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| September 18, 2005 |
Something new: for the past couple years I've been
delving into my adopted state's history, visiting
historic sites. It's hard to find anything really
old here, besides the rocks and the redwoods; but
the originals of these are hundreds of years. In a
seeming departure from my usual secular tone, I've
made a couple dozen of my best photos into a page
about the California
Missions. I've now been to just over half of
'em... and my apologies if you're on a dial-up, even
though they're thumbnails, it's a bit of slow-loader.
More photos:
Germany,
in 1929; in the US, mostly color, courtesy the Library of
Congress,
from
the Great Depression to World War II; and
from somebody's office window,
View
from the Top.
Those unfamiliar with the program may not quite understand
the charge, that the shrub is a "dry drunk" -- this
Huffington
post by Ari Emmanuel explains.
Identifying
Mysterious Buttons is a list of acronyms, possibly
unfamiliar, if one is unassociated with certain political
parties.
|
| September 15, 2005 |
Strolled over to the
Moffett
Field Museum on my lunch break
yesterday, to inspect its new site -- instead of being
inside Hangar One, it's now located across the
street. For the first time, I spoke with somebody who'd
actually seen one of the big dirigibles -- when
one of the museum's elderly docents was six years old,
he remembers sitting on his dad's shoulders, watching
the
small planes fly up to the Macon and get
hoisted aboard. Although his family lived in Richmond
at the time, up in the East Bay, his uncle lived in
Mountain View. Speaking of airships, check
this
suggestion for the
Pentagon's
Flying Walrus.
Katrina:
The Gathering. Don't understand the initial paragraph
about white, but then my MtG knowledge is practically
nil (although it does rate a neon sign in the window of my
local comics shop). Also,
How
to throw playing cards.
Inside the Convention Center: a first-hand account
sourced to Lisa C. Moore, from an email forwarded to
Edward Champion: People all thought they'd been
sent
there to die; and Haygood & Tyson, in the
Washington Post:
It
was as if all of us were already pronounced
dead. Related: if you scroll down to my
Sept 11 entry you'll find the link to that
slideshow corrected. Also, Ray Davies writes
New
Orleans, the ideal place to get shot --
last year, he was mugged there. Coincidentally,
and all too obviously, the refrain of his "Lola"
has been playing in my head these days, with the lyric
changed to 'Nola'.
|
| September 13, 2005 |
L'Oreal
is experimenting with cosmetics based on
butterfly-style nano interference.
Concerning
Ian Fleming, Rudolph Hess, Aleister Crowley and Casino
Royale.
Katrina's
diaspora unprecedented in US -- Martha Mendoza on the
storm's effects, summarizing historical precedents. Also, her
Profile
of New Orleans, Before.
The
Rightwing Crackup by Ruth Conniff, in The
Progressive;
Finally
Fooling None of the People by Robert Scheer
(reprinted from the LA Times); and
Al Gore's
speech
from last Friday, on global warming.
Smoked
Out is an update on the WoD: no change, it's
still a war on potheads, since they're the easy target.
|
| September 12, 2005 |
Ira's
"This
American Life" this weekend was great radio -- about
Katrina, naturally. Among other stories, interviews with
those paramedic tourists from a couple days ago, whose
brave little band of hotel-banished refugees were
refused passage, by the Gretna police. Also, current
tenents of FEMA relocation camps, from previous hurricanes.
On AxMeFi, they're saying
Coke
from McDonald's tastes best. Not just fountain,
but McDonald's in particular. (I wouldn't know.)
|
| September 11, 2005 |
Alvaro R. Morales Villa's
amazing
slideshow -- he lived across the street from local
landmark Antoine's.
Update: Sorry, this seems to have
disappeared. it just moved, link corrected!
|
| September 10, 2005 |
|
Part of any pre-trip preparation is the research -- the
more undertaken, the more rewarding the journey. I
currently compile my information in a couple ways,
which I'll now share -- perhaps you'll find it useful.
First, on my data-transfer floppy, two files are
maintained, which've been growing for many years now:
gnotes.txt and jnotes.txt, for
Germany and Japan. In the course of everyday
web-surfing, anytime something interesting and
applicable is discovered about these destinations,
it's copied into the appropriate file, which eventually
gets printed out, just before departure. (For this
trip, I've also been building a Poland file, whose
second half is the Budapest section. Second, at the
Borders & Noble, perusing the travel
books and taking notes. This is one of the times when,
in addition to all the comfy chairs, I wish for a
courtesy Xerox machine, over in the corner. Lugging
around whole books is impractical, even dumb, when all
that's needed is usually just a few pages. This
time, however, I checked the travel shelves of my
ever-excellent local library system, and behold!
They've got all the good stuff, your Lonely Planet,
Let's Go, Rough Guide, Rick Steve's -- they're all
there, current, sometimes even this year's edition!
Amazing. So, easy enough to check 'em out, and
photocopy at leisure. That's the better way, actually,
'cause reading all this background & tips is
best done while approaching or at that destination.
|
| September 9, 2005 |
Concerning disasters and the status quo:
Rebecca Solnit's "Notes on bad weather and
good government" is (for the time being) on the
Harper's
front page.
In the Washington Post,
Powerpoint:
Killer App? Ruth Marcus makes excellent points,
even though she begins by asking,
Did
Powerpoint make the space shuttle crash?
Sigh... the space shuttle didn't
'crash' -- Challenger exploded at takeoff,
Columbia broke apart during re-entry. TWA800
didn't 'crash' either -- like the Hindenburg,
it exploded. Why does an explosive demise equal 'crash'
to some? A crash requires a collision -- vehicle-with-vehicle,
for example, or vehicle with tree. I guess the
confusion's related to a falling Stock Market being
considered a "crash."
Sam Smith remembers:
45th
Anniversary of the Glen Echo protests.
My Polish studies continue, and since there's time, I'm
looking into Magyar as well. (The language they speak
in Hungary; the only other tongue it resembles (vaguely)
is Finnish.). My favorite Polish expression is Nie
wiem (pronounced nev-yem) -- means "I don't know."
Very handy response to any question, one of the few
I know in Spanish: No Se! Another related,
equally useful Polish expression I fancy is "I don't
understand": Nie rozumiem (which I remember
as Nero Zoomium). Compared to the Magyar, Polish is
no longer so strange. I'm only at this point able to
retain the Hungarian "no" -- nem. Fascinatingly
peculiar grammar constructs, although that exposure
doesn't help with remembering the weird new vocab 'tall.
Be advised, my departure's getting imminent, and I'm
afraid you won't be getting any updates here
until -- well, check back around Halloween, posting
should resume by then.
(I may return to a green-on-black format -- wud'ya
think?)
|
| September 8, 2005 |
|
Darwinian-Libertarian attitude of post-catastrophe
'tough love' is taken to a logical extreme in
this
week's 'Slowpoke'.
|
| September 7, 2005 |
Language Trouble -- according to
this
AP story, Jesse Jackson says it's
racist
to call American citizens refugees.
The Washington Post and CNN aren't using the word, but
the AP and the NY Times will continue (even
as Safire decides 'flood victims' is the better term).
According to some, "detainees" may be more
appropriate -- see
Katrina:
Our Experiences by Larry Bradsahw and Lorrie
Beth Slonsky, NoCal paramedics (and NoLa tourists).
Update on the Displaced Person relocations: the
California-bound transport's on hold, they may
not be dispersed so far from home. In Oklahoma,
a sinister report:
I
just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp.
|
| September 6, 2005 |
Fans of "That Thing You Do" laugh at this new
dollar store 'cause of its name -- just opened,
on el Camino. (As ever, click to zoom.)
Unrelated -- speaking of that thing we do,
Stephen
Fry writes about the stench of humanity,
in the context of the disaster.
On Marketplace
today, discussion of the new Astrodome refugee settlement.
The lights stay on, all night long, in the mega-shelter.
Many of the new residents have no plans to leave -- nowhere
to go. Its new zip code is 77230, and the community's
calling itself Reliant City. Also, some numbers:
California's getting a thousand Katrina DPs: something
like 700 to San Diego, 200 to San Francisco, and a
hundred to San Jose. Best of luck to them all.
|
| September 5, 2005 |
Today we'll look at some new buildings.
Malmo is the second Swedish city. They call their new
twisting 58-story skyscraper (by Santiago Calatrava)
the
Turning Torso (more:
its
blog.)
In London, something called 'Swiss Re' has a huge new
rounded cone of a high-rise known informally as
the
erotic gherkin. (More: a
what? Also,
Samizdata
likes it.)
In Linz, Austria: the
Park
Hotel offers wonderful little tube-cottages.
|
| September 4, 2005 |
Nawlins, the Crecent City, Nola -- I've never
been. Only know it from popular culture: A Streetcar
Named Desire, "Easy Rider," "Angel Heart," A Walk
on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren, and especially
A Confederacy of Dunces. Seems the touristy
French Quarter is undamaged (as it's on high
ground) -- fortunate, but still, when restored, it'll
be all different, and the city's heart may be irrevocably
broken. Glen Ford on the inevitable gentrification:
Will
the "New" New Orleans be Black?
(Naughty Nu-Nu!) More relevant articles --
Duncan
Murrell in last month's Harper's (on
termites) and Anne Rice's
Do
You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? She compares
the devastated city with Pompeii.
In Slate,
Newscasters,
sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally
start snarling -- Jack Shafer about the media finally
"growing a pair," as
Scalzi
put it. One of the newscasters the article mentions
was Robert Siegel on ATC, whose incident I heard -- I was
also astonished when one of those smooth NPR voices actually
contradicted a government official.
Today's photo shows another pair -- while acquiring
more knitting supplies I got a spool of purple thread
and started these two temari balls, one the obvious, basic
90° partitioned into 45°; the other, the more
difficult but rewarding icosa-dodecahedron form (from
which Bucky's geodesic spheres can be derived). Rather
than the usual styrofoam, the cores of these are both
large ball bearings, which give 'em a
pleasing heft. My somewhat recent
temari page
has more info and links.
|
| September 1, 2005 |
A couple blogs worth mentioning, for monitoring the
situation: Chuck Taggart's
Looka,
at his Gumbo Pages -- longtime Cajun fixture on
LA non-commercial radio, he's from New Orleans and
maintains strong ties with the region; and
the
Interdicter, who's blogging live from a high-rise
redoubt there, equipped with a diesel generator and
somehow, an internet connection.
Trapped
in an Arena of Suffering was the
LA Times' report on the deteriorating
conditions inside the "shelter of last resort." The
corresponding NY Times story was
Haven
Quickly Becomes an Ordeal while the Washington
Post went in-depth with
'Now
We Are in Hell'.
How
the shrub's policies doomed
New Orleans mentions the merging of FEMA into the Dept
of Homeland Security. Lots of anger about inadequate government
response to the disaster is directed at FEMA. Eric Holdeman
explained the merger in Tuesday's Post,
Destroying
FEMA, and more budgetary details are revealed in
Did the
New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? as well as
Tom
Tomorrow's post from a couple days back, where he
concludes that
New Orleans is a casualty of the war in Iraq.
More current events, breaking news at gawker:
Condoleeza's
confrontation at the shoe store in Manhattan.
|
| August 28, 2005 |
The past isn't dead. In fact, it's not even past.
Been watching lots of historical WWII video recently,
courtesy the ever-excellent local library systems -- perhaps
in reaction to current events, retreating into nostalgia
when the war was actually justified, everybody sharing in
the sacrifice, all around the world. First heard of Lee Sandlin's
Losing
the War on "This American Life," where an excerpt
was included on a couple shows:
1
2.
It's among the best discussions (he'd characterize it a
belles lettre) I've ever read on 'the Big
One' -- note his description of the Allies'
Berserker rage. More Lee Sandlin at
his
site.
Mike Davis'
Firebomb
(actually "Berlin's Skeleton in Utah's Closet," in
his Dead Cities from 2002)
concerns the Dugway Proving Ground, and how the Axis
working class was targeted and burned alive, via research
there. These incendiary bombings have been bothering me
especially since seeing
Grave
of the Fireflies. For more info, relevant
Wikipedia
entry.
|
| August 26, 2005 |
Earlier this week, on "All Thing Considered" towards the
end of an hour, when their news reporting fades into
reviews of the latest entertainments, there was
something
about Henry Jacobs which I wasn't paying close
attention to when suddenly "The Fine Art of Goofing
Off" was mentioned in the wrap-up. This was a three-part
public television experiment of the early 70s, which, due
to bad timing, I only caught a few minutes of -- but what
I saw was so amazing, decades later I'd still like to
see the whole, and now it's
available
on DVD!
Kunstler
interview, made annoying by the clueless
interviewer's interrupting.
|
| August 24, 2005 |
At the dentist yesterday, picked up a recent issue of
US News & World Report which
opened to
this
article about fresh produce, illustrated in the print
edition (but not online) with a beautiful photo of an
'heirloom' variety of watermelon called
Moon
and Stars. The link's to some seed catalog's entry,
with the same picture! Note how the melons' exterior seems
to be a dark purplish blue. Herr Dentist wondered if those
were true colors; an
alternate
image seems to confirm his skepticism, and better
matches the stock description of "dark green skin speckled
with bright yellow stars and half-dollar sized moons." The
most exotic watermelon experience I've had recently was
vaguely decadent: my first seedless.
Avocado is a fruit, since it falls from trees and
is a seed-package. Once, on the radio, an heirloom
variety was mentioned, but I've never heard anything
else about it, perhaps a dream? The meat of "Julia"
avocados allegedly tastes like ice cream. Which flavor?
Wasn't specific... maybe, avocado flavor?
That's one of the oddball ice cream experiments one
occasionally reads about, like onion, bacon&egg, or wasabi.
A search returns many recipes, most lacking any dairy ingrediants;
usually the result is characterized as
more
of a chilled guacamolé, served as a garnish for
gazpacho.
Something new at Trader Joe's: dried
Dragon
Fruit, beet-red/purple
slices, like nothing you've seen before. The
embedded black seeds make 'em crunchy.
|
| August 21, 2005 |
Word from Cindy,
Hypocrites
and Liars:
I got an e-mail the other day and it said, "Cindy if you
didn't use so much profanity. There's people on the fence
that get offended." And you know what I said? "You know what?
You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody
still sitting on that fence?
I remember being baffled and dubious when the media dug
up 'fence-sitters' during the run-up to the election -- how
could anyone be un-opinionated, in today's world?
Ebert:
What Place does Evil have in Films?
It's in reaction to "Chaos", apparently the worst
sort of slasher film. Saw the preview yesterday, at the type
of picture I find irresistable: black&white, set in Paris in
the 1950s or early '60s, avec sub-titles, naturellement. (It
was great!) As for Roger, he's got a
worst
list; they only I've seen on it is "Swing Kids".
At J-Walk, a post more lengthy and thoughtful than usual:
Making
Fun Of Religion.
|
| August 19, 2005 |
Some new products and ideas:
BadHill
plots bicycle-friendly routes -- alas, only for
Seattle at this point.
YourEmblem.com
should really be 'your initials dot com' -- they sell
"chrome" letters with an adhesive backing (not metal,
but that metallic plastic.)
Fridgy
is a soft, folding portable refrigerator.
Y-shaped
carbon nanotubes are ready-made transistors (but
buckeyballs
may be poisonous). Finally,
PowerFlare sells
LED 'Safety Lights' -- a clean, more robust,
reuseable substitute for road flares -- says it's in use
somewhere in Santa Clara County, although I haven't
observed any.
South
Korea Prepares to take Control in the
North. Also, the shrub,
Out Of Control?
There's real concern in the West Wing that the
President is losing it.
Odd Fellows, Eagles, Rotary -- finally, a lodge for the
tiki-lovers: the
Fraternal Order of Moai (described in
a Columbus Alive article).
|
| August 15, 2005 |
The 'gunsight' turn-signal on a
'55 Chyrsler
Imperial, spotted up in the City yesterday.
(another view.) Speaking
of San Francisco on this V-J Day,
the local celebrations got out of hand,
the
worst riot this town's ever seen. That in contrast
to Times Square's benign, now-indelible image of the
sailor and the nurse. A
new
statue commemorating their kiss has been installed
there (for now -- its permanent home will be elsewhere).
For the Japanese, the definitive photo signifying the
war's end would be from when
the
emperor met MacArthur. (Note the version shown on that
page is cropped; the full-frontal original is easy to
find.)
For many months after the end of the war, the Bomb itself
remained mysterious -- only a handful of Americans
witnessed the concluding detonations, mostly military
personnel. A year later, the veil was lifted:
Operation
Crossroads, at Bikini atoll in the Pacific, when the
mushroom cloud entered the popular imagination. Somewhere I
heard the purpose of this exercise, the reason a fleet
was targeted at sea, was to smooth ruffled feathers in
the Navy, which was feeling kind of left out and put-upon
by this new age of warfare, where all weapon delivery
could conceivably be handled by Air Force bombers.)
Among the many observers, some artists created
paintings
of what they saw. Skip to the fourth page for the Baker
blast, but don't miss that first picture -- they painted the Nevada
orange? The whole ship?
|
| August 14, 2005 |
This pair of sculpted stone blocks appeared recently
at the entrance of a Mountain View tropical fish store,
on Castro Street. Reminds me of that Van Gogh,
On the Threshold of Eternity (aka "Old Man Mourning").
XXXXXXXL in the Baltimore
City Paper says the extra-large white T-shirt
isn't showing any sign of joining one-strapped
overalls and backwards pants in hip-hop heaven.
In Butte, Montana:
Cool
Water Hula by the Berkeley Pit. (Probably
a one-time-only event.)
|
| August 11, 2005 |
Japanese
for the Western Brain -- very useful, even though
my nihongo education is on low idle while I
try to pick up some traveler's Polish, listening and
repeating with a tape played while driving. It's really
tough, their language has nothing I can grab onto,
no familiar words already present in the vocab -- a
truly alien tongue. (In The Warsaw Document,
Quiller
said it sounded
like gargling with razor blades.)
Krugman on the real estate bubble: Flatland and the
Zoned Zone --
that
Hissing Sound.
|
| August 10, 2005 |
Excellent:
the
Christian Paradox, an excerpt from Bill McKibben's
latest -- how
a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong.
In today's Slate, Jack Shafer posted a good
reaction to the recent Newsweek cover
story, the
Meth Mouth Myth. With a lot of reporting on drug
addiction, logic and history can take a back seat to
the loud opinions of the misinformed. (Don't read this
as an endorsement, in any way -- remember, kids:
Speed Kills... and tweakers suck!)
|
| August 7, 2005 |
A colorful view in Chinatown. I went on a
City
Guides walking tour there Saturday, and
learned things (like: in the 19th century the white
man thought the Chinese were nuts, for eating
shrimp).
|
| August 5, 2005 |
In the NY Times:
NASA
Redesign for Next Craft --- not the winged
CEV
Lockheed-Martin proposed, but a capsule (which
won't splashdown, but instead land Soviet-style,
with a hard bump). More space news:
Titan
Dry as a Bone, but there's at least one
frozen
lake on Mars, near the north pole. Related, in a way:
the mother of a pair of new, youthful fans of Star Trek
(TNG)
quotes
their reaction to current events, here on earth:
Why don't they stop fighting? We're never going to
join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don't
they know that? Why don't they want to help end
starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.
I did, too; but the 21st Century isn't living
up to its advertised promise.
The California Kid reports:
My
Happy Hobo Days in the 1950s, with terrific
color snapshots.
|
| August 4, 2005 |
Up in orbit, in an interview this
morning, Commander Eileen Collins
said
that
Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you
can see how there is deforestation. It's very
widespread in some parts of the world. We would
like to see, from the astronauts' point of view,
people take good care of the Earth and replace
the resources that have been used. The atmosphere
almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so
very thin. We know that we don't have much air,
we need to protect what we have.
A
Rocket to Nowhere is a lengthy review of the
space shuttle program.
|
| August 3, 2005 |
I see numerous ads for teeth bleaching... but
some folks fret about the other end, it seems. New
cosmetic services are available for them --
Crapper's Quarterly reports on
Anal
Bleaching.
SpaceExplorers.com
has a lot more pictures now. (It was in color? News to
me -- at the time, like most, we were still a
black&white family.) Says original films have
been discovered, so perhaps a DVD will be made
available, at some point.
Louis Armstrong remembers:
My
Life As A Viper. Somewhere recently, can't recall where,
I heard that Jazz is the sound of God laughing.
|
| August 1, 2005 |
Trouble
in the Land of the Free -- John
Atcheson, more outrage overload.
During the weekly telecom we wondered, is Paul Harvey
still on the air? Or even alive? Unlike in years past,
my orbit never crosses any radio stations which carry
him, although things still appear to be pretty lively
at his
site... but for unspun info, these days we turn
naturally to the Wikipedia, where
his
entry says a 1978 Esquire exposé:
included how he came to drop his last name of Aurandt:
briefly, he stole an airplane and was discharged from
the Army Air Corps in 1944 on Section 8 charges.
Now that's what I call, The Rest of the Story! Like a
lot of old right-wingers he's having trouble rationalizing
his country's current behavior -- said something pretty
dubious,
just
last month.
|
| July 31, 2005 |
Pacifica -- up the coast just south of San Francisco,
their recycling bins form the bold primary triplet. (Photo
of another set, don't miss!)
Would be a viable place to live, if it weren't so remote.
Wikipedia
entry explains difference between diaeresis
and the umlaut... and as I'll be in the Balkans
soon, let's review the
caron.
(These are the accents some non-English languages
place above certain letters: the two dots, and
the upside-down carot.)
|
| July 29, 2005 |
Before "A Clockwork Orange" there was "if..." -- English
public schoolboys in revolt. I saw it in high school,
made quite an impression -- not so much for their
revolution, just its sheer Englishness. Alex Thrawn has an
extensive
page on the film, which piqued my curiosity last
night while listening to an old tape of the
Missa
Luba. Never seen the sequel ("O Lucky Man!"),
really must, some time. Totally unrelated (but maybe just
as obscure): a short
Sprockets
page. I've only seen one of these SNL segments, but naturally
found it hysterical, would like to see 'em all.
Telling it like it is: that Georgian who tossed
the grenade at the shrub
explains,
using the same sentence as me, when asked why I detest
him. (Good translation, or is he just well-versed in
the American vernacular?)
Followup
from a week ago -- London utilities forcing that idiot
'artist' to terminate his "Running Tap."
|
| July 28, 2005 |
USA
map as perceived by Tremble's aunt. Once,
I got an email from him, about my reaction to the
"Home Page" documentary (which I'd link to, if it
were still available, but alas).
PC
World article says color laser (but
not ink jet) printers embed teeny yellow dots
in their output, for document tracking... and
Xerox began doing this 20 years ago.
Cringely looks into the near future: the
Impending
War between Intel and Microsoft.
|
| July 26, 2005 |
Why
are the movies so bad? A search for answers,
with David Thomson. Yes, Hollywood makes crappy movies.
Nothing new it that -- just see films made elswhere. I'm
catching excellent pictures all the time -- two this past
weekend, in fact: "Me and You and Everyone We Know"
(Ebert
review) -- an independent, although it was shot
in LA; and the British "Ladies in Lavender."
Great
Mekka
Blue guest strip, by Dresden Codak.
His
site is bloggish, as is the pleasantly
talented Paige Pooler's
Eyes
Wide Apart. (She's so good, her art-work
pays the bills.)
"You'll get this back at the end of the
school year." You ever hear this, in grade school?
I did, but in the euphoria of June's release, forgot
all about requesting the return. So, the stuff piles
up. A retired teacher's vintage stash is currently
available
on eBay.
|
| July 24, 2005 |
Spotted this staue while up in the City retrieving the
god-daughter at the conclusion of her bus trip south, on
her way back home. If by chance you're interested in
being a volunteer field hand, see
wwoof.org --
World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. There's
lots of opportunities available.
Yesterday, while ramblin' 'round, I noticed a sign at
a town's border which read "No Jake Brakes." This
explanation
says the notice is often made with the international
'no' symbol, the slashed red circle. Later, in a noodle
restaurant, some Asian guy walked in wearing a T-shirt
with the cross-under-circle female symbol overlayed
with that 'no' symbol -- undernaeth, in bold black
letters, the caption "No Ma'am!" -- what the hell? A
militant homo-chauv? I thought it would make a good
Men's Room sign, matched with the equivalent "No Sir!"
for the Ladies' Room.
(Update: my cyber-neighbor
Gina
advises me that this is an artifact of that white-trash
"Married, With Children" TV show.)
Concerning London: were the perpetrators suicide
bombers? A specious explanation,
apparently -- they
were probably tricked into activating detonators they
thought were mere timers. And it now seems the
suspect police shot dead in the Tube a few days back
wasn't
actually guilty of anything other than running away.
Flutterbye's
reaction, worth repeating here:
Like every needlessly confiscated
set of nail clippers, this was a security failure.
|
| July 22, 2005 |
Gushing
Faucet Could Land Artist in Court, and rightly so.
"Is it Art?" Long ago, I came to the conclusion that my
definition is a creation or performance which provokes an
emotional reaction. More recently, I've adapted a qualifier
which I read spmewhere on the internets -- a positive answer
to the question, "Does it haunt you?" is also required.
This passes the first (my reaction being Anger) but not the
second -- I'd classify "The Running Tap" mere Waste, not Art.
Jon Carroll's
column
is recommended today -- subject: his interview with
Groucho, in the 1970s.
New
commemorative silver dollar honors the USMC,
naturally featuring their patriotism atop
Mt Suribachi.
Amanda Fortini explores the
Great
Flip-Flop Flap. I've always remembered that
Sirhan
Sirhan wore flip-flops to his court
appearance -- this article says shrub-daughter
Jenna did the same. Also in Slate, an
update
on the school siege at Beslan last year, beginning with
the trial of the only living Chechen terrorist involved.
On "Fresh Air" yesterday they interviewed
First Lady of the Press Helen
Thomas -- well worth listening to.
|
| July 21, 2005 |
40
things which only happen in movies omits the
thunder-lightening deal: on-screen, the two events
always occur simultaneously -- and the reason why? I
believe it's 'cause thunderstorms are rare in
LA -- in other words, Hollywood film-makers lack the
requisite experience. Nor is this mentioned in
Insultingly
Stupid Movie Physics.
Good-bye,
Scotty. As a matter of fact, Jimmy Doohan is
the one Star Trek actor I've seen in the flesh. Twenty
years ago, I was talked into attending a Sci-Fi convention,
which I found kinda dull except for his appearance -- he
entertained a small audience, running through examples of
his various accents. Glad he got to experience his star
on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame, just before he checked out.
|
| July 20, 2005 |
It's Moon Day, and everybody's pointing at
Google
Moon, but some think it's not entirely serious.
And if your browser is Javascript-enabled, check any of my
links with a mouse-over! (This trick was lifted from
Look At This.
I don't understand how it works, but to DIY, just
"view source" and copy this file's single <script>
line.)
|
| July 19, 2005 |
With less than two weeks to go, and nothing acceptable
located, I've called off the move and apartment search,
for a few weeks. In fact, this chore will probably be
postponed until just after my early Autumn trip to Europe,
eliminating the usual long-trip worries about unattended
dwelling security by placing all my gear into storage
for the duration. Seems radical, but my searching's
revealed a couple local motels with reasonable weekly
rates (and WiFi internet access), so stay tuned.
Lastminute-auction.com
somehow extracts under-$1 auctions on eBay, with less than an hour to go.
Great astro-pic:
Saturn
with ring shadows.
|
| July 17, 2005 |
Yesterday was the atomic anniversary: 60 years ago,
the Trinity device was detonated in New Mexico. I heard
a guy who was there, reminiscing on the radio -- he
said the glow of the blast's mushroom cloud lingered
for a long time afterward, in the sky -- minutes,
not seconds. During my ever-futile apartment searching
yesterday, I spotted these guys a couple times on el
Camino, walking south. I think this was in San Carlos
-- the one in front was chanting, while his partner
kept time with that percussion instrument he's
carrying -- they trotted by and I shot this through the
passenger window, while waiting at a stop-light. A
youthful media personage carrying a large camera was
also tagging along. I immediately recognized them as
Buddhist monks, familiar from the occasional sighting in
Japan but never seen stateside.
Today's Palo Alto Daily News explained their
pilgrimage, in an illustrated story about how a little
later on, they'd met up with that town's mayor (an anti-war
WWII vet). The monks are carrying a small lamp which
contains a flame lit from the fires of Hiroshima, and
kept burning ever since. Their plan is to continue traveling
SE in order to arrive in Alamogordo on August 6th, in order
to "close the circle." The article only identified
one of them (Daijo Ohta), and details of the earlier,
previous aspects of their journey are unclear. (Were
they allowed to fly across the Pacific while harboring
an open flame in the passenger cabin?)
Krugman on
Rove's
America -- We're
living in a country in which there is no longer such
a thing as nonpolitical truth. More on the
shrub's vizier, in US News' Washington Whispers:
Eggies:
the Secret To His Success.
Mike Davis on Dubai:
Sinister
Paradise --
Walt Disney meets Albert Speer on the shores of
Araby. His books are valid, interesting,
though dense -- so far, I've only read City of
Quartz.
Japanese
schoolgirls introduce Darth Vader to the
camera-cellphone -- says it's
scanned from last week's edition of Tokyo
Walker. Totally unrelated, but
another great photo:
Green
Toronto.
|
| July 11, 2005 |
For tonight and the next couple of Mondays,
a mini-series on PBS: Jared Diamond's Guns,
Germs and Steel, about why things turned out
they way they did. Back in '87, he wrote the
Worst
Mistake in the History of the Human Race
which covers the same territory as Daniel Quinn's
Ishmael -- Agriculture is to blame;
we should've all remained hunter-gatherers.
Propaganda posters: from
Soviet
Union, and
Anti-Japanese,
from the War.
Moving -- or maybe not, after looking at
what's available... I'm discouraged,
appreciating what I've got, even if the
new neighbor is even noisier.
|
| July 10, 2005 |
This weekend I was learning all about the War in
the Pacific, especially
Iwo
Jima, adding Suribachi to my vocabulary.
There's
a
couple new books out on human computers, from
before mainframes, when office workers really did
number-crunching.
Some bloggish commentary on the language:
Is
English pronunciation unique? and about getting
useta
'gotta'.
I liked what Eliot Gelwan had to say,
On
London. Rude the way
their glee at winning the 2012 Olympics was abruptly
derailed.
|
| July 7, 2005 |
Specify a symptom, and the program
generates a diagnosis of your affliction, and
corresponding treatment:
What
is your body trying to tell you? (Its URL
should be ianad.com -- that's
I Am Not A Doctor.)
Moving again, just across town, by the end of the
month -- the continuing quest for a perfect apartment, or
at least a change of scene.
|
| July 6, 2005 |
News of Jorn, the original blogger:
Coined
the term 'weblog,' never made a dime. Also in Wired,
Confessions
of a Cut & Paste Artist by William Gibson. (He
mentions 'Kubrick' figures -- unrelated to the director,
apparently.
example)
Americans love the shower, and custom shower heads
are appreciated... so how about the
Electronic
Light Shower? Supposedly there's health benefits from
the bright lights in the head, pointing down (though what I
find appealing is the LED trim) but some might balk at an
electric circuit in the shower stall, sounds dangerous;
and yet it seems such things are commen in South America,
where the electrical shower head heats the water as it passes
through. I've yet to visit, but this is always mentioned in
travelogs. I couldn't locate a sample photo, but Jim provides
a lot of detail, an example in Bolivia, in an entry he calls
Frankenstein's
Shower.
Latest Krugman:
America
Held Hostage. Also from the NY Times,
travel
tips from Ben Stein. And in the current New Yorker,
Why
adults hate Roald Dahl, by Margaret Talbot. (I'm
barely cognizant of him, incredibly. This must be rectified.)
And speaking of that magazine, last week's 4th of July
cover
was remarkable.
|
| July 5, 2005 |
Actually, we were just passing through the City -- at an organic
farm up in Humboldt County, she's spending a few weeks as an intern. Since I'd never been to Humboldt, was curious, and had nothing scheduled for the long weekend, up we drove. I'd just
been reading about
about
"American Gothic" so during the mandatory
photo-op I grabbed a handy shovel. On the way back
down there was time to explore the
Avenue
of the Giants, now a bypass off the 101.
(Click here to see
another farm pic -- both were taken by her friend and
travel-companion, Teresa.)
|
| July 4, 2005 |
The god-daughter breezed through town yesterday... during
the obligatory Haight-Ashbury walkabout she bought an amber
ring plus this skateboard -- irresistably priced due to
tolerable cosmetic damage.
|
| July 1, 2005 |
Making
an Elvis mosaic from yellow stickies,
plus blue and green, and some orange and lavendar
(using Photoshop to map out the pixel-squares). Speaking
of "sticky" -- I thought that's what "wiki"
rhymed with, but after hearing Harry Shearer
discuss one which the LA Times editorial page
implemented (which was quickly inundated with porn) and
pronounce the word as 'weekee' I consulted with a Hawaiian
coworker, from Honolulu, and she agreed -- "It rhymes with
Wai-kiki." But I still think wi-kee sounds better, and is
in fact easier to say -- and that's the first pronunciation
listed in the term's
wikipedia
entry. I've known the word since the late 80s, when
I'd eat at Wiki Wiki Teriyaki (at least two LA locations,
both gone now); also, riding the inter-terminal shuttlebus
at the HNL aerodrome.
How
to make a starship Enterprise out of an old
floppy disk -- only the metal parts are used. Contrast
that simplicity with the detailed
instructions
and experiences to help you build an R2-D2. That rectangular
blue-and-white bit of interesting illumination-decoration is
apparently an R2 unit's "Logic Display" -- some hobbyists
do it with LEDs, others with fiber optics.
In Sunset magazine,
20
hours behind the scenes at Disneyland -- in
two weeks, its 50th anniversary.
|
| June 29, 2005 |
|
More goodness from Molly Ivins:
Batten
down the Hatches. Also, David Corn on the shrub's
No-News
Iraq Speech last night. Tom Tomorrow's summary:
We really screwed the pooch, and now you have no
choice but to let us try to clean up the mess.
|
| June 28, 2005 |
At the BBC, an update on
the
man-made floating islands of Lake Titicaca.
In the Japan Times,
new
bullet train could be world's fastest. Check the
'cat ear' emergency air-brakes in the illustration.
Making the rounds, a series of photographs:
Skills
found only in China.
Peanuts
Comic Book History. When I was a kid, a couple
of the Gold Keys were floating around the house, and their
content seemed peculiar -- now we know: Schulz only
did the covers. (One story involved the usual crew
on a road trip, in a station wagon -- Charlie Brown
at the wheel, IIRC.) Fascinating, how they were
initially packaged with Nancy and Sluggo, in the late
1950s -- and rather than Bushmiller, is he suggesting
Schulz drew Nancy in that first issue?
|
| June 27, 2005 |
Streamlined-Moderne strip mall in Berkeley. Was
that formerly a cinema?
|
| June 25, 2005 |
Almost to the day, a year ago, I
mentioned thinking
about Kansas... this year, am too, 'cause of reading
Was by Geoff Ryman. Last year I
posted a photo my Dad took of the farmhouse where my
Mom grew up, from an earlier trip; they were
just there a couple weeks ago -- hence, today's pic.
Door's open, looks like a a viable squat, after just
a bit of guano out-sweeping. Been through a couple
owners since my grandfather sold it in the '60s, now
the fields around it are being farmed, but the house
stands vacant.
A
report
of ronin yakuza in Tokyo parks -- gangsters
who've been 'orphaned' are thrown in among the unemployed
urban campers, with their
shelters
of blue plastic.
Photo
tour tour of Bonny Doon, Robert Heinlein's house
near Santa Cruz.
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