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Index of my AIDS ride and Pallotta links
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Ron's Log Index
7/21/2003 · 8/ 6/2003
5/29/2003 · 7/18/2003
4/25/2003 · 5/28/2003
3/24/2003 · 4/24/2003
3/ 1/2003 · 3/21/2003
1/28/2003 · 2/28/2003
11/30/2002 · 1/23/2003
11/ 1/2002 · 11/29/2002
9/23/2002 · 10/30/2002
9/ 5/2002 · 9/20/2002
8/10/2002 · 9/ 4/2002
7/24/2002 · 8/ 9/2002
6/27/2002 · 7/23/2002
6/ 3/2002 · 6/25/2002
4/24/2002 · 5/31/2002
4/ 1/2002 · 4/23/2002
3/ 1/2002 · 3/31/2002
2/10/2002 · 2/28/2002
1/22/2002 · 2/ 9/2002
1/ 3/2002 · 1/16/2002
12/16/2001 · 1/ 2/2002
12/ 2/2001 · 12/15/2001
11/ 1/2001 · 11/29/2001
10/16/2001 · 10/31/2001
9/23/2001 · 10/13/2001
9/11/2001 · 9/22/2001
7/29/2001 · 9/10/2001
7/ 2/2001 · 7/28/2001
5/29/2001 · 6/30/2001
5/ 1/2001 · 5/21/2001
4/ 8/2001 · 4/29/2001
3/25/2001 · 4/ 7/2001
3/11/2001 · 3/24/2001
3/ 4/2001 · 3/10/2001
2/18/2001 · 3/ 3/2001
2/ 4/2001 · 2/17/2001
1/23/2001 · 2/ 2/2001
1/ 1/2001 · 1/22/2001
12/18/2000 · 12/31/2000
11/30/2000 · 12/ 7/2000
11/ 6/2000 · 11/28/2000
10/29/2000 · 11/ 5/2000
10/11/2000 · 10/19/2000
10/ 1/2000 · 10/ 9/2000
9/24/2000 · 9/30/2000
9/15/2000 · 9/22/2000
9/ 7/2000 · 9/13/2000
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This is my blogchalk:
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Brighton, English, Ron, Male, Photography, Nudity.
|
April 29, 2001
 Although it was a bit cool for it, I rode to the Milford quarries yesterday. It looked like there had been either a controlled burn or arson. The ground cover was completely blackened over a large area.
Up at the quarry it was comfortable enough to get some sun, using the rocks as shelter from the breeze. I was not the only person there.
On the way out there I saw, for the first time, a peace garden in Sherborn. A statue of Gandhi is at its focus. Around Gandhi are brick walls arranged as spokes. These walls bear plaques with peace prayers and quotes from famous figures. The peace prayers are from different religions, but there are no Christian or Moslem peace prayers there. The garden is adjacent to the "Peace Abbey" and the New England Center for Vegetariansim. The plaques say the site was dedicated in 1994, but I don't think it's been there that long. None of the bronze shows any sign of oxidation yet. I think I have never noticed it before because it's at the intersection in Sherborn where I have to watch traffic (there's only one such intersection in Sherborn).
Had a unique experience on the Green Line one morning this week. A moment after I got on a Lechmere car at Park Street a sound of excitement thrilled through the crowded passengers. There buzzing along just under the fluorescent lights was a fat bumblebee; one of those about the size of a small thumb. This I have never seen before. I was suddenly very aware of all the scents and bright colors people were wearing.
It buzzed along lazily, moving down the right side of the car going towards the back. It crossed over and went forward along the left side. The very crowded train gasped, ohed and giggled, but there were no outright screams. Someone tried to fan it out when it crossed in front of the open door, but that didn't work.
After the door closed, we got heros. One young man in a cheap suit thought that he could capture the bee in his empty coffee cup. He lunged around the car a few times, never realizing the bees aerial dexterity greatly exceeded his. He only succeeded in bumping people and chasing the bee into the faces of people who had been wisely standing by.
Eventually the bee drifted into the range of an ancient farmer or fisherman, gaptoothed, sparse white hair. He grabbed off his cap and began waving it at the bee (probably not a farmer, I guess), possibly not realizing that this would only anger the bee and chase it away to attack those people who knew better than to bat at a bee in a very closed-in place.
After we came out of the tunnels the bee settled somewhere near the left hand rear door where someone appeared to be violently attacking it as we filed out in the other direction when the train reached North Station.
Live cam of a falcon nest in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The freedoms we take for granted!
This week I found out that tandem bikes are illegal in Japan! This came up in a discussion on the Bike Friday mailing list. Many people wrote to say that they had a lot of experience riding tandems in Japan and that the law is never enforced. They theorized that the reason for the law is that the length of a tandem is considered excessive in crowded Japan. That would be fairly irrational, as I'm sure there are many motor vehicles with wheelbases longer than a tandem.
Restaurants in KC according to the Western Farm Show. There is one restaurant in south KC: Stroud's. The only barbeque [sic] restaurants in the whole city are Rosedale and Arthur Bryant. No food is served on the Plaza.
From the "Best of 1997" in the 1/6/1998 issue of PC Magazine:
Best notebook: IBM ThinkPad 770 with 5.1 gig HD, 14.1 inch display, 233 MHz Pentium, includes a DVD drive, all for $7700
Best desktop PC: Toshiba Infinia 7260 with 266 MHz Pentium II, 6.4 gig HD, 17 inch monitor for only $3400.
Best Search Engine: Yahoo! Google was nowhere to be seen.
It's a long way to Mars. When you've got your NASA mission out there sending back data, that's one hell of a long phone line. How to beef that up, make it faster, more reliable, more secure? Is the answer not obvious? Extend the internet to Mars!
"The basic IP stack for Earth's Internet was built for Ethernet-connected networks or computers. It is characterized by always being connected and having extremely low bit-error rates, having very reliable Ethernet or fiber-optic connections between computers, having small amounts of latency between nodes and dealing with network traffic congestion as opposed to bit-error rates. For our deep-space links, we're dealing with many issues that can cause the IP stack to break down, like a lot of latency, intermittent links and high bit-error rates because of very low signal strength. We can encounter latency approaching more than 30 minutes on the link from the orbiter back to Earth, for example. We borrow a lot of the concepts of Earth's Internet but come up with protocols that will work in this deep-space application."
While at the quarry yesterday I read an article in Science News about a study showing that a deficiency of boron can increase the chance of prostate cancer. Americans (here we go again!) are more deficient than Japanese or Europeans because Americans eat fewer nuts and fresh fruits. It seems it takes only about 1 mg of boron a day to eliminate the risk. So join my "Men Of Boron" fellowship and get your 1 mg per day by consuming any of the following:
- Two servings of non-citrus fruits (fresh)
- Two handfuls of nuts (can include peanuts)
- Two glasses of red wine
Autumn Monkshood?
The packages were mistakenly labeled with the statement, "All parts of this plant are tasty in soup," instead of indicating that the plant is poisonous.
The "Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill" bridge still under construction (yet more Big Dig). You can see the Bunker Hill monument (on Breed's Hill) exactly midway between the two bridge towers. I think the structure to the left of the left tower is the Catholic church that sits on top of the actual Bunker Hill. In the forground, lower right is the Tip O'Neill federal building. Mid-left is Spaulding Rehab Hospital
Whiners
A Canadian family has complained to Continental Airlines that they sat next to a critically ill passenger who frothed at the mouth and died during their flight...
I suppose I must link to the slug in the Rice Krispie bar story.
Babysmasher
The Miami Valley [of Ohio] Railway Authority. It may surprise you how extensive their subway system is!
"Soda" or "pop?" Growing up in Kansas City it was pop. Interesting graphic.
April 26, 2001
South End articles here, and here.
April 25, 2001
Ribbons
It has bothered me a little that the red AIDS Awareness ribbon has been copied so widely, apparently without acknowledgement. I hadn't realized how far it had gone until I ran across a couple of websites where they try to compile lists of every ribbon. One list is at www.gargaro.com/ribbons.html and the other is rampages.onramp.net/~arthur/ribbons/ribbon.htm. He organizes them by color and includes appropriate links. Many of the links have died. The page is hard to read because he includes pictures of the various ribbons. So here, to make it clearer and to show you some of the incredibly trivial and silly uses of the ribbon, is my version of the list. I've made no attempt to include links. You can go find those on your own, if you want.
But we should highlight a few important ribbons. First the The Polka Dot Ribbon Campaign for the proper use of language on the Internet where spelling counts!
Then of course the Blue Ribbon campaign for free speech on the internet.
The red ribbon for AIDS awareness.
And to complement that is altpenis.com.
Here's a very interesting thing going on in San Francisco.
April 24, 2001
I neglected to link directly to the Big Dig site back on 4/19. Consider it doubly corrected. And here's a Big Dig pic I really like.
Our weather has just been too incredibly fine lately for me to find much time for this log. Sunday I rode out to Concord, hitting all the patriotic & historic sites along the way. The Concord River is still in a bit of flood. The roads everywhere are a mess of terrible potholes.
Current Read: The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal. My copy is a 1965 Signet paperback that features these fine words on the cover:
"...the first American novel to represent openly and on a full-scale...the homosexual sub-culture in contemporary society." Book Week
"a brilliant exposé of subterranean life among New York and Hollywood expatriates from normal sex" The Atlantic Monthly
Ooooh! "expatriates from normal sex!" It makes me feel like I should take up gin drinking!
April 20, 2001
Yesterday the UPS man delivered the last final bits of the Air Glide: the trailer and the front rack. It looks like everything is there. Gotta set 'em up this weekend.
The Sigma computer, however, has continued to be a problem. Although it's all nicely mounted and I've been fussing with various positions for two weeks now, I still haven't been able to get it to register one single one-hundredth of a mile. I even took the receiver and held it directly on the sender while I spun the front wheel to verify it's not a line-of-sight problem. The magnet on spoke comes within less than 2 mm from the sender, an ideal distance. Then I took a refrigerator magnet and waved it next to the sender a few times while holding the receiver nearby. BAM! We suddenly have numbers! Not only that, but the little green lights blink every time the magnet went by. That's something I didn't expect. So I called the Sigma 888 number again and got the same nice lady. She walked me through a few steps to check it out. Had me hold a bit of steel up to the magnet, which IS magnetic. She said she had
never heard of a case where the magnet was too weak to work. I told her that at least one person on the Bike Friday mailing list had had exactly that problem and it was solved when Sigma replaced his magnet. He said excessive heat can weaken manufactured magnets.
April 19, 2001
Bought my first DVD: Lawrence of Arabia. Having read the book, I find I can't quite remember the movie. I've seen the 70 mm wide screen restoration at the Wang, so I don't want to hear any criticism about watching it on my little TV.
I haven't said much (if anything) about the Big Dig here, have I? I wonder why. I don't say much about the Green Line being crowded either, or that there are more potholes every spring. The Big Dig is just sorta one of those things. But it may also be that it actually works fairly well, at least from my pedestrian/cyclist/mass transit point of view. If I were a cab driver and had to relearn the downtown streets every day, I might find it irritating.
The Big Dig, there it is. When I see pictures I took of the Boston skyline a few years ago they look odd because there is no forest of cranes. Walking around you get to see lots of construction workers (a plus), and sometimes your sidewalk will have a vista to one side (sometimes both sides!) of a deep, dark chasm...a sort of baby Grand Canyon with lots of pipes in it.
When it's done they should name it for Ted Kennedy, since it's his baby. One thing (the only thing) I might like about Ted is that he is not ashamed of loving political power. Why NOT go for the most expensive project in the history of the U.S. government? I've seen several articles detailing just how monumentally expensive this project is, but I've not seen any where they adjust for inflation. I'm sure that in today's dollars the Boulder dam would have to be more expensive than the Big Dig. Maybe not.
In one article the Globe listed the 5 current biggest construction projects of the government. The second biggest project was the reconstruction of an interstate highway in Salt Lake City (I think). The total cost of that Salt Lake City project was LESS than the amount of the first announced cost overrun of the Big Dig. That's how big the Big Dig is. It started at $11 billion and I verified on my commute this morning, they're still working at it.
Yesterday they had a big pour somewhere. Eight cement trucks were lined up beside the Holocaust Memorial. Every minute or two one truck would drive away to dump his load and a new truck would arrive. Went on most of the day.
Interesting flash animation here.
Got a body problem?
Messiah cam! Watch the Mount of Olives! Really!
Another lovely insect photo.
April 17, 2001
I had planned on joining a group of cyclists riding out to Hopkinton (again!) yesterday before the Marathon. I thought this ride was organized by the OutRiders, but maybe not. Maybe it's organized by the YMCA. We were between 20 and 30 riders. We started at the Y, rode up to Copley Square and then began to follow the Marathon route backwards to Hopkinton. There was a lot of illegal riding, running red lights, hugging the right curb in right turn lanes, meandering around on the road, riding four abreast; all of which I found a little annoying, but I was trying to overlook it. It happens a lot at the beginning of any group ride when people are nervous and jockeying for position, although this was worse than most rides. Then we got out to Chestnut Hill where we make a left turn onto Comm Ave. You have to wait for the left turn arrow to do it. The entire group, except me, hugged the right curb, proceeded on a gre
en light (red left arrow) and then made a sudden left turn across two lanes of through traffic. This is all complicated by the fact that the intersection is laced with curving tracks for the Green Line. They had done it in front of a Boston cop and I half hoped he would nail them for it, but he was on his way to fetch donuts. I waited for the green left arrow, took it and caught up with the group and realized there wasn't a single damn one of 'em I wanted to ride with. That kind of dangerous riding could be explained if these were a bunch of newbies on an AIDS training ride. But I know some of those people have at least as much experience as I, and most of them must be used to urban riding, too. So I decided the safest thing was just to break off from them, go do my own little ride, and then head home.
The first rational explanation I've seen for why Netscape is so bad at conforming to HTML standards is here.
Fabulous 1960s interiors here.
Beautiful insect photo
The Oliphant cartoon that was accused of using racist stereotypes. It does.
Article about Alec Guinness being gay. One gets the impression we were supposed to be taken aback.
You know Tom Green who appears on MTV? If so, then you know what to expect from this.
Highway tacky in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois.
The story of one guy who is really fighting Spam.
Fighting with baseball bats in Des Moines?! Fighting over TV?!! What if I told you Bosnians were involved?
April 15, 2001
The new Provincetown nude beach.
Here's the information I've gotten so far.
First the AP Story:
Residents vote to establish a 'clothing optional' beach By Associated Press, 4/12/01
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- The residents of this town at the tip of Cape Cod have voted to establish a nude beach.
On the last night of a six-night annual meeting Monday, voters designated a "clothing optional" beach on the west end of the town-owned "Spaghetti Strip." The 25-foot wide strip runs through the Cape Cod National Seashore from Route 6 to the Atlantic Ocean, more than a mile from Race Point Beach.
The town's decision came one year after selectmen asked the National Seashore to restore a nude beach at its Herring Cove Beach, now informally clothing optional.
Park officials repeated their opposition due to what they said was past and potential damage to land vegetation.
Next, Dennis Kirkpatrick's summary of the significance of this (Mr. Kirkpatrick is a well-informed naturist):
For several years Provincetown Board Selectman, and former candidate for Secretary of State (Lib), David Atkinson, has been trying to get the Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS) to open a section of beach in Provincetown for nude use.
Several years ago the township issued a "warrant", a set of instructions, to explore this possibility with the CCNS. As you all know NAC and AANR have been working with David and also operating on a parallel course of action with their annual beach clean-up projects on outer Cape beaches to establish a good working relationship between then and the naturist usership.
The technicality is that when Provincetown and several other outer Cape townships became a part of the National Seashore project back in the 60s when the CCNS was formed, they ceded control of their shores to the CCNS. So while Provincetown desired a nude beach, the beaches are under CCNS jurisdiction.
To date CCNS has refused to designate such a location despite the township's wishes. Thankfully, talks with the town and the efforts of NAC and AANR have produced a relaxation of the CCNS anti-nudity ordinance in the last few years and traditional nude areas within the CCNS that are frequented by naturists have seen a reduction to near elimination of any nudity citations.
At face value, one might say "pull out of the seashore contract" but its not that simple. The contract also includes a host of issues regarding other lands, water rights, etc, and if P-Town pulled out they might be left high and dry in other areas where they need the support of the CCNS. Its a delicate balancing act and the issues go beyond just the establishment of a nude beach.
Additional details could take pages.
What happened on Monday night was that the Town Annual meeting in Provincetown designated a section of beach that is still under town jurisdiction, a right of way to the ocean that is NOT under CCNS control, to be a nude beach. They could not do this to their general beaches, but this one small slice which is outside of CCNS boundaries was designated. The hope is that it will show to the CCNS that a nude beach is manageable.
However, "Spagetti Beach" as it is called, is indeed the size of a strand of spagetti - about 100 ft by 40-50 ft. Its also not easily accessible.
The long term impact and how it will be used is yet to be seen.
The point however is that it appears to be the first "officially designated" nude beach in the USA, and specifically dsignated by a town government as such.
While Haulover Beach in FL is "legal" it has never been formally declared under statute or town meeting as such by local government. And I don't believe there are any west coast beaches that are officially designated by town government either. Many are like all skinny dipping spots where enforcement of law is lax to non-existant and in a few cases on private lands.
No other beaches in New England are formally designated as "nude" by a vote of a town or city either though there are many that are nude by tradition.
So this is a "first".
Its a first to be celebrated in that a town government, small as it is, was willing to take a bold step. What they will need now is a lot of help and cooperation by the public that tries to use it.
Finally, FROM THE PROVINCETOWN TOWN GOVERNMENT WEB SITE - ANNUAL MEETING MINUTES
Article 32. Designate Clothing Optional Beach. To see if the Town will vote to designate the west end of the Town-owned Spaghetti Strip as Provincetown's Clothing Optional Beach; or take any other action relative thereto.
[Requested by David Atkinson and others]
FINANCE COMMITTEE HAS NO RECOMMENDATION
BOARD OF SELECTMEN RECOMMENDS: 4-0-0
David Atkinson moved that the Town vote to designate the west end of the Town-owned Spaghetti Strip as Provincetown's Clothing Optional Beach. The Global Positioning System boundary coordinates on the beach bluff are: (401680, 4659475) and (401693, 4659472) for the mean high tide they are (401652, 4659541) and (4011665, 4659540).
Motion Carried.
Insert here one small victory dance for New England democracy...again!
From: yourDictionary.com Word of the Day
Dag (Noun)
Pronunciation: [dæg]
Definition 1: A clot of matted wool and excrement found on (or cut from) the hindquarters of a sheep (often plural: dags).
Usage 1: A term widely used in New Zealand, where it also occurs as a verb (to dag a sheep = to cut the dags from a sheep). There is a related adjective: daggy = with dags on its hindquarters or, by extension, "unkempt," "messy." Common in the expression, Rattle your dags! meaning "Hurry up, get a move on!"
Suggested Usage: "This essay is OK but it gets a bit daggy towards the end. You'll need to tidy it up if you want a good grade." "The rehearsals are going well, but the change of scene in Act II is still daggy—we're working on that.'
Etymology: Middle English dagge, 14th century: 1. a hanging end or shred, 2. matted or manure-coated wool
—Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, University of Canterbury
Fanfaronade (Noun)
Pronunciation: [fæn-fæ-rê-'neyd]
Definition 1: Verbal fanfare: boasting or blustering boisterously.
Usage 1: A person given to fanfaronades is a "fanfaron."
Suggested Usage: "Emile is quite an amiable fellow but a fanfaron par excellence." The great advantage of fanfaron over "blusterer, boaster," or "braggart" is its connotative association with "fanfare." "He introduced his daughter with a fanfaronade that embarrassed her so much she interrupted him."
Etymology: French fanfaronnade, from Spanish fanfarronada "bluster" from fanfarrón "braggart." Spanish may have borrowed it from the Arabic farfar "talkative" from farfara "to become agitated or talkative." (Chlyde Russano put us on the trail of "fanfaronade," a far more fetching word than "boasting" or "bragging.")
—Dr. Language, yourDictionary.com
Rode the Air Glide along most of the Marathon route to Hopkinton and back. Beautiful weather. Saw a few other cyclists out there. Usually on this day you can see piles of supplies for the Marathon stacked along the roadside. This year, however, they seem to be using these portable instant self-storage boxes. Much more secure, I imagine.
Hopkinton center was really congested with four helicopters hovering overhead. I watched for awhile, hoping for a midair collision, but no such luck.
Here is a really interesting thing going on. A thousand journals wandering the world. Follow along on the web as well as possible.
Amusing fictional museums here and here.
Great interview with William Shatner in the Washington Post.
Map of the Tokyo subway system makes London look easy.
Beer in Texas does not enjoy the fabulous benefits of free market capitalism. Check this to see how the Texas plutocracy in Austin suppresses the beverage of the people!
An attempt at a disgusting punishment by a public school teacher.
April 13, 2001
Really good article on customer service here.
Spotted this on MetaFilter: "i'm trying to patent the process of suing someone for copyright infringment, but its slow going."
Want to host an orgy?
Really nice photos of a lower colon including a Gala apple sticker that passed through the whole digestive system virtually unscathed and then got stuck right here.
Mastercard attorneys get their comeuppance here.
Again, a lack of respect for the pResident is shown here. Also none shown here.
And THIS is very funny. It's on the site of a Christian radio station, so who knows how long before they get the joke.
April 12, 2001
I got a letter from one of my nieces telling me she's doing the Avon Breast Cancer walk in Seattle this summer. It's another of the Dan Pallotta things. When I went to check out the website I found that they have made at least one improvement. Now you can make on-line contributions. If you'd like to make a contribution for my niece (she has to raise $1900) go here and then find walker #3922 in the Seattle walk. Her name is Erica. Sorry I can't give you a more direct link than that. That's just how it works.
One thing I found odd while poking around at the website is that it's not called the Avon Breast Cancer WALK. No, it's the Avon Breast Cancer 3-DAY. 3-Day what, they don't say. I suppose this gives them the flexibility in the future to turn it in
to a 3-day skate, or bike ride, or sleep-in, or whatever!
April 11, 2001
I came home today to find my new yellow Carlton case waiting for me, a few days earlier than I had expected it. My nice neighbor lady asked (she thought jokingly) "Is it another bike? Oh, of course not, you couldn't fit a bike in that!" Anyway, the yellow is a rich, eggy yellow. Love it.
Vince at Valley Cycles also sent along several pictures of Princess Diana's mother-in-law. Click on the picture below to get a better view.
April 10, 2001
An update of Opera came out today (Norway time). This is version 5.1 of Opera. For those of you who have not been following along, Opera is a web browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator/Communicator (whatever). Except Opera is a smaller download, takes up less disk space, less memory, and has a much, much better user interface. You can get it free, or pay for a version without ads. I use both the free and the paid-up version and am happy with both of them. Opera co-exists on the same machine with Netscape and IE and causes no problems, so you can test it without losing the browser you're used to. Opera is at www.Opera.com
It introduces some nifty new mouse abilities, or "mouse gestures" as they call them. These are so nice, they rate right up there with the Dvorak keyboard, I think.
| Here are movements that are performed while holding down the right mouse button, assuming you use a right-handed mouse. |
| Down while over a link | Opens the link in a new window |
| Down while not over a link | Opens a blank new window |
| Down, then up while over a link | Opens the link in a background window |
| Down, then up while not over a link | Duplicates the window |
| Up and down | Reloads/Refreshes the window |
| Down, then left | Minimizes the window |
| Down, then right | Closes the window |
| Right, left, right | Also closes the window |
| Up, then right | Maximizes or restores the window |
| Left | Go back to previous document in history |
| Right | Go forward to next document in history |
| Here are mouse features using both left and right buttons. Again, these assume a right-handed mouse. |
| Hold right button, click left | Go back to previous document in history |
| Hold left button, click right | Go forward to next document in history |
| Double click left button in a blank window | Opens home page |
| Mousewheel functions, assuming right-handed mouse. |
| Hold the right button and roll the wheel | Next or previous window |
| Hold CTRL and roll the wheel | Zoom in or out. Okay, this one they copied from IE, but on IE it only changes the size of the font and you've only got, what, 5 sizes to choose from. In Opera you zoom in or out by 10% per click. You can go from 100% down to 10% or up to 1000%. In addition, Opera zooms the graphics. |
| Hold SHIFT and roll the wheel | Back or forward in the document history |
| Click the wheel, move the mouse | Pans |
As for Mac users who have one-button mouses (is that still true?), I am reminded of the tribe of people listed in Guinness as having the smallest number system on earth. They can count to three, but any number higher three is expressed with a look of puzzlement.
It was recently brought to my attention that I never mention South Carolina. This may be true, but (I must point out) I have also failed to discuss my appendix, which is at least in New England. Nonetheless, here is the website dealing with the recovery of the sunken Confederate sub somewhere in, near, or under South Carolina.
Something new for you to worry about: a worm in your brain.
Enjoy salad bars?
I'm ready to believe that THIS could be Ginger!
I'll bet they get this service in New York long before we get it here in Boston.
Server 54, Where Are You?
(04/09/01, 4:28 p.m. ET)
TechWeb News
The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time. Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell Inc. (stock: NOVL), IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.
April 9, 2001
The first day of real springlike weather. It didn't reach 60, but with clear skies and no wind it was fabulous. I biked to work. On the return trip home it seemed half the young guys on the Esplanade were shirtless.
What happens to Peeps when cold science takes over?
The [Canadian] National Masturbate-a-thon! Coming on May 20.
April 8, 2001
Gary writes that he rode his Bianchi up Mt. Diablo.
For other things to do around the Bay Area, here is Bare 2 Breakers, i.e. the nude runners in the Bay To Breakers race.
From today's N.Y. Times
April 8, 2001
Broken Path Along Hudson Is Connected for Bicyclists
By BARBARA STEWART
The idea of bicycling along the Hudson River in Manhattan has always been alluring. But until now, the ride has generally proved to be frustrating.
A cyclist who started just north of Battery Park could ride several miles but then had to dismount and steer into Riverside Drive for three- quarters of a mile. From there on, a pattern emerged: Ride, dismount, detour. Ride, dismount, detour.
But on Tuesday, a final piece of the Hudson River greenway will open, including a temporary path for cyclists and pedestrians between 59th and 72nd Streets, which had been the main disruption in the route.
"This is by far the biggest car-free bicycle and pedestrian path New York has ever seen," said John Kaehny, director of Transportation Alternatives, a cycling advocacy organization. "It connects the densest residential section on the Upper West Side with the densest business and entertainment district in Midtown."
Some of the bike route between Battery Park and the Little Red Lighthouse just beneath the George Washington Bridge has been cobbled together and includes parts of the esplanade in Riverside Park. Still, on a day without dense crowds, it is possible to ride the entire length — 11 1/2 miles — without dismounting.
The city said it planned to replace temporarily paved parts of the route with a permanent, wider greenway by the river and extend the path an additional two and a half miles through the Bronx to the Yonkers border.
"People have been expressing hope for this route for years," said the parks commissioner, Henry J. Stern.
"No one agency owns the waterfront," he said, "so it's taken the City Planning Commission, the City Economic Development Corporation, the State Department of Transportation and the State Department of Environmental Conservation to get it done."
Eventually, he said, the city hopes to persuade upstate counties to extend the greenway to Troy, more than 150 miles north of the city.
Mr. Kaehny said that as many as 800 bicyclists had been using the Hudson River greenway on spring and fall weekends. The opening of the inaccessible section, he said, "will itself substantially increase the total level of cycling in New York City."
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