I'm a lasagna boy!

In which we take our chocolate foot to the Left Bank

Paris will promote cycling through a public service program.

The City of Light wants to soon become a city of bicycles. Paris City Hall announced it has selected French outdoor advertising firm JCDecaux SA to operate a new free bicycle service in the capital.

Joining other European cities like the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, Paris wants to make thousands of bikes available for free to commuters, strollers and tourists — in part to help cut down on pollution.

JCDecaux's Somupi unit is to have some 14,100 bikes deployed in the capital by this summer. City Hall's choice of contractor was announced Monday.

The company was chosen over a consortium of rivals including U.S.-based Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc., and several major French companies.

Waiting For Godot / Krapp's Last Tape

Several texts by Samuel Beckett are available online, including Waiting for Godot (in Basque as well, which has a certain deliciousness to it) and Krapps Last Tape.
I first read Krapp's Last Tape because of a class at Boston University -- I was sitting in on an English seminar, considering the school, expecting great things. Wow! The teacher screened a grainy, black-and-white print of "Eh, Joe?" and after that I tried reading everything Beckett.

In which we get all cheery about the vocabulary

Mike Solomon points out this gem of a phrase: Cream of the crap, from a pretty damn funny IM exchange with someone who, looking for a thug to settle someone's hash, stumbled instead upon Mike's homepage. Mike develops cool software, such as SIMBL, the Smart InputManager Bundle Loader. But he doesn't wallop wiseguys.
(That photo isn't Mike. It's Frank, from a poster advertising a 1972 show at Cal State Fullerton, co-headling with Alice. The advertised show didn't take place in '72, but in '68.)

In which I complain about parking

In a city (San Francisco) where parking problems abound — where we find abusrdly low meter revenue, yet high meter occupancy; where 1 in 10 citizens have a handicapped placard; and where meter maids receive physical dressings-down, I am frustrated that the Department of Parking and Whatever only has three PCOs (the Parking Control Officers assigned to tow detail) working on Sundays, a delay of about three hours between call and action on Friday, and precisely zero PCOs working the graveyard shift. To be precise, the graveyard shift (0200 to 0600) routes calls to the local constabulary, who take the report of a blocked sidwalk, obstructed fire hydrant, car on kerb, car blocking a driveway, et c., and promptly ignore it. A DPT dispatcher told me, "Oh, the PCOs don't start until six, and they probably won't get to the first call until maybe seven." Oh, yes, San Francisco, and especially all those people who come to this neighbourhood at weekends to party, you park like an asshole. dot com.

The bestest times to block a garage, park in someone else's driveway, double-park, roll up onto a sidewalk access ramp, or otherwise get in the way of pedestrians are Friday nights, Sunday all day, or any day after two o'clock. The nicely-dressed well-spoken man eating at Out the Door a few weeks ago suggested acts of retaliation, but none satisfies me as much as the tow. The Tow! To the Auto Return!

Lest you think that all I do is belly-ache, I will very happily point out that a cheerful, bearded man named Tory gave me an orange that he had grown yesterday, and it was a delicious orange. He sells fruit at the Farmers' Market at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

In which the right to peaceably assemble diminishes

The New York Times reports that the city of New York has finally pushed through the requirement that all gatherings of 50 or more people require a permit. This is a piece of legislation designed to restrict events such as Critical Mass, fun-an'-stupid happenings like the Idiotarod, and to squash any spontaneous, grass-roots sort of protest or gathering on city streets.

In which we get all huffy about the vocabulary

A list of pompous-ass (hyphen mine) words, including citations and deconstruction. The site's author rails against these words, suggesting that they are the enemy: we should know them, and never use them. An example:

Word: in medias res

Synonymous with: (Latin) In the middle of things: used esp. of a narrative that opens in the middle rather than at the chronological beginning.

Example: Time magazine took care of it in its review of installment 2 of Lord of the Rings. From http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021202/story.html:

It begins in medias res, as though you had just stepped out for a few seconds to get more popcorn. If you didn't see last year's The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson, the trilogy's wizardly director, isn't about to cut you any slack.

Even though it's clear enough in context, it could have been removed entirely with no loss of meaning. Having it in there broke up the flow at the very beginning of the article because I stopped to wonder "what is that?!"

Makes me wonder what my very-expensive liberal-arts education was for, if not to read bloody Time bloody magazine. Oh, yes, it's for reading comics online.

Smartass.

For my part, I consider certain contemporary notions disrespectful to, inconsiderate of, or resulting from a misunderstanding of, English. Turning a perfectly good noun, such as contact into a verb (a phenomenon); or creating a verb like burglarize out of burglar, when one could use the extant burgle (whence the burglar himself); or ravaging the verb to make a noun, such as utilization, while use, a poor monosyllable cousin, sits idly by. But English, she evolves, and I shrug.

In which I get a sinking feeling

Why do we not have something like this delightful grassroots site for Pittsburgh, city of pothole after sinkhole?

Here's something to fill the emptiness:

In which we slice it and dice it

The Will it Blend? website has scads of amusing videos featuring all sorts of junk, in a blender! You can try some of these at home, too. In fact, all sorts of stuff can be blended or shredded, from refrigerators to royalty; from pigs feet to printers; and, of course, tonnes of AOL CDs and cars.

In which we see the places

Google Books now offers summary pages with books and maps extracted automatically: Around the World on A Bicycle, Just Keep Pedaling: A Corner-to-corner Bike Ride Across America, French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure.

In which the louts are getting restless

If it's not one thing, it's another. An assassination attempt at Fifty 24? The Klan in Duboce Triangle?
Carlos has some photos (nice b&w! and color!) from the accident.

In which we don the vestments and celebrate the ritual

Today is National Pie Day.

In which we have sad proof that Octavia Boulevard is bad for cyclists

A cyclist was seriously injured today at the on-ramp bit of Octavia, at Market St.. This bicycle lane is a proven recipe for disaster.

A bicyclist was seriously injured this morning when she was struck by a truck making an illegal right turn onto a Highway 101 on-ramp on Market Street, police said.

The truck left the scene at Market and Octavia streets without stopping, but was soon pulled over by a San Francisco Police Department motorcycle officer, said Sgt. Steve Mannina. The driver, who did not realize he had hit the woman, was cited for making an illegal right turn, Mannina said.

The 28-year-old bicyclist was taken to San Francisco General Hospital with life-threatening injuries, Mannina said. She was wearing a helmet, he added.

The collision occurred about 8:25 a.m., when the truck, which was traveling east on Market Street, turned right onto the Highway 101 on-ramp. A right-hand turn in that direction is illegal at the intersection, Mannina said.

Google Maps has out-of-date imagery for this intersection, but it's hairy, despite being recently designed and built. Octavia was designed and built for cars, not for pedestrians: witness the horrible medians, the light timing that prevent people from crossing along Page or Haight in a single cycle); and definitely not for cyclists: the level crossing with a freeway onramp and no physical barriers at Market St., the abrupt grade changes between Fell and Market.
UPDATE: some movies and diagrams of the madness at the intersection of Octavia and Market.

In which all transit is easy

Can you live in San Francisco without a car?
The San Francisco Chronicle amusingly claims that transit around the Bay Area is "easy", setting themselves up as too easy a target.
How is getting around the Bay Area on public transit easy? Trains don't run 24 hours, meaning that on Sunday I cannot take BART until eight o'clock; meaning that for much of the last year, I could not take light-rail inbound from Downtown San Francisco, but instead needed to rely on MUNI's erratic, poorly-labelled, and tediously slow surface buses; I could (and often do) go on about this, but I find any assertion that San Francisco is easy to get around with public transit laughable.
I have found walking home from Downtown faster on foot than by bus, even during rush hour (!!) with three bus lines, a trolley, and two train lines to compete against; I still consider that cycling from point to point in San Francisco is more efficient than MUNI. To those who say that you wind up smelly and sweaty, consider how smelly and damn nasty MUNI buses are.
In a small way, I am happy that car-sharing, the focus of the Chronicle's article, has succeeded in San Francisco; but this does not improve public transit, and may in fact distract funding from improving transit in the Bay Area. Car-sharing may reduce private car ownership, and encourage drivers to consolidate trips, and cut down on the onerous and contentious task of parking (hey, jackassaurus parked across our driveway! that's not a spot! I will twist your windshield wipers, use a Sharpie on your paint, kick some of the fresh dog shit from nearby Duboce Park onto your door handle, and other nasty tricks I learned from a well-dressed man with a dog under his arm at the Ferry Building). I really wish that public transit in the Bay Area were free or lower-cost, that it ran more frequently (really frequently); I don't buy the local-vs-express argument that MUNI uses in planning routes, and I don't appreciate the lack of dedicated transit zones, and I really can't stand how the different services fail to interoperate).

HOWTO get video onto yr ipod

In order to get .mov, .avi, .mp4, and other files shoe-horned onto an iPod, try VisualHub, successor to iSquint; for DVDs, the (free!) Instant Handbrake, a sibling of the full-featured Handbrake. Alas, the excellent DVDBackup is not to be found any longer. Most of these pieces of software are drag-an'-drop; should a more detailed explanation be necessary, read Mark Pilgrim's HOWTO.

In which I hate on mobile phones

No mobile phone has ever satisfied me, and I think that, as manufacturers add features to phones, the dissatisfaction will increase.

My Motorola V635 began exhibiting a bizarre failure mode: when it cannot join a network, it refuses to charge. Frustratingly, my office abuts a large wetlands area-cum-Superfund site, and no antennae sometimes leads to no signal.

What I really want is a sort of procmail for the telephone, though: an easy-to-use language that I can use to instruct the software to, say, always ring if my sweetie calls; or defer all non-work calls (based on tags in my phone book, a certain prefix, et c.) during non-work hours; or respect "Quiet Time" at the press of a button.
Open-source mobile telephony may have a long way to go from the hardware perspective, but why the software cannot implement something like this -- oh, that's right, all of the networks are closed.

In which we go back to bed (thanks, Banksy!)

Banksy has a shop from which you -- yes, you! -- can freely download and print images, t-shirts, et c., for personal use. No licence, just an admonition against unfair use.

Hurrah! The above is one of several photos of Banksy graf in situ. Hmm. I thought I had more, including some of what turned up in Match Point; I will dig 'em up.

In which we see a stroke of genius

The Subway Knitter has a pattern for most excellent mittens, with a buttoned pocket for holding one's Charlie Card (or Metrocard, or Chicago Card, or ... wait, San Francisco's MUNI has no equivalent stored- or saved-value electronic payment system for transit ...). A beauty. In my case, the mittens would need to be attached to my jacket with elastic and alligator clips, lest I lose 'em (and the card!).
Subway Knitter: wonderful mittens! Thank you for sharing the pattern! Now I wonder about a scarf with a subway map ...!

In which a shadow knows

The Scots are looking in to the feasibility of Maglev trains to speed intercity surface transit. The idea is gaining popularity, probably because politicians can sound hip and promise jobs with the projects.

THE Scottish Tory Party revealed today it is investigating the possibility of eight-minute journeys between Glasgow and Edinburgh using a revolutionary MagLev high-speed train link.

It follows the announcement by Shadow Transport Secretary Chris Grayling that he wants a feasibility study into how MagLev, which can reach speeds of 300mph, would work over short distances.

Mr Grayling said today high speed links had the potential to transform short-haul routes between cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow and such a link had the potential to reduce travelling time.

The Scottish Tories deputy leader Murdo Fraser said: "The effective integration of Glasgow and Edinburgh to form one twin-city economic powerhouse for Scotland would be a revolutionary step.

"This will require an enormous improvement in the transport links between the two cities and we are examining the option of a new Maglev service between Glasgow and Edinburgh."

A Maglev from Pudong to Shanghai has been running for about two years (link includes do-it-yourself maglev instructions!).

In which we score a minor victory

Ninja Kitten's Menufela extension (part of the Application Enhancer family of whatnots) allows OSX users to reclaim the precious twenty-odd pixels at the top of the screen. This doesn't require a kernel extension, although for some reason I thought it would -- that damn Menu Bar is so integral to the Apple gestalt.

In which someone needs to learn to use the metric system

A San Francisco television station reported that MUNI's T-Third line suffers from an inconsistency: platforms that are higher than train floors. The creative interpretation of blueprints may well result from one vendor using the metric system and others not. Or perhaps from typographical errors. Or from improper oversight. Or general jack-assery. With MUNI, who knows, it might be all of these.

In which I wonder

Reading about Classfull networks and thinking about /8s, I wonder: where am I?
And lo:

I am here.

Uncommon Carriers

The prolific John McPhee has collected his essays on transport into a nice volume, Uncommon Carriers. He is at his best writing about his time spent as "part-owner" of a shining eighteen-wheel hazmat tractor-and-trailer combination, and the story of his rides with Don Ainsworth form bookends to his adventures behind towboats, ocean-going vessels, and a dory.

In which we are not proud of Duboce Park

In a local commentary on the Berkeley pet-shop fiasco, in which neighbours along Solano Avenue object to a pet shelter for its barking animals, excessive dog shit, and the smell of piss wafting through the air, the SFist remarks that "their (sic) their being kicked out for being a little too much like Duboce Park". I am not the only one who complains that Duboce Park is a rank patch of dirt unfit for any sort of public or social activity.

affordance

Affordance refers to the psychological concept of "action possibility"; the 'adaptation of the meaning of affordances has caused many people to also use the verb "afford", which the noun was derived from, in a new way that is not consistent with its dictionary definition. Rather than "to provide" or "to make available", designers and those in the field of HCI often use it as meaning "to suggest" or "to invite".' As do some some computer programmers.

In which our neighbourhood has a lot of nice people.

Two young men were shot in the head and killed early Sunday morning in San Francisco's Lower Haight neighborhood. From the Chronicle's write-up on the shooting, we learn, unsurprisingly, that "A reporter who pulled up to the block at 10 a.m. this morning was immediately asked if he wanted to buy drugs as a teenage boy rolled a joint in plain sight on the hood of a car." Apparently some of the neighbours are less observant than others: 'A 36-year-old man who lives in an apartment above where the shooting occurred said the neighborhood was "usually all right. There's the occasional crack-head and what not, but it's a good place to live. There are a lot of nice people."' ... because we have more than the occasional crack-head on that block, and certainly more than a fair share of the number of drug-dealing louts in San Francisco. It's almost comical, how ubiquitous the cheap drugs are on the 400 and 300 blocks of Haight Street. Those blocks are distinctly unpleasant, and despite an impressively vocal Lower Haight community group, the city is acting slowly on the questions of increased police foot patrols.

Ripley Under Water

Perhaps the most chilling of Highsmith's Ripley novels, "Ripley Under Water" features an antagonist who is as unscrupulous and amoral as Tome Ripley himself, but has only the most mysterious of reasons for his harassment of the novel's charismatic and vulnerable protagonist.
Highsmith's writing is precise, descriptive, and gracefully plotted; this is also the first edition that properly adds the accent and diaresis to Mme Ripley's name, Héloïse. Curiously, though, this edition uses "trimmers" rather than "secateurs", a word I learned in the creepy"The Boy Who Followed Ripley".

In which it suits MUNI to a 'T'

"It don't make no sense,'' said Melvin Henderson, 42, an amputee who relies on transit. "Instead of making it easier, it's going to make it harder for us. What they're trying to do is make it look pretty, but it's creating problems. All they needed was an upgraded bus.''

That is: the much-heralded, long-anticipated arrival of MUNI's Third Street Light Rail fell short. Even though today was the first day of actual service, the trip was lengthy, the signals poorly-timed, and the conductors still unfamiliar with the names of stops — that last is not a significant criticism, and if MUNI were to actually put route maps or stickers anywhere, such as inside the carriages or at the platforms, I could more easily find my way around.
I am glad that more MUNI lines will intersect, and that higher-speed transit will become available through a larger section of this city, but! San Francisco deserves better than surface transit that has to share so signal timing with private, automotive traffic. I thought that part of the technological improvement promised for this line included automatic signals and priority switching for transit, but both of our trips encountered significant delays at big intersections, including a five-minute pause where the Third Street drawbridge needed to open.
The Third Street route avoids the drawbridge, heading over the historic Fourth Street Bridge, but appears still susceptible to traffic on Third.

carcanet

carcanet (kär'kə-nĕt', -nĭt): "A jeweled necklace, collar, or headband."

Perhaps from Medieval Latin carcannum, which means "pillory" or "prison"; ARTFL gives a more complete etymology: [Dim. fr. F. carcan the iron collar or chain of a criminal, a chain of precious stones, LL. carcannum, fr. Armor. kerchen bosom, neck, kechen collar, fr. kelch circle; or Icel. kverk troat, OHG, querca throat.] A jeweled chain, necklace, or collar. [Also written carkenet and carcant.].

Some dictionaries mark this as archaic.

In which we get the real first roll at tavula

A backgammon blast from the past:

The oldest backgammon in the world along with 60 pieces has been unearthed beneath the rubbles of the legendary Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchistan province, southeastern Iran.

Iranian archeologists working on the relics of the 5,000-year-old civilization argue this backgammon is much older than the one already discovered in Mesopotamia and their evidence is strong enough to claim the board game was first played in the Burnt City and then transferred to other civilizations.

"The backgammon reveals intriguing clues to the lifestyle of those people," said Mansour Sajjadi, head of the research team.

"The board is rectangular and made of ebony, which did not grow in Sistan and merchants used to import it from India."
He added the board features an engraved serpent coiling around itself for 20 times, thus producing 20 slots for the game, more affectionately known in Persian as Nard. The engraving, artistically done, indicates artisans in the Burnt City were masters of the craft.

"The 60 pieces were also unearthed inside a terracotta vessel beside the board. They were made of common stones quarried in the city, including agate and turquoise," Sajjadi added.

Experts still wonder why they played the game with 60 pieces and are trying to discern its rules, but it at least shows it is 100-200 years older than the one discovered in Mesopotamia.

They are also intrigued that inhabitants of ancient civilizations, widely believed to be concerned with their daily survival, could afford to indulge in such luxuries as playing board games.

The Snail-Watcher and other stories

I was delighted to find a copy of this anthology of Patricia Highsmith's short stories, collecting stories on a theme from 1945 to 1970. I have been looking for one of these, "The Quest for 'Blank Claveringi'", for some time, since reading it in another anthology (along what theme, I cannot recall; it may have been a science-fiction or horror book or magazine) when I was quite young. The story made a huge impression on me, for the economy of its language (although in re-reading it this morning, I needed to consult a dictionary for nacreous and crepitation) and for the inventiveness of its plot.
Most of these stories do not appear in either of the two recent paperback anthologies.

crepitation

Although crepitation seems to have a strictly medical denotation, I came across it in this sentence: "A crepitation, a pair of antennae against the sky on his right, heralded the arrival of the second snail."

crep·i·ta·tion (krĕp'ĭ-tā'shən): A rattling or crackling sound like that made by rubbing hair between the fingers close to the ear; The sensation felt on placing the hand over the seat of a fracture when the broken ends of the bone are moved, or over tissue in which gas gangrene is present; The noise produced by rubbing bone or irregular cartilage surfaces together, as in arthritis; A noise produced by the rubbing of fractured ends of bones, by cracking joints, and by pressure upon tissues containing abnormal amounts of air, as in cellular emphysema; The noise produced by a sudden discharge of wind from the bowels.

It is certainly a descriptive word, but I had no idea what it meant when I read that sentence; upon closer examination, I see that it comes directly into English from the Latin crepare, "to crack", whence also decrepit.

nacreous

An adjective from nacre (nā'kər), "mother-of-pearl"; it means silvery or cloudy.

From the French nacre (Old French nacle); from Old Italian naccaro, "drum"; nacre, from Arabic naqqāra, "a small drum", itself from naqara, "to bore, pierce".

Ripley Under Ground

I am continuing a rapid reading of Patricia Highsmith's terrifying and beautiful Ripley books, about a disturbingly amoral protagonist. "Ripley Under Ground" picks up the narrative some years after "The Talented Mr Ripley" left off, and Tom Ripley has married a pretty French woman, settled in the country outside of Paris, and runs a clever forgery scheme based in London.
Although Ripley's actions are often selfish, motivated through greed or through a plain desire for self-advancement, he is compelling and even likeable (as his first victims discovered): he has social graces and faults, can be enchanting in company and awkward, and does not appear outwardly psychopathic. Different from the cultivated yet bizarre personality of Hannibal Lecter, Ripley is in no way a social misfit, and this makes his crimes, especially the murders, all the more mystifying.
Highsmith's narrative has beautifully-constructed sentences, a broad and comfortable vocabulary -- she mixes French, German, and Italian conversation in a pleasant and non-pretentious way, to add flavour to the dialogues.

In which LA gets pwn3d

Los Angeles' transit system was hacked, perhaps by disgruntled workers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trafficlights9jan09,0,7005703.story?coll=la-home-headlines
2 deny hacking into L.A.'s traffic light system
Two accused of hacking into L.A.'s traffic light system plead not guilty. They allegedly chose intersections they knew would cause major jams.
By Sharon Bernstein and Andrew Blankstein
Times Staff Writers

January 9, 2007

Back in August, the union representing the city's traffic engineers vowed that on the day of their work action, "Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive."

City officials took the threat seriously.

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, they temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair — one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, the other a computer whiz who helped build the system — allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days.

Both men pleaded not guilty Monday morning to felony charges stemming from the case, and Murillo's lawyer said his client meant no harm when he signed on to the system that day.

But authorities say the pair picked their targets with care — intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations.

They didn't shut the lights off, city transportation sources said. Rather, the engineers allegedly programmed them so that red lights would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock for several days starting Aug. 21, they said.

Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center.

The engineers' arrests last Friday point up the vulnerability of L.A.'s complex traffic control system.

City leaders said Monday they also underscore the delicate balance that employers must strike in a highly technical environment in which workers must be trusted enough to have access to important systems.

Some officials Monday called for an immediate review of ways to tighten security of the computer system, which manages 3,200 of the city's 4,300 traffic signals.

"The issue here was public safety," Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said. "What if there had been a major accident and we were not able to control the lights while the officers were on their way?"

Details of the case emerged Monday in interviews and court documents.

After access to the system was cut off for all but top managers, Murillo signed in as one of them, according to the criminal complaint. Murillo had helped design the nationally recognized system.

By signing in, the engineers allegedly obtained the codes needed to unblock the computers that control traffic lights throughout the city. Soon, the lights at those four intersections were reprogrammed with a code that prevented city officials from fixing them.

"The red signal would be on too long for the critical approach and the green signal would be on too long for the noncritical approach, thus resulting in long backups into the airport and other key intersections around the city," said one source in the traffic department, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Murillo was charged with two felonies: one count of identity theft and one of unauthorized access to a city computer. Patel was charged with five felonies: one count of unauthorized access to a city computer and four of unauthorized disruption or denial of computer services.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Commissioner Catherine J. Pratt released the men on their own recognizance on the condition that they do not access city computers or set foot on Department of Transportation property without their attorneys.

If convicted on all charges, the pair could face several years in state prison, although authorities said that is unlikely because they have no criminal records.

Murillo's lawyer, James Blatt, said that his client was on paternity leave when the incident took place and did not receive an e-mail indicating that access to the traffic signal control center would be blocked during the strike.

He said Murillo didn't mean to do anything wrong.

"The issue in the case is Mr. Murillo's intent when he logged into the system," Blatt said. "Mr. Murillo has been an engineer there [at the Department of Transportation] for 17 years. He's highly regarded and respected by management and employees. It was not his intent to jeopardize the system or the citizens of Los Angeles."

Alan Eisner, who is representing Patel, said his client "unequivocally denies the charges against him and specifically denies illegally accessing or disrupting the [computerized traffic light] system. Mr. Patel has been an employee of the Department of Transportation for more than 12 years and has an outstanding work history. He and his family are traumatized by the allegations, and he looks forward to responding to the allegations in court."

After the arraignment Monday, city employees filled the hallway outside the courtroom, creating an impromptu receiving line as they filed past the defendants and their families. Officials from their union were not in court and did not return calls seeking comment.

In deciding how to handle security in the future, the city faces a difficult choice: set up systems that could impede the smooth functioning of its crucial traffic control efforts, or do nothing and risk another hacking incident.

Clifford Neuman, a computer security expert and the director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security, said there are two primary ways to design computers to guard against malicious activity by insiders, but each can interfere with employees' ability to do their tasks and would probably be prohibitively expensive for the city.

In which we hear a famous scream

I stumbled across the Wilhelm Scream while thumbing through some old movie reviews.

The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the movie Distant Drums. The scream was most likely vocalized by actor-singer Sheb Wooley, who later had a number one pop hit with the novelty song "Purple People Eater." It has been featured in dozens of movies since. Alongside a certain recording of the cry of the Red-tailed Hawk, the "Universal telephone ring", the "Charlie Brown fall," the Goofy holler and "Castle thunder," it is probably one of the most well-known cinematic sound clichés.

A great name for a crappy band, probably.

kerf

I learned kerf and many other carpentry-related words, such as
rabbet (also rabbit, which I much prefer) through "One Good Turn", by the eminently readable Witold Rybzcynsky.

One Good Turn

One Good Turn, Witold Rybczynski's latest essay, describes the quiet and beautiful history of the screwdriver. Perhaps it is Rybczynski's writing itself that is quiet and beautiful: he uses lucid, descriptive phrases to draw out the historical and social elements of the screw itself, and supposes the existence of the machine necessary to work it. Historical evidence, in writing and in archaeology, proves surprisingly scarce for the device, and no reliable mention appears until a few hundred years ago.
Rybczynski is one of my favourite writers: he chooses his subjects carefully and writes extremely well. His vocabulary and sentence-formation are superlative.

In which this really gets my goat

Goats in trees.