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Move to Iceland. (For those of you who have been away from the media for awhile, this is the site being parodied.)
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New linking policy at NPR.
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25 cheap thrills from around the world.
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:: Beck's Motor Lodge, Market Street, San Francisco. (266 kb)
:: Uhr A. Bigay? …and his lovely wife, Ima Bigay.
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How government farm subsidies bring a wonderful, glowing life to us all. Iowans can skip over this.
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A bus by any other name…
Take a standard diesel-powered city bus in traffic and replace it with a new silver-colored bus using CNG in a diesel engine and run it through traffic and call it the "Silver Line." Does that give you rapid transit? Hardly.
I hadn't been on Washington Street in the former Combat Zone for a couple of months, and there's been lots of construction in that area, so I walked down there today to see the "BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) lane." It could be done by eliminating parking from Kneeland Street all the way to Temple. But it was no surprise to me to see that there is NO BRT where it is needed most. The bus — excuse me — Silver Line crept along, jammed in by double-parkers, and illegal turners, as every other vehicle on the streets is here. I would suggest that if you are coming inbound on the Silver Line, you would do better to jump off at Kneeland and start walking. The Silver Line vehicles, despite their way cool GPS tracking system still suffered the problem of "wolf packs," as I call it. That is, you wait half an hour and then 3 or 4 vehicles come together in a pack, as though the drivers are afraid to travel alone.
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Bush's feelings about his asshole discussed here. Libertarianism is not the issue.
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And here we tie it all together: Apple, assholes, free speech. Helps if you have broadband and a sense of humor.
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Stage 12
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The bike/pedestrian lane of the Queensboro bridge used to be the trolley lane until 1959!
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From Bovine Inversus:
Zen and the art of swallowing urine
Dzogchu was once seen by a disciple swallowing urine from a silver cup. Turning away in disgust, the disciple crept off to a local bar to drown his thoughts in spirits, thereby to exorcise the image of his master committing such an unwholesome act. The disciple ordered a silver cup full of hot steaming urine and immediately drank half of its contents. Dzogchu came into the bar and saw his disciple, whom he approached and said, "I see you are drinking urine from a silver cup." The disciple immediately attained enlightenment.
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I think I have neglected to mention this little product before now: Anti-alcohol Antioxidants from the Life Extension Foundation. It's the only reliable hangover preventative I've found (other than not drinking alcohol, of course). One capsule contains
- Vitamin C 500 mg
- Vitamin E 16.6 IU
- Thiamine (B1) 166 mg
- Selenium 4 mcg
- Cysteine 166 mg
- Glutathione 8.3 mg
The general plan is when you go out for a night of drinking, take one of the capsules with water for every alcoholic drink you have, up to a max of 6 capsules. (I recommend a FULL glass of water). You can keep drinking beyond 6 drinks, I guess, but I've never taken more than 6 capsules. If you don't want to be seen popping anonymous white capsules while you're out in public, you can wait and take all 6 with water in the privacy of your home before you hit the sack. I'm sure the water helps. I've used these for a few years and they work amazingly well. You'll still wake up tired the next morning because you don't get good, natural sleep when you're all boozed up, but the most painful aspects of the hangover never happen.
"Cysteine is a conditionally essential amino acid [that] can act as an antioxidant." "Cysteine directly counteracts the poisonous effects of acetaldehyde." "Acetaldehyde, the product of ethanol oxidation, is highly chemically reactive, toxic and immunogenic." Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant.
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The officer's report on that troublesome arrest in Inglewood on July 6. On page 5 you'll find the paragraph that I believe is intended to describe the moment when the officer slammed the subject's face into the fender of the car.
During the altercation, the subject pulled, scratched, and fought with the victims requiring Inglewood police personal to strike the subject with personal weapons on his facial area (for further details see officer J. Morse incident report under file #02-1870122).
The fender becomes a "personal weapon" and shoving the man's face into the fender is translated into striking the subject. Language. So tricky. Nouns, verbs. Always trying to identify things. It's tough.
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True Porn Clerk Stories. Fascinating stuff.
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Turn yer favorite English into "Geordie" heor.
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The winners of the 2002 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
The overall winner is Ms. Rephah Berg of lovely Oakland, California, who writes:
On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
Or, how about this winner in the Detective division from Matthew Chambers of Hambleton, West Virginia:
Chief Inspector Blancharde knew that this murder would be easy to solve-despite the fact that the clever killer had apparently dismembered his victim, run the corpse through a chipper-shredder with some Columbian beans to throw off the police dogs, and had run the mix through the industrial-sized coffee maker in the diner owned by Joseph Tilby (the apparent murder victim)--if only he could figure out who would want a hot cup of Joe.
Many, many more. You may also marvel at the submitters' willingness to have their phone numbers, e-mail addresses and hometowns listed along with their full names on a popular website. Well, I'm sure their credit used to be good.
My favorite, by Ian Monteith of Regina, Saskatchewan:
"Uncle Albert!" shrieked the chubby-faced cherub of a niece who dashed excitedly through the parlor, leaping toward the arms of her favorite relative, until stopped abruptly by the sliding glass door she had failed to notice, leaving her for a moment curiously suspended in space like a happy, golden-curled pancake with special anti-gravity powers, before slipping slowly to the floor.
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Real electric cars like this will become available in Japan later this year. Starting at US$10,840, they will have a range of just 50 miles on one charge.
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Want to spill it to the world, but don't want to go to the trouble of creating HTML or registering with some blogger software? And don't want to pay? Go here: my-journal.com. Set it up fast. Write. We wait to hear from you.
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The research hasn't been confirmed yet, but I'm ready to believe this one: consumption of 3 cups of coffee a day (an average of 200 mg of caffeine per day) may reduce one's risk of Alzheimer's! Time for another health break! Beer, wine, meat, nuts, marijuana and now coffee. I'm waiting for buttered popcorn and french fries with gravy to show up on that list.
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samizdata.net
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed libertarian globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of English spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of libertarians, extropians, futurists, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cyberpunks, cypherpunks and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from North America, British Isles, Australia and Europe.
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Blog of the day.
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…under God…
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First off, the wedding went great and Erica and Michael are really married. (Big Other Shoe Finally Drops). Fabulous spot atop a mountain overlooking Calistoga. Bit hairy of a climb on a bike, but not so bad in a Honda with Bill Z. at the wheel. Everything went quite nicely. The "kids" (they may already have their first gray hairs) wrote the whole ceremony and it was blessedly free of god or Jesus or any other divine, semi-divine or merely meddlesome fiction. Warmed the dark corners of my damned heart. Afterwards, the party moved along quickly. The wine was good. The food was very good. Even the DJ was remarkably good. The service staff was servile and efficient. Nobody got in a fight. I never heard any kids crying. Nobody fell in the decorative pool. Old people danced like kids, and kids danced like old people.
I'm only sorry to say the bride couldn't recall what that fabric was that her dress was made from. Whatever, it felt like it ought to wear well for several generations.
The reception, dinner and party ended at 10, but the clock hadn't even reached 11 when the bride still in her full whites rushed into the Hydro Grill in downtown Calistoga. The new husband followed along with his pals, and everybody set a frenzied pace to see what kind of a hangover they could brag about the next day. A few of us old people stayed to see midnight and then walked in the lovely dark quiet back to our room.
And while we're on that subject, I feel obligated to mention that room 20 at the Christopher Inn has an exceedingly large bathroom with what the nice hostess called a "double-wide shower." We pictured a shower big enough for one of those very generously sized women, but really it's a long shower stall. Like, what, 10 feet? The length of the bathroom, anyway, and there's a shower head at one end and one clear at the other. It'd be great room for a tennis team. They could both shower at once without bumping each other. But it is my suspicion that the bathroom is designed to accommodate those who desire high colonics. I'm no expert on this. In fact, I admit shamefacedly, I've never done it. I'm just guessing. It was the HUGE supply of Kirtland toilet paper (Costco is just plain ubiquitous out there) in the bathroom that sent me thinking along these lines…and it is Calistoga, you know.
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Bawls: I found some in San Francisco and felt compelled to sample it, so that I could report to the faithful readers (including whiners and nitpickers) of Ron's Log. Bawls comes in lovely blue bottles that are shaped and sized to fit the male grip perfectly. Additionally, the grip area is covered with an array of raised dots to enhance your tactile sensations. The stuff is carbonated and sweetened, but not as sweet as Red Bull or standard American soda pop. But what you want to know is whether it gives a real buzz, right? In the buzz department it's okay. On an unstressful day, after a disco-nap, I downed the contents of a bottle. Mild lift. After a couple of hours without cardiac arrest, epileptic seizure, hallucinations or soaring fever I tossed off another. The whole effect was about the same as a couple of cups of average coffee, but without the jittery feel — not that a caffeine-addict such as myself would feel jitters after 2 average cups. Bawls also leaves one free of coffee-breath and probably won't upset the tummy as much as coffee. More socially acceptable than Vivarin.
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On account of my fabulously powerful connections and the extremely high intellectual status of my readers, I was able to finagle for myself a genuine physical visit to the mountain top, to the shrine which causes so much abstracted worry and joy among bloggers around the world. Yes indeed, I (carrying Ron's Log discreetly in my head) walked right into Google.com HQ in Mountain View, California, and got myself a personal one-on-one tour of the place (plus free lunch) with one of their system engineers, Frank Jernigan.
Many of you should remember Frank, as he used to be a Bostonian, [Franks says "Hi to Jeff!"] before the siren song of dot com drew him to the Bay Area. One of the places he worked was Epinions, which I hasten to point out, has NOT folded! But before all that, he was a volunteer massage therapist on the first and second Boston-New York AIDS Rides. A few of us knew he was not certified, but who's gonna tattle? We woulda done the same thing, if we coulda pulled it off.
So there I was at the Eagle beer bust, which I highly recommend, btw. What a capital-D Diverse crowd it was. Even included women! Looking around thinking I had to know someone there, I spotted Frank. Ran up to chat with him and found out about his employment at Google, which brought forth a rush of girlish flirtatiousness from me until he caved in and invited me to lunch with him at work.
And a very good lunch it was, too! But before I got that far I signed a non-disclosure agreement. This little NDA is dear to my heart because it's the first one I've signed. Let me tell you, Google's legal team is making sure Google gets its money's worth out of them. There are enough paragraphs in that NDA to make me think I can't tell you where they get their lunchroom tables. So I'll only tell you what I think I can, and then I'll load in a bunch of lies to flesh it out, okay?
First, lunch was damn fine! And free! I had the tuna, by which I do not mean a scoop of tuna salad on a factory-made tomato slice. I mean a big honkin' chunk o' tuna done just right. There was also a veggie option and loads of vegetables. The sugar peas were perfect! The chef used to be the head chef for the Grateful Dead. There were no brownies for dessert the day I visited. No "zucchini bread" either. It was all help-yourself. I saw one very young, very tall, very slender man take enough tuna to get an Eskimo family through the winter — a mild winter. I don't want to exaggerate.
Wayne Rosing, Vice President, Engineering |
Frank and I sat outside at an umbrella table where we were joined by Wayne. Since we were outside and visible to spycams and aircraft I guess it's okay to tell you that Wayne sits while eating (as does Frank) and that he had a salad he made at the salad bar. You know how most of us work at a salad bar, sort of just stacking and smooshing the ingredients, knowing it will end up combined soon. Not Wayne. His salad clearly displayed forethought and integrated design. It was lovely to behold, and new visual delights were continuously revealed as he ate it down. That's part of being VP of Engineering, I guess.
After lunch on my tour of the place I saw people and things. The people were all universally friendly, polite and respectful. They were also, of course, extremely young. Frank seems to be the old man of the house, celebrating his 57th birthday on the very day of my visit. Even so, no one called him "Pops" or offered him their seat.
One thing they're all very excited about is that Google will be providing both the searches and the search-related ads for AOL. I am just a bit saddened that they weren't equally excited to have recently cut the same deal with AT&T Worldnet. I still have most of my AIDS ride related websites hosted on AT&T Worldnet.
I saw Frank's work space. I saw a break room. I saw a couple of meeting rooms. I walked past a number of cubicles, and peered into some number of offices. There were whiteboards and computers and family pictures and exercise thingies. I met a nice lady who gave me a Google polo shirt, just like this one, which I have created by reversing the image of the black one on their website. Most important, I met the guy who is in charge of making sure that when someone searches for "intercourse with sows" (Yes, I still get that!) they will be sent to my page where they will meet with disappointment. I asked him to put a stop to that, and he said he'd be happy to set that right. It's just that easy, I tell you!
We watched a screen that displayed a selection of search requests as they poured in from around the globe. The only interesting one I saw flow by was "bronx trolley."
Here are some photos around the campus which I link to, since I wasn't allowed to use my camera once I got past the lobby. Everything in those photos is just as I saw it, except the street hockey. It was nearly 90 degrees that day, so the hockey team was laying off. More pictures here.
I tried to get a shot of the scrolling search strings in the lobby, but I didn't have my tripod, and you see how badly it came out. Click the picture and you'll see a clear picture I copied from the Google website. |
I visited a Google men's room, and I think it's okay to tell you about it because it's out in the lobby, and so is potentially accessible to the public. I was a bit disappointed that the theme of Google primary colors didn't carry over into the restroom, which looked like any institutional bathroom. It surprised me that they have exactly the same chronically malfunctioning paper towel dispensers as are used in my workplace. Two differences: (1) they have attached a sign saying "Pull Don't Rip" which should fix the worst of it, and (2) they use a cheaper grade of towel than we do! The mind boggles — or googles or something.
They're hiring at Google. But don't go looking for a position that requires a somewhat lazy, sarcastic blogger to hang around the Mountain View office and write a gossipy, trivial blog about culture within Google, because that job's mine, damn you! Just as soon as it becomes available.
I want to point out to anyone who needs one (but especially to Gary) that you can buy lava lamps from Google, for not a whole lot more than other mail order places without the repute. Google lava lamps are available only in blue, and they bear the Google logo, of course.
Anybody who wants to know more about my Google visit just let me know. Maybe we can negotiate a little time for quiet pillow talk. No attorneys need inquire, okay? And if you're a corporate spy, you've still got to meet my usual standards for pillow talk.
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The state of mass transit in the Bay Area: BART has apparently sub-contracted their system of informational announcements to the MBTA. I entered at 16th and Mission to head to the east bay. I was on the platform between two stairways reading the iconographic route map to see which train I needed. Suddenly a train whooshes in and I realize that there is nothing on the SIDE of the train to identify its destination. Because of my position between two stairways I couldn't see any of the electronic announcement signs in the station (and I had forgotten their existence in the 5 years since I last rode BART). There was no announcement as the train came in, but I had been on the platform for less than a minute. The only place the train itself is identified is on the front of the lead car, where you have to look sharp to catch the relatively small sign, sometimes obscured by dirt. Even on Washington's Metro, the front-end marker is color coded and easier to see. But why don't the trains include a side-facing sign on each car? Passengers see the front end for only a few seconds, but are at leisure to inspect the length of the side of the train for whole minutes.
Anyway, I jump on the train figuring I had a 66% or 75% chance of being right. Announcements at every stop were low volume, garbled, and frequently cut short as the operator got too tired to continue holding down the mic button while she droned. Finally, at the Embarcadero station I made the bold move to ask the passenger in the next seat. It was like I was speaking another language. I don't know if he had some odd learning disability or if he just resented my intrusion into his space-staring ride. He claimed to know nothing whatsoever about the route of this train or of any trains, although I caught him stealing a glance at the system map. Fortunately, another passenger, a sort of old western cuss who looked like he was on the way to homelessness, knew the destination and could tell me I was on the wrong one. He was a bit shaky in advising me how to change, but that much I could handle on my own, and I eventually arrived at my stop without further trauma.
While waiting on the platform to make my return trip I learned that the electronic signs now speak! A list of approaching trains is displayed while a heavily computerized faux-feminine voice reads it off. Great for blind people, but frequently she chokes off the last syllable of numbers greater than 10. "14" is pronounced as "for." And both times that the list was displayed in my station, she got too tired to read it all the way to the bottom.
On-board announcements on the return trip were the same: completely unintelligible. The most noticeable difference from Boston MBTA announcements, is that the BART voices had very little accent. The few words I did catch were nearly flat, midwestern American English. This just made it all the more frustrating.
Announcements on board Muni were probably bad too, but I didn't notice so much, since a mistake there is not so disastrous as on BART. Go the wrong way on Muni and you can just walk to where you're going, maybe losing 10 minutes. But what I did notice on Muni (besides the fact that they have new cars — nobody told me about that!) is that people stand stupidly and unnecessarily in the doorways, just like they do on the Green Line. The first person I saw do this was a young very sexy looking guy wearing an OS X t-shirt. Beauty is only skin deep, eh?
The F line is easy enough to fake. I mean, how could you miss it? But I was really surprised to see an N Judah train over at the Caltrain station. Finally, some good system integration, I thought. But then I realized Pac-Bell park was but a block away, and THAT was probably used to justify extending the Muni line, while a hundred years of RR commuters didn't. Bitterness aside, the extension of N Judah runs just super! and we know we'll never see anything like it in Boston. Compare the Silver Line (which could have been an extension of the Green Line) with N Judah to Caltrain.
But my point there was to say that I think it's time to replace my 1988 Muni system map.
On the BART system map I saw light rail connections in cities where I had never heard of light rail. Next time I'm out there, if I have absolutely nothing to do, I'll go give it a look.
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In my pursuit of "misery and squalor" I came up short. Maybe a helpful reader will provide me with a map of where to search. There were lots of homeless people around, maybe double what I've seen there before. Only one panhandled me very assertively, and he dropped it when I got very assertive back at him. One night I was walking with a few cans of Bud that I didn't want anymore in a clear plastic bag. I had decided I would hand them to the first homeless person who asked me for anything. Walked by dozens, including the line outside the toilet in front of the Safeway. Not a one ever said boo to me, so after a few miles of this I got tired of carrying them and just left them sitting atop a short wall along the sidewalk. One day I walked around in the neighborhood where other bloggers have complained that their expensive sunglasses were stolen right from their very heads. While doing this I was pretty careless about who saw my $400 digital camera. I got no reaction. Late one night I went out with the Minolta to take nightshots. I turned it on and left it on (so I wouldn't have to remember to switch off the flash for every shot). I walked past several groups of homeless and a few other people walking the streets. The camera was always out, always on and highly visible. I stopped and took pictures several times. The reaction? Nothing.
In addition I saw street sweepers every day. Locals did confirm the tales of public urination and defecation (not that I ever doubted), but I didn't happen to see any.
Conclusion: San Francisco still exceedingly beautiful and pleasant. Sorry, I know a lot of you don't want to hear that.
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From boingboing:
This is the kind of thing that drives me completely nuts about San Francisco. There is visible corruption, felony crimes, and human degradation everywhere, far more so than any other city I've been to in North America or Europe (excluding Naples). There are people squatting and taking dumps, there are streets whose sidewalks are lined with tents and whose gutters are lined with sealed, fermenting 40 oz. malt liquor bottles filled with urine deposited by tent-dwellers who don't want to live in their own piss. Everywhere you go in the city, you step through drifts of discarded pipes, needles, condoms.
I have just got to pay a lot more attention during my upcoming trip to the Bay area. Must seek out misery and squalor. Somehow it escaped me on my last brief visit.
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Boston Water and Sewer have been digging up the streets around here for the last several days. In the process the crew write little love notes to each other on the pavement. In this photo some sweet guy has asked Jimmy to eat him. Lucky Jimmy! I didn't stay around to see how it turned out.
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Every name on the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial can now be viewed via the web using QuickTime.
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Chile Pepper magazine says Ortega's Mini Market in Kansas City is the 10th best Mexican restaurant in the U.S. I can't say. Never ate there.
They also pick Arthur Bryant's as the BEST barbecue restaurant in the U.S.:
This is the place peripatetic author Calvin Trillin made famous back in the 1970s as the kind of eatery that makes Kansas City a great restaurant town. That might be hyperbole, but Bryant's certainly got the goods when it comes to wonderful 'cue. Mr. Bryant is long gone and some say it ain't what it used to be, but most open-minded noshers will find the ribs and sliced pork on white bread, with fries, as delicious as any on the face of this good, green land.
1727 Brooklyn Ave., Kansas City, MO;
816-231-1123
Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue in Martin City, Missouri (just south of KC), came in 10th place in barbecue.
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Spotted this today.
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Spotted this yesterday near South Station. Somebody moving to Iowa.
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Bawls: anyone have experience with this? Sounds like fun. If you can point me to a place where I can get it in Boston, point away. Same goes for XTZ Tea.
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Talk to me!
Index of my AIDS ride and Pallotta links
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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