The Hackenblog

Dandyism is having a Fred Astaire festival.

By the way, this isn’t news, but Rita Hayworth is a goddess.

She makes tap dancing sexy.

“According to Hsee (1998) – in a paper entitled “Less is better: When low-value options are valued more highly than high-value options” – if you buy someone a $45 scarf, you are more likely to be seen as generous than if you buy them a $55 coat.”

~snip~

“If you have a fixed amount of money to spend – and your goal is to be seen as generous, rather than to actually help the recipient – you’ll be better off deliberately not shopping for value. Decide how much money you want to spend on impressing the recipient, then find the most worthless object which costs exactly that amount. The cheaper the class of objects, the more expensive a particular object will appear, given that you spend a fixed amount. Which is more memorable, a $25 skirt or a $25 candle?

“Gives a whole new meaning to the Japanese custom of buying $50 melons, doesn’t it? You look at that and shake your head and say “What is it with the Japanese?”. And yet they get to be perceived as incredibly generous, spendthrift even, while spending only $50. You could spend $200 on a fancy dinner and not appear as wealthy as you can by spending $50 on a melon. If only there was a custom of gifting $25 toothpicks or $10 dust specks; they could get away with spending even less.”
Evaluability (And Cheap Holiday Shopping), Overcoming Bias, November 27, 2007

Humans are weird.

“The report also said some of the trees were worth as much as $100,000. I’d like to go on the record as being in favor of trees, but if the Collards really have more than $1 million worth of trees, maybe they should declare their property a national forest and secede from Glendale entirely.

“And how about that team of geniuses who bloodlessly produced a $347,600 fee notice and blithely stuck it in the mail without a single person saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t this insane?’”
Out on a limb over trimming fiasco, by Steve Lopez, LA Times, November 28, 2007

The City Attorney dropped the $347,600 fines, but they might get fined around $10K. I think the tree trimmer should have insurance to pay that, he should know what he’s doing with the city before he starts trimming trees.

This happened to a friend of a friend in Arcadia with Oak trees. California is kind of nuts about trees. I can understand the arborists stopping developers from bulldozing acres of mature trees, but $347,600 for trimming a tree in your own yard at the Fire Department’s request is way over the edge.

Update 121307: A happy ending!

“Most well known for his ‘Obey Giant’ street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey’s art is problematic for another, more troubling reason – that of plagiarism.”
Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey, A critique by artist Mark Vallen
Written on the occasion of Fairey’s Los Angeles solo exhibition, Dec., 2007.

My respect and admiration for Mark Vallen grows every time he posts. And, yes, even things in the public domain have to be credited properly. It’s only right.

“Maria Ortiz’s civic awakening began when her husband fired a pistol into their front yard to ward off a gang member who had insulted him.

“Jose Ortiz hailed from a mountain village in Durango, Mexico, where residents were sometimes forced to take matters into their own hands because law enforcement was so far away. “But Ortiz was no longer in rural Mexico, and he spent time in jail for his actions.

~snip~

“But Maria Ortiz said no. Short and garrulous, she had come to the United States from Mexico at age 6 and knew little about how government worked. She knew, however, that her poor and crime-ridden neighborhood was in trouble, and she wanted to do something about it.

“So, in late 2004, Ortiz volunteered when Herman Barahona, of Los Angeles County’s Community Development Commission, showed up a few months later asking for help in organizing residents to battle crime and blight. It was part of a larger county campaign launched to reach long-neglected communities.

~snip~

“Barahona started by holding meetings at local churches and schools with a few immigrant parents, teaching a kind of Civics 101 class. Among the parents were several mothers at Lillian Street Elementary School, including Ortiz, who worked as a campus aide and whose son attended the school.

“Barahona taught them about each county department, such as Code Enforcement and Public Works, and how and where to go for help. Mostly he wanted to give them a sense of empowerment.

~snip~

“At the time, Florence-Firestone was in the middle of a surge in violent crime, with 41 homicides recorded in 2005 — surpassing the homicide rate in some of the nation’s most dangerous big cities, authorities said. About half of those killed had no gang affiliation.

“At a community meeting, Sheriff’s Lt. John Babbitt surprised Ortiz and others by asking for their help in combating crime.

“Babbitt had been tapped as the first lieutenant assigned to Florence-Firestone as part of the county’s civic experiment.

“It was a tough assignment for a former SWAT supervisor with no experience in community policing and who didn’t speak Spanish.

“To complicate matters, many in the immigrant community were distrustful of law enforcement.

“‘We thought only negative things about the police,’ Ortiz said.

“But residents were impressed when under Babbitt, the Sheriff’s Department assigned 60 more deputies to Florence-Firestone. A special prosecutor was also sent to try neighborhood homicide cases.

“Babbitt renovated a sheriff’s substation and moved his offices there. When Ortiz asked him to speak to Lillian schoolboys who were forming a small gang, Babbitt and three deputies showed up in uniform.

“To help build trust in the community, Babbitt gave his cellphone number to neighborhood leaders. He also called in code enforcement officers on gang and drug houses — two of which have been destroyed. With the help of Public Works, he cleaned up a block of 93rd Street that had become another illegal dump.

“And at his urging, some 200 residents have gone through the Sheriff’s Department’s Community Academy, where they are taught about homicide investigations, the jail system, domestic-violence laws and emergency preparedness.

“‘We learned how they do their job, which is something we didn’t know,’ Ortiz said. ‘What’s been achieved is unifying the community with the police.’

“Since the Florence-Firestone experiment began, the neighborhood has had many successes.

“Crime is down. Last year, homicides dropped in half to 19 after a major law enforcement crackdown.”
Residents of Florence-Firestone flex their civic muscles. An L.A. County program helps the neighborhood organize, clean up blight and make civic government more responsive to their needs, by Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 25, 2007

Maybe things are getting better in LA.

But maybe not.

“Citing Schrodinger’s cat, cosmologists speculated that humans’ observation of dark matter, beginning in 1998, might bring about the premature destruction of the universe.”
Harpers Weekly, November 27, 2007

“One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”
Schrödinger’s cat, Wikipedia

“…?”
Mayerson, November 27, 2007

“It was Keynes, too, who anticipated and helped prepare for the ‘craving for security’ that Europeans would feel after the three decades of war and economic collapse that followed the end of the Gilded Age. Thanks in large measure to the state-provided public services and safety nets incorporated into their postwar systems of governance, the citizens of the advanced countries lost the gnawing sense of insecurity and fear that had dominated and polarized political life from 1914 through the early Fifties and which was largely responsible for the appeal of both fascism and communism in those years.

“But we have good reason to believe that this may be about to change. Fear is reemerging as an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Fear of terrorism, of course; but also, and perhaps more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of one’s daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have lost control as well, to forces beyond their reach.”
The Wrecking Ball of Innovation, a review of Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, by Robert B. Reich. Review by Tony Judt, NYT Review of Books, December 6, 2007

This isn’t an easy read, but I highly recommend it. Not only are we living in interesting times, we’re living in vicious times, too.

I’ve always liked and respected Robert Reich, but after I read his first post-Clinton book, I could not help but think he was something of a lamb among wolves, or maybe just Border Collies with OCD, in the Clinton administration. This review doesn’t change my opinion.

“In the early 1980s, Gray, who teaches European thought at the London School of Economics, was the most capable defender of Friedrich von Hayek as a social philosopher rather than just a propagandist for free-market policy. But he later became decidedly critical of any notion that the future belonged to liberal democracy. In 1989, as the Soviet Union was reforming itself out of existence, he wrote that this would not inaugurate ‘a new era of post-historical harmony’ but rather ‘a return to the classical terrain of history, a terrain of great-power rivalries, secret diplomacies, and irredentist claims and wars.’ Over the following decade, he advanced a critique of globalization that sounded, at times, profoundly anticapitalist, if by no means Marxian.

“Such an ideological itinerary seems like a calculated effort to lose friends. But whatever its twists and turns, Gray’s thought has in fact been remarkably consistent, with his journalistic writings simply framing, in the most provocative possible way, theses that have accumulated in more sedate works like ‘Enlightenment’s Wake’ (1995) and ‘Two Faces of Liberalism’ (2000). His latest book, ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,’ treats fundamentalist Islam and Western triumphalism as similar and related phenomena. This argument revisits themes Gray developed in ‘Straw Dogs,’ a volume of pensées originally published in 2002 and now reissued in paperback by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

“‘Humanity’ does not exist,’ he announced in ‘Straw Dogs.’ ‘There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgment.’ This may be the key to all of Gray’s thought, and it is no accident that he echoes Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement that there is no such thing as society. (As she put it, ‘there are individual men and women, and there are families’ — but nothing else.) The irreducible plurality of human ‘needs and illusions,’ Gray argues, means it is utopian to imagine that any single kind of political or social order could ever be good for everyone. ‘If there is such a thing as spontaneous social evolution,’ he writes in ‘Black Mass,’ ‘it produces institutions of many kinds.’

“Alas, conservatives have completely lost track of this crucial point, at least by Gray’s lights, which is why ‘traditional conservatism ceased to exist’ at some point over the last few decades. What has emerged instead is a faith that the marketplace and the values of liberal society are universal in principle, if not yet in geographical distribution. Resistance is futile. And if people in benighted lands resist anyway, the use of military power can force the pace of progress.”
What Price Utopia?, by Scott McLemee, NY Times, November 25, 2007

Progress? What progress?

Or not.

“In Iraq itself, we have succeeded in destroying a formerly prosperous and secular country, and creating the largest refugee problem in the modern Middle East: 4m Iraqis have now been forced abroad.

“Elsewhere in the Middle East, the US attempt to push democracy in the region has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against its old client proxies – by and large corrupt, decadent monarchies and decaying nationalist parties. But rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed they would, Muslims have everywhere lined up behind those parties that have most clearly been seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention in the region, namely the religious parties of political Islam.

“Last week, the Islamic world showed us the sort of gesture that is needed at this time. In a letter addressed to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders, 138 prominent Muslim scholars from every sect of Islam urged Christian leaders ‘to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions.’ It will be interesting to see if any western leaders now reciprocate.”
A lesson in humility for the smug West. Many of the western values we think of as superior came from the East and our blind arrogance hurts our standing in the world, by William Dalrymple, October 14, 2007

What an unlucky time for so many people.

Now, here’s a novel solution:

KROB 2007 Winner

(Via BldgBlog: ” A project by Brendan O’Grady/nocturnal design lab, suggesting what an inhabited billboard mast might look like.” Also see this. Y’know, I’d take a shot at living in these if the price and place were right)

Sorry, sports fans, other than this image, I can’t find jack about “Brendan O’Grady/nocturnal design lab.” Anybody knows anything, I’d love to hear it. They’re keeping a very low Google profile.

“Lori Condinus already knows which way Tuesday night’s Anaheim City Council meeting will go, and it won’t be her way. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be there to lobby for a doomed housing project in Anaheim’s resort district.

“‘We’ve been there supporting this project all the way,’ said Condinus, 42, a switchboard operator at the Anaheim Hilton. ‘We’ll have our voice there . . . win, lose or tie.’

“Condinus’ voice has been no louder than others in this fierce, yearlong debate over whether housing belongs in the city’s tourist district.

“But her words at a February council meeting — ‘If we are good enough to work here in the resort, why aren’t we good enough to live here?’ — became a rallying cry for low-wage earners who pressed the Walt Disney Co., the City Council and other business leaders to approve the condominium and low-cost apartment plan. ‘It just came from the heart,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know so many people would pick up on it.’

“Plans for the housing project near Disneyland unraveled last month when the deal between SunCal Cos. and the owners of the 26-acre parcel near Disneyland fell through.

“That news prompted Councilwoman Lucille Kring earlier this month to withdraw her support of the proposal. Kring cast the tiebreaking vote in a 3-2 decision seven months ago that approved the 1,500-unit project — sparking three ballot initiatives, two lawsuits and regular City Hall protests.

“There are few details about what might replace the massive housing project, but Councilman Harry Sidhu said new potential buyers want to build a hotel on the land, currently occupied by two mobile home parks.

~snip~

“Even if the council votes as expected to overturn a zoning decision that had allowed the project, Condinus believes she and hundreds of other religious and union leaders and community officials have made their point.

“‘We have put Disney and other big corporations on notice,’ she said. ‘We want more than a paycheck. We want social responsibility and accountability. We’ve told them, ‘You’re making a lot of money, so how do you put it back into the community that’s working for you?’

“Over the last year, Disney officials have argued that the lack of low-income housing is a problem that needs to be solved (but not by them evidently GM). But Disney and many others involved in tourism worried that the more than $6 billion in public and private funds poured into the resort district since 1994 would be wasted if new housing began invading the area. (invading? GM) They feared that the resort district would return to its former self: an area marked by a prevalence of seedy motels, tacky shops and neon signs. (from low-income housing? How unkind. GM)

“‘The lack of affordable housing is a national problem and it needs to be addressed in a thoughtful and meaningful way,’ said Rob Doughty, a Disney spokesman. ‘It’s not going to be resolved by one entity, but in partnership with a lot of entities.’ To that end, a Disney executive is leading a 12-member task force that is working on creative ways to build additional housing units for families of all income levels.

“‘We’re looking at how to bring more federal and state dollars to Anaheim for affordable housing,’ said Todd Ament, president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce and a member of the housing committee. ‘We’re working with developers to make them aware of sites in Anaheim that are available for affordable housing.’

“Though Condinus believes strongly in the SunCal project — which proposed building 225 low-cost apartments — she said she would have been happy to support a compromise plan.

“‘Had other options been proposed,’ she said, ‘I’m sure there would have been people to get behind it.’

“Condinus said she would continue to push for more affordable housing, but from a different platform.

“She has taken a leave of absence from the hotel to work full time in Garden Grove as vice president for Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers union that represents about 5,000 laborers, many of whom work in the resort district.

“Although her job status has changed, Condinus said her plight and her long commute were unchanged. She still lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Upland because she can’t afford to live in Anaheim. (Upland is 29 miles from Anaheim [by the way, these are City Hall addresses], which, in LA drive-time is an hour to two hours each way.)

“‘The business owners in the resort district have spoken loudly; they don’t want us there,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want us in the resort district, then where can we live so we don’t have to spend hours on the freeway just to make a living?’ (see?)

“Sidhu, who agreed with Disney and tourist officials that housing is inappropriate in the 2.2-square-mile resort district, said he would join Kring and Mayor Curt Pringle on Tuesday in voting to repeal zoning that allowed the project. But Sidhu said the demise of SunCal’s proposal won’t end the housing debate in Anaheim.

“‘I sympathize with these housing advocates,’ he said. ‘As a free market guy, if there’s another development that comes along outside of the resort district, I’ll support it. We need more affordable housing in this city. It will continue to be a problem. And if there’s a way we can provide more, we will.’”
Low-income housing backer in Anaheim won’t give up. Even though the outcome of a City Council vote on Tuesday should halt the debate for now, supporters says the fight will go on, by Dave McKibben, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 24, 2007

Lori Condinus is my new hero.

Class warfare in the Enchanted Kingdom. I really hate Disney, they don’t even pretend to be human anymore, and the Anaheim City Council has pretty much handed the city over to them.

“Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and television news reporter Mirthala Salinas have ended their romantic relationship, two sources familiar with the situation said Friday.

“Months after revelations about the affair damaged the mayor’s political standing and devastated Salinas’ broadcasting career, the two sources said the relationship disintegrated weeks ago.

~snip~

“Villaraigosa and his wife, Corina Villaraigosa, separated in June, weeks before he confirmed that he was romantically involved with Salinas. From the moment it became public, the affair between the mayor and the rising media star had a largely harmful effect on both parties.

~snip~

“A rising star in Spanish-language television news, Salinas read on the air the news of Villaraigosa’s marital breakup on June 8 without disclosing that she had been romantically involved with the mayor for several months.

“Salinas received a two-month suspension for her handling of the situation. At the end of that suspension, she was reassigned from her post as temporary anchor to a Telemundo bureau in Riverside County. Instead of returning to her job, she quit.

~snip~

“Revelations about the affair damaged the mayor’s credibility in the eyes of some voters, particularly women, said Jaime Regalado, who heads the Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

~snip~

“The affair even raised questions about the mayor’s name. ‘Villaraigosa’ is a merger of his name, Antonio Villar, and his wife’s maiden name, Corina Raigosa. Although the mayor’s wife filed divorce papers in June, Villaraigosa said he would not change his name back.”
L.A. mayor, reporter end their affair, sources say. Villaraigosa’s political standing was affected, and his wife has filed for divorce. Salinas was suspended, then left her job at Telemundo, by David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 23, 2007

Has the LA Times absolutely nothing better to do? On the other hand, I’m glad he’s not changing his name since I worked hard to learn how to pronounce it correctly.

Guys, Gavin, Bill, Antonio, all of you, please, just control yourselves until you’re out of office. You’ve worked so hard for this, you’re on the right side of history, you can make a better world for all of us if you just stay smart and take it home to your wife, okay? Please. You can do what you want when you retire, and frankly, I think should, but when you retire. Have a harem, I couldn’t care less, but not when you’re still in office. Men, don’t be ninnies. Thank you for your attention.

“As for what I wrote in 1996: the world looked very different then. On one side, Social Security projections were much more pessimistic than they are now, basically because the projections assumed that the 1973-1995 era of very slow productivity growth would go on forever. On the other side, the 90s were the era of the great pause in health expenditures, the (it turned out) brief era in which the rise of managed care stabilized health spending as a share of GDP. So Medicare and Medicaid looked less important as sources of fiscal problems than they do now.

“John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, ‘When circumstances change, I change my opinion. What do you do?’”
They hate me, they really hate me, Dr. Krugman, NYT Blog, November 21, 2007

Dr. Krugman loves blogging, I can tell.

There has got to be a better way to fight the war on terror:

“In the UK:

“A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.

“In Maine:

“A powdered substance that led to a baggage claim being shut down for nearly six hours at the Portland International Jetport was a mixture of flour and sugar, airport officials said Thursday.

“Fear is winning. Refuse to be terrorized, people.”
More war on the unexpected, Bruce Schneier, November 22, 2007 (Original War on the unexpected post)

“I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

“The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

“And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

“We’re all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

“In truth, it’s doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports.

“Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded.

“Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that’s basically what’s happening right now.

“Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we’re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists’ actions, and increase the effects of their terror.”
What the Terrorists Want, Bruce Schneier, August 24, 2006

A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.

They tasered an unconscious guy? WTF?

This could take awhile to fix. The entire County apparatus will have to evolve to a higher level. An entire generation might have to die of natural causes before anything gets better in LA County. Am I kidding? Even I don’t know.

“A welfare worker stole more than $4,000 worth of bus tokens and passes meant for foster children and their families.

“A retirement agency employee fraudulently claimed nearly $90,000 in welfare benefits.

“And another welfare worker falsely told colleagues her father had died and took the money they donated to her in sympathy.

“The three cases are among the most serious cited by a Los Angeles County report made public Wednesday that provides a digest of employee misconduct uncovered as a result of calls to the county’s fraud hotline.

~snip~

“The misconduct included failing to report outside employment, downloading pornographic material at work and outright theft.

~snip~

“‘It doesn’t reflect well on the county, but it’s hard to make people understand that when you have 100,000 [workers], some people go bad on you,’ said county Auditor-Controller J. Tyler McCauley, whose office runs the fraud hotline.

~snip~

“The bus tokens stolen by a Department of Children and Family Services employee were set aside for foster children and relatives who need transportation for such activities as family visits or job interviews, said the department’s director, Patricia S. Ploehn.

“The employee was prosecuted, pleaded guilty to felony theft and was sentenced to three days in jail and three years’ probation.

~snip~

“Among other cases in Wednesday’s hotline report was that of a retirement specialist who worked for the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Assn., the agency that manages the $43-billion pension fund for most county workers.

“Prosecutors identified the worker as Rita Kay Brown, 52. Brown was accused of using a false identity to fraudulently claim $89,522 in welfare money, food stamps and medical benefits, said James Baker, assistant head deputy of the district attorney’s welfare fraud division.

“She was convicted in June and sentenced to 16 years in prison, he said.

“The welfare worker accused of accepting money from colleagues who thought her father had died has not been referred to prosecutors, but she faces disciplinary action, the report said.

“In another case, an employee with the county’s Probation Department was accused of fraudulently collecting death benefits of more than $130,000 for her husband, who is still alive, the report said.

“Prosecutors identified her as Damaris Amesquita, 30, and said she faces felony charges of insurance fraud, grand theft and bigamy.

“She has pleaded not guilty.”
L.A. County hotline reveals thefts, welfare fraud. One worker took bus tokens meant for foster families; another cheated to collect benefits. In all, 348 investigations were opened in six months, by Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 22, 2007

Man, what’s wrong with LA County agencies? Do they have preferential hiring for kleptomaniacs?

I don’t know what County workers make, but they have some of the most secure jobs in the country and Cadillac benefits. So what’s with all the stealing? First, there’s the heist at the Department of Children and Family Services and now this. Sheesh, folks, grow a heart and get smart.

“Detecting nothing—even when it’s 1 billion light-years wide—is not easy. It took observations of radio galaxies, temperature, and a bit of conjecture. Lawrence Rudnick, the astronomer who led the team that found the void, was studying data from the Very Large Array, a network of 27 radio antennas in New Mexico, when he spotted a gap in the constellation Eridanus where radio signals from galaxies appear unusually faint. He matched this gap with an enormous ‘cold spot’—colder than the frigid temperatures of deep space—in the cosmic microwave background, the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. ‘We knew we could connect these two things, the lack of radio galaxies and the cold spot,’ Brown says. ‘It’s the easiest explanation—you don’t have to invoke any strange cosmologies to explain it.’”
The Ice-Cream Scoop Taken Out of the Universe. A patch of the heavens that contains far more nothingness than the rest of space, by Stephen Ornes, November 21, 2007

Day-yam, I love science, really I do.

“When Ginger Mayerson heard that an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale had hit Pakistan in October 2005, she immediately wanted to help.

“Ms. Mayerson, a writer and blogger who lives in Los Angeles, knew that aid workers from her favorite charity, Doctors Without Borders, would be at work in Pakistan, ministering to the wounded. But she says she was financially ‘tapped out’ after giving to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

“So Ms. Mayerson did what she could: She turned to fellow blog writers she admired — and, in many cases, didn’t know — and solicited recipes online for a cookbook that would benefit the medical-aid organization.

“Although Ms. Mayerson didn’t contribute any recipes herself — she says her culinary philosophy is ’shake it out of the box and eat it’ — she spent hours compiling and editing the recipes that poured in from others. The self-published result, And They Cook, Too, which was published in March 2006, has sold a modest number of copies and raised just $400 for Doctors Without Borders, but Ms. Mayerson says the cookbook has been well worth the effort.

“‘I knew they could write, so when they wrote about food it was like literature,’ she says. ‘It’s a good cause, good food, and good writing — what could be better?’

“Despite its origins in cyberspace, Ms. Mayerson’s charity effort is part of a tradition that dates back to the Civil War, when women in Philadelphia and elsewhere sold a cookbook to benefit Union hospitals. The countless collections published since then have not only raised millions of dollars for charity, but also evoke the times and places in which they were compiled.”
A Recipe for Success, by Marty Michaels, Chronicle of Philanthropy, May 31, 2007 v19 i16 pNA ($ sorry)

Yay! But too bad she left out the part about Kathy Flake’s and ~Tild’s contribution to the book because I went on and on about how the book wouldn’t have happened without them (and it also wouldn’t have happened without everyone who contributed to it). And there are no links in this story. This was the only part about ATCT, the rest of the article goes into the history of charity cookbooks and other modern fundraiser cookbooks. But ATCT is the coolest. And it’s still making money for MSF, I’ll be sending off a rounded up to $20 check next week. Oh, and the gift-giving season is upon us, isn’t it?

And They Cook, Too. Yay!

FreeRice.com, as seen on Snopes.com

“Well, what my friend Ari discovered is that some of the personal details listed on your Facebook profile aren’t things that you listed, or things that you even knew were listed about you at all. In fact, they’re details about your life that Facebook has decided to publish to the world on your behalf. In Ari’s case, he found out that his Facebook profile reported that he had bought tickets to a movie the other night – it even listed which movie and the date and time he bought them (oops, and his boss thought he was working). Kind of creepy if you consider that Ari could have told his fiance that he was working late that night while Facebook said otherwise (he didn’t, but I’m just saying). Or how about if Ari kept buying tickets to gay films, would that have been an interesting fact for Facebook readers to know about, let alone Ari’s fiance? (Again, he hasn’t… well I think he hasn’t, maybe I need to check Ari’s Facebook profile.) And God only knows if Facebook has similar info-sharing deals with Amazon or other book vendors. Buy any books lately on herbal remedies for cancer, AIDS, or any other disease? Or how about a book entitled ‘So you’ve had an affair’ or ‘So you’re gay’ or ‘Coping with mental illness.’ Buy any sex toys or condoms online? You get the picture.

“From what we’ve been able to glean, Facebook automatically opts its users in to this privacy-violating pyramid scheme and the only way you can get out of it is by visiting every single one of Facebook’s corporate partners (whoever they are, we only know about Fandango at this point), and telling each and every one (if you can figure out where to tell them this) to stop publishing your private information on Facebook. God forbid that Facebook asked its members to opt in to this little scheme and/or gave its members a one-button opt-out rather than requiring them to visit every site on the Internet and search for the Facebook-privacy-violation-opt-out-button. And, even after you do that, it’s still not clear if Fandango and others are still sharing your movie-going habits and other purchases with Facebook.”
Facebook, the new Big Brother, by John Aravosis, AmericaBlog, November 20, 2007

I’m suddenly glad I’m too plebian to be on Facebook. But I’m sure MySpace will do something equally stupid given enough time, and Morlock, sorry Murdock, owns it (but I was there a full two weeks before he ate it).

Update 112407: Also at the WSJ online.

Update 120207: I’m late but here it is – Facebook Bows to Privacy Protest, now it’s an opt-IN deal.

When most 14-year olds are worried about their grades, Antionio Nunez must be living every waking moment in utter terror:

“The issue is being litigated in court. Last March, two criminal defense lawyers filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the California Supreme Court challenging the sentencing of Antonio Nunez, who is serving life without parole after being convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder in 2003.

“Nunez, who was 14 when the 2001 crimes occurred, was riding in the car of a 27-year-old man he had met at a party. The man offered him a ride home, and on the way kidnapped another man and then negotiated with the man’s brother for ransom.

“‘Nunez’s case is the only known case nationwide in which a 14-year-old was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in a single incident in which no one was injured,’ according to the petition filed by attorneys Bryan A. Stevenson of Montgomery, Ala., and Jack M. Earley of Irvine. They contend that the sentence violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

“The California attorney general’s office recently filed papers opposing Nunez’ release and the California Supreme Court may might hear the case next year.”
California a leader in number of youths in prison for life. The state has 227 inmates serving such sentences for crimes committed before they were 18, a new study says, by Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 19, 2007

Nunez’s case is the only known case nationwide in which a 14-year-old was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in a single incident in which no one was injured…

Are we fucking insane doing this to a 14-year old child? God, I’m disgusted with California sometimes. Hey, Jerry Brown, CA AG, this is your big chance to do the right thing. I was wondering where you were and what you were doing lately.

“Los Angeles County supervisors are poised to approve a program that will identify the 50 most vulnerable homeless people on downtown’s skid row and move them within 100 days into apartments with readily accessible support services.

~snip~

“The county has struggled to address the vast homelessness problem. A year ago, supervisors approved an unprecedented $100-million homeless initiative, anchored by five regional assistance centers. But the program faltered after communities balked at the prospect of homeless people coming to their neighborhoods. The county quietly switched gears, deciding instead to fund private organizations and smaller efforts, such as a housing program for families on skid row.

~snip~

“About one-third of the county’s roughly 70,000 homeless people are classified as chronically homeless — meaning they have lived on the streets for a year or more and have disabilities such as AIDS or mental illness.

“Many experts say placing the chronically homeless in permanent housing with social services nearby is more effective than providing them with temporary shelter and more effective than requiring them to get sober before finding them housing. The numbers back up that position: 85% of homeless people living in supportive housing stay off the streets, said Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor who has studied homelessness.

~snip~

“Outreach workers will take a visual inventory of the area over a two-week period to observe who sleeps there regularly. Officials will follow up in person, talking to as many people as possible to learn about their health, time spent on the streets and other factors to determine how vulnerable they are.

“The so-called vulnerability index will determine those most at risk of dying on skid row, and outreach workers will talk with them about moving voluntarily into supportive housing provided by the Skid Row Housing Trust, which is expected to be awarded the second contract Tuesday. The organization helps refurbish and provide housing to the homeless and other needy people.

“The 50 people identified will have caseworkers to help them and nearby support services, such as mental health and substance abuse counselors.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs of Greater Los Angeles will work with the street teams to identify veterans, who represent 12% of the county’s homeless population.

~snip~

“The costs of shelter, emergency room care and incarceration can range from $40,000 to $150,000 per homeless person per year, said Blasi, the UCLA professor. Supportive housing for one individual costs between $14,000 and $25,000, he added.”
L.A. County might get new homeless program. Supervisors expected to approve Project 50, which aims to get skid row’s most vulnerable people into supportive housing. By Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 19, 2007

Y’know, we can either take care of these people or we can just let them die on the streets of one of the richest cities in the world. I’d rather pay taxes to take care of them.

“So I’m at work, right? And preparing a post on LiveJournal as I am want to do during business hours. I was editing a post for my writing journal when I sense someone sort of standing over me (across from my monitor).

“IT WAS GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR.

“Governor: Hello young lady. I’d like to make your acquaintance. I’m Haley.

“NameWithheld: *looks up from fanfiction* Of course I know who you are, sir.

“Governor: *hand shake vise grip of Republican hand crushery*

“NameWithheld: *thinking* I write PORN with that hand! You have DISABLED me! Can I get a government check?

“Governor: I sure would appreciate your support in the upcoming ‘lection. *hands brochure*

“NameWithheld: Yes sir, I’m glad to help *thinking* I hope I just spouted something mildly appropriate. He really squeezed the fuck out of my hand. I’m not even a registered voter. Sadly I cannot register now because my voting hand has been rendered useless. Oh he is walking away. Back to dreamy land of fanfiction lalalalalalalala.

“Not it’s good to meet you sir, or thanks for stopping by or how good to see you, but “Of course I know who you are.” I REALLY suck with this whole people thing. Why didn’t I just tell him, do you mind? I’m on LiveJournal.

“Sheesh.”

Sorry, I’m not linking back because I don’t want to get this person in trouble, but I thought this was fucking hysterical even though I cannot stand Haley Barbour.

I guarantee you, though, that if Governor Musclehead ever rolled up to my desk, he’d get a serious earful for his do-nothing bullshit reign in California. I am NOT one of the idiots who voted for him. And I certainly didn’t vote for a $10 Billion deficit, underfunded fire departments, and however many billions future generations will owe in bonds to fill the gap. Oh! Don’t get me started! GAh!

“Yet the Giuliani campaign springs back after every wound, like Rasputin. I admit, it’s making us nervous.”

~snip~

”What’s more, voters I talked to didn’t particularly care that Romney has done some serious flip-flopping.

“‘”Don’t they all?” said Loraine Battey of Hudson, who is undecided. “They say what people want to hear.”

“‘”They all lie,” added Fred Taylor, a Hudson resident and Romney backer.

“And the moral is, people see what they want to see.”
Projections Mahablog, November 18, 2007

If this is the registered Republican attitude, we are in deep doo doo as a nation. Geeze, even I’m more upbeat than this. What’s wrong with these people? Forget your troubles, c’mon get happy! And think about Judy Garland’s legs! Etc. Eh, politics. Is it next November yet?

“If you opt for the extra D version (or maybe 2 extra D’s, I’m really not sure how many D’s there usually are) be ready to sit with some hard core geeks. I saw geeks of all ages and genders (yes, I’m suggesting that in hard core geek world, there are more than just two choices) and it was fun until I realized that I was accepted by them as one of their own. There were probably also several English majors, who aren’t exactly the sexy people, either.”
Tiny Little Movie Review: Beowulf, by cat on Dan, Tiny Little Division, November 19, 2007

“What this means is that even the very rich cannot escape into their own little bubble of purity and excellence, of ‘haute’ this and ‘haute’ that. Ride around in a limo and you still have to sit in traffic created by ordinary people who can’t afford to live near where they work. Fly in a private jet and you’re still dependent on archaic, underfinanced, systems of air traffic control. Travel first class on the Acela train and you still have to stare out at the rotting environs of Philadelphia and Newark. Oh, and you lobbied against higher taxes and regulations on business? Then think twice before you sink your teeth into that chocolate and gold dessert. The vermin are always with you.”
Roaches in the World’s Most Expensive Dessert, by Barbara Ehrenreich, November 19, 2007

Yeah, you rich anti-tax freaks, quit voting against the world you have to live in with the rest of us mortals.

In honor of the Writers Strike, I thought now, as a public service, would be a good time to announce the publication of a collection of gay cuddle porn edited by moi.

Chase and Other Stories

Excerpts, rationalizations, reviews, etc. are on the sidebar pages. Mild stuff, wouldn’t discombobulate any well-read, right-thinking, open-minded fan of a Jean Genet and Barbara Cartland fusion via Flannery O’Connor in outer space with wizards. Just kidding…about Barbara Cartland. Yay! Crazy for it yet? Here’s the direct link to buy it. Someday it will be in Amazon and suchlike, but for now, it’s only here.

Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

Or this guy will be your boss someday:

(Via Liz, chez Siva)

“Instead of fast food, it was fast flu shots Friday for hundreds of motorists converging on drive-through vaccination clinics at community colleges in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

“At Moorpark College, about 100 cars idled in the morning chill, snaking around orange traffic cones as drivers inched to the front of the line. Over the next four hours, nurses there administered more than 500 doses of flu vaccine. At College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, 1,076 people were vaccinated, said Deborah Davenport, a director of community services for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

“‘It’s free and I get to stay in my car,’ said Summer Healthcote, her 7-year-old son, Andrew, strapped into a booster seat in the back of a green Suburban at the Moorpark campus. ‘I couldn’t pass it up.’

“But public health officials said the one-day exercise wasn’t designed to cater to Southern California’s time-strapped, car-crazed culture. If the drive-through concept proves successful, they said, it could become the model for speedily inoculating entire cities in the event of a deadly pandemic or bioterrorism.”
Drive-through flu shots test ways to speedily deliver vaccines, LAT, November 17, 2007

This is pretty cool, they should always do this. Gee, why wait for a tularemia outbreak to use this system? In more mundane matters: here’s where you can find flu shots, though not of the drive through genus.

“I beg your indulgence, as I state the excruciatingly obvious. If Markos Moulitsas challenged even one significant aspect of ‘conventional wisdom,’ if he dared to question one critical element of what the Establishment itself regards as essential truth, he would not be provided with a megaphone in Newsweek.”
Catapulting the Propaganda, Arthur Silber, November 16, 2007

Vell, Arthur, I don’t think Kos is gong to rock the boat too hard now that he’s in it and has something to lose.