I'm a lasagna boy!

In which we zero-nize

The Times describes a personalised public-transit system, operating (with much hand-waving) autonomously-guided buses via magnetic indicators in the roadway. The buses, summoned by mobile telephone, sound much like a jitney service dressed up like a taxicab, but the just-in-time aspect of providing transit to people when they need it is very appealing.

Toyota have some similar research on the low overhead of autonomous buses, but stopped short of the personalised aspect. They have some splendid buzzwords:

Toyota is striving to achieve this objective by addressing the two challenges of "Zero-nize" and "Maxi-mize" simultaneously.

"Zero-nize" refers to the eradication of the negative effects of "traffic accidents", "traffic congestion", and "environmental impact", while "Maxi-mize" refers to the "enrichment of the heart" to the fullest extent through the fun, excitement and comfort that people seek in automobiles.

MUNI is pretty close to this goal already, as long as you are travelling at 7.45 between 3rd and Geary and downtown. They pretty much have that route nailed.

[ via wmmna ]

In which it has guitars and pills and windowsills

You know he's got your back when Jim Kunstler dings Harry Shearer and gas consumption:

Harry Shearer with his attitude of moral superiority reminds me of my neighbor here in Saratoga Springs, the lady with the "War Is NOT the Answer" bumper sticker on her Ford Expedition. For people who want to keep on enjoying an easy motoring utopia, war is the answer.

This, of course, is the predicament of the Democrats, my own party. They have no interest in modifying the nation's suicidal suburban sprawl lifestyle either, only in the easy pretenses of political correctness. Instead of twanging on WMDs and the depravity of the war in Iraq, I'd like to hear someone like Harry Shearer (or John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid) stand up and pitch for restoring the US passenger rail system. I'd like to hear some of these assholes propose some meaningful changes that Americans can make in behavior so we won't be so desperate to engage in military contests over the oil we need to drive for sushi in Los Angeles.

In which Cody gets the rock-star treatment he deserves

Yesterday (and the day before, to be precise) we rode home in style, in a curiously uncomfortable rock-star bus. The undulating pleather sofas, the massive leopard-print cushions, and the silent big-screen tvs all added to an awkward feeling. Did I mention the stocked bar?

The rock-star comforts definitely suited cody:

In which it depends what you want to do

npr broadcast a story about an opportunity to get away from it all (where "it" entails the daily newspaper and the pub, and, quite probably, all other semblance of ... civilisation):

"The National Trust of Scotland is seeking tenants for two properties on Fair Isle, the most remote inhabited island of Scotland. Anne Sinclair, a resident and historian of Fair Isle (pop: 65), says someone with knitting or construction skills would have no trouble making a living there. The knitting cooperative, for example, has more orders than it can fill."

There's nowhere to run in Fair Isle. Google maps turned up nowt, but ultimately found another map o' the isle. All this could be yours for £300 sterling per annum. And the boat to the mainland runs once a fortnight! (Take that, MUNI!)

After getting over the cultural differences (not locking one's door a'nights! aught for a pub!), I imagine settling down o' a morning to paint, to watch birds at the Skree o' Skroo.

In which we all slag on MUNI

Just when I think I am unduly hard on MUNI, sfist backs me up. They do rightfully point out that for once NextBus is doing something cool, with their widget that integrates their gps tracking with Google Maps. On the other hand, what good is staring at a map when really you want to be flying across town to go somewhere, see someone, do something? Nuts.
I sent my letter to Mr Sunshine vowing not to ride MUNI so long as they hike fares and cut service. One or the other, but not both. I can get around this 7x7 city on my two feet and two wheels.

And, irritatingly, The President of the United States has called for people to take public transportation. Does he know that it is hardly a viable alternative? And if I say that from the perspective of a citizen of a relatively small metropolis, with reasonably accesible transit lines, how are suburbanites -- who perforce have the greatest distance to travel -- going to manage to take public transit? Yet another piece of the neglected infrastructure of America.

marmoreal

marmoreal, straight from the Latin marmoreus, an adjective from marmor, marble: "Resembling marble, as in smoothness, whiteness, or hardness". From the always-wonderful English pen of Sarah Caudwell.

In which we are stranded in Waterloo with nothing to do but eat and drink

Giles Coren's writing in The Times is beginning to crack me up. His writing reminds me of the frustration of Nobu, cast and re-cast at the gastro pub-of-the-moment, The Anchor And Hope (or has its moment already past?). His writing is effusive, and his tendency to ramble often undermines the fact that he is writing about food, but then again so much of a restaurant is not whether the bacon-and-warm-snail salad is "like teenage sex" so much as the fancy and famous people one bumps up against at the workmanlike butcher-block tables in front of the open kitchen. And he makes a case against opening a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. This must be why Thomas Keller buggered off to New York City for Per Se. $210 my arse.

In which MUNI goes all retro

Struggling to keep up with the retro BART station in Duboce Park, MUNI puts service cuts in effect today. Truly, service cuts in addition to the second 25¢ increase in three years. Some buses are now scheduled every 30 minutes, rather than 20, in an attempt to bring actual service capacity in line with posted schedules.

Activists who have been protesting an increase to $1.50 in the Muni's general fare that began Sept. 1 strongly disagree. They argue that cutting back on service now is simply adding insult to injury.

"You will find that riders are pissed off," said Riva Enteen, who helped organize a protest in the Mission District on Thursday. "They will not pay more for less."

Muni rider Tonie Brock was at the protest to argue against changes to the 52-Excelsior line, which she said would eliminate a bus stop while creating a new one at a dangerous intersection.

"MTA," she said, referring to the Muni's parent organization, the Municipal Transportation Agency. "Misery, trauma and anguish."

everything i ate

Nico sent me a copy of TUCKER SHAW's "a year in the life of my mouth", or "everything i ate", a lavishly-photographed chronicle of last year from the menu of a Manhattan hipster. Plenty good-looking snaps of meals (well, take-out) at John's, Sammy's, the 2nd Ave Deli, and pushcart after pushcart.

Save Twilight

A volume of selected poems by Julio Cortázar, with a beautiful sepia-toned photograph as the cover illustration. One imagines the setting to be a Parisian garret.

... somewhere I have an unfortunate, never-completely-read, worn and dog-eared copy of Hopscotch, the daring English translation of Cortázar's Rayuela.

In which no-one is surprised

No-one, perhaps, except for the pot dealers. Matier and Ross go on about the new Octavia Boulevard's baffling traffic flow:

It's your typical "only in San Francisco" story, one that pits cars against bicyclists, politicians against planners -- and right-turn bans against reality.

The issue: a $26 million Central Freeway on-ramp, at the foot of the newly built Octavia Boulevard, that you can't turn onto from the city's main drag, Market Street.

It took 14 years of debate, three ballot measures and a dozen designs before Caltrans crews set to work demolishing the earthquake-damaged Central Freeway and turning Octavia into a $62 million, tree-lined boulevard.

Once work got started, bicyclists -- a potent force in city politics -- took aim at what they saw as a menace to the two-wheel crowd. That menace was the plan to let cars make a right turn off Market, across the most heavily used bike lane in the city, onto the new on-ramp.

City traffic officials didn't buy into their demand for a right-turn ban. So the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and others took their case to the Board of Supervisors, where then-board President Matt Gonzalez carried legislation in August 2004 to ban the right turn -- at least on a trial basis.

Upshot: The only way to get onto the shortened Central Freeway from Market is to shoot past the ramp, make a series of turns around the block and hit the ramp directly from Octavia Boulevard.

Well, that's the only legal way. The reality is that motorists are saying "to heck with this,'' and are making the turn anyway.

At least one bicyclist has been hit by a right-turning car since the ramp opened two weeks ago, and there have been scores of close calls.

"Stand there five minutes, and you will see 15-plus cars ignore the no right turn and make one,'' Peter Surlly wrote this week on a Craigslist post. "Where in hell would someone who doesn't know the city try to find (another) on-ramp?''

Our own inspection of the intersection this week found good reason to be concerned. No sooner did we arrive than a Yellow Cab ignored the "no turn" sign and whipped right onto the freeway without stopping.

Even Derek Martin, the bicyclist who was clipped by a Jeep Wrangler last week (he's OK), said the city should allow right turns. "The original design for the intersection would have been safer," he said.

Representatives of the Bicycle Coalition agree that the intersection is unsafe and say a redesign is needed, only they have an entirely different plan in mind from what car drivers might prefer: a crackdown on motorists.

Andrew Thornley, the coalition's program director, says the city should make it even "harder to turn onto the freeway.''

Plus, he says, there should be "video cameras to catch people and strict enforcement with pretty harsh fines.''

Stuart Sunshine, the acting head of the Municipal Transportation Authority traffic agency, says the no-turn law was meant only as a six-month experiment and that his department could propose eliminating it down the line.

But San Francisco Transportation Authority boss Jose Luis Moscovich, whose office administers most of the city's transit funds, said, "I thought it was a permanent thing."

It sure looks like it's permanent. San Francisco and Caltrans just put the finishing touches on an elegant new, palm tree-lined plaza at the intersection.

And while Moscovich said permitting right turns would be as simple as taking the sign out, the Department of Public Works figures it would mean reconfiguring that plaza -- to the tune of about $140,000.

Whatever they decide, we did find at least one bicyclist who likes the new freeway ramps landing at Market Street.

Sistar Aquadivina, who works at the ACT UP SF pot club on upper Market, says, "It's great for business.''

Meanwhile, a massive campaign in the Republic of Ireland aims to reduce drink-driving, increase seatbelt use, and get people to look where they are driving. The ads are gruesome, grim, and passionate. And pull no punches.
Have I complained about Octavia Boulevard lately?

In which drunken sailors are blockin up the main road

Although I have listened to precisely zero tunes on the old iPod in the past few weeks, this page describing a shuffle for Pere Ubu tunes captivated me.
Pere Ubu are another band I found through a brief record review in Rolling Stone magazine, probably for Story of My Life. Hotcha.
David Thomas claims:

Pere Ubu is not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won't sleep on floors, we won't tour endlessly and we're embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you've got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest-lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock 'n' roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio."

I bet The Fallcould give Pere Ubu a run for the money!

In which we have 23 minutes

At Spitalfields Market in the up-and-coming area off Liverpool Street, I saw a small coffee-coloured cart with the legend "He's so frothy" gaily painted on the side. A smiling young man was pulling espresso and frothing milk from a machine neatly installed in the back of the van. He made the best cappucino I have tasted in months: delicious, creamy milk-turned-into-foam, and just a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of chocolate. He laughed and chatted with customers as they came up, and when Anar and I had made the rounds of the market (including the purchase of a volume of obituaries from Wisden, and the tasting of some delicious olives), we returned to the coffee-cart. He laughed and chatted some more, told us that he was, alas!, out of pastries -- his regular customers claim them early every morning! -- and he made us another coffee. His compact setup, regular clientele, and bustling cheer reminded me of the coffee-shops that ring the Grand Marché in Casablanca, quite possibly the tastiest and most sublime coffee-drinking I have enjoyed. The men who run those stalls are delightfully personable, genuinely nice, and very, very good at making coffee. And although I vowed to limit my coffee intake to one, at most two cups each day, I yielded to temptation. I had already enjoyed an espresso at the Caffe Nero outside the Liverpool St Station, and then had a ristretto from the cart -- but after smelling Anar's cappucino, I had to have one for myself.

In which ninety-five thousands stoop

Analygis have a very cool demo application that collates U.S. demographic information with online maps (using Google Maps, natch). Within one mile of where I live now: 95,000 people; within 5 miles, 797,000. This is twice the density of where I went to college and where I grew up.

The Mysterious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I picked up a 60p paperback at half-price from a stall at Spitalfields Market and read it on the flight back. Spine-tingling, from the inhumane horror of the decaying morals of the title character and from its effect on his lifelong friend, Dr Lanyon.

In which it is to larf, nay to hoot an' holler

Thanks to the OSX Password Generator (also available as a Dashboard widget):
classicist516696945*woolgrowing
The mostly-undocumented OSX builtin is actually FIPS-181-compliant. You can find it via System Preferences -> Accounts -> Change Password -> (click on the key to the right of New Password).

In which the logalyser makes a brief appearance

After some especially delicious pâte, I remembered that I needed to sort out the good ol' logalyser (some might call it a 'food blog'). The code is crufty beyond belief -- it dates about six years! -- and currently is only un-broken for the current week's menu.
The pâte was outstanding.
UPDATE: Oh, yes: for some reason it does'n't work on Safari, but does on Firefox. And the pâte was outstanding.

In which we learn about the grocer's apostrophe

Mr Looney (of Looney-Field-Effect notoriety!) informs me that this is 'the grocer's apostrophe' and causes much merriment. It certainly gave me a chuckle as I went walking around Ballsbridge this morning. The Wikipedia, of course, has an article that describes the (green)grocer's apostrophe's phenomenon.
It has been a while since I belly-ached about apostrophes and quotation marks.

In which I have a yard-stick

One measure I use for determining how cosmpolitan, or how traveller-friendly, a city is: ease of getting between the airport and downtown. San Francisco: not so much, despite the much-anticipated wetlands preservation BART-to-SFO project. Other cities: thanks to the International Air Rail Organisation, and their database, I can find out online, including such details as: does the Shanghai maglev really vibrate at speeds about 200k?

In which we are not equal under the law.

Today's Examiner discusses community-planned intersections:

Most importantly, the studies will seek input from the community on those improvements and then offer suggestions on how to make them a reality within five years, by identifying funding and resources for the project, said project manager Julie Kirschbaum, who works with San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

"We want to create a tool kit so neighborhoods can help themselves," said Kirschbaum, adding that there could be many more similar projects in the future. "And we want to focus on showing real returns for implementation."

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval, whose district includes Mission Terrace and the Excelsior, has lobbied hard for the project and other traffic-calming measures. He said the area is especially dangerous because both Mission and Geneva streets are used as thoroughfares.

Five years? That's all we've got? I mean: that's how long it takes to implement traffic-calming solutions?

In other intersection-related news, an Oregon bicyclist was charged with manslaughter:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police said Monday.
Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk, Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and reckless driving.

"A car and a bicycle are both vehicles and if they are operated in a way that could be criminal, then charges are filed equally in both situations," Noble said. "He was going right through a stop sign."

Lightning was being housed in Benton County jail with bail set at $57,500. He will be given a court-appointed lawyer at his arraignment in Benton County.

I do not believe that a motorist would be incarcerated or even charged for a similar offence. I know this to be fact in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties.

In which an illegally-parked vehicle is immobilised

The officer in this tidy little truck was in fact attaching a clamp to an L-car parked on the kerb near a pedestrian zone.

How Not To Use the Cellular Telephone

Umberto Eco's essay on How not to use the cellular telephone springs to mind whenever I think about how sensitive I am to the buzzing slab of metal in my pocket, to the chirp of the pager on my belt, to the ringing of a bluetooth headset. Thanks to Amazon for providing the searchable text and scanned pages of How to travel with a salmon, his excellent and hilarious collection of essays.

I was a little surprised to see that his latest novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, does not appear in English translation by the formidable William Weaver. The subject puts me off, too: an apparently-trendy work in which the protagonist loses his personal memory, but remembers exactly each comic book, novel, and printed word he has read. The work unfolds partly as a graphic novel. Although neither the cultural synthesis nor collage-like accumulation of information is foreign to Eco's novels, the modernity rubs me the wrong way. Eco has written about memory and isolation before, in both The Island of the Day Before and in Foucault's Pendulum.

In which the disbelief continues

While cycling home from the bus-stop yesterday evening, I saw yet another fixie (a converted late-model Bianchi Pista) hauling ass down Market St., with a freewheel and no rear brake. Although technically feasible, the rear-brake-less fashion is a frightening and stupid trend. There are a lot of fixies, off-the-rack and custom, speeding up and down Market these days. It's a little ridiculous, especially with all the playing cards tucked in the rear spokes.

In which the new is old again

A story about urban archaeology in San Francisco contrasts with a story about the rebuilding of the Central Freeway ("Octavia Boulevard", the Road That Goes Nowhere).

Other now-inland shipwrecks serve as interesting obstacles for public works projects. The new Municipal Railway tunnel extension that takes baseball fans out to SBC park goes right through the hull of The Rome, a ship's remains underground at the intersection of Market Street and the Embarcadero along the waterfront."

I am embarrassed to have voted for the Octavia Boulevard project, partly because it has turned out so poorly, and partly because at the time I was mostly excited that the Central Freeway would disappear. I was wrong about the intention of Octavia Boulevard: it misses the opportunity to provide a clear, continuous surface-grade thoroughfare from south of Market Street to Geary Boulevard. Although this route is indirectly available through Gough and Frankling streets, these do not permit seamless travel from the freeway to Geary, which is something essential to moving private auto traffic to those highly residential neighbourhoods along Geary. Octavia Boulevard and the Market Street off-ramp also turn out to be strangely pedestrian- and bicycle-unfriendly: a freeway offramp touches down exactly where many pedestrians and cyclists will be walking. I cannot imagine that will be a fun intersection to negotiate during rush-hour, with cars choking the southeast corner of the off-ramp in order to turn right on to Market St (will this even be permissible? If so, chalk up another design oddity).
On the other hand, I imagine that Flippers is looking forward to a boom in its business. It sits neatly at the end of the Octavia Freeway, at a t-intersection where drivers wishing to continue on Octavia need to dog-leg to the north or turn on to Hayes Street.

In which the Owl catches a Bug

The two o'clock N-Owl pushed this new Beetle onto the sidewalk. The MUNI driver, calm and collected, stood outside the bus door and said "That person must have been drunk when parking." More photos. This has not been a good week to park your car on Haight Street -- and take it from me. I know something about trees falling on parked cars.

In which Aram gets a good one

Aram takes the concept of a 'straw man' to a whole new level. Man, I wish we worked at the same place: I do'n't have enough of a sense of humour around the office.
... not that I am there a whole lot. Today I stuck around the house to handle the usual assortment of inept, illiterate, under-informed, tardy, or totally incompetent contractors, sub-contractors, and workmen. The exception was, of course, the cheery carpenter who did not actually finish anything today but managed to put off what he needed to do ("Your parts are on order. We'll 'ave 'em in a few weeks."). I spent hours on the telephone: with customer service; with technical support; with billing; with product support; with premiere technical service; with billing; with customer service; with account activation services; et cetera.
For confirmation, may I please have the last four digits of your Social? your mother's maiden name? your street address? your account number? Please press 1 for English. Do you mind if I put you on hold for a minute?
How do people ever get anything accomplished? I do not trust any of these workers, these distant customer-service people, or these account specialists to actually effect what they claim they are.
On the other hand, I have a better approach to telemarketers now.

In which it comes in three flavours!

bhs pointed out that chicken now comes in three flavors, thanks to a popular fast-food restaurant. Better yet, learn how to fold your t-shirts. Do'n't click here.

In which we circumcycle Stanley Park

Anna and I pedalled our way around Stanley Park in Vancouver.

Thus was Adonis Murdered

Reading the late Dame Sarah Caudwell's delightful epistolary mystery novels featuring a quartet (or quintet, or sextet) of New Square barristers, I recalled picking up The Sibyl in Her Grave from a sidewalk sale in La Jolla five years ago, probably just after it was published. The Edward Gorey cover illustration caught my eye, and the curious title excited my imagination.

The Fever Trail

Mark Hongsbaum's account of the discovery, cultivation, and exploitation of the cinchona meanders too much to be captivating. The story wanders through thrilling and mysterious places: the cordillera, Tucuman, Kew Gardens, and Panama.

In which cold pizza, like the earth, has no ownership

If there's one thing I learned from reading comix -- specifically, Sam Hurt's magnificent Eyebeam series -- it is that cold pizza has no ownership. Much to his chagrin, the fellow in the online story (videlicet) found that taking leftover pizza led to his termination:

I had been working for a mortgage company as a developer for 18 months and things were going well. Then, one day I saw that a different group in my company had just finished up a pot-luck and had some pizza left over. I thought they would probably end up throwing it away and I was kind of hungry so I went for it ... I took a slice of pizza.

Apparently the employees who threw this pot luck were planning to take it home and were offended by my action. Now I thought we were all basically on the same team and if someone didn't like what I did they would tell me so and I would apologize and maybe offer to pay for the pizza. These employees ended up telling their manager, who told her vice president about what I did.

The worst part about this is that I wasn't told about any of this until a month after the incident. No warning, no second chance.

I know that I left an impression because to this day my former coworkers refer to unattended pizza as "programmer bait".

In which MUNI receives a warning

Jay's report on MNUI's shortcomings and coming problems appeared in the SPUR newsletter (link to pdf).

In which I hear phrases around the office

The jargon sometimes irks me, but jargon goes with almost any job.

orthogonal

web-scraped definition

straw man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Decision_making

remediate

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=define:+remediate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8