Archive for August, 2007

2007.08.14

Women of Battlestar Galactica

Oh joy! The women of Battlestar Galactica might have their pieces of angst at times, but as this trailer shown at Comic Con shows, they also kick some serious fraking booty!

2007.08.12

No Halloween in the Castro This Year

Well, it looks like after yearly growth from a neighborhood party into an event of gawkers and hanger’s ons culminating in last year’s shootings (see the update at the link), the annual Halloween party in the Castro is finally dead.

City officials said Wednesday that there will be no official Halloween celebration anywhere in San Francisco in October – not in the Castro neighborhood, the traditional home of the event, and not at a parking lot near AT&T Park, which had been considered as an alternate site.

Yes, it’s horrible there were shootings last year, but this party has been declining in quality for years. From a fun event and street party it degraded to some sort frat party (with the tri-Lams invited only as a courtesy). Most of the good parties were far, far away from the Castro and I stopped going bothering to head to the street party years ago because -yawn!- it was getting boring.

It will be interesting to see how many people show up in the Castro this year because they have no clue the party’s been cancelled. Time to start looking for an alternative. San Francisco Party Party has promised to put up a list of them closer to zero hour.

2007.08.11

What a Dog Day Afternoon

Today was a day of dog stories at the beach in Bolinas. I think if some of these dogs could have paddled out they would have joined us in surfing.

1: The dog carrying and playing with the well desiccated body of a large water fowl. The dog shook it at one point and… It was just disgusting.

Dog Pooping2: Two dogs, at separate times, walked out to where the surf was breaking on the shore and took dumps into the oncoming waves. I have never, ever seen this and I wonder if this is some new trick dog owners are teaching them. For fun I’m putting up a picture of another dog pooping right in front of us before we started surfing two weeks ago.

3: Some dog decided he wanted to hang out with us when we were grilling. Nothing about this, but the dog seemed -and I’m not joking- that he was stoned. When shooed away from the food and the grill you could practically see him shrug his shoulders, walk away and lay down in the seaweed that washed up at high tide. This shot up a spray of sand flies which he would idly try to snatch out of the air with his teeth. When he’d get tired of that he’d bother to get up and wander to the grill again. Repeat to fade.

4: Possibly because she had seen the dog in the first bit, some little girl was running about with a huge dried up fish (must have been at least two feet long) trying to find her dog and get him to eat it.

5: There are lots of birds by, above and in the ocean. Sometimes they’re just out there, floating in the surf. One dog decided he was very curious about these things and swam out to one that had floated close to shore. I’ve never heard a bird emit the sound this one made (definitely a warning sound for the dog!) and never worried so much that a dog was going to get his eyes pecked out by some long beaked bird.

6: I’ve seen my first true prissy dog. A large black poodle was walking with some older guy. He’d chuck a tennis ball down the beach, the poodle would chase it. A normal game of fetch. Except the dog would stop the ball with its paw, pretend to bite it, and then wait for the guy to come up, clean off the ball of sand and detrius, and put the ball in its mouth. “I love to play fetch but I can’t stand the grime. Jeeves, clean this!”

Not the best stories in the world, but it is remarkable what a dog day it was.

2007.08.10

iPhone Testing

One of the brilliant parts of my job is playing with new gadgets and toys when they become available. I’m playing with (and posting this article!) with an iPhone right now. While functionally limited it’s still a very nice gadget. I’ll post more another time, but for now I’m quite happy with it.

2007.08.09

San Francisco Skyscraper Proposals

So the proposals are in for buildings to replace the ailing and aged Transbay Terminal south of Market, and all three proposals suck. What the hell is up with architects these days? Bigger does not mean better except in A) personal income and B) portions of anatomy. Take a look at pictures of the three proposals then come back.

The Pelli Clarke Pelli design looks like a giant vibrator or high tech phallus. Given that none of the buildings in the area are giant, reflective testicles this thing just sticks up in the sky pronouncing its penis inferiority complex. Put a giant SUV on top and the image is complete. Sadly the interior looks like it would be better suited for a rest home for insane persons than a bus terminal. Oh wait, it’s a bus terminal! Spot on design.

Someone else has already pointed out that the Rogers Stirk Harbour building looks like the Tower of Barud Dur from the Lord of the Rings (and illustrated it!) so I won’t say much more than that the architects obviously played with an Erector Set when they were kids.

It’s hard to tell what the Skidmore Owings Merrill proposal really looks like in whole. Right now it looks like a giant shaft of light, all softly lit and white yet hard and long. Like the Pelli Clarke Pelli design, there is a distinct lack of testicles, though you could be sure they would be smooth, round and translucent.

Looking more at theSkidmore Owings Merrill I kind of like it but I have to say I’m partial to the Tower of Barad Dur. I love Tolkien! While the building is still at least twice as tall as it needs to be Sauron, being only a flaming lidless eye, can be forgiven for making up for his lack of other anatomy. I can’t wait to start calling San Francisco the Mordor of the West!

2007.08.09

A Cure for Cancer

Here’s a question for you. Why is it with all the billions of dollars (more than US$5.165 billion) poured into cancer research have we not cured a good portion of the various forms of this disease? Because the pharmaceutical companies won’t make money with a cure. They make money with treatments. You know, pills that cost hundreds of dollars a piece and therapies that may or may not kill the cancer growing in your body. Where is the financial incentive to cure such a lucritive market?

I’m not saying that researchers aren’t interested in curing these things. After all, they and their loved ones are just as susceptible as the rest of us. But they often work for corporations who thrive on money to exist. In the case of for-profit companies this is obvious. The bottom line profit growth brought about by an ongoing disease is more important than a cure which will bring an end to those profits. For non-profits the goal is to exist. It’s the fix-it guy who doesn’t perfectly fix things so he can be employed to fix the thing again.

I don’t know how to fix this issue, and certainly in my place in society there isn’t much I can do aside from point out that something is -horribly, terribly, morally, ethically- wrong with the situation. Too much money goes into research that brings forth no solutions and cures. If the billions of dollars of research from one single year were used to aid in tobacco cessation, that alone would be more effective than all the “research” to date. The next year the money could be spent on engineering a pollution trapping automobile engine (good for urban health and the environment!).

Getting rid of the incentive to make money would also help. Capitalism and “free markets” are great for getting you to come up with the next great consumer product, but useless for our health.

Apparently I’m not the only one thinking these things. These ideas have been around for a long time. Until profit is taken out of the equation, there will never be a “cure” for cancer; the cure for cancer is removing corporation’s bottom line.

2007.08.08

Now We Can Levitate

Scientists in Scotland have managed to reverse the Casimir force -the force that draws atoms together- and created what is, in effect, levitation. Note that this is not magnetism!

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

If you’re into this kind of thing, there’s more information on the Casimir force here, and about this new announcement here (humorously phrased as turning the Casimir force “from suck to blow”).

Excellent. When can I get my hoverboard?

2007.08.07

Reminding Myself of Things Forgotten

And it seems most of all I write this to remind myself of things I sometimes forget.I wrote this in the Spring of 1994 while in Prague and found it today scouring my old journals for material to fill out a project I’m working on. I would write it a bit differently today, but the sentiment is still very true. Maybe we are wiser in youth then we ever realize.

I do not write this to wring bitter memories of days of hate and confusion, to remind you of slow days walking around town, of sleeping in on the weekends, of sitting on the patio discussing the day and just how things seem to be in the world, of watching the tree across the street slowly turn yellow and start loosing its leaves until snow started to cover it all anyways.

I write this to remind you that love is real, but that love can die, and when anything dies it is a sad occasion and often causes a lot of pain. But in every moment of a death there is a birth, and so it goes.

I write this to remind anyone that cares to read it that love is so much more than holding hands and going out. Love is more than just an intense experience. It is all those days in between, all the days of sitting down to dinner, of trying to wake the other one up, of calling to see when and where to meet, and of getting ready for bed in different parts of the bedroom. Love is about ordinary days as much as about the days that turn into future stories.

And it seems most of all I write this to remind myself of things I sometimes forget.

2007.08.06

20th High School Reunion

This past weekend was apparently my 20th High School reunion. I know this thanks to my friend Synnove who told (warned?) me about it a few weeks ago, though I didn’t remember. Not that I wanted to go. As I didn’t grow up in one place I really don’t have any special attachment to the place. In fact I have some fairly bitter memories of this particular high school. It was not friendly to outsiders despite being the local high school for the Air Force base we were stationed at.

But that’s neither here nor there. While I have no interest in seeing anyone except a handful of people from that time, I wish them no real ill. This is in stark contrast to journal entries of the time when I was wishing they’d all die and the school would burn down.

So congrats to them, I hope the weekend went well and old acquaintences were not forgot!

2007.08.04

First Wave Second Wave

Too many people recommended I read this article about American’s in Prague. Though I was there in the early 90s some of the “adventurous” spirit of the Second Wave of Americans in the article was around when I was there. Give it a read if you’re so inclined!