Mar
27
I know that anyone who likes Monty Python will read this post after recognizing, as its headline, the title of the song that the condemned men sing and whistle while nailed to crosses in “The Life of Brian.”
My former Pacific Business News colleague and Hawaii Public Radio alum Chad Blair discussed it with Ian Lind, who mentioned it recently on his blog http://ilind.net. If you did not see it, “Life of Brian” was widely slammed as a satire on the life of Jesus.
Though an irreligious man myself, I found it more pointedly directed at extremism and fatuity, therefore supportive, in a mischievously underhanded way, of religion’s finest traits, including faith.
Seeing it reminded me of a news conference I covered when Rev. Jerry Falwell, come to national celebrity as head of the Moral Majority, called a news conference to denounce TV shows that undermined family values.
Falwell and some other guy offered a list of the worst shows. Reporters didn’t understand and asked who was surveyed. No one was surveyed; they made the list up — examples of bad shows. Like that sitcom where a single mom was raising two daughters and one of them ran away with her boyfriend. It set a bad example.
Wait a minute, I said. I saw that show. At the end of the episode, she had learned her lesson and returned home, giving a fairly eloquent speech about the reasons why what she did was wrong. The last scene could have been written by the Moral Majority. Wouldn’t that make it an example of good television from their point of view?
Rev. Falwell looked at the other guy. The other guy said maybe so. I didn’t press the point, being impressed he didn’t try to talk his way out of it. But I never forgot how easily, and with so little thought, people could condemn something as wrong-thinking.
Even I’m capable of considering something to be arguably sacriligious. I’m one of the few people who actually read Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” and to me it was unquestionably sacriligious. It’s also hilarious, but that’s another thing entirely.
I just think that reserving judgment on such things might be a good idea once in awhile. I could live without sitcoms but I wouldn’t want Rushdie novels or Python movies banned, because then someone would probably ban “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis and then where would we be?
Mar
27
Hawaii, sugar, and biofuel
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There is a lot of excitement in Hawaii about using agricultural lands to grow fuel. This excitement is not unwarranted, provided everyone keeps a clear head. Otherwise we could go through the old rollercoaster cycle of exaggerated promises, disappointment, and cynicism about real prospects.
Gay & Robinson, the Kauai sugar producer, is looking at growing sugar for fuel. Alexander & Baldwin’s Hawaii Commercial & Sugar, the Maui grower of turbinado cane for “Sugar in the Raw,” sees potential in burning sugar cane waste to produce biofuel or electricity. There has been active discussion of biofuel production on Oahu. This has run parallel to mainland enthusiasm about ethanol made from corn.
On Wednesday, the largest European oil company, Shell, announced it was launching a venture to explore the use of sugar cane to make gasoline.
Hawaii has some things going for it, and some things going against it, if this sort of thing goes further. First the negatives:
- Land is scarce, land costs are high, and any company growing fuel in Hawaii will find that some of its costs are higher than in Iowa.
- Farmers in Midwestern states have political clout because of their numbers and their big contribution to breadbasket economies. Here, farmers are a minority economic sector.
- We seem to be married to the idea that if we grow fuel we will do it with crops that we traditionally grow like sugar and pineapple. I hear certain grasses may actually be more efficient here.
Here are certain things working in Hawaii’s favor:
- While the whole country frets about “energy independence,” we also are concerned with “food independence,” which leads us to feel protective toward all local agricultural operations. This can offset the small size of the ag sector and bring legislative support.
- The fact that land is scarce, and that a great deal of very nice land is under heavy development pressure, has made support of farming a strategic maneuver for land use planners: tying land up with farming puts it off-limits to development, and usually farmland looks almost as scenic as land left well and truly alone.
- We’re a tropical clime and can grow several crops a year on the same field, while a similar farm in a temperate zone is fallow in winter.
I note with interest that corn, wheat and certain other agricultural commodities cost several times what they did a year ago, because of growing global demand for these crops for human food and animal feed, combined with the added demand of biofuel operations.
The whole idea that ethanol was a viable idea was based on cheaper prices, and the only reason this hasn’t been more of an issue is that oil prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange have been soaring along with the stuff they buy and sell on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Proponents of biofuels always stress that existing engines can safely switch to the new fuels. At this point I’d be equally concerned that a biofuel plant at Campbell Industrial Park can safely switch from burning sugar cane chaff to something else if sugar prices skyrocket.
Mar
26
The Ilikai: see what develops
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Since it has come to my attention that some mainlanders have become regular readers of this space, I begin with this: remember the beginning of “Hawaii Five-O”?
Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) in his trademark blue suit is standing on the balcony of a tall building looking intently at the camera, which appears to be on a helicopter. Remember this?
O.K. That’s the Ilikai.
As you drive across the canal into Waikiki on Ala Moana Blvd., the first hotel on the right is the Hawaii Prince. The Ilikai is the second.
Brian Anderson, his daddy a famous developer on Kauai, bought the Ilikai with plans to renovate it and make it a mecca for hip young singles.
He’s been frustrated at approximately every step of the way.
Anderson has now canceled his original plan, complaining that he did more than a dozen versions of the plan without ever winning the support of the people who own individual units within the original three-wing hotel. He was going to renovate their units without charge but now he won’t. He’ll renovate the units he owns — roughly a third of them — and leave the common areas as they are.
He had a vision for the common areas. But others like the common areas. What they don’t like is the way Anderson allowed the second building, called the Marina Tower, is fall into separate ownership. Those mainland investors control the common pool.
The owners of the Japanese restaurant that used to be there were upset because construction work in the common area made many people think they were closed.
As you can see, the lack of unity among owners and tenants has gone far beyond even what is seen at other hotels.
Anderson is not blameless. His basic idea is flawed. How do you brand a hotel as a Young and the Restless mecca when the back doors open onto a parking lot instead of a beach?
The independent unit owners and Local 5 of the hotel workers union scheduled a protest demonstration Thursday. Meanwhile, the management laid off two thirds of the remaining housekeeping staff, citing very low April bookings that could lead to an occupancy rate of 30% or less.
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