July 31, 2004
Soundex and the Infury
About two years ago, during a round of greasy fish an' chips down at the Edinburgh Castle, I found that the Soundex algorithm more interesting than I had previously imagined; it was developed over a century ago for use in the U.S. Census. And it was recently abused to disenfranchise voters in the 2000 national election in the U.S.
July 30, 2004
July 29, 2004
Brideshead Revisited
I picked up a copy of Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt, a slightly self-righteous, R.-Crumb derivative yet still original confessional comic.
I opened it up to a random page, and found a diary entry entitled "How to be cheap." Perfect, as I had bought the book from a vagrant who's a regular at the corner of Waller and Steiner on Sunday mornings: he collects leftover books from all around San Francisco and resells 'em, $1 a pop ("Each book a dollar! 7 for $5! 15 for $10! The more you buy, the more you save," as well as keeping that particular corner clean.
July 28, 2004
This is the bike against itself
Cody was generous enough to throw my bicycle into the back of his car and scoot us all over to the bike shop to pick up my newly-minted wheel. This wheel ain't no ordinary dealie, though: it's a duallie. I can kind of make the chain work with 14t and 18t cogs, but the bigger cog hangs precipitously on the edge of the dropouts (not fork ends!).
Kill 'im already!
July 27, 2004
July 26, 2004
Three Sisters
Pedal steel
For the first time in months, I rode a derailleur bicycle to work. The exhilaration of speed -- of being able to go quickly up hills! -- of racing down hills without have to and brake with my knees! -- wore off as I heard all the clanking and mechanical motion of the gears shifting, of the jockey wheels spinning, the chain slapping, the rear axle breaking. Oh yeah, as I was turning at speed from 24th on to Valencia, the wheel slid forward in the drops and the chain slipped off the gears as the plastic end-cap of the skewer cracked. The washer underneath didn't come off, but without the knurled cap to hold it in place it wouldn't stay tight.
I've never trusted those wheels -- I was saying as much to jimg just yesterday. Well then! Time to find a new 130mm 8speed wheel.
July 25, 2004
The ill perambulation
It doesn't beat Jo Mendi, but it's close.
July 24, 2004
Phlebotomist lobotomy
Here I sit listening to my jukebox, what sits down in a closet somewhere, bumping through my stereo upstairs. And what are we mashing today? Ergo PhizMiz covering White Light / White Heat.
Ergo Phizmiz plays Banjo, Bass Guitar, Ruler, Music Box, Violin, Toy Piano, Electric Guitar, Accordion, Squeezebox, Euphonium, Ukulele, Kazoo, Xylophone, Pixiphone, Uumskither, Mbira, Pod, Delay, Turntable, Percussion.
"Uumskither" appears to be a hapax legomenon.
via http://boingboing.net/, via http://www.metafilter.com/.
I can never forget Kurt Loder's liner notes to the Verve reissues that introduced me to the Velvet Underground: On "Sister Ray": "sailors and drag queens doing god knows what -- and presumably the record-buying public did not care to know ..."
July 23, 2004
Have your cake and drink it, too
Krispy Kreme take their donut to the next level. Thanks to Ozé for pointing this out.
Safety in numbers
On the hourlong trip from Mountain View to San Francisco yesterday evening, I was multi-tasking: using an AT&T GPRS modem (in the form of a PCMCIA card), I was doing some work, while watching video clips from yesterday's breath-taking Tour de France time trial, and watching the fog roll over San Bruno Mountain.
A fellow sitting across from me started talking about Macs, and free wireless access points in San Francisco, and sent me a white paper from the Bay Area Wireless Research Network.
Walk at your own risk; this is California
According to the Senior Action Network, and as reported in the faithful San Francisco Examiner, the most dangerous intersections in San Francisco:
19th Ave. and Holloway 19th Ave. and Taraval 24th St. and Potrero 3rd St. and Palou 4th St. and Folsom Bayshore and Arleta Columbus/Broadway/Grant Diamond and Bosworth Geary and 6th Ave. Geary and Divisadero Geary and Gough Geary and Masonic Geneva and San Jose Market and 5th St. Market and Castro Market and Church Market and Van Ness Mission and 16th St. Mission and 30th St. Mission and Geneva Mission and South Van Ness Ocean and Junipero Serra Silver and San Bruno Turk and Hyde
Use it or lose it.
Thinking more about unused green space and its worth to the community, I read an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle about celebrating the Great Outdoors: claim lots from "urban oblivion" and provide shared, community space for neighbours to enjoy together.
This happens in Chicago: parklets, small previously-vacant lots turned into vegetable gardens, walking paths, or landscaped areas with benches.
July 22, 2004
Still on the payroll?
A few months after the Chronicle ditched Zippy the Pinhead (again), my father pointed out this comic:
I've written the Chron (again and again), only to receive in response semi-literate boilerplate about how periodic reader surveys determine which comics run in the 'paper. Do these same myopic readers suggest the microscopic size at which the Chron crams several dozen strips onto a single page? Even more so that most local newspapers in this day and age, they dishonour comic strips and artists by pushing the reproductions towards illegibility. Bill Watterson, champion of the art-form, refused to cave in to this practice a decade ago; now he no longer produces serial comics.
July 21, 2004
These are the people that you meet Pt VI
Stephan, who is opening a new bistro called Las Mesas, collared me on the street this morning as I was walking home from an errand.
Named for its tables, which feature images from loteria, Mexican bingo cards, his restaurant is the first business to occupy the building in four years. The beautiful backyard won't be available for seating, though, nor will the restaurant have an on-site licence for selling alcohol. Neighbourhood objections prevent this. (Yes, there's a full-service bar on each of the neighbouring blocks; and yes, we are in sore need of outdoor cafés in San Francisco.)
July 20, 2004
Uh-oh, cops!
"You are not going to go interact with those police!" said Mary to Aram, as we all stood on the stoop and watched a fixie rider explain to two SFPD how a fixed-gear bicycle works.
Greg had ridden his new bicycle over to the stoop, and Aram and Mary pulled up in their shiny just-washed car, and just as jimg walked up, the police blazed by with bullhorns roaring.
The outcome: the cyclist got a lecture and a ticket; the policemen got a bewildering explanation of how a fixie works; and Aram did talk to the police (after the tickets were written and the cyclist on his way).
July 19, 2004
Stray and junkyard
NYC are patching up the Kissena Velodrome in Flushing, Queens. Couriers and track racers held races in April to celebrate the track's grand re-opening. Meanwhile, the world is my velodrome [50MB movie].
July 19, 2004
Recycling a Cycling Haven: A New Day for 'Big Bumpy'
By MAREK FUCHS
The cyclists who race without brakes around the steep embankments had to be hardier when the Kissena Velodrome was called the "big bumpy" - a nickname uttered with equal parts derision and pride in honor of the landscape of potholes along the 400-meter oval.
But the hazards for these racers, who ride in tight packs on their one-gear machines at speeds that can exceed 30 miles per hour, were not limited to potholes that caused eye-watering jolts or, worse, tumbles of various degrees of intensity.
Stray dogs darted about. The track's infield served as the occasional dumping ground for discarded appliances. Shards of beer bottle glass were so common as to seem part of the natural order. Among the small number of velodromes left in America, the one in Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, built in the early 1960's, became known among some riders as the absolute worst.
Now, though, that the track has been refurbished - it is part of the city's effort to spruce itself up for 2012 Olympic consideration - the bicyclists have found themselves with the last thing they expected: a pristine track.
"There used to be 57 cracks with grass growing out of it," said John Campo, who, as the velodrome director, is in charge of organizing the races for the club. "Now it's a little like having an Olympic pool in your own backyard."
Mr. Campo, a former musician who now works as a shop steward, has tasks that run the gamut from deciding what type of races to run to sprinting with the first aid kit to anyone who gets scuffed up. In between, Mr. Campo busies himself speaking of velodrome racing with a missionary's zeal.
For spectators, velodrome racing has distinct advantages. Unlike road races, where spectators can see only a sliver of the action, velodrome races can be viewed in their entirety. Edward Beloyianis, 82, of Flushing, watches from the sidelines, where he often straddles his own bicycle, and enjoys the scene because he can see the whole race from one spot. He still rides every day, but gave up racing a few decades ago.
Velodrome racing was a well-followed sport a century ago, when thousands of fans paid to watch riders compete on wooden tracks in places like the original Madison Square Garden. The sport lost favor to more modern ones like baseball and football, but sees a small-scale regular revival during the Olympics. It also has its dedicated base of participants, like the several dozen members of the Kissena Cycling Club who race there, some of whom dropped out during the time the track was under reconstruction and are only slowly making there way back to their velodrome, which cost $500,000 to fix. The track has an asphalt surface with an acrylic seal and was reopened in the spring.
Cynthia Bye, a 40 year-old from Huntington, Long Island, first raced in Atlanta 20 years ago. She was attracted by the elegance of the Atlanta track's curved slopes at each end and was not overly concerned that the bicycle she would be riding would have no brakes.
"It's actually safer," Ms. Bye said, "because you don't have to worry that the person in front of you will stop or slow suddenly." When she moved to New York and got married, the prospect of resuming her velodrome career at what she called the "notorious" Kissena Park track did not appeal to her.
"I always heard the stories about the layers of potholes, generations of weed and graffiti in every language," she said. But the camaraderie and competition with dozens of others gave her the fortitude to try it and to keep coming back, despite the conditions.
Renshon Michel, 17, a student at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, has been coming to watch races here ever since he was 1, brought by his father, Michael Robinson, who started racing in his native Trinidad and Tobago. "I used to race, too," said Renshon, "but I prefer to watch the falls."
His father added, "Everyone learns the sport by trial and error."
The club races several nights a week and helps organize instructional programs for children through the city's Parks Department. It provides its own referees and judges, including Don Winston, 41, from Port Washington, Long Island, who started as a rider until a crash ended his racing days. Mr. Winston levies small fines of several dollars to riders who do dangerous things, like make abrupt moves that endanger fellow riders.
Earlier in the season, there were even specially sponsored races for bike messengers. On any given night, dozens of food and legal-brief couriers came to transfer their street-honed talents and recklessness to the velodrome. The races were sponsored by Puma and would offer several hundred dollars in prize money. But the races are, for the time being, on hold.
"There were all sorts of problems," Mr. Campo said. "Bike messengers ride their bikes in the street every day and get paid for it. So they all wanted to get paid salaries to ride the velodrome. There was all sorts of tugging and pulling and now their races are in flux."
Whether the International Olympic Committee will see gestures like the refurbishing as reason to hold the Olympics in New York City is not yet known. But as the members of the Kissena Cycling Club spun around their track in their ninth heat of the night, into the twilight and even beyond with no potholes or weeds to trip them up, the decision seemed moot.
Said Mr. Robinson, mounting his brakeless bike, "This is really like we have gold."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
July 18, 2004
Unused green space
If you could save $300,000 by shutting your county parks, would you? San Mateo County thinks it's a good idea, and has been cutting the budget for years to the point where no rangers actively patrol, nor do staff routinely maintain or clean the park facilities.
Several times each month, I cycle through the parklands of San Mateo County.
I'd wager that in two years, a developer will sneak in under-handedly: complain to the County that the parks are under-used, and that they should be the site for for new (and subsidized) development.
July 17, 2004
It doesn't shit in the woods.
Went for a walk through the Marin Headlands with Anna, wildlife educator extraordinaire, who pointed out some black bear scat on the Coastal Trail. Several dried patties appeared in a hundred-yard stretch, leading to a theory of a bear with diarrhea. When we got back to the trailhead at Muir Beach, we saw that rangers have in fact posted warnings of a black-bear sighting, the first in 75 years.
And this is as good a time as any to mention my favourite online bear. It doesn't shit in the woods, either.
July 16, 2004
Complete & Uncut
After a harrowing trip home on the J-Church, I debarked at the corner of Church and Duboce and walked in to the Out of the Closet shop to look for a copy of a book: Stephen King's Complete & Uncut "The Stand". I read the cut-for-weight version about 20 years ago, but thinking about germ warfare lately has caused this novel to reënter my mind.
To my surprise and delight, I found a crisp hardcover, dust jacket in Brodart even, with the promotional bookmark tucked neatly inside it. Perfect! Just as I picked it off the shelf, the lights dimmed and a clerk announced that the store was closing; "Please bring purchases to the counter."
I sailed away to China
File a complaint with the CPUC
I received a leter from Kathleen Nelson stating that the utility company had not been able to read my electric meter for the past 18 months, ''as access to the meter is locked.'' I place plastic cards, which PG&E provides, in an unblocked and unambiguous location in the window immediately next to the front door, facing the street. I have called PG&E on more than one occasion to ensure that they have noted this practice and location in their records. I have spoken with a ''Kathleen'' at PG&E within the past 18 months, and with other representatives, because I have repeatedly received notices from PG&E meter readers to the effect that they are unable to find or read the PG&E-provided plastic cards. The telephone number (415 695 3598) that PG&E provides, both on the notice the meter reads and in the letter that Ms Nelson sent, does not answer during the hours listed ( 7:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.), nor is voicemail provided, either during or after hours. Letters to Ms Nelson at the return address on the envelope (2180 Harrison St. SF CA 94110) go without reply. Over the past 18 months, I have paid the monthly bills for both the gas and electric meters attached to my account. If the utility were unable to read the meter, how did they send these bills? This is not acceptable practice for a corporate utility. I strongly protest the repeated inaccuracy of their meter readers, the claim by the utility that they cannot read my meters over the past 18 months, as I have been paying regularly. I object to their lack of customer focus.
July 15, 2004
Tomorrow's man and me
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts opens a new exhibit, featuring Twist.
His one-man show at Brandeis was written up in the New York Times earlier this week. He's been written up in lots of fun places.
Although I haven't yet been to The Independent, the successor to the Justice League, word is that the beautiful Twist murals have vanished. Alas!
July 14, 2004
Another side of ...
Today got off to a slow start: the coffee shop was inexplicably shuttered, and I couldn't focus on work.
But then I found a trove of Royal Truxxx CDs on my way out the door, and spent myself listening to their distrait song "Junkie Nurse".
As Aram (in whose 55th St. apartment I first heard this song) put it, "Putting the win back in heroin."
... speaking of which, now I'm listening to Jonathan Fire-Eater's stellar "Tremble Under Boom Lights" EP.Why don't I listen to something uplifting, like James Brown?
July 13, 2004
Reduce, reuse, and ...
Today is a five-newspaper day: The Wall Street Journal (courtesy Aram), The New York Times, the San Francisco Independent, the venerated San Francisco Examiner, and the suitable-for-puppy-training San Francisco Chronicle. If I jump on CalTrain, I can also pick up a copy of the San Mateo Daily News. And what of all this newsprint? Almost two pounds that I'll haul back and forth, and then dump into a recycling bin.
Why do I prefer the newsprint editions of these 'papers, all of which are available (in some form) on-line? And why do I contribute to the consumption of our limited paper resources?
July 12, 2004
2005 Sunrise
From C|Net or the New York Times, come reports that American hegemony of the bar code is slipping away with the adoption of new international standards.
Global trade depends on uniform identification of products, and the UPC symbol -- developed half a century ago -- forms the basis of a robust system for tracking inventory and prices. However, the U.S. has stuck to its 12-digit UPC code,
How much instant-recgonition and automated tracking does our world need? Do bar-code concepts extend to fingerprinting human faces?
Bar code technology is about to get a face-lift, and IBM aims to be the surgeon of choice. IBM on Monday announced services to help retailers and makers of packaged goods prepare for new bar code standards set to take effect at the start of next year. The Uniform Code Council, the group behind the Universal Product Code information found on everything from window cleaner to Windows software packages, has declared that by Jan. 1, all U.S. and Canadian companies must be able to scan and process product symbols used elsewhere in the world--at the point of sale. The council announced its "2005 Sunrise" program in 1997, but many companies are not yet prepared for the change, said Ray Tromba, director of retail application management systems for IBM Global Services. "Changes in the checkout registers, including IBM's point-of-sale systems, have been introduced over the past eight years," Tromba said in a statement. "But time is running out, and most companies have been slow to change their core business applications." IBM isn't the only technology services firm hoping to help companies get their bar code systems up to snuff. Electronic Data Systems and Cognizant Technology Solutions have also announced efforts focused on 2005 Sunrise. For the past 30 years, U.S. products have been labeled with 12-digit UPC symbols. But outside the United States and Canada, retail products are marked with EAN-8 and EAN-13 symbols, using the European Article Numbering system. To sell those products in the United States and Canada, manufacturers have to relabel them with a 12-digit UPC symbol, adding expense and delays, according to the Uniform Code Council.
After Jan. 1, Uniform Code Council "company prefixes" will no longer be issued to new companies based outside of the United States and Canada. "Therefore, these new companies will be marking their products with EAN-8 or EAN-13 symbols," according to the council. This means that U.S. retailers need their computers to be able to recognize the EAN tags. As an advancement of traditional bar code systems, companies are also developing radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology. RFID systems combine chips that carry descriptive information with radio frequency technology to track inventory. Because numbers in the 12-digit bar code conveyed information about product maker and the individual items, retailers built their core business systems--including those managing price and inventory--on the familiar UPC code over the past three decades, IBM said. Big Blue said its Legacy Transformation Services for Retailers use consulting methods and IBM applications to help retailers update and modernize aging computer software, including reworking them for Web-based use. This is not IBM's first experience with the bar code, the company noted. Two IBM employees played key roles in the development of the UPC code, the company said. In 1952, Joe Woodland was awarded a patent as co-inventor of the early concept, and in 1971, George Laurer headed up IBM's development of the concept for the 12-digit UPC, IBM said.
July 12, 2004
Bar Code Détente: U.S. Finally Adds One More Digit
By STEVE LOHR
The humble bar code, the rectangular thicket of slender bars and spaces on products, ignored by shoppers, indecipherable to humans, is joining the forced march of globalization.
For American retailers, whose checkout-line bar-code scanners will be expected to read the global bar-code standard by Jan. 1, the required changes in computer systems and software programs has echoes of the Y2K computer problem.
In the not-so-subtle tug-of-war of trade rules and technology standards, the globalization of the bar code represents a small erosion of American industrial hegemony.
Europe won this one. The global bar code standard will be the European Article Numbering Code. It turns out that the American Universal Product Code - which turned 30 years old last month - was never so universal after all.
The difference between the American and the European bar code standards, as it so often is in computing, is a matter of digits. When the Europeans set up their bar code in 1977, patterned after the American standard, they reasonably decided that they needed extra digital space for more products and identifying countries. (There were 12 nations in the European Community at the time.)
So the European code has 13 digits, while the code used in the United States and Canada has 12. The 13-digit code took off and is used in most other countries. And the American side has finally made an accommodation with reality. The Uniform Code Council, the North American arbiter of bar codes, has told North American retailers that bar-code scanners will have to read the 13-digit codes by January. The 12-digit codes do not die; systems that can read 13-digit codes can also read 12-digit codes.
"But the 13-digit standard is what it's all moving to," said Ray Tromba, an expert in retail and consumer products distribution for IBM Global Services. "The 13-digit is the global standard."
The bar code's globalization is a sign of its triumph over the years. As the identifying code of modern commerce, it has made possible everything from faster checkout service to sophisticated market research. More than five billion bar-coded products worldwide are scanned every day.
When the bar code arrived three decades ago, the computer revolution was beginning in earnest. Low-cost, powerful computing and vast databases, experts say, helped reduce labor costs, change the relations between manufacturers and retailers and hasten the rise of efficient mass-merchandisers like Wal-Mart - and the bar code was central to that revolution.
"The bar code opened a gold mine of data," said Janice H. Hammond, a professor at the Harvard business school. "Without the bar code, it would be a whole different ballgame in retailing than it is today."
The bar code's story is a striking example of how new technologies become adopted, and perhaps holds some lessons.
The successful spread of the bar code may seem inevitable, but only in retrospect. Even after its commercial introduction on June 26, 1974, when a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum was scanned at a grocery store in Ohio, there were rocky years.
Consumer groups protested the bar code, saying that shoppers would be cheated if price tags were not on each item. Labor unions decried the possibility of job losses from the labor-saving technology. There were environmental worries that the laser scanners in the bar-code readers might damage people's eyes.
By 1976, the initial wave of enthusiasm had faded when BusinessWeek magazine ran an article headlined, "The Supermarket Scanner That Failed." Predictions that 1,000 or more grocery stores would have installed bar-code scanning systems by 1976 proved wildly optimistic. Only about 50 stores in the United States had them, BusinessWeek reported, and bar-code equipment makers, including RCA, Pitney-Bowes, Singer and Bunker Ramo, had fled the field.
In the early years, it took a pioneering spirit and a leap of faith for a company to put in scanning systems. The first was a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
"We've always been innovative and tried to be on the leading edge of technology, but that first store wasn't easy," recalled Don E. Marsh, the 66-year-old chief executive of Marsh Supermarkets, a regional chain with stores in Ohio and Indiana.
A faster, more efficient checkout process and instantaneous inventory and sales data were significant benefits. But in the early years, manufacturers did not routinely put bar codes on products, so the stores had to print bar codes and put them on the products. That meant about 200,000 products a week had to be labeled at the Troy supermarket, adding to labor costs.
"You don't get an immediate return for some investments," Mr. Marsh explained, "but we did see the potential of the technology."
Claude Fenstermaker, the current manager of the Troy supermarket, was a 21-year-old assistant manager at the time. "When it started, I didn't have a clue where the technology was headed," Mr. Fenstermaker said. "Today, I don't know how we would get by without it."
Though it took retailers with vision to deploy the bar code in the 1970's, the idea for the technology actually goes back to the late 1940's. Two graduate students at Drexel University, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, first thought of using Morse code, printed out vertically. They later switched to the bars-and-spaces format, and they filed for a patent in 1949, which was issued in 1952.
The technology languished until August 1970, when a meeting of chief executives of major retailers and food manufacturers like A&P, Kroger, Winn-Dixie, General Mills, General Foods and H. G. Hines convened at the O'Hare Inn, near the Chicago airport to decide whether to move forward with the technology.
It was a "last gasp" effort to chart a compromise between the retailers and manufacturers, said Stephen A. Brown, former legal counsel to the Grocery Manufacturers of America, who was at the meeting.
"Everyone knew the technology was there, but it took the involvement of the top management of the end users of the technology to really push the standard," said Mr. Brown, author of "Revolution at the Checkout Counter: The Explosion of the Bar Code."
Eventually, in April 1973, a linear bar code, mainly developed by Mr. Woodland, who was then working for I.B.M., was adopted. The Universal Product Code, as it is called, is a string of digits - one group to identify the manufacturer, another group to identify the product, and one "check digit" for automated error-checking.
"The genius of the standard was its simplicity," said Tom Brady, a former NCR engineer who helped install the first scanners in Troy, Ohio. "It is a simple ID that triggers all the electronic data that is now so necessary to modern automated commerce."
The technology's standards bodies are becoming a single global group as well. EAN International, based in Brussels, and the Uniform Code Council, based in Lawrenceville, N.J., will be folded into one organization, called GS1, next year. The global headquarters will be in Brussels.
For American retailers, conforming to the 13-digit standard requires retooling software programs. "We're well along," said John Metzger, chief information officer of A&P. The grocery chain, with 630 stores, has handled the problem as part of a modernization of its technology systems. "It is important," Mr. Metzger said, "but it is not a shut-the-company-down kind of issue."
But are the days of the simple bar code numbered now that new-generation radio frequency identification tags, which can transmit far more data, are arriving on the scene? The expert view is that the two technologies will live together for a long time.
"If I walk into a supermarket 20 years from now and there's a box of cereal without a bar code on it," declared Alan Melling, a senior director of Symbol Technologies, which makes both bar code and radio tag readers, "I'll eat it without opening the box."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
July 11, 2004
These are the people that you meet Pt V
Down at Zeitgeist, Thomas told me about how Irish transportation infrastructure emulates American: sprawling suburban developments, built without thought to non-private transportation.
I like this place: I walk in, the bartender looks up and says, "The usual?" even though I haven't been coming here regularly since last year. A couple of drinks later, I wandered over to the food counter and Derek smiled and said, "Hey Salim, what'll it be today?"
July 10, 2004
The Future of Food
How does one eliminate seed that becomes genetically-intertwined with one's own crops? Can multinational conglomerates push the world's 1.2+ billion subsistence farmers out of their traditional farming roles, and into poverty at the edge of ever-growing urban areas?
Deborah Koons Garcia's documentary The Future of Food addresses these issues, through a history of humanity's interaction with farming, and a thorough dressing-down of the large companies that are privatizing genes. And in protecting their patents, they are suing family farmers whose seed has become polluted with patented (and sometimes) experimental stock from these corporations, whose tactics are shamelessly profit-oriented ("buy the herbicide that kills everything! then buy the plant that is genetically resistant to the herbicide! and oh yes, we own the herbicide. And we own the seeds."); when subsequent generations of their patented corps mutate and are no longer uniformly pesticide- and herbicide-resistant, farmers end up using increasingly toxic sprays on their crops.
Nosireebob. One of many reasons I'm glad that farmer's markets are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, that markets and retailers are labelling foods (well, at least in the EU) ... but what about countries outside of the "First World"?
The film did not touch on many of the public-health problems raised by genetically-engineered foods: what of the addictive properties of corn syrup?
Sara invited me to the San Francisco premiere of the film. Hooray! Hearing her dulcet tones in the narration was a pleasant surprise.
July 09, 2004
And like that, *poof*, it's gone.
Beginning in October 2003, solar storms of unprecedented vigor have pummelled the Earth.
The solar eruptions were so powerful that billions of tons of electrified gas shot into space at speeds of up to five million miles per hour, the fastest ever measured from the Sun, scientists said. The blast waves from the series of explosions merged as they moved out, creating a front that is now moving toward the edge of the solar system at about 1.5 million miles per hour, they said.
I think they're responsible for the sudden disappearance of my Keychain and the almost concurrent iSync vaporization of my iPod.
July 08, 2004
It's all about the meta
This is not a blog entry. It's a test to demonstrate that I've finally fixed all of the CSS errors that have plagued the site. My problem? I was using @#$@#$ perl-style # comments, rather than C-style /* */
dad-gum-it. On the other hand, I got a biscuit:
I re-wrote the stylesheet so that I can apply CSS to other parts of my massive web property.
July 07, 2004
roads vs schools
Does California spend more on education (k-12) or on roads (highways, I suppose)? If six million U.S. workers commute via public transit each day, how many are in California? Which state has the highest per-capita commute via public transit?
July 06, 2004
The power of independent booking
After many years, I finally picked up (and read!) a copy of Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler's essay on the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City.
I have enjoyed a membership at the musuem for several years -- one look at their unequalled collection of Hagop Sandaljian's microminiature sculptures convinced me! --
Although Josh carefully called 'round to a bevy of bookstores in Marin and San Francisco, he couldn't find a copy of Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder on the day that he mentioned it (and a few years after our collective first visit to the museum and the nearby Indian take-away, also detailed in the book). It was again at Dutton's in Brentwood that a woman, eavesdropping on my conversation with a woman wearing a Mattress Factory t-shirt, mentioned the book. And they had a copy in stock, in the North ("Science") Room, along with a DVD of the museum's exhibits (which I haven't yet watched).
July 05, 2004
... and not a drop to drink
The Center for Land Use Intepretation in Los Angeles conducted a bus tour of the Owens Valley, subvertings its subtexts.
July 03, 2004
You let me get a pregnant elephant ...
At Dutton's in Brentwood, arriving five minutes just before they shut for the weekend, I came across Raphael Patai's The Children of Noah, an account of ancient Semitic seafaring adventures.
July 02, 2004
In massalia there were no networks
Surprised to find an outpost of a local independent bookstore at the airport, and happily picked up Cunliffe's The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek
.
Need to find a copy of Mark Buchanan's Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks.
July 01, 2004
Mind your prefixes
In the sentence "After immigrating to New York in 1964, he worked as a clerk at the Indian Consulate ..." shouldn't the use of the accusative be required?