PAgent’s Progress

My first full day in Australia began much too early. Thank you, jet lag. I also noticed that I had a bit of a sore throat, which I chalked up to spending 13 hours in a dry airplane the day before. Little did I know what that sore throat would evolve into….but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Australia was largely settled by England (voluntarily or otherwise) and the stamp of British culture is obvious throughout the country. For example, every single place we stayed while in Australia, from a posh resort to a bare-bones tent, had an electric kettle in it. God forbid you should ever find yourself in a position where you couldn’t have tea. But I digress.

We spent the day driving around the Clare and Barossa valleys, two of South Australia’s premiere wine-growing regions. The countryside was beautiful, with long vistas of rolling green hills dotted with gum trees, and a spectacular blue sky. As I said earlier, I’ll take winter in Australia any day.

For lunch we met several of J’s companions at Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop, in Nuriootpa. Maggie Beer seems to be Australia’s version of Martha Stewart, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. She has her own television show where she champions the use of verjuice (the juice of unripe grapes) in cooking, as well as her own pheasant farm, and a large selection of branded gourmet foods. At her Farm Shop in the Barossa valley, you can buy her salsas, her chutneys, and her verjuice; and you can get “picnic fare”, which means pheasant terrine, bread, cheese, and other goodies. It was a memorable lunch, particularly the dessert — Burnt Fig Jam, Honeycomb, and Caramel Ice Cream. My God, talk about decadent! It was like eating gold velvet.

Near the end of the day we drove up to the Spring Gully Conservation Park to enjoy the view of the Clare valley. It was spectacular.

Next time — Feral Feast and Flinders

As S and I staggered from the plane in Adelaide, feeling distinctly rumpled, we were greeted by our buddy J who was there to meet us. J is well-travelled, to put it mildly, but has been living in Australia for several years now, and more recently settled down in Adelaide, capital of the state of South Australia.

After dropping our bags off at J’s place, he immediately dragged us off to a luncheon as guests of the Norwood Redlegs Football club, more specifically, we were guests of club President Joe Tripodi who was a wonderful host, a football enthusiast, and the Redlegs’ biggest supporter. The Redlegs play Australian Rules Football, or “footy”, and it is wildly popular in South Australia. As guests of Joe, were treated to an excellent lunch, and then escorted out to the President’s Box for the game. For two guys that were brain-dead and exhausted, it was perfect. The day was clear and cool, and footy is great fun to sit and watch. By the end of the game, we almost had a handle on the rules. Even better, when the closing horn sounded the hometown Redlegs were triumphant.

         

When I said it was clear and cool, please bear in mind that July is midwinter in Adelaide. Coming from a string of 90 degree days in Portland, the 40’s and 50’s during the day felt wonderful. All you needed was a light jacket and you were good to go. For Adelaide, however, this was freezing. The summer temperatures in South Australia can hover around 104 F, and in a million little ways the architecture reflects this; buildings are masonry, with broad eaves and high ceilings. A lot of rooms had ceiling fans. A lot of places did NOT have central heat. So it shouldn’t have been surprising that In the middle of July, the locals were bundled up in their heavy winter coats and complaining about the cold.

Given the choice between 104 degree Aussie summers and northwest winters that sometimes dip into the 20s, I’ll take the winters thank you very much.

After the game, we packed up our gear and drove up into the Clare Valley, one of south Australia’s premiere wine-growing regions. By the time we finally crashed for the night, the reality was soaking in on a visceral level. Everyone had an accent, and they drove on the wrong side of the road. The sun crossed the northern half of the sky. And we had somehow exchanged summer for winter. We truly were on the other side of the world from home, almost as far as we could go and remain on the same planet.

What an adventure.

What do you get when you send five neuroscientists rafting down the San Juan river? Hopefully, some additional understanding of how omnipresent technology effects our brains.

It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

Cellphones do not work here, e-mail is inaccessible and laptops have been left behind. It is a trip into the heart of silence…

Read the whole article at the New York Times online.

Depressing WSJ article on David Stockman, Reagan insider:

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats’ Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider — someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology — says about America, helps all of us better understand how America’s toxic partisan-politics “holy war” is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

Stockman’s thesis is that the GOP’s policy doctrines have caused “four great deformations of the national economy” that will prevent a conventional recovery from the recession, but lead to “a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing.”

Read the article at MarketWatch.

For some perspective, the Patent Office is funded solely by user fees, NOT tax dollars. Moreover, since 1992 Congress has diverted more than $750 million in patent fees to cover budget shortfalls in other areas. That corresponds to an unwritten tax on innovation, but what’s worse, they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg in the process.

“To revitalize America’s engine of entrepreneurship — and create as many as 2.5 million jobs in the next three years — Congress should, first, give the patent office a $1 billion surge to restore it to proper functioning. This would enable the agency to upgrade its outmoded computer systems and hire and train additional examiners to deal with the threefold increase in patent applications over the past 20 years. Congress should also pass pending legislation that would prohibit any more diverting of patent fees and give the office the authority to set its own fees.”

“Congress should also offer small businesses a tax credit of up to $19,000 for every patent they receive, enabling them to recoup half of the average $38,000 in patent office and lawyers’ fees spent to obtain a patent.”

Interesting Op-Ed from the New York Times by a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the chief executive of a technology miniaturization firm.

Dalton Ghetti carefully crafts the tips of pencils into amazing micro sculptures. These miniature masterpieces are a side project for the professional carpenter, who has been perfecting this art for the last 25 years. Dalton uses a razor blade, sewing needle, a sculpting knife, a steady hand and lots of patience to meticulously carve the graphite which can take anywhere between a few months to a few years.

See More Amazing Examples of Pencil-Tip Art