The ferries head in and head out. The bridge is empty of traffic (except for the 108 on the upper deck) while repairs continue on the eastern span.

 
After sunrise. A single truck on the bridge. Traffic is only allowed between San Francisco and Treasure Island/Yerba Buena: the 108, a few cars, repair vehicles, an occasional truck. That's it until the repairs on the broken crossbeam and tie rods are finished, examined, inspected, okay'd, and the bridge re-opens.

Traffic elsewhere is a scramble. BART and the ferries are packed.

 

Labels: life, news, photographs, SFOBayBridge

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:08 AM|| |

If you don't watch Rachel Maddow, at least occasionally, you should. I watch her whenever I'm in a hotel that carries MSNBC and I watch her over the Web. (Our dirt-cheap cable subscription does not include MSNBC.)

Last week Maddow and Pat Buchanan got into a brouhaha over Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court and affirmative action, which Maddow supports but Buchanan does not.

Here is a snippet where Maddow corrects some of the "facts" presented by Buchanan during the debate.



The original debate is here:

Labels: history, news, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:34 AM|| |

The Mexican sailing ship Cuauhtémoc is berthed at P27 through July 18th.

 
Come visit!

Labels: news, SanFranciscoBay, ships

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:39 AM|| |

Fishers give up on plan for Presidio art museum

... so I wrote another letter to the editor at the Chronicle (previous letter was 09/2007):

The Presidio was never the right place for the Fishers' Contemporary Art Museum for reasons both practical and historical, reasons soundly argued by neighbors, historians, park enthusiasts, and environmentalists.

There are wonderful alternatives to the Presidio site in our city. Consider for a moment the effect of having the Contemporary Art Museum located near Pier 70/Potrero Point, an area poised for redevelopment! Donald Fisher could do immense good by building his museum there, at the edge of the Bay. Plenty of public transit. Space for parking without cutting down a single tree! Near the ballpark and the new UCSF Medical Center development at Mission Bay. Near all the new condos south of Market. Within shouting distance of Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill. A short transit ride from the southern neighborhoods.

The Contemporary Art Museum could knit the city together, bringing folks from the northern neighborhoods and the western neighborhoods over to our "other" shore.

Look what the ballpark and UCSF@Mission Bay have done for the surrounding areas!. The Fishers have the opportunity to do wonders for the central waterfront and the city if they build their museum there. Say you will, Mr. Fisher!

Update: Letter in today's Chron.

Labels: art, museums, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:07 PM|| |

McCain And Palin Personally Approved Internal Email Hunt For Leakers, Campaign Manager Says

I really don't get it. All this uproar over whether Schmidt (with or without Palin and McCain's approval) searched through staff e-mails to find out who was leaking information to the press about Palin's diva behavior during the lead-up to last November's election..

If you use a company server to send your e-mails, your e-mails are not private. The company owns the servers and can noddle through your e-mails to their heart's content. And that's not counting what anyone in the IT department with admin passwords can do.

A recent survey spilled the beans about what folks in the IT Department do out of boredom, curiosity, or maybe something less benign.

It should not surprise you that IT admins read your e-mails. Yes, they check logs to see what sort of Web surfing employees do. Turns out, yes, they check HR's folders to see what everyone's making and sometimes they leave taking data with them as they head out the door. There is no privacy on company computers.

Get over it, as Scott McNealy famously said ten years ago.

Labels: news, privacy, technology

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:13 AM|| |

When the Thrill of Blogging Is Gone ... - by Douglas Quenqua

Interesting article. You must register w/ NYTimes.com to read.

[snippet]

Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.

Labels: blog, news, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:49 PM|| |

Autograph fraudster poses as Capote, Vonnegut, Crichton | Philadelphia Daily News | 05/19/2009

Man who forged autographs in books (for resale) pleads guilty.

Labels: books, crime, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:11 PM|| |

AnnaQ is a month and four days older than I am, another water dragon. The 18 May 2009 issue of Newsweek Magazine contains her resignation from her gig writing LAST WORD, which she's had for the last nine years.

THE LAST WORD - Anna Quindlen (18 May 2009 issue of Newsweek)

This page, this place, is an invaluable opportunity to shed some light. But if I had any lingering doubts about giving it up after almost nine years, they were quelled by those binders on my desk, full of exemplary work by reporters young enough to be my children. Flipping through their pages, reading such essential and beautifully rendered accounts of life in America and around the world, I felt certain of the future of the news business in some form or another. But between the lines I read another message, delivered without rancor or contempt, the same one I once heard from my own son: It's our turn. Step aside. And now I will.



Boy, am I feeling like a dinosaur.

Labels: news, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:32 PM|| |

Ad running in the righthand sidebar of SFGATE.COM.

United States Courts-Ninth Circuit
Bankruptcy Judgeships
$160,080/year

Recruiting for 4 vacancies on the Bankruptcy Court.

(We need more judges because we're having more bankruptcies?)

Labels: commentary, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:16 AM|| |

Practical Tips for Combatting Swine Flu In Your Home | Beyond the Beyond from Wired.com

There is always some flu around and flu is always killing some people. Even when a raw mutant flu manages to kill off more people than a shooting-war, flu has never ravaged whole cities as cholera or the Black Death can do. As awful pandemics go, flu is like the snotty-nosed little sister of awful pandemics.

I've been tracking Twitter and checking what people are twittering about porcine influenza.

We now have multiple Twitter accounts aggregating swine flu news with names like stoptheswine, SwineFlu, SwineFluTweets and more. Someone's even picked up the domain name swinefluoutbreaknews.com.

There's hype hype HYPE! and folks madly re-tweeting such things as How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear war http://bit.ly/4CKca (something from UK's Daily Mail Online)

Chill, people. Really.

For up-to-date information go to the CDC site

Labels: health, news, twitter

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:22 PM|| |

United Airlines To Charge Heavier Passengers Twice To Fly - cbs2chicago.com

[...]

Under the rules outlined by United, passengers who "are unable to fit into a single seat in the ticketed cabin; are unable to properly buckle the seatbelt using a single seatbelt extender; and/or are unable to put the seat's armrests down when seated" will be denied boarding unless they purchase an extra seat.

If no empty seat exists, the passenger will be forced to take a later flight.

"The seat purchase or upgrade must be completed for each leg of the itinerary," the United policy states. "If a customer meeting any of the above-listed criteria decides not to upgrade or purchase a ticket for an additional seat, he or she will not be permitted to board the flight."

[...]

Labels: life, news, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:22 PM|| |

Bronstein at Large : Newspaper disaster? It's all my fault. I'm the one.

This column is from last month, but I hadn't noticed it until I saw Bronstein link to it from today's piece.

He has some interesting ideas, including this one:

In the meantime, we should look at the problem in simpler terms:

I get two newspapers delivered at home: The Chronicle and the New York Times. The Times hits the step somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. The Chronicle gets there before 6. Both papers are in existential trouble despite good work and 300 years of accumulated history between them.

So even in the face of the threats to our survival, there are still at least two different people and two entirely different delivery systems in place to get two newspapers to the same address in the same couple of hours. Really? In what rational world does that make sense? Why is that a good idea for businesses on the brink?

He goes on to talk about sharing resources beyond the delivery staff and the printing presses. Pooled news?

We already have pooled news. Take a look at the Chronicle some time and check out how much of the news is fed in from AP or the NYT. (How often do I read an article and think, I read that a day or two ago. Yup, another article from NYT.) We also have the end-of-the-week roundup column telling us what was in the Economist and the half page that covers what the top stories were in a handful of top international papers. We have blocks of print nipped from people commenting on sfgate.com. We have the columnists, writers and editorial and ... but for how much longer? (No more Morford except on sfgate.com, alas.)

Who knows what's to come. The dominant paradigm is failing. We are watching it failing, and blaming the failure on Craig Newmark or Google is not saving the bacon. What needs to change? What will change? What will take the place of the bagged up newspaper delivered to the doorstep?

Bronstein makes mention of both San Francisco Appeal and The Public Press, recently added online news sources for those who don't insist that they get ink smudges on their fingers.

Is that what the future will be? Smaller, more focused local papers? Online "papers"? Behemoth news providers feeding news to newspapers that don't have much staff anymore?

Maybe some brill soul will work out a nice arrangement with Google, which will monetize their news aggregator up the wazoo and then employ their brilliant data mining to figure out how to share the ad $$ equitably with the papers that people are clicking through to.

Will the papers then put their staff on a revised salary plan and "share" their clickthrough income with the staffers who write the articles that people want to read? If I click through to Carl Nolte or Mark Morford (both of whom I enjoy) but not Willie Brown, will Carl and Mark get bigger slices of the pie?

                                    *

But enough of that, here are my dull and unimaginative suggestions to the Chronicle for generating revenue.

(1) Take the crossword answers and the Sudoku answers out of the same-day newspaper. If someone wants hints and clues and answers THAT DAY, they can log on and pay ($1 -- the cost of a Lotto ticket -- would be a good price point) for the info.

(2) Sudoku? Monetize that. Someone inks in that day's Sudoku, ships their answers to the Chronicle with a ($1 again) fee. All the fees go into a pot. One person's name is drawn. If that person's answers are all correctomundo, that person gets 25% of the pot. There'll be a bit of expense over at the Chronicle for handling the entries, but how much could that be? The rest would be found money. Note: you'll have to buy (or otherwise arrange to read) a physical paper to find out how to contact the paper to send in that day's entry.

(3) Be more upfront about what ads cost. Make the information more available. Anniversary, Birthday, Graduation coming up? Maybe the Chronicle could put messages on Page One or above the fold for the Sports section or next to the comics for a suitable price.

(4) Someone had suggested a poet's corner where someone's poetry would be published, for a price. (And then the year's worth of poet's corners could be gathered into a book and offered for sale to those interested.) Why not?

(5) Have a photographer's corner too.

Oh, and while I have you on the horn, could you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE move Paul Madonna's work out of The Pink? Paul Madonna needs to be on a white background, and last Sunday? The print job was so uneven, I couldn't even read the print that accompanied his work. Don't let that happen again.

Update: An edited (to meet the 200 wd cutoff) version of my suggestion list was published in the Chronicle's LtoE column on April 16. (See 4th letter in. ...)

Labels: advertising, financeconomics, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:05 PM|| |

Fear the rainbow! / A storm is gathering. Are you afraid, Christian? Are you afraid *enough*?

The best part? It's only been just over three months. These adorable hyenas can't possibly sustain such a silly froth; in terms of extreme vitriol, there is nowhere left to go. Really, how do you top calling Obama a Satan Hitler Mussolini Lenin Iran-loving dictator hell-bent on taking away our guns and destroying capitalism as he forces everyone to drive a pink Prius to the Commie Hut to pick up our gay Chinese babies?

Labels: commentary, government, morford, news, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:22 PM|| |

KCBS - South Bay Phone Outage Likely Caused by Vandals

Way to make people sympathetic to your cause, CWA.

Idiots.

Labels: news

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:35 PM|| |

Los Angeles Times Staff: Fake News Story 'Embarrassing and Demoralizing' - Peter Kafka

Newspapers are losing money. What to do? What to do? What to do?

Think outside the box. Revisit the dominant paradigm. Make people pay for online content. Make people pay for premium content. Make people pay more for subscriptions. Only put premium content in paper version. Cut the newsroom staff. Stop home delivery. Stop the presses and go 100% online.

Sell ad space on Page One?

The LATimes ad was clearly marked as such. It was below the fold. I =do= have some understanding about the uproar from staff, but ...

How will papers survive as papers? Would you rather the LATimes fold than sell clearly marked ad space on Page One?

Any ideas for our friends in the daily paper business?

According to the article: UPDATE: I'm told publisher Eddy Hartenstein is supposed to be addressing the staff this afternoon.

Labels: advertising, news, web2.0, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:10 PM|| |

So I open my Chron yesterday to find this article: Social isolation a significant health issue by Katherine Seligman.

I promised yesterday to blog about why the article's focus annoyed me so much.

They could have more friends than ever online but, on average, Americans have fewer intimates to confide in than they did a decade ago, according to one study. Another found that 20 percent of all individuals are, at any given time, unhappy because of social isolation, according to University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo. And, frankly, they'd rather not talk about it.

i.e. "friends online" aren't considered fodder for intimate confidences.

The article also points out that 80% of people are not feeling socially isolated, but that doesn't sell books. (I doubt their 20% figure anyway.)

The article goes on to quote Jacqueline Olds, a psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard Medical School and co-authored "The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-First Century." "People are so embarrassed about being lonely that no one admits it. Loneliness is stigmatized, even though everyone feels it at one time or another."

Olds wrote the book with her husband, Dr. Richard Schwartz, because, she said, she wanted to bring loneliness "out of the closet." The two were struck by findings from the General Social Survey (conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago), showing that people reported having fewer intimate friends in 2004 than they had in 1985. When asked how many people they could confide in, the average number declined over that same time period from three to two.

Why would three be better than two?

In 2004, almost a quarter of those surveyed said they had no one to discuss important matters with in the past six months; in 1985, only 7 percent were devoid of close confidantes.

Two separate issues [1) no one to disuss important matters with in the past six months, 2) devoid of close confidantes for a year]

I'd be interested re 1) in what the question text was. Was it, "Did you discuss important matters with a close personal friend in the past six months?" If so, what if there were no "important matters" to discuss with anyone? Does a "No" answer mean that you're lonely?

Those who know me can see where I'm going here.

#1 The authors writing these books are obviously more comfortable with people around to talk things over with.

#2 The authors writing these books obviously don't think that people can "talk things over" with online buddies. It's F2F or on the phone or nothing at all, according to them.

So I read on

But humans are not wired to live alone, researchers say. The impulse for social connection - though it is stronger in some people than others - is rooted in the basic urge to survive. The need is so great, says Cacioppo, [John Cacioppo, whose research was mentioned at the beginning of the article and who has also! written a book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection] that it is reflected in our neural wiring. Most neuroscientists agree, he said, that it was the need to process social cues that led to the expansion of the cortical mantle of the brain.

In "Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection," which he co-authored last year, he wrote, "In other words, it was the need to deal with other people that, in large part, made us who and what we are today."

Loneliness, Cacioppo explained in an interview, has more in common with hunger, thirst and pain than it does with mental illness. It signals that something is wrong and needs to be corrected.

and at about this point I twigged that Olds and Seligman and others who worry so much about loneliness and being alone are probably extroverts, eh?

See the Atlantic article Caring for Your Introvert by Jonathan Rauch, to see what I mean. (DT recently reposted a link on his Facebook page, just in time for me to get my every-couple-years re-read of a great article.)

Labels: culture, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:11 PM|| |

Obama vs. The Fear / Grin and be enthralled, or tremble and stuff dollar bills into your mattress?

[...]

This seems to be the bottom line, at least for now. We have, for the first time in just about forever, an enormously ambitious, confident, risk-taking president so full of grand and even borderline radical ideas they barely fit into a single generation, much less a single speech, and we have him at a time when we need, well, someone exactly like that.

That he just so happens to be tremendously intelligent, progressive, serene as an oak tree and utterly magnetizing? I guess you just call that a bonus.

What he ("he" being Mark Morford) said.

Labels: commentary, government, news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:41 AM|| |

As a follow-on to Peter Harlaub's

The 9 types of Facebook friends

which the Chron ran last Sunday, today they ran

Other classic, and annoying, Facebook types

e.g.
Probably the two most annoying types of FB friends I'd add to the list: "The Infected" - seems to exist on Facebook to propagate memes (make lists and tag others) and share their quiz results. "The Activist" - almost every day they invite you to join a new cause, sign a petition, or send you a "lil green patch" request. They occasionally inspire the urge to explain why you don't believe in a cause or how you feel their demands are a bit unrealistic, which you refrain from indulging.

- Sarah Lockhar, Oakland


:-)

Labels: life, news, San Francisco, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:16 PM|| |

The proposed FY 2010 budget in 146pp of detail. This is a narrative take on the budget, not pages and pages of income/outgo numbers.

Take a look. [PDF]

Labels: economy, government, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:52 PM|| |

Here's news!

It's Not What You Eat, It's How Much

Calories count.

A lot.

Labels: food, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:45 AM|| |

Reflections of a Newsosaur: SF Chron cost-cut target equals 47% of staff

and the ever hopeful San Francisco Bay Guardian politics blog.

and Debra Saunders, who is ... afraid she might lose her column?

Reading the comments following her column, I think, as ye sow. ...

Saunders has a point with, When a newspaper dies, you don't get a comprehensive periodical to fill the void. You get an informational vacant lot into which passers-by can throw their junk.

Except I don't know that that will happen. I don't know what will happen. The void may attract something entirely different. Someone may cobble together the best of the best coverage into an online entity. Some enterprising sort may create the San Francisco Phoenix print edition and rise from the ashes. Some new UPI/AP entity may suck up all the good print reporters and reportage and act as a clearinghouse.

All I do know is Macy's won't have a clue how to reach their customers with their diamond sales and shoe deals.

More importantly Where will my favorite columnists land?

Labels: news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:51 AM|| |

You know times are bad when kink.com lays off 11% of their staff.

[ref: Leah Garchik's column this ayem]

Labels: financeconomics, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:33 AM|| |

Hearst seeks changes at Chronicle

The Hearst Corp. today announced an effort to reverse the deepening operating losses of its San Francisco Chronicle by seeking near-term cost savings that would include "significant" cuts to both union and non-union staff.

In a posted statement, Hearst said if the savings cannot be accomplished "quickly" the company will seek a buyer, and if none comes forward, it will close the Chronicle.

And don't forget I told you so: By Christmas, the Chron will decide to exist as a Sunday-only print paper -- tabloid format -- with all other news content on the Web.

If that.

Maybe not at all.

The company did not specify the size of the staff reductions or the nature of the other cost-savings measures it has in mind. The company said it will immediately seek discussions with the Northern California Media Workers Guild, Local 39521, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853, which represent the majority of workers at the Chronicle.

Labels: news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:09 PM|| |

Bakers make cake with image of flash drive instead of image in flash drive - Boing Boing

Oh, dear.

Not realizing that the flash drive had the image wanted for the cake, the bakers made the cake with an image of the flash drive.

Duh.

Pretty cute, though. Bet the cake was a hit.

[via 'sted]

Labels: life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:46 PM|| |

An Open Letter to Amy Dickinson by Margo Howard

[...]

In short, when the Tribune hired and syndicated you, that made you their new advice columnist, period. You are no more "the new Ann Landers" than Carolyn Hax, Dan Savage or any of the dozens of advice columnists who were bought by newspapers to fill the space previously occupied by my mother.

By law, the only person who would have been able to become "the new Ann Landers" was me. And that was nothing I chose to do. You see, dear, even I knew that there could only be one Ann Landers.

Sure. Whatevs.

That's why Dear Margo®'s column always finishes off with Dear Margo is written by Margo Howard, Ann Landers' daughter.

Not that Margo Howard would ever even consider trying to be the new Ann Landers.

Labels: news, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:03 AM|| |

Justice Rehires Attorney Fired Amid Gay Rumor : NPR

This should never have happened. That she's been rehired is a good thing, but for pete's sake, how can anyone justify this to begin with?

Off with their heads! May the people responsible be ineligible for another legal position for the rest of their lives! How dare they mess with this attorney's life like this?

Labels: legal, news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:45 PM|| |

At the beginning of the year we lost John Flinn, the Travel Editor, and Lynette Evans, the Home & Garden Editor.

Starting February 1, Home & Garden moves to Sunday from Wednesday and Saturday. Food (which was all of four pages yesterday) moves to Sunday, where it will share a section with Wine, which is moving from Friday to Sunday. Restaurant news and the Inside Scoop column will show up in the Datebook section on Thursdays.

Beginning Sunday, The Chronicle will offer its readers an enhanced newspaper that will better capture the essence of living in the Bay Area. Not only will readers notice a new look and new features in its daily sections, but there will also be new sections and features that will add to the value of the Sunday newspaper.

Complete announcement

What does my crystal ball have to say about these moves?

People who currently subscribe because they want the Wednesday Food Section AND the Friday Wine Section AND the Sunday paper will cut their subscription to Sunday-only or drop it altogether. Why bother when the food/wine/home stuff has all moved to Sunday and the current news is on the Web? We're reading stale news in the morning paper for the most part anyway. Sunday's a nice day to go out for a walk, pick up a paper from the newstand and walk back home for coffee and a read.

Circulation will fall. Subscriptions will fall. Ad revenue (based on circ stats) will fall as well.

By Christmas, the Chron will decide to exist as a Sunday-only print paper -- tabloid format -- with all other news content on the Web.

Labels: news, periodicals, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:20 AM|| |

"You should be able to do that in a free country that guarantees the right of free speech especially when you're doing it in what you think is the sanctity of your home and you want to do it out of your home phone because you don't want any interconnection with the government lines so someone thinks you're talking politics on a government phone ..."

Charming.

Rachel Maddow is that good. ...

Labels: news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:27 PM|| |

Borrowed from cygnoir

post the first sentence for the first post of each month for 2008:

January2008:
In 2008 may you have warm sunshine to bask in, blue skies overhead and a light heart.

February2008:
Years and years and years ago, I read horse race results at the back of the sports section in the San Jose Mercury News.

March2008:
Packed.

April2008:
Wednesday I knew where my set of keys to the loft was and his nibs' set as well.

May2008:
Yay, me! I just caught up on eighty back posts at grapes 2.0, dating back to before we left for Jordan/Egypt in March.

June2008:
The gang was over here tonight for dinner and a discussion of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach.

July2008:
The First Today Show: January 14, 1952 with Dave Garroway

August2008:
The trash police: Gavin Newsom is proposing the nation's first-ever mandatory recycling and composting law.

Sept2008:
I've been having a nice back and forth exchange with Luis Herrera, the guy in charge of the San Francisco Public Library, re the Library's dumb idea to put the new North Beach Library on top of the Triangle.

Oct2008:
British Battles - analysing and documenting British Battles from the previous centuries

Nov2008:
My enduring thanks this election cycle to Nate Silver.

Dec2008:
Pownce is closing down effective December 15th.

Labels: news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:07 PM|| |

ABC News: Obama Heads Home After Vacation in Hawaii

While on the pre-inauguration trip he attended a private memorial service for Madelyn Payne Dunham — known to friends as "Toot" — and scattered her ashes into the sea.

***

known to friends as "Toot"???

Obama called her Toot but that was short for Tutu, Hawaiian for Grandma.

I doubt if friends knew Madelyn Payne Dunham as "Toot."

Slack reportage. *tsk*

Labels: news

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:21 PM|| |

Archbishop of Canterbury warns recession Britain must learn lessons from Nazi Germany - Telegraph

I don't know this guy at all. I'm certainly not very Christian, if at all, and not Anglican, so his pronouncements are as important as ... nothing.

But man, I love that face, hair, beard, eyebrows.

Especially the eyebrows.

This man could be Gandalf in a different setting.

Labels: news, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:27 PM|| |

Of the jobs I wish I'd had, fireworks designer/handler is up near the top of the list. Also near the top is implosion designer/handler.

Implosion designers don't just blow things up, they calculate things so precisely that the building/stadium/whatever blows up and falls in on itself without damaging nearby structures.

Beautiful example of a controlled implosion. RCA Stadium. Indianapolis, IN. This morning. Eight hundred holes drilled and kaboom! powder added and then at the specific moment ...

Labels: news, science, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:07 AM|| |

Venice under five feet of water as the city suffers its worst floods in 22 years

I love Venice. I could spend some serious time there. I think it's a magical place.

When we got back from our one and only trip there (followed by a walking holiday poking through Palladio sites in the Veneto), I had a dream ... a nightmare.

In the dream, we had bought a palazzo in Venice and moved lock, stock and books to take up permanent residence. Knowing the dangers of putting heavy loads of books on upper stories of aging homes, I'd set up all my book shelves on the ground floor of the palazzo.

All this is backstory.

The dream opens with me leaning against a railing, looking across the canal to the palazzo that we had just moved all our worldly goods (and books) into and were making our home.

As I leaned against the railing, the rain began to fall and before you could say, "George Washington" (this was a dream after all), the waters start to rise and rise fast. I realized the waters will rise enough that everything on our ground floor will be flooded ...

MY BOOKS!

I don't have time to run down the paths to the nearest bridge and across the bridge and back down the paths to our palazzo and get the books shifted in time to save them.

... so, Freud. What is the deep meaning of this nightmare?

Labels: dreams, news, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:01 AM|| |

Mumbai/Bombay - Twitter Search

... ongoing news and commentary on what's happening in Mumbai/Bombay via tweets, some direct from India.

Also links to news articles and useful information and, as always with the Web, some wasted space and very stoopid people.

Labels: news, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:26 PM|| |

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

Is Black Friday worth it? Do you really need this stuff on sale? Are you really saving enough money to make all this worth it?

Maybe it's just that I am not a fan of large pushy crowds, but I decided that getting up in time to stand in line at Cost-Plus to be one of the first hundred through the doors for a 7 a.m. opening, which would score me a free pretty little glass Christmas ornament and a chance for a huge prize, was just not worth dealing with people in mind of a Black Friday deal.

Some stores opened at 4 a.m. Macy's opened at 5 a.m. Other stores had midnight madness sales. People left their family Thanksgiving dinners early to stand in line to score deals on stuff.

More shopping news:

Gabrielle Mitchell, 28, from Rockville Centre, was out at the stores in Hicksville at 3:45 a.m. waiting for them to open. Almost four hours later, she said she had spent more than $1,600.

But did she need the stuff she spent money on? Does it make her happy? Does it make her happy even through the paying of the bills?

For me it's much nicer to stay home today and read the paper back and forth over breakfast with his nibs and let the glow of family Thanksgiving keep me warm on a grey day.

Dinner tonight with friends. Money will be spent not for durable goods but for transient pleasure.

And no one dies.

Labels: life, news, shopshopshop

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:04 AM|| |

This year, our financial markets have been tested in unprecedented ways. And though the global landscape has become increasingly complex, one thing has remained consistent: Citi's commitment to helping our clients and customers find solutions that will drive their financial success.

and the full-page ad in today's San Francisco Chronicle (Page A16) goes on.

hahaha hohoho.

c2008 Citigroup Inc. Member FDIC. Citibank and Citibank with Arc Design are registered service marks of Citigroup Inc. Citi never sleeps is a service mark of Citigroup Inc.

Citigroup's latest news

Citi dodges bullet
Government will guarantee losses on more than $300 billion in troubled assets and make a fresh $20 billion injection.

By David Ellis, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: November 24, 2008: 2:03 AM ET

Citigroup secured a massive government aid package over the weekend following a painful selloff last week in company stock.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. federal government on Sunday announced a massive rescue package for Citigroup - the latest move to steady the banking giant, whose shares have plunged in the past week.



Oh.

So how much does a full-page ad in the Chron cost?

Labels: financeconomics, news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:43 PM|| |

Showcasing Your Life Online? New Software Uses Images of Keys to Make Copies

So the lesson to be learned is not to empty your pockets and take pictures of "what's in my pockets" with your keys in clear view and then post the pics on your Facebook page or Web site or blog.

New Sneakey software can setup a keymaking machine to reproduce your key(s).

Labels: app, news, yikes

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:31 PM|| |

FYI.

"The Comcast Newsgroups service has been discontinued. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have already signed up for Comcast Newsgroups, please be aware that this service will be discontinued on 10/25/2008."

A list of links to Public news servers

And (for a price!) by-golly! Giganews (which had been providing Usenet services for Comcast) will provide service for you too!

Labels: news, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:54 AM|| |

 


Our Zeppelin has arrived!

More news

Labels: news, photographs, SanFranciscoBay

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:11 PM|| |

Map of Newspaper Endorsements for 2008 US Election

Blue/Red, depending on whether the Democrat or Republican candidate earned the endorsement.

Size of circle indicates circulation size. If the circle's perimeter is a darker shade, it means the newspaper endorsed the "other" party's candidate in 2004.

Interesting visual.

The blog post that accompanies the map.

Labels: election2008, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:19 PM|| |

A toast to the late crime writer Jim Crumley - Eddie Muller in today's Chron

Labels: books, mystery, news, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:14 PM|| |

Homer, Alaska - 348.2-pound halibut reels in derby jackpot

Jeff Pardi of San Rafael, CA, caught the fish in July and was declared the winner of the $45K prize when the derby closed on the last day of September, Tuesday.

Picture of fish in the article.

That's a big fish. I didn't know halibut got that big!

Labels: news

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:43 AM|| |

Amazing speech.

"No way. No how. No McCain."

"Keep going. ..."

Well done, Hillary.

Part I
Part II
Part III

Labels: election2008, news, people, politics, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:04 PM|| |

Fish Tale Has DNA Hook - Students Find Bad Labels - NYTimes.com

Two teenagers, recently graduated from high school, decided to check whether the fish in restaurants and at the fishmongers is really what it's labeled as.

Upshot? They found 25% of the fish with DNA they could identify had been mislabeled.

(The mislabeling usually meant the fish was identified by the seller as a more expensive fish than it really was. Shock.)

The teenagers shipped the fish off to someone at FISHBOL who did the DNA analysis using a newish technique that is simpler and cheaper than a full-bore analysis.

Bad enough that your wild-caught salmon might not be wild-caught. It might not even be salmon!

Labels: food, news, technology

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:25 PM|| |

Maybe the next time I have to look up chyron I'll remember what it means.

(Three's the charm.)

Labels: news, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:24 PM|| |

Brought to you on Hulu

[>>> Anna L. Conti's journal]

Labels: history, news, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:41 AM|| |

The Daily Show & The Colbert Report on Hulu

[Thank you, Laughing Squid]

Labels: news, politics, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:46 PM|| |

TimesMachine - New York Times

TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.

The Web is a wonder.

Update:Note: TimesMachine is available only to home delivery subscribers. Contact your library for complimentary access to the complete archive of The New York Times offered by ProQuest.

Dang. Sorry to get everyone's hopes (including mine) up.

Most public libraries in the United States offer access to ProQuest to registered library users (e.g. reference tools available at San Francisco Public) but not access to the PDFs. Drat. Dang.

Labels: history, news, resource

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:09 PM|| |

Spit and polish for a Seattle icon | KOMO-TV - Seattle

First deep cleaning of the Space Needle since 1962 opening.

Pictures!

Acrophobia, me? Eeeks!

[via Laughing Squid]

Labels: news, photographs

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:57 PM|| |

ABC News: Don't Tell Mama, Clinton-ites for Obama

Interesting. ...

Labels: news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:40 PM|| |

Golden Gate Fields Sees Russell Baze's 10,000th Racing Win [KCBS]

Years and years and years ago, I read horse race results at the back of the sports section in the San Jose Mercury News. Didn't take me long to discover that a bet on whatever horse Russell Baze was riding was a good bet to place.

Congrats to Baze, who won his first race in 1974 in Yakima, WA, on a horse trained by his father, Joe.

Labels: news, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:51 PM|| |

A Rebellion and an Awkward Embrace
By PEGGY NOONAN
February 1, 2008 / Wall Street Journal

In the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime, Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack Obama. If you had asked me in December if I would write that sentence in February, I would have said: Um, no.

Noonan's column continues ...

Labels: news, people, politics, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:00 PM|| |

I was trolling through political blogs and sites today for commentary on the political debates last night.

There in a comments tail, some someone posted an AP article that slammed Obama, followed by a paean to Clinton.

ASSOCIATED PRESS-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has lot of explaining to do.
He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive. He supported allowing retired police officers to carry concealed weapons, but opposed allowing people to use banned handguns to defend against intruders in their homes. And the list of sensitive topics goes on. With only a slim, two-year record in the U.S. Senate, Obama doesn't have many controversial congressional votes which political opponents can frame into attack ads. But his eight years as an Illinois state senator are sprinkled with potentially explosive land mines, such as his abortion and gun control votes. recent land purchase from a political supporter who is facing charges in an unrelated kickback scheme involving investment firms seeking state business. Abortion opponents see Obama's vote on medical care for aborted fetuses as a refusal to protect the helpless. Some have even accused him of supporting infanticide.

[End excerpt. No indication that the article wasn't quoted in full. ...]

I checked out the AP reference. The reference isn't a current reference but a reference to a Ryan Keith article from January 2007. This is how it reads:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may have a lot of explaining to do.

He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive. He supported allowing retired police officers to carry concealed weapons, but opposed allowing people to use banned handguns to defend against intruders in their homes. And the list of sensitive topics goes on.

With only a slim, two-year record in the U.S. Senate, Obama doesn't have many controversial congressional votes which political opponents can frame into attack ads. But his eight years as an Illinois state senator are sprinkled with potentially explosive land mines, such as his abortion and gun control votes.

Obama _ who filed papers this week creating an exploratory committee to seek the 2008 Democratic nomination _ may also find himself fielding questions about his actions outside public office, from his acknowledgment of cocaine use in his youth to a more recent land purchase from a political supporter who is facing charges in an unrelated kickback scheme involving investment firms seeking state business.

Obama was known in the Illinois Capitol as a consistently liberal senator who reflected the views of voters in his Chicago district. He helped reform the state death penalty system and create tax breaks for the poor while developing a reputation as someone who would work with critics to build consensus.

He had a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. [...]

Notice the slight changes? Notice where the AP quote in the comments tail stops?

Should you care? It's only dirty tricks.

If you pop / Obama "lot of explaining"/ into Google, you'll find a variety of people quoting the excerpted AP article in the comments tails at various news and blog sites.

Dirty tricks? We have

• Davey (Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun)
  
• obama flip flopper (CNN)
  
• Sherry Lansing (ed. sure)(Boston Globe)
  
• jonnie62 (politico.com)
  
• Cary (The Atlantic)
  
• dyck21005 (WashingtonPost)

and on ...

Come on Cary Sherry Lansing Davey dyck ... Clean up your act. Either Clinton approves of what you're doing (wouldn't be a surprise) or you're an overly ambitious volunteer.

Either way you're doing no favors.

Labels: news, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:16 PM|| |

Joyce Gemperlein's Chefs At Home for the Wall Street Journal (20 Oct 2007) focuses on David Kinch of Manresa (Los Gatos, CA) with Dishing Up the Fall Harvest. Recipes included.

Which reminds me, we haven't been to Manresa since we moved up here full-time. THREE YEARS. It's been three years. Used to be easier when we lived at least part time just a couple miles up the road, but now any Manresa dinner plans involve a fifty mile trek coming and going and it's a bit of an excursion.

... but we have a dinner chit that we were high bidder for at a charity auction earlier this year.

We need to make plans.

[from a link at Eater SF]

Labels: food, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:02 PM|| |

On the heels of the Daily Show opening its archives to the world FOR FREE!, comes word (1) via Sour Grapes' Google Reader cache and (2) via link from the article that Grapes' snagged of more archives coming online.

(1) The Economist will put the Economist Historical Archive 1843-2003 online for a free look initially and then on a subscription basis -- fees not given.

(2) As of Nov 3d the Guardian and Observer newspapers will be available in an online digital archive. Free for November. Fee-structure post-November not given.

The first phase of the Guardian News & Media archive, containing the Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and The Observer from 1900 to 1975, will launch on November 3.

It will contain exact replicas of the original newspapers, both as full pages and individual articles. and will be fully searchable and viewable at guardian.co.uk/archive.

Readers will be offered free 24-hour access during November, but after this trial period charging will be introduced.

The rest of the archive will launch early in 2008, making more than 1.2m pages of digitised news content available, with Observer content available from its launch as the world's first Sunday newspaper in 1791.

[continues ...]

Hope springs eternal that both archives will discover, as the NYT did, that fees are not the way to go, that revenue generated by selling advertising based on page hits from a shipload of people is more lucrative than charging a fee to a coracle full.

Labels: news, resource

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:59 PM|| |

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean by Justin Berton, SFChronicle.

[...]

At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

[...]

At the end of the article is a link to Save The Bay's Bay Trash Hot Spots. Click on a hot spot and get the details of dumped trash between Hunter's Point and Candlestick Point, Colma Creek's trash, trash in Coyote Creek in the south bay and more.

3.5 million tons of plastics and other debris floating out in the ocean between us and Hawaii! Yikes.

Do what you can to help, or at least don't make it worse. Minimize bag use and don't let the ones you have get loose and wind up in the wild.

His nibs and I are signed up for a SPUR tour of Norcal's transfer station out on Tunnel Ave next Tuesday AM. Should be interesting.

Labels: culture, environmentalism, news, San Francisco, urban

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:24 PM|| |

By golly they DID IT!

Watch Daily Show Video Clips Online

Comedy Central's putting all Daily Show videos online (paired with subtle and well-thought-out advertising, natch).

1999-Now. Seven thousand one hundred twenty-eight videos so far.

The national productivity index makes a whooshing sound as it plummets by.

Labels: news, people, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:44 PM|| |

NYC Woman Finds Python in Her Toilet

"And when she brushes her teeth, she said, 'I'm looking over my shoulder.'"

Update: WARNING. Mute your computer. The article opens on a page with a LOUD advertisement.

Labels: news, woowoo

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:32 PM|| |

NYC Bride Sues Florist Over Flower Color [AP]

The florist sez he told her he probably couldn't match exactly the color she wanted. He provided pastel pink and green hydrangeas when the bride wanted dark rust and green ones.

Ruined her day, it did.

Bride is an attorney and is suing for $400K in restitution and damages.

And get this: the original flower bill was for $27,435.14!

Yikes. I hope her dear husband knows what he's getting into.

[More complete NYTimes article]

[tons of comments at the SFChronicle]

Labels: legal, news, people, yikes

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:32 PM|| |

Porn Spammers Get Five Years.

Nice coupla guys.

Harsh sentencing of Kilbride is credited to his attempts to prevent a witness from testifying at the trial. Kilbride received six years in prison and Schaffer received a 5-1/4 year sentence. Each was fined $100,000 and had to forfeit $1.1 million of their porn spam profits. They also had to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL, which claimed 1.5 million of its customers complained about their spam.

Labels: culture, internet, legal, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:19 AM|| |

Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear

Labels: news, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:33 PM|| |

Fan mail.

Well, maybe not fan mail per se but at least someone agreeing with my LETTER TO THE EDITOR in today's Chronicle.

The letter was a rehash of a recent post wherein I gave my oh-so-lucid opinion re where Don Fisher should put his Contemporary Art Museum.

Fan mail's nice ...

Labels: art, museums, news, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:35 PM|| |

Missile found in Florida junk yard
Thursday, July 19, 2007

"If you left a surface-to-air missile lying around in a scrapyard in Florida, then some people would like a word with you.

"Authorities say that the Patriot missile was discovered lying in a scrap metal yard in Ybor City, Tampa, which is on the west coast of The State of Never-Ending Weirdness."

[...]

Missile found in Florida junk yard

Labels: news, woowoo

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:14 AM|| |

 




Sure, I know. The game isn't until Tuesday, but we already have the Goodyear blimp circling around between the ballpark (hidden behind the Embarcadero Center towers) and the pyramid. 

Labels: news, photographs, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:48 PM|| |

For Villaraigosa: Sex, lies and eyes that pry - commentary by Timothy Rutten in the LA Times.

Is this affair a newsworthy tidbit? Is it any business of ours? Is it the business of people who watch Salinas on Telemundo or who live in the city for which Villaraigosa is mayor?

Is it newsworthy only as relates to whether Salinas should've kept covering the news? Had she told her bosses about the relationship? Does it matter whether Salinas and Villaraigosa were "just friends" or lovers? If she told her bosses "just friends" and not "lovers," should that have affected the limits her bosses put on her reportage?

Oh, the questions, the reckless behavior, the conflict-of-interest.

Does it even matter except as a way of selling the news in an industry where the more news sold the better?

My favorite part of Rutten's commentary is his reprise of the late Abe Rosenthal's standard in such cases:

It doesn't matter if a reporter sleeps with elephants, so long as they don't cover the circus.

Labels: California, news, people, politics, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:55 PM|| |

100% contained.

254 homes destroyed. According to the Stanford update, all of the camp staff members with houses in the area came through with houses intact.

Cause of fire: illegal campfire in an area where campfires are never never ever allowed.

Labels: life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:26 PM|| |

On Your Feet by January W. Payne (yes, no kidding, payne) Washington Post Staff Writer. Subtitled: How do shoes affect your feet? Is there a good way to walk in heels? Want to know about Morton's neuroma? How about hammertoe and pump bumps?

A quick snippet from the middle:

One of trendiest shoes this season is YSL's platform "Tribute" -- with a tottering 5 1/2 -inch heel. Often painstakingly selected to complete outfits, shoes like these put stress not just on feet, but on ankles, knees and backs, contributing to the approximately $3.5 billion spent annually in the United States for women's foot surgeries, which cause them to lose 15 million work days yearly.

Ouch.

(mentioned in the comments tail of the previously mentioned aetiology post)

Labels: health, news, science

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:29 PM|| |

The things women do for beauty--or, beware the bikini wax

Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Iowa, creates a post with serious ewww factor.

Here's the background: A woman with untreated Type 1 diabetes (making her susceptible to infections) gets a bikini wax. ... She comes down with a fever, swelling and pain where the bikini wax works its magic, waited another week to find a doctor. ... and ...

She presented to the ER with not only "grossly swollen" external genitalia, and pain so extreme that she had to be put under general anesthetic just so her physician could perform a gynecologic exam. She was so swollen that, according to the legend to Figure 1 (which you can find online, as the article is freely available), "she was unable to pass urine, and the vaginal space was obliterated by edema."

Ouch.

The patient also had a rash over her chest and neck. From these clinical signs and the subsequent isolation of S. pyogenes from a urine culture and sample of the vaginal discharge, she was diagnosed with streptococcal cellulitis and toxic shock syndrome, and was also found to have an active herpes simplex virus type 1 infection.

[...]

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ....

[via pharyngula. Thanks for the intro to Dr. Smith and aetiology, a blog that discusses "causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena."]

Labels: health, news, science

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:58 PM|| |

Plazes

Interesting app especially now. Everyone's weirded out about "them" knowing where we are and what we're up to. Sure! Use Plazes! Tell the world!

"You have no privacy. Get over it." as Scott McNealy famously said a few years back.

Check out the TechCrunch article from earlier this month -- Plazes CEO Busted By His Own Product -- for a sample of what's in store.

Labels: app, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:30 PM|| |

The fire's jumped the fire break and is down at Emerald Bay Road. Propane tanks exploding. All hell and all that breaking loose. Fire folks are evacuating Tallac Village.

ABC News coverage
SF Chronicle coverage

Labels: damn, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:38 PM|| |

Paris Hilton's Prosecutor Under Scrutiny

"He was living in somewhat of a glass house," said Raphael Sonenshein, a political scientist at California State University, Fullerton.

Labels: California, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:44 PM|| |

From Craigslist via Curbed SF

Room for a Woman in a No Guests Place

... and please if you decide to rent this furnished bedroom from this piano teacher, don't come to me a month down the road, crying and twisting your hanky.

Labels: life, news, real estate

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:17 PM|| |

S.F. condo rules snarl FBI agent's plans
by Adam Martin, The Examiner

The buyer is suing everyone involved, it seems. Who do you think is at fault here?

• The brother of the deceased owner, who sold the place at market price when it was a restricted Below Market unit? [maybe he didn't know]


• The buyer (an attorney) for not checking the title report that showed the restriction? [maybe she lets her "people" deal with the details when it's not a court case]


• The real estate folks on both the seller and buyer side who didn't check into whether the unit was a Below Market unit? [anything to do with the commission being based on sale price?]


• The appraiser who didn't check whether there were Below Market restrictions and appraised it at market price?


• The butcher?


• The baker?


• The candlestick maker?

The comments tail is a doozie.

[via Curbed SF]

Labels: news, real estate, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:03 PM|| |

Back from our annual week at Camp, obviously.

Yesterday we were heading south to the annual Men's Club dinner and had KCBS on. They made mention of a fire in the South Lake Tahoe area. Uh. Oh. We'd just returned from that neck of the woods.

Seems the fire started up on Angora Ridge and the Angora Lakes Resort had been evacuated. Homes were ashes. The fire raged with no control in sight.

This noon, news isn't much better. 240+ structures burnt. 160+ of those someone's home. 2500 acres. Less than 10% contained. All from a fire reported less than a day ago, a fire probably caused by human activity as there was no trace of lightning or other natural cause before the fire began.

Camp Richardson, out on Emerald Bay Road in South Lake Tahoe, has been evacuated. I'm assuming that means Camp has been evacuated too. Those skinny, twisty roads that take people into and out of the lakes areas and the Desolation Wilderness would not be the best things to depend on if the fire is roaring down the mountainside toward you, especially if the people on the road include your family, another sixty or seventy families from Camp, all the people with family cabins and the people at the resort across the lake.

The El Dorado County Sheriff has a PDF up which gives the status of homes in the area. So far, the home of the only family we know on Tahoe Mountain has a status of "OK."

When we were at Camp, we learned that the fire crew stationed at the lake (including the Camp director and other Camp staff) had already been called out on fires four times this season and the season has just begun. "This doesn't bode well," we said. We all agreed that the area was a tinderbox and something had to be done to get the fire crackly vegetation crap out from under the trees and do some serious fire fuel/tinder abatement and not dawdle around with a bit here and a bit there and the ten year plan.

Hope our fire teams have the fire under control soon.

Four more months of high fire danger in the state.

x'd fingers.

Update: Map of burned area (so far) courtesy of sfgate.com. "Lily Lake" is mislabeled. Should be "Upper Echo Lake" and "Lower Echo Lake" (the larger one). Weird to think how different it all must be from the area I was hiking in just last week.

Update2: Web site says that Camp was evacuated yesterday afternoon. When staff is given the all clear to return, they'll pack up the belongings left behind in the cabins and ship them to campers who had to split in such a hurry.

The guy in charge and seven staphers are at Camp to do what they can to keep it from burning but have been told they MUST get on boats and get out to the center of the lake if the fire comes down onto camp grounds and their stretch of the lake shore.

Don't get heroic, guys. We all love the place, but ...

Updated news from the Chron

Labels: environmentalism, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:33 PM|| |

Symptoms Found for Early Check on Ovary Cancer - New York Times

By DENISE GRADY
Published: June 13, 2007

Cancer experts have identified a set of health problems that may be symptoms of ovarian cancer, and they are urging women who have the symptoms for more than a few weeks to see their doctors.

The new advice is the first official recognition that ovarian cancer, long believed to give no warning until it was far advanced, does cause symptoms at earlier stages in many women.

The symptoms to watch out for are bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly and feeling a frequent or urgent need to urinate. A woman who has any of those problems nearly every day for more than two or three weeks is advised to see a gynecologist, especially if the symptoms are new and quite different from her usual state of health.

[...]

Take note. Read the rest of the article too.

Labels: health, news, science

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:34 PM|| |

[Caution reading Goodman's column and blog. There may be spoilers lurking therein.]

Tim Goodman (SFC) says ARRIVEDERCI to the Sopranos.

(Speculation/discussion/news of the Sopranos finale was above the fold on page one of today's paper!)

I've never seen an entire Sopranos show, just a few bits, and I mean a few. One bit, maybe. We're too parsimonious, you see, to subscribe to HBO. We have plain vanilla cable (about $3/mo when added on to our broadband costs) and that only because I figured we might want to watch some breaking news some time. Oh, and watch the Today Show broadcast from Bhutan. (Thank you, Auntie K, for that heads-up!)

My lack of viewing experience and serious lack in the fandom department does not, however, stop me from joining in the frantic speculation about the most hyped show finale since Dallas went off the air.

I have my own theory how it will all end next Sunday.

As a nod to our European contingent, who are a ways behind in the episodes, I've put my theory here.

Read Tim's blog entry / synopsis of Ep. 20: "A glorified crew." Search for "towse" to retrieve my comment from the 298 (so far) comments re the end of the Sopranos ... if you care and don't mind my uninformed speculations.

Labels: culture, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:31 AM|| |

theage.com.au has a terrific article, Meaty Bites (by John Bailey) which begins thusly,

Masterfoods in Britain recently announced that Mars Bars would now contain animal product - specifically rennet, an extract pulled from the stomachs of calves. Sweet-toothed vegetarians the world over howled in protest and the company quickly restored the original recipe and issued a blatant apology for its error. But how many other foods contain sneaky meats and furtive fish?

Number one on Bailey's list is Nestle Strawberry NesQuik which gets that unearthly pink color from "colour (120)". That 120 is cochineal, also known as carmine, and is derived from the dried bodies of pregnant scale insects (the yummy sounding Dactylopius coccus costa).

Yum!

His article goes on from there naming most cheeses (rennet there too), anything with gelatin (check the yogurt label), Guinness (Guinness!) and other you-may-not-realize-they're-not-vegetarian foods.

Bailey also specifically mentions Lea&Perrins Worcestershire sauce, which contains anchovies and has since forever.

I actually knew this (as of last night) because I was making a cheese sauce for the cauliflower (white sauce, shredded cheese...) and added a bit of Worcester sauce for some added punch along with chopped grilled onions and fresh-ground pepper. I said to his nibs, "What's in Worcester sauce anyway?" and he read the ingredients off the label: vinegar, molasses, high fructose corn syrup (!!), anchovies, water, hydrolyzed soy and corn protein, onions, tamarind, salt, garlic, cloves, chili peppers, natural flavorings and shallots.

Anchovies? Who knew? Well now you do, I do, and anyone who read John Bailey's article does too.

Labels: food, life, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:57 AM|| |

Graying duo keep passenger in check - The Boston Globe

Hooray for graying geezers.

Hayden's wife of 42 years, Katie, who was also on the flight, was less impressed. Even as her husband struggled with the agitated passenger, she barely looked up from "The Richest Man in Babylon," the book she was reading.

"The woman sitting in front of us was very upset and asked me how I could just sit there reading," Katie Hayden said. "Bob's been shot at. He's been stabbed. He's taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody's neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn't know how the book would end."

Labels: news

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:57 AM|| |