That Sinking Feeling ...

For a couple of hours this evening, I was Mr. Percy Andrew Bailey, a solo passenger on the April 10, 1912 maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. This was my "role" on my "boarding pass" for a new exhibit at the Metreon here in San Francisco. "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" is a self-guided tour displaying over 300 artifacts salvaged from the ship's resting place at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. (Sorry, this time I could not sneak any photos; the shots here are just from the entrance.)

The tragedy of the Titanic is well-known, but no matter how many documentaries, photos, or movies you see, or articles or books you read, there is no comparison to actually seeing items that went down with the ship. This exhibit flows through different sections, starting with the ship's inspiration and construction. In addition to actual artifacts are reconstructions of First Class staterooms (as opulent as a posh hotel room) and Third Class staterooms (four-to-a-room bunkbed style, looking like something between a prison cell and a college dorm room), hallways, the Café, and the Grand Staircase. We learn more about the 2207 passengers en route to New York City. Along with photos, drawings, text displays, and models, are the artifacts: eyeglasses, benches, wallets, clothes, kitchen items, even bottles of champagne. The last item in the exhibit is the largest artifact recovered: a 30,000 pound section of the ship's hull, complete with portholes and rivets. Looking through the actual porthole's half-smashed glass makes it easy to imagine the pre-sinking scene in the stateroom. A separate, much smaller section of the hull nearby, was the only "please touch" exhibit. Pressing my fingers on it made me feel even more connected to this tragedy than seeing the other exhibits.

At $27 ($22 plus $5 for an audio player), it was a bit pricey, but the money goes to pay down the debt from the expeditions that retrieved these exhibits. So, in a way, I helped underwrite the "Raising of the Titanic!"


Oh, and the fate of Percy Bailey? He was among the 1517 lives lost that fateful night.

Wayback Wednesday #20060628

While music is a big part of my life, so are books. When the book is about music, it's two passions rolled in to one! I wish I could speed-read, because there are more books I want to read than time available to read them. Same goes for magazines, newspapers, and even blogs. But sometimes you just have to make the time to read what you want. I hope you, dear reader, enjoy reading FreeThought by a FreeThinker. Let's move on with a book-related (and music-related, and Summer related!) post, shall we? It's Wayback Wednesday time again!

Let's spin the big wheel and see where we land today ...

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Nineteen Ninety-One!

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November 11, 1991, to be exact. Seattle, Washington. When I heard that the Beach Boys leader and now solo artist Brian Wilson was autographing copies of his new autobiography, "Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story," I just had to run up to Tower Records to buy my copy and wait in line and meet him. I gave my camera to a stranger nearby and asked her to take a photo of me shaking Brian Wilson's hand. She missed that shot, and here we are a few seconds later. In my mind's eye, however, when I look at this photo, I am shaking the hand of one of the most creative musicians ever.

Yes, I'm a big Beach Boys fan. The band's overall product is spotty - some simply horrible albums but many near-perfect gems such as Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), Wild Honey, Friends, and of course Pet Sounds. From the early tunes about girls, cars, and surfing, to the later creative psychedelic triumphs, the music of the Beach Boys just makes me feel good. Not to discount Mike Love, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and others, but Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys to me.

Natural Atheism

One of the most profound books I've read recently is Dr. David Eller's "Natural Atheism." Dr. Eller, a cultural anthropologist from Colorado, holds that atheism is innate and the normal, natural state of humans and all living things. We are all born atheists (natural atheists). Believers in gods and other supernatural phenomena usually cling to such beliefs from a lifetime of indoctrination and little, if any, critical thinking applied to such matters. When an atheist becomes a theist (the path taken by most people even today), "naturalism" yields to a dangerous "unnatural" mindset that no longer applies consistent logic. The danger lies in wasting time and money in other ways: buying lottery tickets, seeking advice from "psychics," being scared of ghosts, fear of flying, superstitions, and so on.

It was my pleasure to hear Dr. Eller give a talk today, followed by a booksigning in which he autographed my increasingly dog-eared copy. He kindly consented to a photo as well.

One small example of Dr. Eller's clear-thinking outlook is his preference -- which I have emulated -- of the use of the word "gods" instead of the word "God" when discussing questions like "Do you believe in ___?" The lower-case "gods" covers the whole pantheon of supernatural beings, while the upper-case "God" refers to one particular god, the Judeo/Christian god, named, conveniently, "God." So a Muslim would answer "no" to "do you believe in God?" He believes in another god, Allah. An atheist does not believe in any gods, so the answer to both questions, "do you believe in God?" and "do you believe in gods?" is no. The theist's answer to at least one of these questions will be yes. But asking "do you believe in gods?" is preferred because it leads to which god(s) he believes in, and begs a new question: "What gods don't you believe in?" And answering that question with "why not?" opens the gates to even deeper thinking that is all too lacking in general discourse today.

Wayback Wednesday #20060621

Funny how some things can be "new" and "retro" at the same time. With today's digital cameras, you have the digital image right away (instant gratification!). With the old Polaroid Land cameras, you had the picture right away (instant gratification!) ... after a couple minutes of it developing before your eyes. However, the tradeoff was a lower quality photo. Scanning and cropping and "Photoshopping" Polaroids can make them look a little better than brand new. Wayback Wednesday will use these new techniques on old photos for our midweek travels back in time. Ready for today's edition?

Let's spin the big wheel and see where we land today ...

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Nineteen Eighty-One!

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Here we are in Denton, Texas, with my Toyota Corolla. I went through a lot of cars around this time: used and junky but always with a good stereo and speakers. They were as small as a Toyota Carina (yes, a Carina) and as big as a "hot" Ford Gran Torino (hey, one of my lowlife friends "gave" it to me!). My blue Corolla had a nice radio/cassette player with speakers in the doors installed by "Dalworth CB and Car Stereo," the Dallas-area car audio wizards. I put a big decal of KZEW ("The Zoo," my favorite Dallas album rock radio station) on the rear window. A silk garter hung from the rear view mirror. The Texas heat made the elastic stretch to a hefty and unsightly circumference, so it didn't last long.

I went through fewer guitars than cars at this time. This is a cheap guitar, barely playable, and I think I had it with me this day so that if it got banged up or sun-baked, no big loss.

Nineteen Eighty-One was the "after high school, before college" era for FreeThinker. We'll dip into the high school years and the college years in future Wayback Wednesdays!

Dixie Chicks: Taking The Long Way

Although guitar, bass, and drums are the core of the type of music I crave, there are many variations that do it for me. This includes the twang of country-western sounds. On a whim I bought the new Dixie Chicks CD, Taking The Long Way, and I just keep hitting "Play" again and again. From the vocal harmonies to the varied instrumentation (banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and I think I hear a sitar in there!), this is a great country-pop album. (Some credit must go to superproducer Rick Rubin.)

Defiance, confidence, and attitude pours through all the songs. The band starts right off (on "The Long Way Around") announcing they are not run-of-the-mill traditionalists: The first lyric is "My friends from high school - married their high school boyfriends - moved into houses - in the same zip codes where their parents live - but I could never follow ..."

Things mellow down for the sixth song, "Lullaby," a ballad so sweet, it can make a grown man want to be serenaded with this gem before bedtime. Sheryl Crow sits in on "Favorite Year" which she helped write. "I Like It" is a joyous life-affirming song: "Gonna live it up ... and dance like the song is never ending ... gonna get so high tonight ..." In "Lubbock Or Leave It" the Chicks really slam the Bible Belt: they won't stay "on their knees" in a town with "more churches than trees."

The Dixie Chicks are certainly not conformists, and they do wonders with the otherwise "traditional" sounds of country music. If you think you don't like country music, be a rebel to your conventions and check out Taking The Long Way.

Wayback Wednesday #20060614

On this second installment of Wayback Wednesday, we travel back in time once again, to those glorious days of black and white photographs made out of something called film, now converted via scanner into something called pixels.

Let's spin the big wheel and see where we land today ...

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Nineteen Seventy-One!

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This is a Bart Simpson-aged FreeThinker in front of his house at 1503 Effie Lane in Pasadena, Texas, near Houston. Locals like to say: "The grass is greener in Pasadeener." Local cynics call it "Pasastinker" because it's downwind from several oil refineries.


This was not my first bicycle, but it was the first one I was really proud of. I'd already outgrown streamers on the hand grips and baseball cards clothespinned near the spokes which made that ratatattat faux-engine sound. No, this was a big boy's bike, complete with a groovy name -- the "Apollo Swinger." Check out the gearshift. With 5 speeds, I was fairly competitive in racing the other kids. And I could "pop a wheelie" for a long time. Helmets? Nobody wore 'em in the '70s.

This bicycle was later put to work on a morning paper route. The money was nice but it was hard to look cool with a big basket attached in the front.

My Pen Pal

This is Cristhian, my fourth grade Pen Pal.

Pen Pal?

I participate in a San Francisco Unified School District program in which students are paired with adults in The City, writing letters to each other in a composition book every two weeks throughout the school year. At the end of the school year (now!) we finally meet.

It was a good body of letters between us. I learned more about soccer, bubble gum, and Nintendo, and Cristhian learned more about the virtues of studying, nutrition, and exercise. Cristhian gets to keep the book. I wonder if he will read it again 10-20 years from now? I wonder if I will?

The Puffy Chair

Indie movies are great. Without the distractions of overwrought CGI, big-name famous actors and formulaic genre conventions, you usually get an original, realistic, and intelligent movie experience.

That was the case with "The Puffy Chair." This is a funny character-driven road trip movie about Josh and Emily, a young, bickering couple, bringing a huge purple La-Z-Boy type recliner (just like Josh's Dad's old chair, now long gone) to his parent's house as a surprise birthday gift. Hijinks ensue, of course. Like life itself, this movie is about the journey, not just the destination.

The soundtrack is just as "indie" as the movie itself, with cool tunes from the likes of Death Cab For Cutie and Of Montreal.

You won't find this flick at your local megaplex -- but there's always Netflix!

Wayback Wednesday

Today marks a new weekly feature on FreeThought by a FreeThinker. This blog is a year old now, but there's still lots of fun stuff from further in the past to show pictures of and write about. So, every week, there will be a "Wayback Wednesday" post that time-travels into the past (like Peabody's "Wayback Machine" but without an atrocious pun at the end).

Let's spin the big wheel and see where we land today ...

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Nineteen Sixty-One!

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Way, WAY back!

This is Lil' FreeThinker on his rocking horse, so excited, he's dribbling down his shirt. The curly locks have yet to appear (and it will have nothing to do with getting fingers caught in the electrical socket!).

The rocking horse was a favorite toy for a short time. New discoveries were soon enough made ... Lincoln Logs, Silly Putty, Spirograph, Sea-Monkeys, stamp collecting, model cars, Wacky Packs, comic books, girls ... Oh, there's so much to write about ...

See you next week for another Wayback Wednesday!

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

The Apocalypse? Or Just Another Tuesday?

It's the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia -- the fear of the number 666 -- is so silly, it's funny. My friend Pat sent me this supermarket receipt years ago, and it's been on my bulletin board for all this time for a quick laugh.

What's not so funny is the numbers of Americans (59%, according to a Time Magazine/CNN poll) who actually believe that a Biblical "apocalypse" is coming shortly, if not on 6-6-06.

The telephone prefix at the University of San Francisco -- a Jesuit institution -- was 666 for a long time. They jumped at the first chance to change it once new prefixes became available.

(Note to local hexakosioihexekontahexaphobics: St. Peter & Paul Catholic Church is still at 666 Filbert Street.)


How about some Hexakosioihexekontahexamania humor?

More Numbers Of The Beast

666 --Biblical Number of the Beast
660 --Approximate Number of the Beast
DCLXVI -- Roman Numeral of the Beast
665 -- Number of the Beast's Older Brother
667 -- Number of the Beast's Younger Sister
668 -- Number of the Beast's Neighbor
999 -- Number of the Australian Beast
333 -- Number of the Semi-Beast
66 -- Number of the Downsized Beast
6, uh..., I forget -- Number of the Blonde Beast
666.0000 -- Number of the High Precision Beast
665.9997856 -- Number of the Beast on a Pentium
0.666 -- Number of the Millibeast
X/666 -- Beast Common Denominator
0.00150150... -- Reciprocal of the Beast
-666 -- Opposite of the Beast
666i -- Imaginary Number of the Beast
6.66 x 102 -- Scientific Notation of the Beast
25.8069758... -- Square Root of the Beast
443556 -- Square of the Beast
1010011010 -- Binary Number of the Beast
1232 -- Octal of the Beast
29A -- Hexidecimal of the Beast
2.8235 -- Log of the Beast
6.5913 -- Ln of the Beast
1.738 x 10289 -- Anti-Log of the Beast
00666 -- Zip Code of the Beast
666@hell.org -- E-mail Address of the Beast
www.666.com -- Website of the Beast
1-666-666-6666 -- Phone & FAX Number of the Beast
1-888-666-6666 -- Toll Free Number of the Beast
1-900-666-6666 -- Live Beasts, available now! One-on-one pacts!
Only $6.66 per minute! [Must be over 18!]
666-66-6666 -- Social Security Number of the Beast
Form 10666 -- Special IRS Tax Forms for the Beast
66.6% -- Tax Rate of the Beast
6.66% -- 6-Year CD Interest Rate at First Beast Bank of Hell
($666 minimum deposit, $666 early withdrawal fee)
$666/hr -- Billing Rate of the Beast's Lawyer
$665.95 -- Retail Price of the Beast
$710.36 -- Price of the Beast plus 6.66% Sales Tax
$769.95 -- Price of the Beast with accessories and replacement soul
$656.66 -- Wal-Mart Price of the Beast (next week $646.66!)
$55.50 -- Monthly Payments for Beast, in 12 easy installments
Phillips 666 -- Gasoline Used by the Beast (regular $6.66/gal)
Route 666 -- Highway of the Beast (where he gets his kicks!)
666 mph -- Speed Limit on the Beast's Highway
666 lb cap -- Weight Limit of the Beast
666 Minutes -- Weekly News Show about the Beast (airs daily from
Midnight to 11:06 a.m., on Cable Channel 666, of course)
666o F -- Oven Temperature for Cooking "Roast Beast"
666(k) -- Retirement Plan of the Beast
666 mg -- Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
Lotus 6-6-6 -- Spreadsheet of the Beast
Word 6.66 -- Word Processor of the Beast
Windows 666 -- Bill Gates' Personal Beast Operating System
i66686 -- CPU of the Beast
666-I -- BMW of the Beast
IAM 666 -- License Plate Number of the Beast
Formula 666 -- All Purpose Cleaner of the Beast
WD-666 -- Spray Lubricant of the Beast
DSM-666 (rev) -- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
66.6 MHz -- FM Radio Station of the Beast
666 KHz -- AM Radio Station of the Beast