July 2007 Archives
house, Ketchikan Alaska, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
sort of a random shot of somebody's house in Ketchikan, Alaska, with hand-made no parking sign.
I wanted to go in and have a cup of tea or something, but didn't have the nerve.
Yellow escalator
Actually, since I live so close to them, I usually just avoid them altogether, and add 4-5 minutes to my journey (and 4-5 years to my life) by driving to a different ramp.
Daily Herald | Cook County:
The ramps from Chicago's downtown roads onto the Kennedy Expressway spit cars into a left lane buzzing with speeding sedans and trucks.
Drivers have a second, maybe two, to decide whether to swerve into the aggressive traffic and slam the gas or jam the brake and hope drivers behind notice.
What many drivers may not know, however, is that the state has had a plan to fix the dangerously short merges since 1995, but it really won't get done until around 2011 or 2012.
In fact, the state cut off ramps to two of the downtown bridges over the Kennedy in a project state transportation officials said would increase safety. Yet, the project was not finished because of nearby Dan Ryan construction and the full safety improvements have yet to materialize.“That stretch remains a good example of poor planning compounded by the slow pace of modernization,” said Joe Schwieterman, director of DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. “For motorists, it is one of the trickiest choke points in the city.”
The Kennedy lanes near the rapid succession of left-lane entrance ramps - at Jackson Boulevard, Adams Street, Madison Street, Monroe Street and Washington Boulevard - have been prone to crashes.
Somehow, the scariest highway ramps in the entire city are not worth fixing immediately.
The existing three northbound left-lane merges and three southbound left-lane merges have been in place since at least the mid-1960s, says Joseph Schofer, interim director of Northwestern University's Transportation Center.“They are scary ramps. They are very short and they don't meet design standards,” he said. “That is the kind of compromise you make to squeeze in the access.”
In 1995, IDOT officials drafted a plan to fix the short-merge problem by removing some ramps and then using the extra road space to extend the remaining left-lane merges.
The project would not finally begin until 10 years later. Crews closed off the left-lane entrance ramps at Washington Boulevard and Monroe Street in 2005 and 2006, respectively, as Chicago was rebuilding those bridges.
Yet, large chunks of those unused ramps still remain on the ground, growing weeds and blocking vehicles merging from bridges to the north and south.
If those hulks of concrete were removed, the left-lane merges from Madison Street and Adams Street could be lengthened from about 170 feet to about 520 feet, giving drivers more time to negotiate the speeding traffic. The average merge length is about 1,000 feet.
IDOT spokeswoman Marisa Kollias said the job wasn't finished in 2006 because reducing lanes for construction would further hamper traffic during the Dan Ryan Expressway rebuild. That two-year project ends this winter.
Instead, IDOT officials have tucked the $7 million project into the middle of their five-year construction plan, so crews may not get around to finishing the job until 2011 or 2012.
That has planners like Schwieterman perturbed.
“It is hard to believe it takes five years to clear away those kinds of traffic hazards,” he said. “This is a recipe for chronic accidents.”
Why the secrecy?
Energy Bill Aids Expansion of Atomic Power:
A provision buried in a recent Senate bill could make new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees.
... Lobbyists have told lawmakers and administration officials in recent weeks that the nuclear industry needs as much as $50 billion in loan guarantees over the next two years to finance a major expansion.The biggest champion of the loan guarantees is Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee and one of the nuclear industry’s strongest supporters in Congress.
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico and the energy bill’s author, has long argued that nuclear power plants do not need federal loan guarantees. Mr. Bingaman said that the industry was over-interpreting the provision and that it would provide loan guarantees for only the most innovative power plants.
I am ambivalent about nuclear energy - better than coal, probably better than petroleum, yet the problem of everlasting nuclear waste has not yet been solved. However, I most certainly do not like the system of public financing of nuclear plants. Public financing, yet private profit. Sounds like welfare to me.
But the provision could go much further than many lawmakers had in mind by giving the Department of Energy the power to approve an unlimited amount of loan guarantees for “clean” power generation. Under legislation enacted in 2005, nuclear power qualifies as a clean technology because it does not emit carbon gases that contribute to global warming.Power companies have tentative plans to put the 28 new reactors at 19 sites around the country. Industry executives insist that banks and Wall Street will not provide the money needed to build new reactors unless the loans are guaranteed in their entirety by the federal government.
...
Many experts fear that the proposed subsidies could leave taxpayers responsible for billions of dollars in soured loans.“Such projects, by their nature, pose significant technical and market risks,” the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned last month in an analysis of the provision. “Studies of the accuracy of cost estimates for pioneering technologies have found that estimates are consistently low.”
Michael J. Wallace, the co-chief executive of UniStar Nuclear, a partnership seeking to build nuclear reactors, and executive vice president of Constellation Energy, said: “Without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants.”
...
The little-noticed provision in the Senate bill subtly refines and expands the loan guarantee program that Congress passed in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.As before, the Department of Energy would be allowed to guarantee 100 percent of the loans and up to 80 percent of the total cost to build a reactor.
But the bill essentially allows the department to approve as many loan guarantees as it wants for both new reactors and plants that use other “clean” technologies.
That is a big change. Under current law, the government is only allowed to guarantee a volume of loans authorized each year by Congress. Last year, Congress limited the government to awarding just $4 billion in loan guarantees for clean energy projects during the 2007 fiscal year
The NYT finally notices this two week old story.
Chicagoans Protest as Indiana Lets a Refinery Add to Lake Pollution:
Tens of thousands of people here have signed petitions protesting a permit granted in Indiana that allows the largest oil refinery in the Midwest to discharge more pollutants into Lake Michigan.Area residents signed petitions protesting an Indiana oil refinery’s plans to increase its daily discharge of pollutants into the lake.
The petitions, which advocates say they expect to deliver next week to Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, reflect growing concerns in the Great Lakes States that the permit undercuts efforts to clean up Lake Michigan.Organizers said Monday that they had collected 45,000 signatures.
....
Last week, by a vote of 387 to 26, the United States House of Representatives approved a resolution urging Indiana to reconsider the permit. The resolution was introduced by Representatives Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, and Vernon J. Ehlers, Republican of Michigan.
...
Regulators in Indiana allowed the refinery in Whiting, Ind., just across the Illinois state line, to increase the amounts of ammonia and suspended solids that it releases into the lake after the facility undergoes a $3 billion expansion. BP last received a discharge permit for the refinery in 1990.Backers of the expansion, including Governor Daniels, said a bigger refinery would mean more jobs for Indiana — an estimated 2,000 contract jobs for the expansion and 80 positions at the refinery.
Mr. Daniels said he had no plans to rescind the permit.
“Here’s one of the biggest steps forward for the Midwest, really the whole nation,” Mr. Daniels, a Republican, told reporters last week. “I don’t think it should be held up without a good scientific reason, and none has been provided.”
Nope, no scientific reason at all that increasing the amount of pollution in a fresh water lake, shared by the population of 5 or 6 states, would be a decision to avoid. Gee, thanks, Gov Daniels. I'm sure all of your drinking water comes directly out of BP's spigots, right? Perhaps we should put you in Grover Norquist's famous bathtub, except instead of filled with Federal dollars, the tub is filled with water released from the Whiting plant?
A number of governors, from Democrats Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Mark Warner of Virginia to Republicans like Mitch Daniels of Indiana, have pushed through significant tax increases...Daniels's apostasy was particularly meaningful, since he was once Bush's budget director and had been a lifelong fellow traveler of antitax warrior Grover Norquist.(from Chris Hayes of The Nation)
Technorati Tags: BP, Chicago, environment, pollution
Random visit to my photo archive
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Home Depot sucks. "Activists are urging Home Depot to withdraw advertising from Fox News, whose hosts and commentators dismiss global warming as liberal hysteria."
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There are certain topics that just aren't worth discussing in a blog forum, in my experience. Racism, Israel-Palestine are the two that figure most prominently. Too easy to be misunderstood by strangers.
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meant to post a version of this stupid news story, picked up by the MSM, but here is a better analysis
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I hate the Celtics. Don't do it, KG!
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In case you want to go on a Bergman binge, since it is not winter at the moment, and you wont' fall into an extreme depression
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They've only posted the first ten, and I've seen a few, so cannot vouch for the lists 'greatness', still a fun idea.
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I'm asking Fixer about my next auto problem....
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my photo of a tiny automobile is used on this Italian (?) blog
I bet it is a rough ride, but fun to drive
Anti SUV, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
A Fiat 500, as big as my head, nearly.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500
Don't see many of these around Chicago.
Notice the sticker "Actual Size"
This, if true, is very depressing. Not that I have made many visits to a healthcare provider so far, but still. Doesn't make one trust that the expensive procedure is actually worth agreeing to, without a few second opinions.
Doctors - Managed Care and Health Insurance - Medicine and Health - Wages and Salaries - New York Times:
Primary care doctors and pediatricians, who rarely perform complex procedures, make less than specialists. They are attracting a declining percentage of medical students, and some states are facing a shortage of primary care doctors.
Doctors are also paid whether the procedures they perform go well or badly, Dr. Bach said, and whether they are crucial to a patient’s health or not..
“Almost all expenditures pass through the pen of a doctor,” he said. So a doctor may decide to perform a test that costs a total of $4,000 in order to make $800 for himself — when a cheaper test might work equally well. “This is a highly inefficient way to pay doctors,” Dr. Bach said.
Medicine shouldn't be treated as just another commodity, traded at the Mercantile Exchange. A 20% commission is pretty high - I pay that in a restaurant, if the service is decent, but I don't pay that to my local bartender ($1 a drink, unless they make special efforts on my behalf), or my cab driver (10%-15% depending on the trip).
Technorati Tags: corruption, health
Woody Allen liked Bergman too. The NYT republishes part of book review written by Woody Allen, which includes this tidbit....
Ingmar and Woody - Paper Cuts - Books - New York Times Blog: In addition to all else - and perhaps most important - Bergman is a great entertainer; a storyteller who never loses sight of the fact that no matter what ideas he’s chosen to communicate, films are for exciting an audience. His theatricality is inspired. Such imaginative use of old-fashioned Gothic lighting and stylish compositions. The flamboyant surrealism of the dreams and symbols. The opening montage of ‘’Persona,'’ the dinner in ‘’Hour of the Wolf'’ and, in ‘’The Passion of Anna,'’ the chutzpah to stop the engrossing story at intervals and let the actors explain to the audience what they are trying to do with their portrayals, are moments of showmanship at its best....
His breakdown is in there too, over the income tax scandal. It’s mesmerizing to read about it. In 1976, Bergman was crudely snatched from a rehearsal and taken to police headquarters over money owed the Government because of his mishandling of income tax payments. It was not unlike the type of thing that occurs so frequently where one hires an accountant, presumes he will handle everything brilliantly and aboveboard and finds later one has trustingly signed papers without understanding them or even reading them. The fact that he was innocent of willful dishonesty and a national treasure did not prevent the authorities from dealing with him harshly and boorishly. The result was a nervous breakdown, hospitalization and self-imposed exile to Germany with profound feelings of rage and humiliation.
I'd comment more, but cannot.
Technorati Tags: Film, film_history
Hmmm, don't have these issues currently, as I am the IT department at our company, but I know some who do (I'm looking at you, Aunt P!)
Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You - WSJ.com:
Admit it: For many of us, our work computer is a home away from home.
It seems only fair, since our home computer is typically an office away from the office. So in between typing up reports and poring over spreadsheets, we use our office PCs to keep up with our lives. We do birthday shopping, check out funny clips on YouTube and catch up with friends by email or instant message.
... There's only one problem with what we're doing: Our employers sometimes don't like it. Partly, they want us to work while we're at work. And partly, they're afraid that what we're doing compromises the company's computer network -- putting the company at risk in a host of ways. So they've asked their information-technology departments to block us from bringing our home to work.End of story? Not so fast. To find out whether it's possible to get around the IT departments, we asked Web experts for some advice. Specifically, we asked them to find the top 10 secrets our IT departments don't want us to know.
Especially this problem
3. HOW TO VISIT THE WEB SITES YOUR COMPANY BLOCKSThe Problem: Companies often block employees from visiting certain sites -- ranging from the really nefarious (porn) to probably bad (gambling) to mostly innocuous (Web-based email services).
The Trick: Even if your company won't let you visit those sites by typing their Web addresses into your browser, you can still sometimes sneak your way onto them. You travel to a third-party site, called a proxy, and type the Web address you want into a search box. Then the proxy site travels to the site you want and displays it for you -- so you can see the site without actually visiting it. Proxy.org, for one, features a list of more than 4,000 proxies.
Another way to accomplish the same thing, from Mr. Frauenfelder and Ms. Trapani: Use Google's translation service, asking it to do an English-to-English translation. Just enter this -- Google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.flickr.com -- replacing “flickr.com” with the Web address of the site you want to visit. Google effectively acts as a proxy, calling up the site for you.
The Risk: If you use a proxy to, say, catch up on email or watch a YouTube video, the main risk is getting caught by your boss. But there are scarier security risks: Online bad guys sometimes buy Web addresses that are misspellings of popular sites, then use them to infect visitors' computers, warns Mr. Lobel. Companies often block those sites, too -- but you won't be protected from them if you use a proxy.
How to Stay Safe: Don't make a habit of using proxies for all your Web surfing. Use them only to visit specific sites that your company blocks for productivity-related reasons -- say, YouTube. And watch your spelling.
Technorati Tags: Free_Speech, Technology
Tina emailed a friend of hers who lives in Whiting, Indiana, home of the proposed BP pollution plant, about our disgust with BP. She sent me this email, published without edit - with her explicit consent.
I just wanted to let you know that I live in Whiting and I have two small kids and I am totally disgusted by the feudal state I live in that BP governs. I fought them for a few years regarding what I consider to be a human rights issue. Let me explain.In 2003 (I believe) BP Amoco succeeded in passing two bills in legislation. HB1858 and HB 1902. These two bills allowed BP to exorbitantly cut back on their share of property taxes. Let me put this in perspective for you. They take up about 3/4 of the town of Whiting. The rest are mostly senior citizens who spent their lives working in said refinery back when it was Amoco, before it was bought out by BP.
As a result our property taxes went up 1000%. Yes that is the right amount of zero's, I'll type it again. 1000%. Next, we were retrobilled for three years in arrears. That's right! Our mortgage
doubled. Our knees buckled. We are still making it but really we are not making it at all. We are in debt, we have re mortgaged, we cannot sell, the property values have plummeted as people panic and try to move out of the area.It's a disaster for the elderly, who abandon their homes, or sell life insurance policies, automobiles, and give up health insurance. As I said, these are the same elderly who worked to make BP Amoco what it is today.
We fought it, we fought it hard, but it soon became apparent that we needed to pay attention to our little family. My own family. We missed many birthday parties, play dates and parades because mommy and daddy had to go to the protest/meeting/etc etc etc.
I'm not giving up. But I need to get my family through these next few years. I need to stabilize our situation first.
BP I believe is the second largest oil corporation in the world. Their actions are reprehensible and deplorable. They behave as if they are the only corporation on the planet.
The more light can be shed on their ill doings the better.
some previous coverage of the topic:
Technorati Tags: BP, corporate_evil
I don't begrudge John Peavoy saving letters from his high school friend, Hillary Rodham né Clinton, however, plastering them on the front page of the Sunday New York Times feels a little exploitative on the part of the NYT editors. As I was telling a long-lost, college-era friend*, I wouldn't want the writings of my 19 year old self to be circulated across the nation, to be pored over with morning coffee and bagels, or pitchers of Bloody Marys, or whatever. And unfortunately, none of the male candidates of either party wrote letters interesting enough to save, so only HRC gets the treatment.
In the ’60s, a Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out in Letters:
Letters written by Hillary Rodham provide a rare unfiltered look into the head of a future first lady and would-be president.
They were high school friends from Park Ridge, Ill., both high achievers headed East to college. John Peavoy was a bookish film buff bound for Princeton, Hillary Rodham a driven, civic-minded Republican going off to Wellesley. They were not especially close, but they found each other smart and interesting and said they would try to keep in touch.Which they did, prodigiously, exchanging dozens of letters between the late summer of 1965 and the spring of 1969. Ms. Rodham’s 30 dispatches are by turns angst-ridden and prosaic, glib and brooding, anguished and ebullient — a rare unfiltered look into the head and heart of a future first lady and senator and would-be president. Their private expressiveness stands in sharp contrast to the ever-disciplined political persona she presents to the public now.
Yeah? What a surprise....
*Ms. Dolmanet, who found me via my webzine - nobody should claim blogs aren't worth the ink they are printed on. In fact, everyone should have a blog of one's own!
Technorati Tags: 2008_election, Clinton, media
Geoff pointed out that one of the masters of cinema died.
Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89:
The Swedish filmmaker, considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today.
Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89. ... He moved from the comic romp of lovers in “Smiles of a Summer Night” to the Crusader’s search for God in “The Seventh Seal,” and from the gripping portrayal of fatal illness in “Cries and Whispers” to the alternately humorous and horrifying depiction of family life in “Fanny and Alexander.”Mr. Bergman dealt with pain and torment, desire and religion, evil and love; in Mr. Bergman’s films, “this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory,” Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times Magazine in a profile of the director. God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires.
For many filmgoers and critics, it was Mr. Bergman more than any other director who in the 1950s brought a new seriousness to film making.
“Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics — religion, death, existentialism — to the screen,” Bertrand Tavernier, the French film director, once said. “But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He’s like a miner digging in search of purity.”
Bergman was 89, so his death was not unexpected, but still, a great loss to the world of film. I loved his films so much I tried (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to learn Swedish.
Technorati Tags: Film, film_history, film_snob, obituary
hand painted garage
This could either be interesting, or real shite. No middle ground.
BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA: HIP-HOP HOPPING ALONG: WITH UPDATE:
Dylan has agreed to let Mark Ronson, the dance world’s hottest producer, weave his magic on 'Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)' [sic], the bittersweet break-up song from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.
After years of rejecting all offers to remix his catalogue, Dylan, 66, has decided that a dancefloor makeover is the best way to introduce his generation-defining work to a new teenage audience.
... Ronson and Smith were invited to trawl through the entire Dylan catalogue for a suitable track to reinvent. Smith said: “We hit on 'You’ll Go Your Way' because it already has a great rhythmic breakbeat. It’s also got a timeless, universal lyric.”It’s not such a familiar song that people will cry, ‘Sacrilege’. It will also confound people’s expectations of Bob, which he has done throughout his career.“
...Smith said: ”We hope the fans will see this as an addition to the canon, not a desecration. It’s a new interpretation of Bob’s world and adds to the mystery. We all approached the remix with respect and awe.“
Ronson said: ”It’s the first time Bob Dylan has given anyone the original multi-tracks of his songs to do remixes. I’m a huge Dylan fan, so it’s a great honour, along with the fact that he heard it and approved it, because, as you imagine, he’d be quite picky.“
(30 second sample available here)
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is from
Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan), if you didn't remember.
lyric and sample available here
(1996 performance here, recorded with somebody's cellphone camera in the 17th row.)
Follow-up on Xerox and their environmentally efficient color printer, now there is a paper to go along with it.
Xerox Develops a Green Paper, But Will Firms Add It to Fold? - WSJ.com:
Xerox Corp. has invented an environmentally friendly copy paper that costs less.
Xerox's new cut-sheet “High-Yield Business Paper” isn't as white or as smooth as the kind most businesses run through their copiers and laser printers, and it yellows badly as it ages. But compared with average 20-pound bond paper, Xerox says it requires half as many trees and fewer chemicals and less energy to manufacture. Sheets weigh about 10% less, reducing postage and trucking costs. ... The High-Yield paper is made with a process similar to that used to make newsprint for newspapers. Trees are ground up, bark and all, and mixed into a slurry that is then sprayed out onto a moving belt where it is squeezed, dried and cut up. Unlike newsprint or the new Xerox paper, high-quality bond paper involves chemical processing to remove the lignin in wood that makes aged newsprint brittle and yellow and bleaching to brighten the paper.
I'd probably try it, once it is available for the SOHO market: much of our printed paper ends up in the recycling bin anyway, and we have special heavier weight paper for presentations.
Technorati Tags: environment, Green, pollution
random stroll through my photo archive
Well, I don't know exactly what they are on, go-pills maybe. I guess you had to be there. For me, looking at this performance through the veil of modernity, I can't stop laughing at the dancers' unabashed exuberance as The Byrds lip sync a Dylan tune on some show called Hullabaloo (no affiliation with Digby, as far as I know).
Bonus, more serious footage of Eight Miles High, albeit with annoying text crawl in the beginning of the clip. David Crosby doesn't look too high.
and double bonus, the seminal band, Hüsker Dü ripping through their cover version, live in London, circa 1985.
and live at the Pink Pop Festival in 1987 (slightly longer version)
I still have this 45 record somewhere gathering dust.
Technorati Tags: Bob Dylan, music_history, YouTube
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Still haven't seen Helvetica, the Movie. "image by swanksalot"
A question to our readers (subscribers and random browsers alike) - do you notice certain pages displaying text incorrectly? I have noticed that sometimes on the main page, certain typographical characters are displayed incorrectly. Often “quotation marks” are garbled, for instance. However, if I click through to the individual page entry, the fonts are displayed correctly. Before I start troubleshooting (is it just on posts created on certain computers, or just on posts created in ecto, posts containing text from certain websites, etc.), and open a support ticket at SixApart, I wonder if it is a real problem, or just a problem with my peculiar setup.
Answering this poll would help me out a lot (assuming that it works). If you are feeling generous with your time, leave your system details in comments (but you don't have to do that if you don't want, I can figure out enough about that out by looking at my sitemeter log)
(flash)
Thank you!
(update, I guess the poll will live in the sidebar to the right for a while, even though that's sorta ugly, or else click here)
The best use I've found for LastFM (other than in a general stat-head way) is somebody's clever mashup, using Yahoo's pipe tool, of LastFM and Youtube. The page searches for youtube videos based on recently played tracks. Lots of false hits, and plenty of unwanted results, but some gems too.
Like...
1966-ish John Lee Hooker sings Boom Boom.
John Lee Hooker sings Hobo Blues at the 1965 American Folk Blues Fest
John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison sing, Gloria.
Bonus - footage from the Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz featuring Van Morrison and his foot kicks. Straight out of the 70s.
Coryus Veal has issues with control. Doesn't she have better things to do then watch prisoners jack-off?
Inmate found guilty in masturbation trial - 07/25/2007 - MiamiHerald.com:A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.
Terry Lee Alexander, 20, unsuccessfully fought the charge, which had been brought by a female Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy who saw him perform the sex act in his cell in November.
...The sole witness in the case, BSO Deputy Coryus Veal, testified that Alexander did not try to hide what he was doing as most prisoners do. Veal saw him perform the act while she was working in a glass-enclosed master control room, 100 feetfrom Alexander's cell. There was no video tape or other witnesses.
Alexander's attorney argued that the prison cell was a private place and that what Alexander was doing was perfectly normal.
''Did other inmates start masturbating because of Mr. Alexander?'' McHugh asked Veal. ``Did you call a SWAT team?''
''I wish I had,'' Veal answered.
Veal, who has charged seven other inmates with the same offense, insisted that she was not against the act itself -- just the fact that Alexander was so blatant about it. Most inmates, she testified, do it in bed, under the blankets.
and this was probably amusing. What exactly were prospective jurors asked? and what were their answers?
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
“Juror number 13, how often do you masturbate? Could you describe your technique for the court? Have you ever masturbated in front of another person?”
(H/T)
Fishbone music video, from the 1985 EP Fishbone.
I played the hell out of this EP, circa 1986. Didn't own a television, so never saw this music video, until just now. The video is about 3 minutes shorter than the EP version, but is still fun. Looks like the EP is out of print, but this excellent compilation contains a version.
The Essential Fishbone (Fishbone)
(reminded by UBM)
click image for annotated version
What I carry, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
pockets, plus my camera bag, emptied out. Not pictured: D80 with a 18mm-200mm VR lens, and my crummy wallet, cause I forget to take it off my dresser.
printout of the Photographer's Right, in case I get hassled taking photos of buildings again
www.krages.com/phoright.htm
A few hundred years ago, I might have studied cartography. As a small boy, I made maps, obsessively creating legends, and laboriously drawing page after page of islands, oceans and unchartered territories for made-up lands.
In our modern age, there are all sorts of tools for map mashups: mixing google maps (or Yahoo maps, Microsoft Collections, or whatever) with new sorts of overlays. I just mentioned the walking map a day or two ago.
With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking - New York TimesOn the Web, anyone can be a mapmaker.
With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.
They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.
Already there are maps of biodiesel fueling stations in New England, yarn stores in Illinois and hydrofoils around the world. Many maps depict current events, including the detours around a collapsed Bay Area freeway and the path of two whales that swam up the Sacramento River delta in May.
ParkingSearch.com was mentioned in the WSJ a few days ago:
Web Sites, Satellite Radio Offer Real-Time Parking Info to Drivers - WSJ.com:
Locating a parking spot in a big city ranks among drivers' most nagging frustrations and new services aim to direct drivers to open spots.
Taking advantage of the Web and new generation vehicle navigation systems, these offerings give drivers more information to help them find the closest – and sometimes cheapest – available spot.
ParkingSearch.com is a “virtual exchange” that lists open parking spaces within ZIP codes, said the company's founder Stephen Sinclair.While the majority of the roughly 6,000 spaces currently listed on ParkingSearch.com are from commercial lots, there are a small number of residential spots for sale, rent or sublet. The availability may range from a six-month sublet to a space that is only available during the weekend. The number of parking spaces listed fluctuates seasonally as well as regionally, Mr. Sinclair said.
ParkingSearch.com's biggest markets are Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to Mr. Sinclair. Parking in some cities, especially Los Angeles, is so in-demand that listings are sometimes snapped up within a day of posting. “The spots come on and off so quickly that people think that in certain areas there's no parking available,” Mr. Sinclair said.
Technorati Tags: maps
For your daily anti-BP dose - apparently, BP thinks we want mercury to be part of our drinking water too. Gee, thanks. Is this fact going to be mentioned in the BP PR page, the one probably still linked through a google ad, found somewhere on this page?
Poor, poor, BP - record profits for years and years, and yet cannot find it in their budget to add anti-pollution devices to their plants.
BP dumps mercury in lake:
Refinery has been exempt -- and new permit gives it 5 more years
Although the federal government ordered states more than a decade ago to dramatically limit mercury discharges into the Great Lakes, the BP refinery in northwest Indiana will be allowed to continue pouring small amounts of the toxic metal into Lake Michigan for at least another five years.
A little-noticed exemption in BP's controversial new state water permit gives the oil company until 2012 to meet strict federal limits on mercury discharges. In documents, Indiana regulators predict the refinery won't be able to comply and will ask to continue polluting after that date.Federal records analyzed by the Tribune show BP puts 2 pounds of mercury into the lake every year from its sprawling plant 3 miles southeast of Chicago in Whiting, Ind. That amount is small compared with the mercury that falls into the water from air pollution, but mercury builds up in the environment and is so toxic that even tiny drops can threaten fish and people.
The BP refinery and a power plant in nearby Chesterton, Ind., are the only two industrial polluters that still dump mercury directly into Lake Michigan, federal records show. Under standards adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1995, BP's annual discharge of the metal should be reduced to 8/100th of a pound.
Some industrial plants have spent the money to comply, but BP is complaining they cannot. Because, you know, BP is such a Green company, at least according to their own advertising.
Peter Swenson, chief of the water permits section at the EPA's regional office in Chicago, said some Great Lakes polluters have been granted exemptions to the mercury limits when they renew their permits. But others have been forced to comply immediately, he said, noting that emerging technology can remove the metal from waste water.A Tribune review of federal records shows that the waste water the BP refinery pumps into Lake Michigan includes more than a dozen toxic byproducts of oil refining, including benzene, toluene and suspended solids containing mercury, lead, nickel and vanadium.
The refinery is the top industrial source of lead, nickel and ammonia pollution directly released into the lake, according to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory. It also is one of only two industrial polluters on the lake that dump acetonitrile, a chemical that metabolizes in the environment to cyanide.
If BP were to meet the federal mercury standard for the Great Lakes, it would take the refinery 25 years to put the same amount of the toxic metal into Lake Michigan that it does now in one year.
BP sought a new water permit to accommodate an expansion project that will enable the refinery to process more heavy Canadian crude oil, which is considered a more dependable source than supplies in the Middle East.
When Indiana regulators last month allowed the company to increase its pollution, they justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.
Oh, not those 80 jobs again. Still not quantified.
Why should anything BP says be taken seriously?
The “waste-water permit for BP's Whiting refinery fully complies with the federal Clean Water Act and assures the full protection of Lake Michigan,” Thomas Easterly, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said in a prepared statement. “The permitted levels will not affect drinking water, recreation or aquatic life.”In documents filed with the permit, though, the agency noted that levels of mercury and lead detected in the refinery's waste water “show a reasonable potential” to violate water quality standards.
Mercury concerns environmental regulators because of its staying power in the environment. The metal accumulates as it moves up the food chain from bacteria to fish to people.
All of the states on the Great Lakes advise people to limit eating certain types of fish because of high levels of mercury contamination. Consuming even small amounts of mercury can damage the developing brain and nervous system of infants and young children.
Prodded by Congress, the EPA moved during the 1990s to virtually eliminate direct mercury discharges into the lakes. “The risks posed to human health and to the Great Lakes themselves by these toxic pollutants are simply too high to ignore,” then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner said in 1999.
Technorati Tags: BP, Lake_Michigan, mercury, pollution
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Dvorak is still an ass, no matter what, and I will not click through to any article he writes
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raw foods, in general, are good. Haven't yet been here yet, but have heard raves so far.
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Mark Frauenfelder agrees with me: "The US House voted against the Hinchey Medical Marijuana Amendment, which would have prohibited the feds from busting people for possession of small quantities of marijuana."
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Why? "Rep. Bobby Rush, who heads the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, said he is also considering calling a hearing on the matter "should the facts warrant public scrutiny.""
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important bits left behind
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as only the Smithsonian can tell it
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OSX for $7? Sign me up
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free Fishbone joint, err, MP3, called Party With Saddam
The music of Sufjan Stevens, in certain Nick Drake-esque moods, is quite beautiful.
Sufjan Stevens playing “Chicago” live in San Francisco
Though, I think I like the version on the album better
and I miss going to Emo's (in Austin)
Bill Callahan performing “Cold Blooded Old Times” at Emo's in Austin, Texas on July 24th, 2003.
I love this song.
The version on the album is more sedate and poignant, excellent in fact.
Here's another favorite song of mine, from the same Smog show.
not the best performance/sound quality (some flubbed notes, and the keyboard too loud, guitar too low), but good enough.
from
Random whiny complaints, in no particular order. Probably not the best post to increase my daily google ad earnings (which have plummeted into near single cent rang