Pictures from the memorial for Evan this week.

Evan Chappuis

Yesterday my grandfather Evan Chappuis passed away. He was well past the age of 101 and doing very well living in his own home, sleeping in his own bed. He had around him family and friends who he could talk to when they came to visit. I am sure he enjoyed the World Series last month and was probably reading on his latest electronic book up to his last day. Evan was always trying to learn new things and never stopped. He was constantly reading history, figuring out the new tools of the world like GPS and cell phones, trying to understand our politics, and concerned with those less fortunate than him. Evan and my grandmother Juen were generous to those in need, my first memories of charity was through them and later I recognized the efforts he provided to his communities.
I have known all of my grandparents, I know that many people are not so fortunate. All of my grandparents were strong people in their special ways and taught me things from their strengths. From Evan I learned integrity and honor, a strong work ethic, and the importance of being part of my community. I could see that as a CPA people trusted him with their money and their finances, I could see that he took that trust seriously. I could see his dedication to the support of his wife and daughters and to his brothers and sisters. That dedication expanded to support his friends and community. And that community was large, it was the cities he lived in, his state of California, his nation, his ranching community, and his aviation community.  I may not have appreciated all of this immediately as I grew up, but it is obvious to me now and it should be to all who know him.
I'm sure we all appreciate the things that he did for us, the good times he was part of, the bad times he helped us through, in the accomplishments that he made in his life. He will long be remembered in our memories and in our histories.

Personalized Billboard.

FW: Funny

Stupidity isn’t illegal.  It isn’t a disability either.

This is my 1st post using Dragon dictate on my Mac. I'm trying to not use the mouse too much. I'm trying to learn how to dictate to the computer, control it, and write something that is intelligible. So for right now this thing seems to be doing okay. So, all I have to do is to be able to compose my thoughts in such a way that I can dictate them out clearly.
The pain in my wrist gets pretty intense by the end of the day. It isn't in the carpal tunnel, the pain is in the tendons to the side of my wrist. I am currently using ergonomics, Aleve, aspirin, and anti-inflammatory cream. Usually through the day I can manage the pain with a glove and posture although the pain usually starts as soon as I sit down at the keyboard in the morning.
This is can be a test of how much that ranting I can do and see how much it actually gets before his 1st rent a gobbledygook. Wow, it knows how to spell gobbledygook! So here goes. I cannot believe how much time Republican Congress has wasted on antiabortion legislation that didn't need to be done that doesn't need to be legislated. I need the longer. This is awkward, I rant at the computer all time and now I'm tongue-tied. How freaking stupid.Okay, I need to practice some more. Maybe I should try something I know more about.
On Sunday this weekend the Monterey Bay 99's are going to have a fundraiser for their aviation scholarship program. They sell airplane rides for $.10 a pound. I will be flying my Bonanza in this charity event along with several other airplanes that Sarah has scared up. Usually this is pretty fun, most of the people really have a good time seeing the world from the sky in a small airplane. The bonanza is flying very well right now, oil leak has been fixed, it has a new battery now that makes starting a whole lot easier. Last year this event got rained out surprisingly. We ended up in the EAA hangar eating hotdogs that were supposed to be given to the public coming to visit. The weather so far looks really good for this weekend. So all I need is for my 60-year-old airplane to not break.
Well I tried a blog post with the Dragon Dictate and it wasn't too bad. This is probably a good way to practice so maybe I'll make some more blog posts can be more prolific. The level of pain is certainly a lot less this way.

44D display at Watsonville Air Show & Fly In

Photo Courtesy of FlightAware.com

Out of Body, Roger!

I love Radiolab.  Particularly this one.  Out of body experiences.  Listen.

9/10/11

19 terrorists attacked the US with box cutters.  It took us nearly 10 years, an additional 6000 dead and 60,000 wounded, $2 Trillion to kill Osama Bin Laden.  We may be safer, we are not stronger.  We are in debt, our military exhausted, our politics in deadlock, our people fed up with our leaders.  Our civil rights and freedoms are under question and attack.  Who is winning?

Irrational belief in rhino horn power...

"IPSWICH, England — The Ipswich Museum contains many alluring and potentially theft-worthy items, including a spectacular 2,000-year-old gold-leaf Egyptian death mask on loan from the British Museum and a rare Hawaiian cape featuring feathers from the extinct o’o bird. But when two thieves forced their way in after midnight on July 28, they were seeking something else entirely.Never mind that their target, a large rhinoceros horn, was still attached to its owner, which had been standing blamelessly in the museum since 1907."

And now they are stealing horn from museums? For some reason the killing of rhinos for their horn so that some inadequate prick somewhere can pretend to be enhanced sexually with it enrages me. (yeah, what else is new?) Why is that? Could it be the stupidity of a totally irrational belief in rhino horn power causing the slaughter of thousands of people.... oops rhinos?

The demon hunter

An emerging Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus, is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role.

I am not sure if to be worried or happy.  Perry must not become President.  I don't think that is likely if the Republicans nominate him, but the fact that he could be nominated is frightening in itself.  Like Richard Dawkins recently said:

" There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities." 

"For the past several years... the NAR has run a campaign to reclaim what it calls the "seven mountains of culture" from demonic influence. The "mountains" are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.

"They teach quite literally that these 'mountains' have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society," says Tabachnick. "And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. .."

They are looking to gain control and remove the demons that are preventing the second coming of Christ.

Hoping Irene isn't too bad for my friends on the east coast.

Be nice to Vagabonde Irene!

Naked ladies. How do they do it?

These have been blooming all over Santa Cruz county over the last few weeks.  All at once.  How do they know?  How do they know when to bloom?  Some clock?  Some hormone?

Fwd: solutions

From my friend Vicky. 

Sent from my iPod

this is a cool letter from my friend Myles.

 

Our ancestors made it through the age of the dinosaur - I think we can make it thorough this.

We are not out of bullets - what we are lacking is a historical perspective.  When the world reacted with fear and pulling back in 1929 it exacerbated the problems and exacerbated, if not led to, a massive world wide depression.  Many of the wise heads have been saying, and I have been agreeing, that the turn around will happen if the government steps in and starts stimulating the economy with public works/repairs.  It is not sexy and it increases our debt but our debt can not be paid off if we are not paying taxes and unemployed people do not pay taxes.

Look at California where a minor increase in jobs has caused our debt to go way down.  What we have needed - all along and long before this crisis - is jobs.  That is a major reason why the Arab world is rebelling - jobs - they want jobs.  There is plenty to do.  Even I could come up with enough ideas ideas to keep millions employed.  If we put our heads together we could turn this mess into a bright future.

But we continue to recoil in fear and as we cower the walls fall around us - when we should be bracing the walls we are just staring in shock as they fall.  The so called conservatives among us need to be sidelined before they can get us all the way back to the middle ages where a tiny percent owned everything and nearly everyone else lived short hard lives in perpetual poverty.

I am looking at the bright side also - there seems to be a faint noise in the land of people realizing that we do not need this monster military.  In my opinion we could turn a large portion of that enterprise towards fixing our infrastructure - at least then we the people would have something when the dust cleared - instead of mountains of spent shell casings we could have fixed bridges and built new schools.  And the builders would actually learn something useful - as opposed to the latest method of killing each other they could learn how to work with concrete (I know... I know...)

As the some of the wise founders saw it, and I agree, we can fight when we need to fight.  We don't need to be constantly fully prepared for every war like contingency.  When the Canadians attack just give me 6 weeks of training and I will be able to pull whatever trigger they tell me to pull.  After all - our species has excelled at fighting for countless millennia.

Myles

August 2011 Young Eagles

It ended up being too foggy to fly kids on Saturday but I got the neighbor kids up in the air on Sunday.  The forecast was the same for both days, but all of the sudden Sunday after opened up big time.  A beautiful day to fly.  The two boys below got to fly.  I am sure these girls will come back, they and their mother are local to the airport and really wanted to fly.

 

Pissed off again.

The FAA is down to air traffic control only.  Congress, on a much smaller scale is stuck because of the same thing, desire to regain power in the Senate and Presidency.  Tens of thousands of jobs are put out because the Rethuglicans won't compromise at all.  The key sticking point is a Republican rider that makes it harder for air and rail workers to unionize.  They are shutting down thousands of jobs because they want to make it harder for workers to unionize.  How un-surprizing.  Obama has screwed up over the last few weeks working on the deficit.  It isn't a deficit problem... it is a recession and economy problem.  He has let the Republicans define the debate to be about the deficit when what he was handed was a recession and the need to recover.  The Republicans failed since Reagan to do anything about the debt when times were good and now are screaming about it now that we have to invest and pull ourselves to get out of this recession.  They know this.  They don't want the American people to realize we were driven here by their actions and inaction.  They want to regain the Senate and White House in 2012 at all costs.  Jobs and the American economy is a small cost to them.