Amazonians, Mount Si, Blue Angels, and shopping

I just had a really great Seattle weekend. Mount SiYesterday was the Amazon.com summer picnic, which was held at Mountain Meadows Farm in North Bend, about half an hour east of here. The picnic was lots of fun – it was nice to meet colleagues away from work – but the big attraction for me was the location: at the foot of Mount Si. As you can see from the pictures, it’s a very photogenic mountain.
Of course, being in North Bend meant that I wasn’t here in Seattle for the Seafair events. Fat Albert, the Blue Angels C-130But never mind: the Blue Angels were scheduled to perform on both Saturday and Sunday. Rather than trying to get to the shore of Lake Washington, I decided to watch from the 12th Avenue viaduct across I-90, just below the PacMed building where I work. It’s a great location, with photo opportunities limited only by the overhead wires for the trolleybuses that run up Beacon Hill. The first few photos show the Patriots aerobatic team, then “Fat Albert” ((the Blue Angels’ C-130 support aircraft)) made an appearance, and then the Blue Angels did their thing for about 45 minutes.
When the show was over, I headed downtown, intending to do a little domestic shopping. When I moved here a year ago, I bought so many things in such a short time that inevitably I made a few mistakes. Most of my household items came from IKEA, and in several areas I opted for convenience (and low price) rather than quality. And quality matters. So today I picked up some really good kitchen knives ((though not ceramic – I’m still a little hesitant about that technology)), and a couple of really thick bath sheets, and some Bodum double-wall glasses. Oh yes, and a decent cocktail shaker – because even though I’m living above a store that sells a hundred different varieties of sake, there are times when a martini is the right choice.
Regina Spektor: Begin To HopeAnd finally, I stepped into a bookshop (yes, I know…) to pick up a magazine, and I heard some strangely compelling music being played. I asked who it was, and the saleswoman said “Regina Spektor”, with the eager smile that people have when they are glad to have shared a favourite. So I decided to treat myself, and bought a copy of the album (“Begin Hope”).

Good for Hamilton – but where was Massa?

After the soap-opera of Saturday’s qualifying, it was nice to see the Hungarian Grand Prix come down to simple head-to-head driving. Yes, of course the track is hard to pass on – but not impossible, as Alonso showed early on. All of the top four (Hamilton, Raikkonen, Heidfeld and Alonso) drove well.
Which leaves Massa. OK, starting 14th is nobody’s idea of a good time, but the great drivers would accept it as a challenge and fight their way up the field. Instead, Massa spent a lot of his time stuck behind third-tier drivers like Sato, and he never looked competitive. More to the point, he didn’t look like a championship contender. Success in racing depends on driving skill, intelligence, physical fitness, and temperament. And is it merely coincidence that as soon as Michael Schumacher leaves the team, Ferrari starts to stumble, both operationally and technically? (Actually, I think Ross Brawn‘s “sabbatical” may be more significant.)

Dammit, Alec

Here I am, celebrating my first year of working at Amazon and living in Seattle, and feeling thoroughly acclimatized here ((As you can see, I’ve even changed my blog pic from the Boston skyline to the Seattle waterfront)), and then Alec goes and posts a little blog entry that makes me all homesick for England.
Sigh…

What happened to DARWIN

Some of my most popular blog entries from a year or two ago involved my choice of a new car: a Subaru Legacy GT with the license plate DARWIN. Even though my Amazon relocation package would have paid for the shipping, I decided not to bring it with me to Seattle, which was a smart move. And now I’ve finally signed it over to Chris and Celeste, who drove it from Massachusetts to California, covering “4233.3 miles in 13 days”. It’s a trip that I would have liked to do myself, but life’s a bit too busy right now. I hope they enjoy DARWIN (or whatever their new California plates are).

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at McLaren…

Extraordinary goings-on at the qualifying for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix this morning. Hamilton had been comfortably fastest in the first two sessions, but in the third… Well, here’s how the BBC reported it:

The 22-year-old British rookie was fastest until the Spaniard pipped him by 0.107 seconds with his final lap of the session in the dying seconds. Hamilton was unable to reply after being forced to wait behind Alonso at their final stop, leaving him too little time for a final flying lap. Afterwards, Hamilton refused to be drawn in to criticising Alonso for delaying his exit out of the pit lane ahead of his final run.
“There’s not really much to say – you saw what happened,” he said. “The team did a great job and we had very good pace, but I’m not aware of what happened. You should ask the team.”
When asked as to how long he missed out on setting a final quick lap, he tersely replied: “About the same amount of time I was held up in the pit stop.”
Explaining his hold, Alonso said: “The team held me back in this. We tried to have some space with the Ferrari (Raikkonen) in front of us.”
But team boss Ron Dennis said: “It is a matter to be discussed within the team, and we will do so later.”

There only seem to be two alternatives: incompetence by the team, or deliberate balking by Alonso. And when you compare what happened with the meticulous procedure that the team followed in earlier pit stops, it’s pretty clear that Alonso held up his team mate deliberately. It sounds as if Ron Dennis agrees. I guess this means that Alonso doesn’t believe he can beat Hamilton with sheer skill.
At most circuits, Hamilton would have a chance to out-drag Alonso to the first corner, but at this track the “dirty” line is much slower than the “clean” line. Perhaps if there’s a cloudburst after the GP2 event, to wash away all the “marbles”…
UPDATE: Gossip on the boards suggests that Alonso’s personal trainer (or “his personal physio Fabrizio Borra”) was shouting instructions to Fernando over the team radio during that controversial pitstop. Many fans are pointing out that when Schumacher baulked the entire field at Monaco last year, he was sent to the back of the grid. Meanwhile Planet-F1 is reporting that the stewards are investigating the incident. Throughout it all, Hamilton is displaying remarkable grace under pressure. [UPDATE 3: Well, maybe not quite as much grace as I thought.]
UPDATE 2: This in from the Beeb:

Alonso and Hamilton, as well as team principal Ron Dennis, were summoned to an FIA inquiry to explain why the Spaniard had stopped for such a long time.
“The commissioners decided that Alonso unnecessarily interfered with another competitor, Hamilton, and he has been penalised five places on the grid,” said an FIA statement.
“The attitude of the team at the end of qualification was considered prejudicial to the interests of competition and motor racing.”
McLaren immediately appealed the decision but this will only cover the withdrawal of points not the personal penalty handed out to Alonso.

In other words, Ron Dennis agreed that Alonso got what he deserved, but argues that the rest of the team had nothing to do with it. What do you think are the odds that Alonso will be driving for McLaren next year?

First anniversary stuff

My one-year anniversary with Amazon.com is in less than two weeks, and already a bunch of “end of year” things are happening. I replaced my annual bus pass on Friday, and today I signed the new lease for my apartment at Uwajimaya. ((The rent is up significantly, but not out of line with the market; it’s still a really good deal.)) Oh, and my renter’s insurance just renewed (automatically).
What an interesting year it’s been. Maybe it’s time to go back to IKEA…

On having your cake and eating it…

Pharyngula nails the remarkably silly Oxford theologian Alister McGrath for trying to get away with one of the most common tricks employed by religious apologists. The occasion is an interview with McGrath in a Catholic journal in which he is attacking his bête noire, Richard Dawkins. McGrath’s two-step follows a familiar pattern. First, argue that everyday notions of epistemology and ontology don’t apply to God:

I think Richard Dawkins approaches the question of whether God exists in much the same way as if he’d approach the question of whether there is water on Mars. In other words, it’s something that’s open to objective scientific experimentation. And of course there’s no way you can bring those criteria to bear on God.

The next move (usually several paragraphs later, to minimize cognitive dissonance), is to cite in support of your position the kind of evidence that you just rejected:

As someone who has studied the history and philosophy of science extensively, I think I’ve noticed a number of things that Dawkins seems to have overlooked. One of them is this: One of the most commonly encountered patterns in scientific development is seeing a pattern of observations and then saying, in order to explain these observations, we propose that there exists something that is as yet unobserved but we believe that one day will be observed because if it’s there, it can explain everything that can be observed.
Of course, if you’re a Christian you’ll see immediately that that same pattern is there in thinking about God. We can’t prove there’s a God but he makes an awful lot of sense of things and therefore there’s a very good reason to suppose that this may, in fact, be right.

One moment a “pattern of observations”, which is the raw material of all science, cannot be “brought to bear on God”. The next, this kind of pattern provides “a very good reason to suppose… there’s a God”. PZ charitably calls this “inconsistent”; I think “hypocritical” is closer to the mark.
But then consistency is not a strength of McGrath’s. One minute, atheists are supposed to be attacking Dawkins:

The most serious, negative reviews have come from atheists who feel that Dawkins is doing atheism a very bad turn, that Dawkins is portraying atheism as extremely ignorant and prejudicial.

… and the next, they are worshipping him:

Another thing of interest to you, seeing as we’re talking to a Catholic audience, is that I’ve spoken in many lectures about Richard Dawkins and critiqued him. And very often atheists will stand up and say: “How dare you criticize Richard Dawkins!”
It’s almost as if there’s a new dogma of the infallibility of Richard Dawkins in certain circles and I find that bizarre.

No, Dr. McGrath: what is bizarre is your sloppy thinking (not to mention your total misunderstanding of the nature of science).