and oh how it rains

2010-05-29T01:37:00.001-07:00

Returning to the Jung typology test (a light version anyway), I discovered that I am now ENTJ (not what I recall being before, although I really don't remember what I was before): extraverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. Thus I join the company of Patrick Stewart, otherwise known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. Considering that captaining a Federation starship has been my dream job since childhood, I think I've just achieved one small part of a lifelong dream.

Last night, the full moon was gazing at me through the blinds again.

2010-04-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

It's after midnight. I'm typing at my computer when I realize a round, bright white light is piercing through the closed shades over my window. It's the full moon, glaring unrelentingly at me with some unspoken message. In the 1.5 years I've inhabited this room, this has never happened. How did the moon make it through tonight?

2009-10-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

The defenestration of an icon. An act of sacrilege or an everyday technological activity?

musicians kicking the bucket

2009-08-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

The media makes such a fuss speculating about the causes of death for musicians like Michael Jackson and now Mozart. You'd think specifying the precise way they went was more sensational than what they left to us.

alms

2009-07-02T01:19:00.000-07:00

Male panhandlers in the subway are easy to pretend to ignore. But today a middle-aged black woman hobbled her way onto a crowded subway train. One of her eyes was screwed half shut and she had the most tragic and hopeless and crazed expression of anyone I'd ever seen in public. Light blue clothes hung off her body like ill-fitted hospital robes, and a single key was tied to one of the drawstrings, perhaps put there by someone who feared she'd lose anything that wasn't securely attached.

"Won't somebody please help me?" she uttered, and it was somewhere between a plea and a wail.

"Won't somebody please help me?" she said once, twice, thrice. Her cries, quivering with desperation and resentment and alarm, were identical down to the slightest inflection. A well-dressed young asian woman held out a dollar bill, which she accepted silently. She then made her way down the aisle in the opposite direction. I was unwilling to decide if something particularly horrible had happened to her today or if this was simply her routine.

The last time Andrew and I were headed to Penn Station, he was accosted by an angry young man who wanted to start a fight. "You stepped on my shoe and you didn't apologize. You were too busy looking at your pretty girlfriend. You're a tourist, huh? Somebody should teach you some manners." The strangest things happen on the 1-2-3. We came into the evening light on 7th Ave, but for a while I walked around Midtown South with a sadness headache, unable to forget the voice of this haunting, haunted woman.

2009-05-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

Did someone seriously just go by shouting in a fake Irish accent, "I am the f*cking beer master!" to the hooting accompaniment of his friends?

2009-05-03T22:15:00.002-07:00

The NYT declares Guangzhou to be the hottest new place to visit. Why does everything I read and do make me want to go to China?

2009-05-03T21:15:00.002-07:00

Some post-apocalyptic landscapes and machinery from Terminator Salvation.

hypochondriac society

2009-05-02T01:10:00.004-07:00

These are the new values of our enlightened post-embodiment hypochondriac society as set by the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health:

Masks carry both physical and psychological benefits, said Dr. Julio Frenk, former health minister of Mexico and current dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Masks are a "reminder to people that they should avoid close contact with other persons," he said. "They also have this effect of isolating people and reminding them that they should not be kissing people, shaking hands, things like that."

'inspired by music'

2009-04-30T22:46:00.002-07:00

I love the new line of furniture by Diesel and Foscarini. One of each for me, please.

Tiffany lights

2009-04-25T11:45:00.003-07:00

If you know me well, you probably know my social aspiration to one day own a Tiffany lamp. Well, in the meantime we can be green and a bit more thrifty by getting a Tiffany Flowers lamp for me. Yes, that means you.

2009-04-22T22:51:00.002-07:00

A California vegan on the FBI's most wanted list? It seems a bit ridiculous for both parties involved, although I do have to admit this vegan gives us veggies a pretty bad name.

iTunes prohibits terrorism

2009-04-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

2009-03-20T02:04:00.002-07:00

OMG somebody please enter me in this totally legit contest to win a $2 million house in San Francisco. Benefits go to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. How'd they swing this one?!

2009-03-17T09:13:00.004-07:00

Who woulda thunk that Stewart Brand would give the best Keynote/Ppt-type presentation I'd ever seen? There were so many slides I felt as if the whole thing was advancing with a life of its own. Lesson learned.

2009-03-09T14:09:00.002-07:00

Who wouldn't want this nuclear reactor lamp? I'd put it up over the photo of me devouring a sandwich in front of the Doel nuclear plant.

2009-01-21T20:39:00.003-08:00

"If you haven't watched The Matrix, you'll have a hard time understanding this course."

I have to give up a new media course with a professor who can say that? *sigh* What I do to pursue the carillon... Feld's course is going to be amazing, though. The electric excitement in the room throughout the morning foreshadows as much.

2009-01-19T23:39:00.002-08:00

"Happiness is an organized closet." That's the headline of my receipt from the Container Store. I do like Santana Row in the end.

Rockabye Baby

2008-12-26T20:50:00.005-08:00

Tinkly instrumental renditions of Radiohead songs meant to serve as lullabies for babies? It's a wonderful idea for adults but sure seems like a terrible thing to unleash on our young. I do suppose the removal of the lyrics makes the listening experience the ultimate double-entendre. Peter Szendy would be fascinated by these arrangements. We can listen to makers of children's music listening to Radiohead and then babies listening to the innocent instrumental versions while the adults fill in the ominous words as they listen.

contradictions

2008-10-25T11:19:00.002-07:00

While the progress of the Plan Daly City project is encouraging, I had to snicker at one of the conclusions from the city-wide survey:

In terms of top priorities, survey respondents selected “Stricter code enforcement”, “Less traffic”, and “More parking” as the top First Choices of what they would like to see changed in Daly City. “More for-sale home choices”, “Preservation of historic buildings”, “More luxury housing”, and “More public art” were the least selected First Choices from the overall respondent pool.

2008-09-18T10:40:00.002-07:00

Our media really reports significant news these days. The residents of Obama, Japan believe it, glasses and all.

not just the American picket fence dream anymore

2008-08-18T20:50:00.005-07:00

A massive (and massively costly) fence is going up along the border near San Diego to certain environmental detriment. I hardly want to know what the ancient American Indians would have had to say about our recent wave of anti-immigration sentiments. Had they built fences, would we be here to lock others out today?

2008-08-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.dezeen.com/2008/08/07/global-warming-rug-by-nel-for-nanimarquina/

2008-06-11T22:08:00.001-07:00

There went 27,000 marijuana plants down the drain in Sonoma. Woops.

2008-06-10T21:59:00.001-07:00

How can we bear to eat Ethiopian cuisine these days without feeling the cutting irony that the Ethiopians themselves are barely staying alive on one meal a day?

2008-06-03T09:55:00.002-07:00

I'd love to go for a walk among the treetops -- literally -- on the Kew tree top walkway. What a brilliant idea.

2008-05-07T18:10:00.001-07:00

The UK has sent $10 million to Myanmar for relief after the cyclone, and the US has thus far appropriated only $3 million.

cake lyrics come true

2008-05-03T18:49:00.001-07:00

Did someone take Cake's lyrics about fuzzy dice too far?

windoze

2008-04-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

Internal IBM documents show that some Macs are now being used internally. "One advantage cited: less reliance on Windows."

La Galerie de Pierre Bergé & Associés

2008-04-18T21:27:00.003-07:00

Look what's appearing on the Sablon in Brussels not far from Pierre Marcolini.

2008-04-02T20:47:00.002-07:00

MRE, one of the funniest Wikipedia articles I've ever read.

Living at home

2008-03-23T09:58:00.001-07:00

Not just a Belgian phenomenon?

2008-03-06T23:10:00.004-08:00

Yet another project from the Beijing sandbox: Architect Steven Holl is building a small version of the city I've envisioned twice my fiction: a forest of highrises connected by aerial throughways.

2008-02-13T08:24:00.006-08:00

"Lantos had assumed his committee chairmanship [of the House Foreign Affairs Committee] just a year [ago], when Democrats retook control of Congress. He said then that in a sense his whole life had been a preparation for the job." A sad time for our representative Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, to pass away of cancer.

Am I just too old-fashioned or hippie? Some of these "money-saving" suggestions from NYT are great; others make me sad. Desert local retailers? Is this how globalization has trickled down to the average American?

2008-02-12T20:28:00.003-08:00

We had a fine powder in the evening, but later after my clavichord jury it began to drizzle. The resulting slightly solidified surface of the powdery snow gave it the fascinating consistency of old cake frosting. It was the right color too.

leaf crunchers unite!

2008-02-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

This is what makes video gamers relish wrecking and pedestrians crunch leaves underfoot in the fall. I could hardly put it better: "W.H. Auden once warned that poets make lousy politicians, because they're way too entranced by apocalyptic spectacle. I think he was right, but the truth is this poetic hunger exists in almost everyone. After a 40-hour week of sitting in a cubicle, shuffling Word documents and being robotically polite, any reasonable human needs some catharsis -- some full-body shock of the illicit. Full-bore destruction in video games serves the need admirably."

2008-02-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

The TSA needs a copyeditor if it's started its own blog and can't figure out the difference between Everyday and Every Day.

2008-01-31T07:12:00.000-08:00

Postaplast is clearly what our house needs to stop missing deliveries. The design, built to last the harshest Norwegian winters, wouldn't be out of line for Rochester either.

2007-11-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-11-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

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."

2007-10-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

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

Saffron Revolution?

2007-09-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-09-20T17:13:00.001-07:00

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."

2007-09-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

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."

2007-09-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

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."

2007-08-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-13T19:31:00.001-07:00

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!

2007-08-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

Front yard lawns? I want one!

2007-07-31T14:58:00.001-07:00

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

Why buy what falls from the sky?

2007-07-28T13:49:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-25T15:00:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

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

stop the road rage!

2007-07-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-17T15:00:00.001-07:00

Hear hear.

2007-07-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-07-12T16:04:00.001-07:00

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.

2007-07-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-07-02T17:37:00.000-07:00

"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

2007-07-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

"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.

2007-06-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-06-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-06-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-08T03:24:00.001-07:00

Are we millions and millions of exuberant monkeys?

worldwide spam decrease?

2007-06-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-29T21:07:00.001-07:00

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?

2007-05-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-05-28T07:44:00.001-07:00

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?

2007-05-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-05-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-06T22:40:00.001-07:00

really just not funny.

2007-04-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-04-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

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.