13 minute read
Robert’s Big Questions
What is Truth? Degrees from Physics departments of MIT and UC Santa Barbara. Career in designing atomic-resolution microscopes. Childhood spent in Europe and the East of the US. Passion to understand the Big Questions of life and the universe. Duty to be a good citizen of the planet.
MONTECITO JOURNAL20 “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marley THE Martin Minute
January 2020 Market Update In the south county, closed home sales, pending sales, and new listings were all up compared to last year while active inventory was down. Closed condo sales and pending sales are comparable to last year and total active inventory and number of new listings are down over 30%. As of this writing, I’m personally seeing an increase in overall consumer activity, attributed partially to seasonality, coupled with the historically low interest rates. Considering buying or selling? Now is a really good time to make your move. For new map, reports, and to watch the video, visit: MARTI NMINU TE.COM Taryn Martin 805.636.6442 | TarynMartinRealEstate.com © Sotheby’s International Realty and the Sotheby’s International Realty logo are registered (or unregistered) service marks used with permission. Operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Real estate agents affiliated with Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Taryn Martin DRE: 01995581 Granada Building 1216 State Street, Suite 500 Santa Barbara, CA 93101 O 805.730.3350 raymondjames.com/mattrowe Raymond James & Associates, Inc., member New York Stock Exchange/SIPC. 20-BR3GD-0078 TA 2/20 MATT ROWE, CIMA ® Financial Advisor Vice President, Wealth Management D 805.730.3363 matt.rowe@raymondjames.com with “T he moon is made of green cheese.” Fact or Opinion? This was a question we were given in a high school English unit on telling the difference between facts and opinions. This was a required part of the Montgomery County, Maryland curriculum. It took me many years to learn that it was not part of high school curricula elsewhere.
The answer? It is a fact. Meaning that it is a matter that can be tested, at least in principle. It is a fact which is false, but it is a matter of fact. In contrast “Rocky Road is the best flavor of ice cream” is not something that can be tested. It is a matter of taste for each individual. Before one can even begin a discussion on a topic, step zero is knowing if the topic is a matter of fact or opinion.
Some have claimed that we are in a “post-truth era” and that we are facing dire consequences as a result. The stakes indeed are high, but this challenge to the very concept of “truth” has origins going back much further. When I was a child in the 1960s, a new generation was challenging standards that shocked an older generation. Men were wearing their hair long and wearing “love beads.” Girls were wearing slacks instead of skirts. And challenges were being made to long-standing institutions like traditional religion and the military.
Conservatives saw these challenges as an assault on “the way things ought to be.” Even as a child I understood there was a mismatch of what each side was claiming. The conservatives were treating traditional customs as if they were matters of fact. As if a boy with long hair was not really a boy and a young person challenging the U.S. war in Vietnam was not a real American. But those are not matters of fact. They are customs.
There was talk of “moral relativism.” Conservatives saw everything that held civilization together as being threatened. If young people could challenge these customs, what is next? Stealing and murder becoming acceptable? This was a misunderstanding of what was seen as “relative” by young people. One could choose a new religion or no religion at all without challenging the true basis of civilization. And where did this idea of “relativism” come from? For better or worse, many challengers of the status quo turned to new discoveries in 20 th century physics to bolster their case. After all, didn’t the brilliant physicist Einstein say that “everything is relative”? Well, no.
Einstein developed a mathematical theory of space, time, energy, and matter that challenged previous understanding of these aspects of reality. These quantities indeed were relative depending on how fast you were going in relation to the reference frame being examined. But those relationships were solidly constrained by the math.
And what about quantum physics? Didn’t it show that everything is random and that nothing is predictable. Well, no. The Apollo program sent human beings to the moon and back with extraordinary precision based on Newtonian mechanics. No relativity or quantum mechanics needed.
A final 20th century challenge came from Kurt Gödel’s surprising mathematical discovery: There are mathematical theorems that are true, yet they cannot be proved. Does this mean that even in math anything could be true? Well, no. Every mathematical theorem is in fact true or false. It just means that it may not be possible to prove that theorem with a specific set of axioms.
For my entire life, our civilization has faced a series of existential crises that are matters of fact: Nuclear war, depletion of critical resources, overpopulation, climate. These are not matters of opinion. One can gather data on these dangers and develop risk analyses for each. It may be impossible to make perfect predictions given our human limitations. But the actual risk is still a matter of fact, not opinion.
There will never be such a thing as a “Post-Truth Era.” Individual humans can be confused or can be in denial. But the truth remains. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best: “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” I know followers of Eastern religions who claim that there is no reality outside of what their own minds create. But I notice that they live their lives very much as if there is an outside reality. They earn money. They save money in banks. They buy basic needs and sometimes they buy luxuries.
I am completely open to the possibility that reality is nothing at all like the way we perceive it. In fact, I am quite sure that is the case. But there is still a reality outside of what I perceive.
I am grateful to Gwyn Lurie and the other new owners of Montecito Journal for giving me space to explore a range of issues in new ways. I would like to transcend the usual political divides. Not to avoid being political. After all, society can only function with effective policy making. “Politics” and “Policy” come from the same root. I look forward to using this space to raise issues that are not necessarily part of the current furor in the news or in social media.
If this encourages readers to challenge what I say, so much the better. But please know the difference between fact and opinion. In the words of the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, if we have a disagreement: “Let us calculate.” •MJ
No Vacancy Quebec-based Cirque Eloize showed its boundless acrobatic talents in a 90-minute show Hotel at the Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series.
The talented company has also produced iD, Saloon and Cirkopolis, which have been seen by more than 3.5 million spectators, and performed more than 5,000 times in 550 cities around the globe.
The show featured maids, handymen, and waiters showing their expertise on the tightrope, juggling, and swinging on ropes and trapezes. The stage featured the hotel’s lobby doors, which enabled us to go inside and see the intricately woven story of the hugely entertaining production of the circus arts combined with the latest technology.
Final Gift The late Montecito actor Kirk Douglas, who died earlier this month aged 103, has left his entire $60 million fortune to charity.
Kirk, who was known for his charitable contributions throughout his life, has reportedly left the money to several major beneficiaries, including $50 million distributed by the Douglas Foundation, founded by the actor and his wife, Anne. These include the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, the Children’s Hospital and Sinai Temple, which
Cirque Eloize impresses (photo by Pierre Manning)
houses the Kirk and Anne Douglas Childhood Center, in Los Angeles, and St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where the couple established a scholarship for minority and underprivileged students.
City of Love
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Rameau, Schumann and Liszt
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Prolific author Michael Bowker launches first novel (source: Twitter.com)
Investigative journalist Michael Bowker, 68, who writes on health, science and environmental issues, has written his first novel Gods of Our Time: A Paris Love Story and launched it with a bijou bash at Tecolote, the bustling bibliophile bastion in the upper village. It has now been optioned for a movie.
Michael, who lives in our Eden by the Beach and Placerville, has written 24 books and 4,500 articles, including for the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Readers Digest. The new book transports readers to Paris in the 1920s, when artistic gods included Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and relates a torrid romance between a painter-healer and a journalist.
MARCH THUR, 8:00 PM 2020 26
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
LAHAV SHANI conductor & piano
Lahav Shani, winner of the fi rst prize at the 2013 International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, directs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4—with Shani as soloist!—and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Living in Luxury An old friend, New York interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield sends me his latest 295-page tome A 21st Century Palace Asia, featuring a 250,000 sq. ft. 36-bedroom home in China on 30 acres, which took four
Sponsors: Alison & Jan Bowlus • Bob & Val Montgomery Andre & Michele Saltoun Co-Sponsors: Geri & Jerry Bidwell • Jocelyne & William Meeker Fran & John Nielsen • George & Judy Writer
ON THE RECORD (Continued from page 8) transportation to recreation. So now when you look at the trails, you get mountain bikers, trail runners, back packers, and folks just trying to get some exercise.”
Conant grew up in L.A. but moved to Santa Barbara in the 1990s to attend college at UCSB. “I didn’t look at the mountains for three years,” he marvels. “I was focused on surfing and the beach, and I assumed these mountains were just like the ones in Santa Monica, but I realized it was much more expansive. I started hiking and exploring and doing backpacking trips and started volunteering with the Forest Service doing trail work.” In the early 2000s, Conant, a professional cartographer, began working for the US Forest Service, and recalls trails manager Kerry Kellogg as a “natural born leader” who inspired him to dedicate his life to the great outdoors. “I worked on a map of the back country in 2003, which is available at REI and different places,” Conant notes. “I became somewhat known.”
Throughout the past few decades, Conant says, the increasing frequency and destructive power of fires had become apparent, as the mountains above Santa Barbara and Ventura seemed to catch fire nearly every year. In 2006, the Day Fire destroyed 11 structures in Ventura. The 2007 Zaca Fire burned most of the backcountry over a period of several months and became the second biggest fire in California history at the time. Then, in November 2008, the Tea Fire destroyed 210 homes in Montecito and Santa Barbara.
None compared to the Thomas Fire of December 2017, the largest inferno in California history, which turned to ash 281,893 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. At the time, Conant was assigned to an LFPA trail crew that was supposed to work the San Ysidro Trail, clearing bushes above the waterfall where the trail begins to get steep along a seemingly endless series of switchbacks.
But after checking out the dry and windy weather conditions, Conant called off the work. He knew that just one errant spark from a weedwhacker could cause a conflagration. “We cancelled it, and a week later, the whole canyon burned out,” Conant says. “There have been a lot of people in charge of the trail over the years. Now it’s people like me and Ashlee.” Saving the Trails
During the disaster, Mayfield and her family, who’d moved to Montecito a decade earlier, lived in a hotel room
Doug Hulett and his pal, Gigi
for 70 days. After she was able to move back into her house in March 2018, she wanted to volunteer. An avid hiker and trail runner, she had already been exploring the trails, even running weekly hikes up the canyons. “A friend of mine on Montecito Association knew there was an opening on the Montecito Trails Foundation (MTF) board,” she says. “The pieces fell into place naturally.”
Within a few months after the disaster, Mayfield and other MTF mem
Hulett and excavator on the Cold Spring Trail
bers began organizing meetings. “The Forestry Department hadn’t had time to scout the area yet,” she recalls. “We went to them and guaranteed we’d get after the repairs and restoration and show them there was a network of safe places to hike around.”
The group also held a successful meeting at the county’s Office of Emergency Management, and, two days later, the forest reopened to the public. After surveying the trails, it was agreed that the first one on LPFA’s and MTF’s restoration schedule would be Romero Jeepway. “That was actually a project we did
ON THE RECORD Page 454
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