A whopping 5% of electricity in the US now goes to phantom power -- the power sucked by your plugged in gadgets and even power strips even when you're not using the energy. The only solution currently is to unplug your power strip every night. Perhaps in the long run some inventor will come up with a solution that more people can deal with. But for the moment please unplug before you sleep and don't leave your gadgets on sleep mode.

From dad -- The scary side of fog: 100-car pileups.

If you're looking for a harrowing real-life scare this Halloween, look no further than the moving experience of four firefighters who narrowly escaped death in the SoCal inferno.

The most original way I've ever encountered to talk about education.

Why do I crave chocolate? It's the bacteria living in my stomach. I have to feed them what they want. Seriously. Although I wonder why they get hungrier when I'm stressed.

After reading this NYT article on a visit to Darjeeling, I really want to go on a tea vacation. Like wine tasting but in the Indian mountains with prayer flags flying and more modest accommodations.

A horrible tunnel fire occurred in LA. One of my biggest road nightmares since watching What Dreams May Come.

Alix Bryan has completed her journey around the US in the shape of a peace sign, after riding 11,000 miles (almost the distance from the North to the South pole) on a little scooter. Read about her message at her blog.

Anyone think of asking Twombly whether the lipstick on his painting in France is an improvement or really worth a 2 million euro lawsuit?

It seems that I have found in the Paris bureau of the New York Times a fellow religious tourist. Just watch the stunning photo montage accompanying her article "Worshiping Paris". Her article reveals another connection between myself and Paris: Keith Haring's foundation gave copies of a triptych he created after being diagnosed with AIDS to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and the city of Paris, which placed its triptych in St.-Eustache.

Perhaps next time she'll also discuss the draw of the organs and bells in a bit more detail. It's interesting that despite their overall absence from her article, their sounds are one of the most noticeable and memorable aspects of the video.

I guess the problem of "big babies" is widespread...

In other news, biofuel from cows. My favorite line is "To date no viable method has been devised to capture this gas as it erupts from either end of the cow."

It may not be so bad to be packaged up by Garfield and exiled to Abu Dhabi any more. With Louvre and Guggenheim posts going up and a CSU-educated computer-savvy princess managing the economy, the place is shaping up.

Distributed human computing is digitizing documents and manuscripts as fast as the Internet Archive can supply them. Thanks, Cornell!

Saffron Revolution?

The latest census gives interesting information about the immigrant population of the US, and it does not distinguish between citizens and illegal immigrants. To nobody's surprise, "California led the nation in immigrants, at 27 percent of the state's population, and in people who spoke a foreign language at home, at 43 percent." 43% even surprises me, although I suppose my being in the other 57% might not have given me a very good perspective.

Speaking of illegal immigrants, here's another sad story, made even more grimace-worthy by the fact that federal prosecutors offered him a deal: He could take $10,000 of the original cash seized ($59,000 he'd made from 11 years of dishwashing to buy land and build a house for his mother and sisters in Guatemala), plus $9,000 in donations (only a fraction of what's been donated) from legions of sympathetic supporters as long as he didn't talk publicly and left the country immediately.

The news that beats all for me, however, is the dramatic political unrest and violent suppression of protest in Burma. The first article I read about isolated pockets of protest earlier this month dismissed the events as feeble. This seemed strange to me; protesters putting themselves on the line probably wouldn't do so if an underground movement hadn't already formed that would eventually build on what they were doing. Otherwise why protest at this point in history? Shore up your resources for real results.

Well, it has turned into something major. Wikipedia in its new role as current events mirror offers some highlights in choppy prose: "As of 22 September 2007, the Buddhist monks have withdrawn spiritual services from all military personnel in a symbolic move that is seen as very powerful in such a deeply religious country as Myanmar.... On September 24, 20,000 monks and nuns led 30,000 people in a protest march from the golden Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, past the offices of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party... On Saturday, monks marched to greet Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. On Sunday, about 150 nuns joined the marchers. By this time, the marchers' numbers had swelled to 100,000 protesters."

Now the government has cut public internet access, making outside perceptions of what might be going on even darker. Protesters, students, journalists shot at close range, bodies piled in the streets... When will someone, anyone, overthrow the junta and bring a successful end to the so-called Saffron Revolution? And where did it get that name?

And who in the world has been vandalizing the Wikipedia article on Myanmar?

Real estate more profitable than sex?

The landscape of Amsterdam is about to change. About a third of Amsterdam's red-lit windows for prostitutes will disappear from the city center as one of the main brothel owners is set to sell his empire to a real estate company for about 25 million euros ($35 million). A funny quote if ever I read one: "Mayor Job Cohen said he had no plans to rid Amsterdam of prostitution but the concentration of sex in the city center was too high."

So my issues with fashion-deprived men could have been solved if Ashton Kutcher had just appeared a bit earlier on the scene. Now I know to pick my date like my handbag. But what if I have incurably bad taste in handbags?

solar-powered cruises

Sydney got it first, and San Francisco's awaiting its order for a new ferry to Alcatraz. Aussie Robert Dane's invention, however, goes beyond revolutionizing cargo, cruises, and luxury yachts. According to him, "for the cost of one conventional battleship, you can have 8,000 of these drones patrolling the seas." Why it's making news today long after its debut at the Sydney Olympics, I don't know. I suppose our ears are perked for the word "green."

Think practicing is repetitive? Be glad you're not the woman in a Chinese toy inspection facility whose job is to stick a plastic spoon in a baby doll's mouth 10,000 times to test for unsafe wear and tear.

the 40th summer of love

50,000 gathered in GG Park to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the summer of love. Too bad I missed both the original and the commemoration. It sounds like there was a great crowd. "San Francisco police said the gathering proceeded harmoniously, with no major incidents reported. 'Just nothing but love,' police Sgt. Mark Im said."

Steeplechasing as a sport? Sounds like what I do, although it's not even remotely like what I do.

In the vein of great architects like van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Michael Graves is putting out his own distinctive furnishings -- such as inexpensive clothes drying racks available exclusively at Target. His logo looks just like his buildings. I don't like his buildings, but I'm pleased with my new drying rack and tie/belt hanger. No more undershirts hanging from every extrusion in my room. And no more wasting energy and quarters on the dryer. But now I have to figure out when in the washing cycle to manually pour in the fabric softener...

happy 25th!

Happy 25th birthday to the CD, which is only one year my elder but outnumbers me by about 200 billion.

Cappadocia -- another reason to visit Turkey. After the apparent vegetarian friendliness of its cuisine, as I discovered in Dorset.

Anyone for wine tasting in Oklahoma or South Dakota? The number of wineries in the US has more than doubled since 2000.

Looks, I'm in the news!

Chicken or the egg?

For all my concern about minimizing my environmental footprint, I know I could be doing better by minimizing the energy my computer eats up. Perhaps Climate Savers Computing will have some food for thought. Even Amtrak's summer magazine was devoted to green lifestyles, and got me thinking about sustainable consumption of fish, something else I've been trying to ignore. America is getting better on some fronts each time I return...

Except perhaps in the case of Apple. Of all companies.

Despite the heinous exchange rate of 2 bucks to the pound, I did luck out in buying my Belgian chocolate before major price hikes. Quelle disastre!

In Cali, a house made of straw will spare you air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, allow you to have European deep-set windows and doors, and it won't kill you during the Big One.

white light/black rain

Having just come from Germany, a country still severely haunted by the memory and guilt of its atrocities, I am embarrassed to realize how much more in denial America is about its own atrocities. Looking back at my history classes, I can hardly remember spending any time on the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's not censorship, but some national urge not to dwell on what we did. And perhaps the lack of an emotional reaction to White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the Sundance shows that we're not prepared to deal with the emotional consequences of it -- we believe that we're above guilt.

The navigator of the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima responded to the film, "The story about the survivors of this has been told many, many times. It doesn't change. And this is just another story about survivors. I don't think there will be much reaction to it at all." But according to the filmmaker, survivors have hardly been heard from at all. And many refuse to share their stories with the public.

"Okazaki also found a plaque where the Nagasaki bomb detonated that said everyone within a one kilometer area was killed instantly -- except an 8-year-old girl who had fallen asleep in a bomb shelter." He tracked her down, but she refused to talk. Can you imagine waking up when you were 8 and emerging to find that your entire world was in ruins? I can understand not wanting to dwell on it. But the American people need to hear these stories. We're not above guilt, yet we feel none.

Cute and vaguely novel, but otherwise, what's the point of recording to your iPod?

Front yard lawns? I want one!

Speaking of mics, here's one for the real creeps.

Why buy what falls from the sky?

One of the most logical campaigns I've heard of recently is Think Outside the Bottle, a nonprofit that challenges us to examine why we waste vast amounts of money and resources when much of the world still lacks access even to clean water. "Just three corporations – Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé – make up over half of the US bottled water market. These corporations are privatizing our water, bottling it and selling it back to us at prices hundreds, even thousands of times what tap water costs. They have turned a shared common resource into a $100 billion global market." To my surprise, culinary might is also helping to forge a path: "Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, has helped lead the way by serving tap water instead of bottled water."

Jeff Caso, a former Nestlé Senior Vice-President for Marketing, Sales and Communications, summarized it best: "We sell water so we have to be clever.”

Try these creative ways to reuse newspaper. I think I need to give the shoe odor absorbing trick a try.

executive orders

Exactly how far can our government go to protect our so-called international security? Bring your attention to sections 1(a)(3), 1(b), 2(b), and 5... apparently it's okay now that "any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited."

Germans Hack At Forest of Signs Distracting Drivers

Germany's vast excess of traffic signs: The funniest news I've read in ages.

stop the road rage!

I'd heard of a cyclist in New Haven shot by a driver with a BB gun, but it never occurred to me that the people who keep our roads driveable (for god's sake) are victims of the same kind of impertinence to the point at which roads are shut down for their safety.

Great stuff in the news today. Like a series of Ocean's Eleven-type burglaries of the wealthiest homes in LA and old Swedish ladies surfing the web at 40 gigabits per second.

What's beneath your house? It's frightening to realize that the very infrastructure of our cities is so old that when it fails, it can kill, and replacing it costs unthinkable amounts of money. Although it couldn't have taken longer to build it than to replace it, right? So the expenditure hasn't changed that much... we just need to realize that we have to spend money on it again.

As if mandatory voting wasn't a strange enough policy in Belgium, now they're trying to scrap it, which seems even stranger. Why is it that when people are given a choice, they become too lazy to decide? In some countries, people die trying to vote.

Hear hear.

China bars U.S. trip for doctor who exposed SARS cover-up, apparently not understanding that this might make the country look worse. Quit while you're ahead, China.

the red balloon(s)

Who has the patience to sit in a lawn chair for a 193-mile ride through the air, hoisted by 105 large helium balloons? A 47-year-old gas station owner, that's who. Brilliant. Fearless. Quirky. I think he could make money off of this, although I suppose the trip is at your own risk. A lawn chair! I imagine it gets a little uncomfortable after a while. What if you wanted to get off a stretch? Did he read a book or listen to music or have a drink? I bet plenty of Belgians would have the lounging experience to do such a thing.

I really enjoy exploring Zeeland through Google satellite maps, but the sight of this housing development actually makes me ill. No geographic image has evoked such a visceral reaction in me before. The thing looks like some sort of pox. It's clearly somebody's idea of a good time, residents and architects included. Perhaps on the ground it has its virtues. But all the identical roofs suggest identical houses. Just horrid.

In better image news, I've found the first online specimen for my safety card collection.

The world is a-changin' -- fast. "According to figures released last week by Nielsen SoundScan, physical album sales decreased by 15 percent from Jan. 1 to July 1 this year, while sales of digital tracks, though still a much smaller business, rose 49 percent." In just half a year, iTunes, and to a lesser extent, Amazon, Yahoo Music, Napster, and Rhapsody, have brought statistically very significant change to the music sales landscape. Where does this leave live concerts? Are they affected at all?

I thought I had it bad when the calls I was receiving on my 5000 cell phone number in college suggested that the previous owner had been or still was in jail. But imagine being assigned Paris Hilton's cell number.

Josh Wolf is running for mayor of San Francisco against Chicken John wearing a justin.tv-style webcam on his forehead? I'm proud to say I come from one of the nuttiest cities on the planet. I used to hang out with a few of the justin.tv folks in the God Quad in Branford College. Never imagined that this is what they'd be up to in a couple of years. Nor did I envision a mayoral campaign for Wolf. Just when you think you know the world...

it's a bird! a plane! a... train!

"London to Frankfurt by train? It's possible, it can be as fast and as easy as flying and it's far better for the environment, a group of European high-speed rail companies claimed Monday." There has definitely been an unmet need for the international rail alliance Railteam, but its goal completion date seems far away, and who knows if the discount airlines will still be flying by then. How long will they be viable before the price of fuel makes them impractical? Anyway, the whole carbon offset business that's been all over the news lately would certainly motivate me to go by train rather than plane if they could make it equally attractive and affordable. I don't like to lose time, but a longer train trip probably won't be such a problem as I get on in years (really!) and became a little more patient. I'm already feeling more leisurely nowadays, reading nonfiction books and listening to Yale lecture podcasts. I'm liking this life.

Tiffany

"Medieval form of THEOPHANIA. This name was traditionally given to girls born on the Epiphany (January 6), the festival commemorating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus."

So goes the description for the group "I am a Tiffany" on the college social networking site ConnectU, which I'd nearly forgotten about. This is new information to me; certainly not the history of the name given in my parents' old copy of What Shall We Name the Baby?. In that case, I have a new pseudonym. I also can no longer enjoy the great coincidence that one of the only words rhyming with my name is "ephiphany."

It's still funny that the two words that rhyme with Tiffany that I can remember right now, epiphany and antiphony, have religious connotations. This despite the fact that "-phony" is a false rhyme.

Sometimes I turn my head when someone says "timpani." Then I feel stupid.

The average American spends about 47 hours per year stuck in traffic. Yet with all the discussion of how to combat an ever growing number of cars on the road by ever constructing more thoroughfares, public transportation is not considered.

kicking the bottle

San Francisco city departments are officially off bottled water. Three cheers! Over a billion water bottles end up in California's landfills each year. Bottles of stuff that falls from the sky and costs more per gallon than gasoline. Oh, human folly...

I was skeptical I'd see the day global warming would be all over the media. Now the even less likely is happening -- sci-fi-like proposals to counteract its effects.

Anyone for cycling in California wine country? A Cali version of bar-hopping on bikes...

A mother searches Tijuana for her mentally disabled son, who has been deported despite the fact that he is an American citizen. The picture of pathos.

Are we millions and millions of exuberant monkeys?

worldwide spam decrease?

It's hard to imagine that the arrest of one spammer could decrease spam worldwide, but apparently the arrest of 27-year-old Robert Soloway may have just that effect. The man has made a lot of money via "zombie" computers of unwitting users--enough that "even with four bank accounts seized by the government, he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer."

The only difference I've noticed recently is that an increased number of phishing attacks have been making it through Gmail's spam filter to my inbox.

architectural social commentary

Dutch architects Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk manage social critique through their Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision while simultaneously preserving what they criticize in ghostly images. But they also subject those who visit and, more importantly, those who work in the building daily to what sounds like a rather harsh interpretation they've placed on media. The building, compared by this journalist to the Beinecke Library at Yale, looks gorgeous, but how will the inhabitants feel about it in ten years? Have the architects managed to balance usability with a flexible social critique?

People buy modern-day ecological indulgences to compensate for driving SUVs while Cindy Sheehan quits the war movement saying that her son "did indeed die for nothing" in a society that cares more about who the next American Idol is than how many troops will die in Iraq in the next month.

And here I am soon to leave the country again...

Remember when Michael Moore shared with us in Stupid White Men that he feels nervous being flown by commercial pilots who make less than the kid at Taco Bell? I don't feel any safer that so many underpaid and undertrained security guards protect our likeliest terrorist targets. How about quality rather than quantity in paranoia? How much training and pay do our favorite friendly folk at the TSA receive, I wonder?

If only people would band together to raise money for causes more worthy than buying $26,000 worth of peanuts in order to get to veg out in front of another season of Jericho.

It still upsets me greatly to think that many of the Americans dying in Iraq are my age or younger. I suppose this isn't the most reasonable or urgent thing to be perturbed by, but it hits close to home.

The man who started the camera phone revolution was really just an engineering nerd whose wife was going into labor.

Some moving stories about Asian American pioneers. Normally I wouldn't resolve to watch a movie because I never watch even the movies I intend to see, but doctor-turned-survivor-turned-Academy-Award-winning actor Haing S. Ngor's comment before his murder, "If I die from now on, OK! This film [The Killing Fields] will go on for a hundred years," makes it just memorable enough to put this film on my list.

the murse

My brand familiarity clearly ranks me amongst the wealthiest in America with an annual income of over $300,000... because unlike all these luxury-man-purse-buying men, I'm familiar with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada, but I actually had no idea what Coach was until this year. Go figure.

By the way, if anyone ever gets me one of these things, I'll return it. Way to waste your money spending it on the thing you're carrying your money in and that folks will snatch when they realize you have a fortune dangling off you.

I'm still amused at the skinny young Asian woman I saw getting off the bus around Park Avenue one afternoon whose slick pink trenchcoat and giant handbag blared the most expensive brands on the planet. "That girl's rich," the requisite gregarious Commentator at the front of the bus informed the driver after we took off again.

The article asserts that "the luxury handbag is the accessory that defines the wealthy woman." I wonder how that bright green handbag with flowers and grass hanging off it in the Milano subway defined its middle-aged owner, then. I'm sure it was more expensive than any of the handbags I passed by in LV.

</end rant>

Save the Sagrada Familia!

A high-speed tunnel connecting Barcelona and Madrid? Great. Running it 5 feet from the Sagrada Familia despite the protests of everyone from Gaudi's successor on the project to MIT professors? Royally bad idea.

Will Earthly bacteria take over the universe? Or at least some poor unwitting Martian's solar system?

D.C.'s first female police chief dropped out of school and had a baby at 15, yet has come farther than most women in the country. We need more role models like this. Wow.

Also, this is why the death penalty is not only barbaric, but also a waste of precious taxpayer dollars.

We Americans are so bad at trying to look good that it's almost funny. As reported by the BBC:

"We made official apologies on the part of the US government and payments of about $2,000 for each death," [US army spokesman Col John Nicholson] said, after US officials visited some of the families left bereaved by the incident.

US forces were accused of killing the civilians during shooting near the city of Jalalabad.... At least eight Afghan civilians had been killed, with a further 35 injured. Reports said that as they left the scene along a busy highway, the Americans fired indiscriminately on civilians and their vehicles.

Journalists said at the time that US troops confiscated their photos and video footage of the aftermath of the violence.

$2,000? Is this some kind of joke? Oh, wait. They're Afghans. That means their lives couldn't possibly be worth more... than a 15-inch MacBook Pro.

not funny.

really just not funny.

So this is what happens to recycled rechargeable batteries!

And this is the heartwarming story of what happens to unused paint!

And... this is what happens when a tanker catches fire and destroys some Bay Area highways.

when did comfort = exploitation?

I know there are even more hideous stories around the world, but somehow the thought of 50,000 to 200,000 "comfort women" (what an outrageous euphemism) enslaved by Japan's military in the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan during and after WWII, and the explosive popularity of their services amongst American troops during the occupation is the most abhorrent thing I have read in a while. Those women could hardly have fought for themselves, considering the culture they came from and the obligations they must have felt to their impoverished families. Even recently, not a single Japanese woman felt justified or unembarrassed enough to step forward and claim an official apology and compensation from the Asian Women's Fund, which was just closed. But just take a look at the attempts male authorities made at justification: "Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops," recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. "The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls."

British town of 1,500 bans plastic bags

Breaking news: Over 70% of people who read newspaper articles online about towns banning plastic bags would support a ban on plastic bags in their own towns. Wowsers!

Great way for a tiny town to get its name on the international news, now that I think about it.

Is it any surprise that a Dutchman built a new Noah's Ark? Perhaps it is a surprise, however, that a creationist should inadvertently draw more international attention to global warming.

Lois Poppema, visiting from California, said she thought the Netherlands was exactly the right place for an ark.

"Just a few weeks ago we saw Al Gore on television ... saying that all Holland will be flooded" by rising sea levels, she said.

"I don't think the man who made this ever expected that global warming will become (such an important) issue -- and suddenly having the ark would be meaningful in the middle of Holland."
...
[Dutch creationist Johan] Huibers said he hopes the project will renew interest in Christianity in the Netherlands, where churchgoing has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years. He also plans to visit major cities in Belgium and Germany.

Doesn't this sound like an article out of an old DOS version of Sim City?

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Families victimized by tainted spinach and peanut butter put a human face Tuesday on a recent string of high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness..."

A better headline, and unexpected: House passes legislation to increase math and science teachers. For real?! I didn't know our legislators were educated enough to realize that this might be important. Perhaps my opinion was recently lowered when somebody told me recently that only about a third of legislators actually possess American passports. *shudder*

I also want to express my excitement about the ambitious and highly worthwhile local startup campaign Critical Brisk Stroll. The cry for help: "I am looking for volunteers to help me organize this event. I propose that we schedule and promote a brisk stroll from the Village Gate to a bar in the South Wedge, occuring at some point within the next month, starting at precisely 7 PM."

Although if pressed, I am likely to admit that I would gladly run any pedestrians off the pavement if I felt the need to cycle on the sidewalk.

the dark side of the tech boom

China continues to crush free speech and as Internet users we're all complicit.

In other news, traveling gourmet dinner parties of strangers in the Bay Area. Something to add to the list of "things I want to visit before I die" list that I started on Tuesday's extra studio class. That list began with "One of the regional 'P.O. Boxes' to which IRS tax forms are sent each April." I envision several warehouses exploding with envelopes arriving by the truckful on the due date rather than your normal cubbyhole-in-the-wall. I don't understand why I never thought to start such a list before. Perhaps even before I learned the news of Virginia Tech, covered surprisingly thoroughly on Wikipedia as John brought to my attention, I had mortality on the mind.

rabbit liberation or massacre?

Five thousand rabbits blocked a highway in Hungary on Monday, tying up traffic after the truck that was carrying them collided with another vehicle and overturned. Neither driver was hurt, but some 500 rabbits were killed. 4,500 were gathered up, and the remaining 100 will run/hop/skip/jump free forever in the Hungarian fields.

real news

Ozzy Osbourne: New album first I've done sober. He didn't want his life to go to "pieces."

In other news of the retarded, a guy tried to yoink an ATM but was unsuccessful because his prosthetic leg fell off.

Yet other mildly thought-inducing stories:
Have spatula, will travel describes the joy of learning to cook local cuisines while traveling. I think this is great, but unless you have the luxury of traveling a lot, would't you want to spend more time exploring the places and enjoying the local food as a restaurant customer?

The Navy has used dolphins to protect harbors for a long time. I had no idea that our government employed marine mammals and gave them retirement benefits. What are the terms of their contracts and benefits?

Although they found a way to not return Ingrid's money to me (quel outrage), the SNCF deserves some credit for setting the world record train speed of 574.8 km/h (357 mph). Hello, Amtrak?

EDRT

The UR has an "Emotionally Disturbed Response Team?" I know the article isn't something to laugh at. But really, is this a typo?

Also typoed: In Brussels, the homeless have had to spend a first night on the streets."

Sometimes the gap between average and CEO salaries can be supersized American-style the other way around -- leave it to Google. You'd think the guys were Belgian (as Wendy's boyfriend assumed). Josh Wolf is finally free after 226 days in jail, 58 more than the last record-setting journalist for refusing to hand over information. Damn.

In terms of public health, New Mexico gets an A and Arizona gets an F.

april fools

Nerdly humor explained.

world record alcohol concentration?

Some Belgian headlines are exciting today. More Flemings are cycling to work and school and whatnot, and more people in Antwerp cycle to work or school than use public transport. While the latter is not so important or exciting in itself, it reflects an attitude towards cycling as the preferred method of transportation that you won't find even in the bike-friendliest American city.

Others are just plain bizarre and/or misleading. "No animals in pet shops," for example. Or "Increase in stalking." Best of all must be "Nieuwpoort man sets record" for the highest blood-alcohol concentration measured, 4.66 % (it is not explained whether this is a national or world record). I enjoy the judge's wit: "Congratulations! You're still alive. You hold the record. Blood-alcohol levels of 4 percent and higher have been measured, but that is usually during a post-mortem." A helpful comparison is also supplied: "A blood alcohol level of 4,66% is equal to drinking a barrel of beer and two bottles of wine in close succession." Could even the Poles or Russians top that?

math that's durned big as Manhattan

Lie group E8: "An international team of mathematicians says it has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan."

I didn't know Wikipedia was so groovy about amplitude modulation.

The Germans can't possibly be serious. Limit speed on the autobahn?

It's not only North Carolina that still has funny laws about personal life (and maybe public life as well?) still on the books. Ireland's High Court is doing some spring cleaning after 1,000 years.

Are we better off without our emotions?

Sad and disturbing as it is, innocent fluffy white sheep being spray-painted (ooh a verbed noun!) with swastikas by miscreant German youths is also terribly funny. As is the feigned bemusement of the German authorities, who told the media, "Exactly why the group behaved toward these good-natured beasts in this way is unclear." I am tangentially reminded of Donald Barkin, who addressed his "Writing Portraits" seminar (into which I failed to gain admission) in 2003: "People see being a poet as like being a shepherd. They respond, 'Oh, are there still poets around? Why?'"


The swastika hasn't always been T3h Evil. To give one of many examples, in Buddhism it's a vegetarian symbol. Happy post-St. Patrick's Day!

Finally, something to remedy my aging brain's seive-like memory: exercise!

Somebody is in a hell of a lot of trouble for leaving $20 million worth of MJ by the side of the road. I feel sorry for that truck driver.

After thousands of years, Mayans are still mystical and awesome.

oh the irony: "Belgian Defence Minister André Flahaut chartered a military helicopter to make it on time to a screening of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," according to La Libre Belgique.... The two-hour flight from Brussels to Hasselt produced 12 to 20 times more CO2 greenhouse gas than a car journey of the same distance."

DNA analysis has pinpointed the origin of avian flu to the province of my ancestors, Guangdong. Figures.

Santa Monica will be the next city after Berkeley to administer birth control shots to its squirrel population.

Asians seem so harmless that it's really difficult to take the astoundingly offensive article, "Why I Hate Blacks," by self-declared Asian Supremacist (first time I've heard the term) Kenneth Eng (perhaps a cousin twenty times removed) seriously. It's so pitiful it's funny. And now we have to go about passing a San Francisco resolution just to make up for it. Save the paper and trees involved in such officialdom and just TP this guy's house once, folks.

Not sure what to make of the increasing vanity of my generation, however. I don't see it as being prevalent even at places like Eastman and Yale (perhaps Chip would ahem at Juilliard and I at Hahvahd ;), but how could I when I'm an illustrative representative? Might not the same thing be happening in China with the one-child-per-family deal?

So you don't just get fined if you don't vote in Belgium. If you're a student, you're normally required to work the polls. Won't they need more immigrants to work them this year, with students going into exams?

world press photos of the year

Much of the world we inhabit is nothing like what we know, is it? And yet even in horror there is beauty, and in ugliness there is extraordinary love.

I still really, really want to visit Beirut.

Happy Chinese New Year, folks! With apologies to the 125 people reported injured by fireworks in Beijing, including one person who lost their eyes. Partying always has its price.

Especially in a nation of pyromaniacs.

A big HAH to all of you who dare to contaminate your tea with milk: Milk may counteract the healthful effects of tea.

Sunday brunch in Schoen Place after taking the scenic route through brilliant snow-covered Rochester. Warming xocolatl and berry white tea at the natural foods store. Then sweet heavenly goodness at Simply Crêpes. Who could ask for more?

the deep

Massive lakes that fill and drain rapidly under Antarctica, so deep they're not affected by climate change. What an awesome world we inhabit.

another reason PCs suck?

Dell laptop burns down farmhouse. But... Apples have a recent history of going up in smoke as well, so...

who's got the best rack?

Did a man or women append the comment, "The good news is, breast size is increasing across generations," to the news that "The biggest breasts in Europe are found in Britain, where one in every six women prides herself on cup D or larger. The Danes and the Dutch are the runners-up. Belgian women come in fourth. Only little more than half of the Belgian women wear a bra sized bigger than B."

absurdity

Now that she's shocked the world by being dead, Anna Nicole Smith has everyone in the world coming forward and claiming they've dated and getting into scuffles about it. I wonder what precisely it is about a woman that would bring men to this point.

Are your caretakers at the hospital really as nice as they seem?

Oh, and the next time you think about redeveloping Olmstead's Central Park, just remember that the land costs $627 million an acre, which is "26% more than the entire 2006 U.S. defense budget, or 7 million times the price of Boardwalk and Park Place together."

apocalypse

The Klan is growing, fueled by and fueling anti-immigrant sentiment. Chapters grew 63% between 2000 and 2005 after a drop through the 90's. An ironic form of comfort against the accusation that I was deserting my country by moving abroad until it got better.

Software may well start watching all our (just as I suspected) unwatched surveillance camera feeds, turning America into a true surveillance society. Thanks to London for taking the lead... but it was the US that destroyed itself long before in V for Vendetta.

Our government was brilliant enough to ship over $4 billion in cash, weighing 363 tons, on military aircraft to Iraq in 2003 and 2004 at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance. "'Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?'.... On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially 'the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history'... It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later." More irony: I and my fellow gamblers were debating at Casino Royale whether there was really $1 million in dollar bills in the educational display box at the RMSC's new Moneyville exhibit. Thanks to that instructive experience, I now actually have a visual image of how these shipments might appear.

13 computers manage global internet traffic (according to who?) and were briefly overwhelmed by hackers. The attacks continue.

Just some tidbits to brighten everyone's day.

45,000 missing

So much for Brussels being rated the best airport in Europe. Last year over 45,000 suitcases went missing. Where the hell could all those suitcases have gone? You can't just miss 45,000 suitcases lying around in some corner. The bending of the space-time continuum is clearly at work here.

pizza for pesos

What is wrong with our country if anti-immigrant sentiments are so strong right now that a pizza chain with a 60% Hispanic customer base receives hundreds of angry emails and even death threats for offering to accept pesos? People don't have time to sit down and write to their government representatives or their presidents about problems such as global warming or overcrowded schools, but they do have time to read this sign, remember it, go home, find Pizza Patron's contact information, and compose extraordinarily unproductive feedback that makes no difference in their communities or lives besides quashing an opportunity for some Hispanics (and tourists returned home) to use up spare pesos lying in their drawers. Wow thank you all for your valuable contributions to this country. I worry about people's attitudes towards legislation regarding immigration, but this incident makes me wonder how dangerous and disturbing those attitudes are in everyday life. Where did extreme nationalism ultimately take some other countries in the 20th century?

andromeda

My question, which could probably easily be answered if I bothered to do some conversions with the data supplied in the article, is how much of the night sky our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy (M31), really takes up for the naked eye. Because UCSC researchers have found that it's much, much bigger than we thought.

In less intellectual but more entertaining news, Mr. Blackwell has assigned the euphemism "style-free and fashion deprived" to Britney Spears (who makes 1st for the 3rd time) and Paris Hilton (who makes 1st for the second time) in his annual worst-dressed list, undoubtedly to the glee of many such as myself. Also rewarding was his inclusion of my favorite Angelina Jolie and even Nancy Pelosi in his list of 10 "fabulous fashion independents." The unfortunate thing about all this style criticism is that any actress can be portrayed as a poor dresser. Taking bad shots of people is so easy, particularly when they're in runway clothes.

It's awfully entertaining to me in my campanologically nerdy way that UC Berkeley's library catalog gives as search term examples on its home page "bell tolls" and "for whom the bell." I apologize for not having resisted sharing that incredibly stupid fact with you.

wanderlust

I'm starting to think about travel again as I work out my European concert tour, and am in the mood to be enticed by other destinations. China, anyone?

The Belgians are getting taller and heavier. Not the most surprising news around the block. But Dutch men are the tallest Europeans, and Dutch women weigh the most in Europe, while Ireland has the biggest difference between the sexes. That's weird.

nerdiness

So I feel justified in indulging in a little nerdiness today. I have time. How's this?

It's a false-color image of colliding galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163, space.com's sometime image of the day.

If you're also feeling nerdy, you might try voting for the best space images of 2006. Or reading about the most bizarre satellite ever.

Tiffany Blue

Sweeeeet not only do I have gaudy jewelry and a stinky expensive perfume named after meeeeeee, but also a shade of my favorite color, blue: Tiffany Blue, PMS 1837.

Indiana Jones 4!!!

So I keep telling people that I haven't been particularly excited about any movies since Back to the Future and Indiana Jones. (The Matrix and Koyaanisqaatsi excepted.) Well, today's my lucky day: George Lucas has announced that Harrison Ford will be returning for his fourth installment as Indie!

I'll be the first in theaters with my Icee to watch and cheer. If it ever emerges from development hell, I'd also watch Ender's Game.