Returning from an unplanned detour (long)

On the last day in July, L, J and I went up to friends' weekend wedding in Point Reyes. The surroundings were beautiful and we were glad for a weekend away from the city. There was a small creek behind the hotel which J loved. And I could pick fresh apples and blackberries from the plants on which they actually grow. (Picking and eating fruit -- tropical and NE US -- is something that was a big part of my childhood, but which J doesn't see very often.)

However, that night J woke up around 11pm with a high fever and was up most of the night. We gave him some ibuprofen and he (and we) were able to get some sleep before the ceremony early Saturday afternoon. The rest of the weekend went pretty well considering how it had started.

When we got home to the city, J's breath started stinking and his gums were red and swollen. His pediatrician identified the illness as the initial infection with Herpes simplex, and gave us a over-the-counter remedy for a topical oral anesthetic for when the sores started. He stayed with me instead of going to day care, and for an uncomfortable two-year old, he did pretty well. His appetite and energy started recovering by the end of that week, and he went back to day care the next Monday (earlier this week). The only remaining problem seemed to be that being catered to all week had spoiled him a bit. He was being quite a brat.

But now I had a problem in that I had come down with it. I had assumed that, since I've had cold sores before, that at most I'd get a cold sore. Over the week, often finishing food J didn't want, I got myself quite an exposure, so who knows what happened. Anyway, last Friday, I came down with a high fever and chills which stayed for three days, making me unable to move very much. I am now also recovering energy and appetite, and have been able to play with Jasper more.

Last night, after J said he wanted to play with blocks, he dumped them out of the bag into his dump truck, and dumped them from there on to the floor. But then he said he didn't want to play with them anymore and walked away. I dragged him back and held him screaming trying to get him to put them away. L came by and reinforced the message and tried to get him into family block-putting-away. Beyond telling him he couldn't play us against each other, this seemed to only make it worse, so she left. A few minutes later, he was happily helping me put the blocks away, insisting on putting the last several blocks in the bag himself.

My interpretation is that he was being such a brat not because he was spoiled while he was sick, but because he was acting out in hopes of drawing me off the sick bed. I often play the role of stern enforcer of discipline for him, and I think he was worried about my sudden withdrawal from family life. He didn't really seem to understand that it was completely due to illness, even though he had just recovered from it. So being bratty was the expression of his anxiety about my illness.

Thankfully, those two weeks, of nursing J's illness and then my own, seem to be nearly over.

Nationalize Oil and Gas

Well, maybe. The problem, as predicted on The Oil Drum and now happening, is that the business cycle is not long compared to the oil and gas project cycle. This means that the current low energy prices are causing projects to be canceled that will be needed during the next economic recovery. Failure to invest now means higher energy prices than the last spike once the economy again attempts something like growth. In theory, nationalizing these companies would allow a steady flow of money to needed projects in good times and bad. Probably the same results could be attained by granting lines of credit on favorable terms with lots of strings attached. Matthew Simmons has for some time recommended setting energy price floors at any new high, something that would also guarantee return on investment. Anyway, in much the same way that people are talking about "green jobs to save the economy," there should be stimulus with with conditions for oil and gas extraction, because we're going to need all we can get. Without it, we won't have anything with which to build this "green economy" (which we must build if we can).

Update: This post makes the same point:

But as those in the oil industry already know, low prices will lead to a reduction of new supply in the future, a reduction that could cripple any attempts to restart economic growth. And, failure to provide adequate supplies of the world's most essential fuel will not only stifle growth, but also impede attempts to create the renewable energy economy that we will need as oil supplies decline due to geologic constraints. We need the energy from fossil fuels and especially from oil to help make the next energy transition. That calls for a massive change of direction for energy investment that simply cannot take place in an environment of low energy prices.

The implication is that we now need to put a floor under fossil fuel prices so as not to discourage the development of alternatives. That means new taxes, but ones that could be offset with reductions elsewhere. We need to discourage what we don't want, namely, wasteful use of fossil fuels, and thereby encourage what we do want, namely, carbon-free energy technology.

UPDATE II: And in this post, with more detail.

How to Make French Press Coffee

I've been making french press coffee for about 1.5 years now, and I finally feel like I've arrived at a method I'm happy with. It'll probably change more, but it seems to be very good and robust. I'm writing it down in attempt to put it out in the world for anyone interested. The most important things will be in italics, and I put in a bunch of other detail that may or may not be important. You decide, and I may update it after more experiments.

If the beans are frozen, take out what you want to grind and let them thaw.

This method uses a microwave to heat the water. I put the amount of water I want for coffee (usually about 1 US cup = 8 oz) into the glass beaker (Bodum 12 oz) and heat it to boiling. Take it out and put in the plunger to heat it (see Blue Bottle Coffee, under "Preparation"). (1) Start heating another cup of water to boiling in a cup with a good pouring spout. I use an OXO Good Grips angled measuring cup. Grind the coffee on a gently (not very) coarse grind (you need a burr grinder), not all that much coarser than you would for a flat-bottom filter automatic drip. (2) When the second cup of water is boiling, take it out and put in a cook's thermometer. When it gets to about 203 F, dump the water from the french press into your cup to warm it. Put the grounds into the beaker, evenly on the bottom, and pour about 1/3 to 1/2 of the water -- which should be about 200 F when it hits the coffee -- onto the grounds in a quiet, non-splattering stream. Try to wet the grounds as completely as possible. Stir the mixture thoroughly with a wooden or plastic implement. (3) This should cause the mixture to foam up a bit, which will continue for several seconds after you stop stirring. When the "bloom" seems to stop, start gently tapping the press vertically down onto the counter, until you see bubbles (sort of pock marks) begin to emerge on the surface of the coffee. Put the rest of the water back into the microwave and heat it for another 10 - 15 seconds (or whatever you think will bring it back to about 200 F), and keep tapping the french press until no more bubbles emerge. (4) The surface of the mixture should now look like a dull sludge, instead of like coffee grounds in foam. Now pour the rest of the water over the coffee in a solid stream so it punches through this sludge, wetting down all of the sludge. Put the plunger back into the beaker, with the strainer a little above the surface of the mixture. (5) After 45 seconds, swirl the mixture so the floating grounds sink. In another 1 minute 30 seconds, press the plunger and pour your coffee. I like my coffee cooler ("neko jita" or "cat tongue"), so I let it sit to cool for several minutes before drinking it. This also allows the sediment to settle some.

What I like about this method is that it consistently produces coffee with an expansive coffee "center", a full extraction of complexity, and a rich mouthfeel, without sourness or bitterness. No dairy or sugar needed.


(1) I took my Bodum beaker out of its metal holder with plastic handle and made an insulating jacket for it out of cardboard. I place the beaker of boiling water into this jacket to warm the jacket.

(2) Ritual's regular coffee is french press coffee, made in large presses. I got a sample of their ground coffee and matched it as best I could on my grinder at home.

(3) This idea of stirring the coffee half way though the pour was in this video. I believe Robin may also have suggested it. Other parts of the video, such as drinking the coffee from a paper cup with cream, strike me as a bit wacky, but each to his own.

(4) As far as I know, this is my innovation. It stemmed from my observation that the times I poured the water and produced the least foam made the best coffee. I suspect that the foam interferes with fully wetting the grounds. So I wet them once with the first pour, twice with the stir, knock down the foam, and wet them a third time with the second pour.

(5) From first pour to this point takes me about 1 minute 15 seconds, for a total steep time of about 3.5 minutes.

Update: The extraction level seems to be well controlled by the amount the grounds and water mixture is stirred. More stirring = more extraction. You will want to adjust the extraction level to get the balance of flavors you prefer in each coffee.

East coast coffee update

Last weekend, we returned from a ten-day trip to the East Coast - three days in Manhattan and a week in DC. L went for work and J and I tagged along. In NYC, I got to a few of the coffee shops linked from Ritual's web site: Gimme!, Joe, and Abraco. Actually, we stopped by the last one only after dinner in the East Village, when it was closed. In DC, I went back to Murky in Arlington, and to Peregrine in DC (located where Murky used to be). (Someone I spoke to at Murky said they'd likely be re-opening in the district, although it would not be called Murky.)

The espressos I got were excellent and of varied styles, from the dark, rich and spicy at Gimme, to the medium-dark, rich and smooth at Joe, to the dark, complex and wine-like at Murky. The best, though, was a single-origin (El Salvador, I think) espresso at Peregrine: multi-layered complexity, on the lighter side, spicy with underlying smoothness. (All of Peregrine's shots are hand-pulled, but unfortunately I did not get back to try their regular espresso.) Still, I doubt even that one has dislodged my favorites: the single-origin espressos at Blue Bottle Cafe, which are syrupy smooth, sweet and complex.

What surprised me was how few options there were for brewed coffee. Gimme had thermoses of previously brewed coffee. Joe had one bean option for previously brewed coffee or french press coffee. Murky had two. Peregrine offered individually poured drip. Abraco looked to be little more than an espresso counter. I guess it's not bad, but nothing like Ritual, where the regular coffee is freshly made french press and you can order a Clover of pretty much any of their beans. Or Blue Bottle, where you can get a siphon coffee or cold filter coffee. (Blue Bottle's individual hand-poured drip coffee is usually a disappointment for me, although I certainly find it difficult to do that uniformly excellently.)

I was also surprised that Murky and Peregrine served Counter Culture Coffee, roasted in North Carolina and shipped up in a few days, instead of roasting there own. It's not that there's anything at all wrong with CCC, but I'd think they'd want to control their own roasts. The roasts of Ritual and Blue Bottle are not tremendously different in darkness, but the overall emphases and styles of their coffees are quite different.

So, although I love the coffee tourism, I'm glad to be home, with my beans from Ritual and Blue Bottle waiting for me in the freezer, joined now by some from Murky.

yeah, pretty much

This post on Open Left, about the documentary Food Fight, notes

We prowl our farmers' markets instead, scooping up vegetables so fresh that the soil still clings to their roots. We buy our other basics at the local health food store or Whole Foods, or maybe Trader Joe's. But, once in a while, we run out of toilet paper or cat food or some other staple and, in a pinch, we dash to the supermarket across the street. Whereupon we are confronted, aisle after aisle, with the reality of what the average American eats--and, quite frankly, it freaks us out.

That actually has been my reaction the whenever I go into Safeway in the last few years - seeing the aisles and aisles of "food" and being bewildered that most of the country eats this way.

Public Library Can Be a Little Too Public

I've been going to the main San Francisco Public Library to read up on the uses and pricing of financial derivatives. (The useful stuff seems to be Reference-only.) One day after lunch, I put my head down on my book for a nap, and was woken by someone new at the table talking loudly. When I looked up, I saw a middle-aged white woman talking to someone apparently about twenty feet over my left shoulder. But when I looked in that direction, I could not discern to whom she might be talking. Then, however, she went to work on what appeared to be her problem set on basic AC circuits, muttering to herself only occasionally. This didn't bother me for a long time, but, eventually, I decided to seek someplace quieter. I was initially delighted to find an individual desk at a sunny window overlooking Civic Center plaza, but quickly noticed that the somewhat rotund, long-haired white man at the other desk in the alcove was distinctly stinky. (I couldn't make out what he was reading.) This constant sensory perception was perhaps more easily managed by nervous system facilitation than the randomly interjected commentary at my previous location, but it was still distracting. I reflected, though, that he had to put up with a non-smelly, short-haired, skinny white guy reading about financial derivatives, a comparably obnoxious stereotype.

From my childhood in Hawaii onward, I recall loving going to the public library, without ever dreading running into mentally ill or homeless people. I would assume, however, that the library staff take more care in ejecting all adults without children from the children's room.

Visit to Murky Coffee

Last week L had to go to Washington, D.C., for work, and J and I tagged along. On the recommendation of someone who staffs the siphon bar at Blue Bottle, I went to Murky Coffee in Arlington, VA. (The store in the Capitol Hill area has closed.) I got to sample only two of their coffees, so it might be a mistake to generalize from my impressions.

On the first trip there, in the late afternoon, I bought a bag of New Guinea "Kuta" coffee. The roast appeared to be somewhere between Blue Bottle roasts and Ritual roasts. They ground half for me, which I made in a cheap automatic drip machine in our hotel room. The other half, I froze in a jar during our stay and brought back with me to make in my French press at home. It was excellent, although different, made both ways. In the automatic drip machine, the malty, nutty / woody character stood out clearly and distinctly. (I still haven't figured out how to describe the acid flavor.) In the French press, the same flavors were less distinct, but blended smoothly and ever so evenly across the palate. It is at least as good as the New Guinea I've had from BBCC, probably better. (I haven't seen a New Guinea at Ritual.)

This was the main impression of the French press of delicious Kenyan I had at the cafe: a complexity of flavors balanced "just so". I found their preparation of the Kenyan perhaps slightly weak, but the lack of intensity reinforced my perception of striving for delicateness. It did not have the stunning complexity I've tasted in Kenyans from Ritual, but was probably more "accessible". (I've not seen a Kenyan at BBCC.)

The decor of the cafe itself reinforced the impression I had gotten from web sites prior to my visit, that the owner cares passionately about coffee and people and not as much about the other aspects of running the business. Still, I will eagerly go there again when I am in D.C.

If I'm drinking coffee at the time, that is. :)

Sickness and Health

In the first week of July, for the third time this year, a fairly mild viral cold incubated a subsequent bacterial infection in my sinuses, producing fever, intense sinus congestion, and general malaise. After starting antibiotics a week later, I slowly felt much better over the two-week course.

Perhaps as part of this general distress, and certainly as part of my love / hate relationship with coffee, I resolved once again to quit the stuff. However, on the night of the 4th, I did something different. I got out of bed and threw away all the coffee I had in the freezer: parts of half pounds of Brazilian coffee from Blue Bottle and Ritual. (Now, I'm sure that some of you will say, "Well, of course, you wanted to throw away the Brazilian. You should have been drinking [your favorite coffee].", but that's not where I'm going with this.) The previous time I quit, it took about twelve days to get through withdrawal, and this time was pretty much that. For the first days, it was pretty bad, but it was often difficult to tell the caffeine-withdrawal headache from the sinus infection pressure headache. Towards the end, it was hard to tell caffeine-withdrawal grogginess from antibiotic-side-effect dizziness.

Instead of buying, grinding, brewing, drinking, and cleaning up after coffee, and especially while unemployed, I am trying to meditate more. I had thought I could both drink coffee and meditate, since the Buddha nature is in all things, but in practice for me it seems to be an "exclusive or" proposition. The coffee, however delicious, makes me feel more stressed, while it reduces my ability to focus and remember all the things I want to do. This is fine if I have a lot of non-thoughtful tasks that need energy to be done, but not so great if I have to think carefully about what I'm doing. Apparently, I generally respond to stress not by being frenetic, but by shutting down, so the "excitement" of caffeine is not terribly practical. Job-hunting is stressful enough.

Coffee also reduces my openness to stopping activity for a while to sit, even if the "activity" is not terribly productive. And besides being critical for my own growth, meditative cultivation is foundation of my and L's relationship, and of our marriage vows in particular. By this, I mean that the presence of mind which comes from sitting is the basis from which we try to act towards ourselves, each other, and our friends and families.

Even after all this, I still can't say I won't continue drinking coffee at some point, but for now it seems like I'd be better off if it were only the occasional indulgence.

Learning More About Peak Oil

which is what I've been spending more time doing during my time off... To start:

A primer from a great site, including "five myths".

Basically, the U.S. uses oil and natural gas for about 60% of its primary energy. World oil production now appears to be at peak and decline appears immanent, and natural gas will probably do so soon. (Since natural gas expands on its own, it is more easily recoverable, but its production drops off much more quickly once decline starts.)

The Five Myths:
1) OPEC could produce more if it used current techniques
2) Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will save us
3) A small downturn can easily be made up with energy efficiency
4) Canadian Oil Sands will save us
5) Biofuels will save us

Although production is roughly symmetrical on the way up and the way down, the way down will not resemble the way up for (at least) three reasons:

1) Demand is now much larger, and continuing to grow, which will lead to increasingly large unmet demand, i.e., unmet needs for those who cannot afford the higher prices. See the Hirsch Report (PDF), from the U.S. Dept of Energy.

2) The oil which was easiest to take out of the ground has been extracted, and future amounts will be more difficult to recover. This is summed up in the idea of Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI or EROEI). Initially, EROI of oil was about 100:1. Now it's more like 15:1, and will keep falling. (See this graph from this presentation.) This means that the amount of oil we can actually use will fall faster than the amount of recoverable oil. (See the "Gross vs. Net Energy" graph in this presentation.)

3) Oil imports, on which the U.S. is highly dependent, will likely fall even faster than net production does. The idea in the "Export Land Model" is that demand for oil in countries which are still net exporters will continue to grow exponentially even as production declines, leading exports to decline significantly faster than production. Explanation of and support for this idea is provided at the link above.

So, the world, and the U.S. especially (Europe is much more energy-efficient), is looking at a large and rapid loss of an energy source on which it's completely dependent - for the production of fertilizers, production and transport of food, manufacture of medicines and about every other product in our modern lives, and transport of people from home to stores and work every day (not to mention air travel). So far, the most serious U.S. effort to prepare for this transition has been the invasion of Iraq (see "Is the Bush administration aware of this?" down the page at this site).

Laid Off

On the last day of April, at 4pm, I was informed that my services were no longer needed at the company. It was not a complete surprise by any means, as it had seemed for a while like it was not the best fit. Now, I'm cleaning up the house a bit and getting started on the next job search. If you have suggestions about where I should look for work, or, more generally, what I should do with my free time, please let me know.

Long Time No Update

January was a bit trying as I spent most of it sick. I caught two colds in a row, presumably from our adorable little day care vector, and wound up with one of the bacterial sinus infections to which I am prone. After a course of antibiotics, I am much better.

Back on my bicycle, I have found that the new Blue Bottle cafe is a very easy detour on my ride to Caltrain in the morning. The espresso blend they for the cafe is mostly Central American and has a flavor palate of roasted nuts, brown sugar, maybe cinnamon and orange peel, and just straightforward earthy brown coffee. A little acid for my taste but delightfully complex. If only they had food before 8am.

I am disappointed but not terribly surprised that John Edwards has left the Democratic primary race. In his place, I have no idea whether to support Obama or Clinton. Out of perennial disgust for the Democrats, starting after the 2002 midterm elections, I registered Green. I had meant to re-register Democratic to be able to vote for Edwards, but now the point is sort of moot, and it doesn't really matter whether I "support Obama or Clinton". Since I'm in California, it doesn't matter who I vote for in the general election.

Work is still going along. As in many areas, every bit more I learn makes me aware of how little I know.

Blue Bottle Coffee is okay, I guess

When I first started tasting wine, more than 15 years ago, my tastes were in the full-flavored, full-bodied reds. I didn't get the point of Pinot Noir. Now, of course, I like my pinots delicate and elegant, and scorn those made by producers in more or less the same style in which they make Cabernet Sauvignon.

I think my taste in coffee is undergoing a similar evolution. At first, I really liked the hard-roasted style of Cole Coffee, which still isn't bad. Their coffee comes out with less acid, which can give it a more mellow style than Peet's. Now, however, the medium roasts of Blue Bottle now seem just about right. The problem described in the last entry was, to some extent, due to a half pound of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe I bought from them which was awful: strong bitter vegetal flavor, like artichoke stem. Recently, though, I have bought two other half pounds which have been fabulous: Yemeni Mattari and Ethiopian Wotona. The irony of the latter is that even though it is very fine coffee, I'm not sure I like its flavors. What disagrees with me is the Merlot-like "sour tar"-ish flavor, which many people don't like (in Merlot). (Tonight I drank a 1999 Beringer Napa Valley Merlot, delicate and delicious, aged to perfection.) I guess I will have to suffer through it as an intellectual exercise. :)

The catalyst for this shift in coffee palate was the coffee I had at Ritual. Their coffees, if anything, have even lighter roasts than Blue Bottles', and they really emphasize delicacy and complexity. It's quite a contrast from Cole. So, try the single-origin Blue Bottle coffees. Try the Clover coffee at Ritual. Then see what you think of Cole, or Peet's for that matter.

Consultant Zen Mind

My usual habit of work, if you can call it that, is to focus on the next task ahead of me and try to get it exactly right. I can fret for hours about something which, in the larger project, is relatively minor. This was fine as a grad student, and maybe as a post-doc, but it is completely counter-productive as a consultant. In contrast to grad school's dragging on for years, consulting projects should have been done yesterday, and, better yet, last week. The trade offs between time spent and results generated must always be weighed and acted upon ruthlessly. I have to shed my attachments to ways of doing things which, although elegant and thorough, are unnecessary.

As always, though, zen is in the mind, not in the habit. A friend who had been a consultant for years recently got a job with the East Bay Municipal Utility District. She said that her co-workers don't share her zeal for getting things done, and that she still hasn't been able to figure out what they do all day.

Fall

Well, first: literally. About a month ago, I fell off my bicycle and pretty much all of me landed on my chin. Not a scratch anywhere else. My first thought after hitting the pavement was that I probably broke my jaw. After some kind passers by helped me to the sidewalk and then to a chair at a cafe, I locked up my bike and took a cab to St. Mary's emergency room. There they stitched up the gash in my chin and x-rayed my jaw. Not broken, but very sore for weeks afterwards. The stitches came out after five days and the gash has healed up well, although shaving there is still a little awkward.

The next day, J started day care in the same building where L works. Because I had a follow up appointment with a specialist around noon, I didn't go in to work, and got to hang out with J on his first day, morning and afternoon. He seems to have adjusted well and to like the place. However, he has, as everyone warned us he would, brought us plenty of colds from the other kids. I'm still getting over my second cold in a month. (J fortunately doesn't seem all that bothered by the colds. He gets a runny nose, but still crawls all over and eats well.) Between the accident and the colds, I haven't felt much like riding my bike, and have been taking MUNI a lot. Booooring.

Still, despite how fast the summer is flying by, there are already the stirrings of autumn. The desert beckons (not that I'm going). The fungi whisper that they will soon be fruiting. (The staff at day care have noted to L that J crawls around picking up little bits of stuff from the floor and eating them, as we see him do at home. L informed them that he gets the foraging gene from his father.) If I can just get through the summer of falls and colds...

Iraq as the Central Front of the War on Terror

For a long time, it puzzled and infuriated me that the president and vice-president would continue to link the war in Iraq to the "War on Terror." After all, none of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, Hussein had no working relationship with Islamicist terrorists threatening the US, etc. - the usual rebuttals. There didn't even seem to be such a thing as the War on Terror (except as a rhetorical tool to bash domestic political "opposition"), just a bunch of separate conflicts only distantly related.

But after reading John Perkins' books Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Secret History of the American Empire (actually, I'm in the middle of the latter), I think I'm beginning to understand stories like this. A central aim of US foreign policy has been to secure natural resources from other countries as cheaply as possible, using extortion, bribery, covert operations to overthrow or assassinate uncooperative foreign leaders, funding opposition forces, and, as a last resort, sending in US armed forces. These efforts naturally inspire some resistance from people whom we label "terrorists" and whom we fight under the rubric "War on Terror." They all have their own political, cultural and religious contexts and reasons for using terrorism, the tactic of the weak, but to us they're all the same: people who try to stand in the way of our taking their property.

Thus when GWB talks of Iraq as the "central front of the war on terror," he is actually speaking truthfully. The most important resource to control is oil. Iraq is central territory in oil country; if you control Iraq, you can project power throughout the region. Thus, Iraq is the central front of the US battle to maintain control over other people's resources, i.e., the War on Terror.

A couple travel blogs

A German friend of L's who happened to be in town for our wedding is now traveling around the world with her husband. They have a blog. (I have linked the English version.)

Another couple, Canadians who lived near us in North Beach, departed recently to travel the Silk Road. Their blog is here.

Clipless Bike Pedals and Fountain Pens

For my commute down to Silicon Valley, I bought a new bicycle. It's a lower mid-range road bike. Last weekend, I got clipless pedals and bike shoes - the kind that snap into and out of the pedals. They have taken a little getting used to in terms of snapping in and out of the pedals, but I love them! I get more power out of each stroke, and I feel so much more connected to the bike. (Yes, I know that's because I am so much more connected to the bike, literally.) The sensation of riding with them reminds me of the smoothness and connection to the paper and process of writing one gets with a good fountain pen.

Science and Meditation

Some of you have probably been muttering to yourselves, "Why the hell is he going on about visions in the desert and such nonsense? He studied physics at a decent school and didn't even advance as far as Brian Josephson before he lost it." Hmm, well, yes, right you are. Here I attempt to explain my views on the reconciliation of these two traditions.

Science examines the world around us, taking concepts that our minds can comprehend, from, say igneous rock to adenosine triphosphate to differential manifolds, and examining their properties and how they relate to other parts of our conceptual library. Science purports to explain how the observable and logical worlds work, and has done so convincingly well. Its goal is objective truth.

What science does not convey is quality or subjectivity. What is the nature of our experiences, or, as my teacher put it once, what's it like to be alive? You could start investigating this by asking questions like: I feel happy (or whatever) now. Why am I happy? Who decided that I am happy? Is the quality of happiness consistent if I examine it closely? Who is the "I" that thinks it is happy? What is the process in which it becomes happy? Is there something fundamental to this process or is it kind of arbitrary? These are the kinds of questions which meditation, a close, uninterrupted observation of one's experience, seeks to answer. They lead to the kinds of observations about the basic nature of our existence about which I have written.

There is some overlap between objectivity and subjectivity, as shown by the increasing neurological and psychological studies of meditation these days, or, I suppose, by attempts to study the psychology of happiness. But even if someday, there is a precise characterization of the brain activity of someone who is enlightened, graduate students or professors studying this characterization will not become enlightened. At a lower level, scientists have a pretty good description at the cellular level of what pain is, but does that convey the experience of pain?

Work

I've now been working for three whole weeks. What of it?

I still like the company and the other people in it. It's small, friendly and cozy. There's lots to be interested in, lots to learn, and helpful people around me.

After driving there, about an hour each way, I bought a new bicycle (Trek 1500) and am riding it to and from the Caltrain station on both ends. It's nice to be riding again, although I can't say I relish riding in San Francisco traffic the way I used to in Berkeley or, heh, Woods Hole. The flat, smooth roads of Silicon Valley are much more pleasant than the hilly, pothole-strewn roads of San Francisco (especially Chinatown, which is fortunately not very busy when I ride through in the morning), but I still don't feel like I get much of a ride before I have to stop at a traffic signal.

There are, as ever, issues about coffee. When I started, the office coffee was Folger's Gourmet Supreme. This was not good coffee, but I had to admit that it wasn't excruciatingly awful either. The current canister, however, is regular Folger's. This is spit-it-out awful. Caffeine withdrawal was more pleasant. Apparently, I would be reimbursed for any Peet's I buy and bring in, but we still have that big bin of Folger's to go through. In the meantime, I brought in my small coffee maker and will brewing my own supply.

Death, too, is not what it seems

While I've had a number of interesting experiences related to my meditation practice, two stand out in my mind. I've already described the view of the Nature of Mind. The other happened when I was in Eritrea.

First, a little preamble. In the months before I went to Eritrea, I had been seeing things "in a larger context". I particularly noticed it one night as I was falling asleep. Metaphorically described, it was if I were walking through a path in the woods. The path was clear and the weather sunny, so I could see where I was going quite well, and there was lots of interesting stuff to see, etc. However, past the edge of the path, the woods became quite dense, and I couldn't see into them at all. I would, mentally, go to the edge of the path and try to peer into the thicket of woods, but I could not even mentally go there, much less see anything. I was nonetheless somehow aware that beyond this sunny path stretched an infinite darkness, that beyond the world which forms our daily existence was this "something infinite." It was starting to see the thoughts or feelings of my daily existence within the realm of this "something infinite" which was the "seeing them in the larger context." Within that context, even things which were initially quite disturbing seemed quite minor. It was as if you were watching something unfold in front of you which you found very gripping, but in the larger context, the image you were watching somehow became kind of two-dimensional and turned on its side, so that, while still there, it became much less significant or troubling than it had originally seemed.

After a week or two in Eritrea, I got the usual sort of traveler's distress (except that it didn't seem responsive to antibiotics, so it might have been stomach flu or food poisoning), and even after having my GI tract cleared thoroughly, didn't eat much for a few days. Towards the end of that time, I was lying in bed in my weakened state and, at some point, came to view my weakened state in that larger context. My weakened self was a small opaque fleck in a large, shimmering sea of golden light, and I saw that this small fleck could vanish entirely and nothing would really change or be lost.

I interpret this as revealing, as the other vision showed, that we are not these isolated, limited individuals we appear to be, but actually that we are something larger, indivisible, and unchanging. Even as anger, fear, delight, apathy, etc., are not what they seem, neither is death.
After this, the Christian ideas of life after death began to make more sense to me. However, it's not really continued life after death in the literal way in which people seem to think of it. Rather, when we come to see ourselves within this larger context, to see what we truly are, what we truly are does not die. Rather than "larger contexts" and "shimmering seas of light," the Christian metaphors would be something about not dying because you have become close to God, or being reunited with God upon your death, if you have been "good" enough.