education.  It's hard to know when that goal has been achieved because it's hard to define it and hard to know how to teach it.  Clifford makes it clear why it's important.

I'm not altogether satisfied with how I've dealt with this look at Clifford.  I may return to him.

On that note, I wish you a good day and week.

Gary