The crime rate in North Oakland has been going up again. Now, people are getting shot.
[Sonethavy] Phomsouvandara was killed in a robbery that began just before 10 p.m. Monday. A lone gunman walked through the back door of Bangkok Palace and asked employees, who were eating dinner, for their wallets. Phomsouvandara handed his over, but asked if he could keep his green card, friends said. The gunman shot him in the head and fled.
There just has to be a special circle in hell...
I don't know what's wrong with Mail.app's spam filter, but mine seems to have stopped working entirely.
I can see what it might think that "pretty young Cuties" was a legit message — my sister could have sent a picture of her daughter playing with her friends or something — but "Son fuucking pictureque Mom," "Hardccore incest Pictures," "Re: PHARMbgvACY," "DietWatch," or "Don't expose your intimate life!"? Hellooo, Apple?!??!
Well, not exactly, but Google gets slapped for doing an homage to Miro in their logo.
I'm with the Slashdot folks on this one. Really dumb thing to go after Google for. (Besides, wasn't Miro imitating Picasso at times, or vice versa?)
Went to Your Place Thai restaurant on University Avenue today for lunch. Berkeley has lots of Thai restaurants; Plearn and Cha Am tend to get most of the attention, but I've always had a soft spot for Your Place. It seemed cheaper, but just as tasty if not more so, and there was never a line to get in (unlike Cha Am.)
I'd never been for lunch before, but was meeting a friend today who lives nearby. I got one of the lunch specials: tofu with friend shitake mushrooms. It came with a choice of white or brown rice, plus a fresh spring roll. I opted for the brown rice, and also asked for a cucumber salad. Due to a misunderstanding, the salad ended up being instead of rather than in addition to the roll, but it was tasty anyway.
The tofu/mushroom dish was terrific. The mushrooms were nicely battered and very crunchy (I've never had them that way before!), the tofu went very well with them, and there were also an assortment of bell peppers in the mix, along with chili sauce, basil, and some other flavors. I'm still thinking about it four hours later. The rice was really good too — some kind of wild purplish rice, with a great nutty flavor.
I think Your Place is my favorite Thai restaurant again. Wonder if they offer that dish at dinner?
White House pain in the ass press secretary Scott MacClelland has resigned!
On the other hand... he's only a year older than I am!?!! I'm an underachiever, or he's middle-agedly pudgy beyond his years, or both...
The New York Times has an article about a program called "Cat Show", about show cats and their owners (a la Best In Show, but for real.) It starts thusly:
Cat people and dog people never tire of expressing their disdain for each other. Why, cat fans ask, would you want such an undignified pet, one that so obviously wants and needs your love and attention? Why, dog fans reply, would you want such a haughty, arrogant pet, one that ignores you 95 percent of the time?
95% of the time? We should be so lucky. They ignore us when they're asleep. Maybe food will distract them briefly. Otherwise, it's "Pet me! Pet me! Why aren't you petting me RIGHT NOW!?!? OMG!"
Stolen from DailyKos...
Coloradans for Marriage is a group trying to get a ban on gay marriage on the books there. As part of their effort, they launched a website to explain their mission and goals. They also thought it would be a nice idea to list all the things that are so great about marriage.
And here they are. (Click the image to see the full-size version). Erm... maybe they're just trying to say "Gays shouldn't get married, because marriage just ain't all that?" Somehow, I think not. I expect their webmaster is probably sitting there with sweat on his or her brow, attempting to slap some bullshit up on their site as I type this, but for now, you can see the original in all its dubious glory here.
There's a story up on Daily Kos right now about the rather vile Michelle Malkin. Did you hear about the protests at UC Santa Cruz against military recruiters? It seems that she got a copy of a press release sent out by some of the students involved — which had their contact information listed on it — and posted it on her site. They got tons of hate mail and phone calls, asked her to remove it... and she posted it AGAIN. Lovely.
And yet... I can't quite work up a rage against her for this one. The people calling and emailing death threats? Hell yes. But...
The students DID put their contact information on a press release. They made themselves public. And you're taking a risk when you do that.
I've put together fliers in the past, and each time, I debate with myself about how much contact information to include. If I stand behind the information, I should be willing to put my name on it, right? But when you put yourself out there for all the world to see, you can't count on the world being entirely sane.
I wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle about the war. All that appeared in the paper was my name and the fact I lived in Oakland. Well, some other letter-writer who couldn't get in the paper tracked down my home address (my old home address, it turned out) and wrote to me personally, taking me to task for my views. Not threatening, but not exactly comfortable, either. (I dealt with it in my own way)
I've had other incidents that made me aware of illusory our privacy is. Anybody could be reading this blog. Anybody at all. So whatever I write, I have to be prepared for the world to see, even though odds are the world doesn't really care (plenty of blogs in the sea!)
So I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps those students didn't think so much about these things before... but I'm guessing they will now. And I think they should get lawyers to inform their harrassers that what they are doing is illegal. And perhaps their lawyers could make the case to Michelle Malkin that if anything happens to those students, she risks being charged with being an accessory to a crime...
But reposting contact information that somebody already made public? I wish I could share other people's ire on that one, but I just can't.
At the end of the day, we all are stuck with the responsiblity of protecting ourselves.
Some movies I've seen recently that I really enjoyed:
Thank You For Smoking: Wicked satirical humor. My favorite scene is the one where the three lobbyist buddies argue about which of their clients is the most lethal to the American public.
Friends With Money: Not a lot happens, exactly, but the acting and dialogue are wonderful, and somehow very true to life.
V For Vendetta: I forgive the Wachowsky brothers for Matrices parts 2 and 3. I actually liked this film a heckofalot better than the widely praised first Matrix. The political commentary is timely (and not overdone), and there's a fairy-tale element (Brothers Grimm, not Disney) to it as well that gives it some emotional resonance.
Three good movies! Go figure!
Some other things Republicans might want to try pinning on Democrats while they're at it:
OK, maybe not such a tragedy, but... I used to love Round Table's Pizzatatoes, and it seems that they've been discontinued. A search online shows them on five-year old menu pages in Hawaii.
Anyone know how to make them? I'm so tempted to write to Round Table and beg for the recipe... though I suspect the ingredients list might horrify me...
First we fooled ourselves into attacking Iraq, next Iran?
How two failing politicians could trigger WWIII.
Simply beyond depressing.
Let me be a better parent than these two.
Britney Spears has hit the headlines after baby son Sean Preston suffered a suspected fractured skull.The six-month-old tot is thought to have hit his head when he fell from his high chair on April 1st.
According to reports in the Daily Mirror, Britney, 24, got an all clear from doctors but became concerned when Sean became groggy over the following days.
She took him to the UCLA Medical Centre on April 7th and officials contacted the LA child welfare department.
It is reported that both Britney and husband Kevin Federline, 28, had been questioned by investigators but a police official has since confirmed the case was closed on the spot, at the house.
It's scary. I know accidents can happen in the blink of an eye, and I'm terrified.
On the other hand... should Kevin Federline really be wearing a shirt that says "Get a Clue"?
Recently, King Yen on Piedmont Avenue was sold, and has now become Holly's Madarin. A friend called me and raved about how fabulous the meal she had there was, so naturally, I had to try it. We went on Friday, a couple days after they opened, and ordered won ton soup, chicken salad, Yu Shiang chicken and stir-fried green beans. They offer a choice of white or brown rice, a nice touch.
The won ton soup: nice light broth, not too salty, with lighter-than air won tons floating in it and some fresh spinach leaves. One of the best won ton soups I think I've ever had.
The chicken salad: barely qualified as salad. Deep-fried pieces of chicken arranged over a bed of iceberg lettuce dressed with a vinagrette and some ground peanuts, and garnished with what looked like a couple of maraschino cherries. The chicken was nicely fried but flavorless. Not what I was expecting at all, and not something I'd be likely to order again. (When they asked how we were enjoying our meal, I expressed my ambivalence about the salad, and they said that it's a similar recipe to one at Uncle Yu's, where the new owner used to work, and that it was a top seller there. No accounting for taste, I suppose.)
The Yu Shiang chicken: julienned carrots and some other vegetables I didn't recognize (was seaweed in the mix?) combined with strips of chicken. Nice spicy sauce. I liked this one a lot.
The green beans: also nicely spiced, not too salty, with flecks of chili and crunchy beans.
Overall, I was happy with what we got and would definitely go again — and I'll definitely be getting that won ton soup!
After dinner, we rented Crash. The same friend who had told me about Holly's had told me how much she enjoyed this film. Sadly, I didn't share her high opinion. The cast was good and it was definitely an interesting movie, but not especially enjoyable. It felt rather contrived to me — so many scenes of person of racial group A encountering person of racial group B and within two minutes, saying something very cartoonishly stereotypical.
Maybe that's part of the reason I enjoyed Brokeback Mountain so much — far less dialogue, with many scenes having no conversation whatsoever!
Hopefully this link will work for a while.
A snippet:
One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing."
A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years--since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.
One result of all that is warmer oceans, and a result of warmer oceans can be, paradoxically, colder continents within a hotter globe. Ocean currents running between warm and cold regions serve as natural thermoregulators, distributing heat from the equator toward the poles. The Gulf Stream, carrying warmth up from the tropics, is what keeps Europe's climate relatively mild. Whenever Europe is cut off from the Gulf Stream, temperatures plummet. At the end of the last ice age, the warm current was temporarily blocked, and temperatures in Europe fell as much as 10°F, locking the continent in glaciers.
What usually keeps the Gulf Stream running is that warm water is lighter than cold water, so it floats on the surface. As it reaches Europe and releases its heat, the current grows denser and sinks, flowing back to the south and crossing under the northbound Gulf Stream until it reaches the tropics and starts to warm again. The cycle works splendidly, provided the water remains salty enough. But if it becomes diluted by freshwater, the salt concentration drops, and the water gets lighter, idling on top and stalling the current. Last December, researchers associated with Britain's National Oceanography Center reported that one component of the system that drives the Gulf Stream has slowed about 30% since 1957. It's the increased release of Arctic and Greenland meltwater that appears to be causing the problem, introducing a gush of freshwater that's overwhelming the natural cycle. In a global-warming world, it's unlikely that any amount of cooling that resulted from this would be sufficient to support glaciers, but it could make things awfully uncomfortable.
"The big worry is that the whole climate of Europe will change," says Adrian Luckman, senior lecturer in geography at the University of Wales, Swansea. "We in the U.K. are on the same latitude as Alaska. The reason we can live here is the Gulf Stream."
