August 2007
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Big Effing(ham) Cross
About an hour into Southern Illinois after watching St. Louis’ Gateway Arch recede from our rear-view mirrors, we were met along Interstate 70 by an even more surreal giant totem: a white cross, rising oddly out of a field next to the highway and behind a bunch of industrial buildings. So we shot a bunch… Continue reading
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Elsewares
Two new posts in other places. First, in Linux Journal, Is free and open code a form of infrastructure? How about the humans who write it?. It runs with what Steve Lewis wrote here. Second, at the ProjectVRM blog, Dealing with it. It responds to Dave Rogers’ latest. Continue reading
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Loose links
Timothy Noah in Slate: “Superficially, If I Did It is chiefly an indictment of Nicole’s character and only incidentally the story of her murder.” What’s plugged into the power strip. The cutting edge, one year later. Stephen Lewis: Libraries vs. the Internet: Researching the Peloponnesian War, the British Library’s “Turning the Pages” Project, and a… Continue reading
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Grounds for talking radio
Day 3 of our drive from Santa Barbara to Boston, pausing at a motel outside St. Louis… Between our Sirius satellite radio receiver, the MP3 player, breaks for public radio and talking to each other, I didn’t have much time to indulge my interest in exploring the high soil conductivities that make AM radio so… Continue reading
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Day 4: Going through Kansas City
For someone as old as I am, it’s hard to keep Kansas City (the fist song ever written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, recorded by everybody but made a hit) by Wilbert Harrison out of one’s mind. With my Kansas City Baby and a bottle of Kansas. Citywine. Taking a plane, a train and… Continue reading
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Day 3: Cruising into Colby
First we got up at 3-something AM and drove back into Arches National Park, roughly to the site where Thelma & Louise stuffed the cop in the trunk. There, in darkness, we watched the eclipsed moon sink slowly behind rock spires barely visible in silhouette. It was there that I shot the photo above, acting… Continue reading
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Day 2: Making it to Moab
We almost went to Cedar Breaks, but it was raining heavily up there — and all around that part of Utah — when we left Cedar City this morning. So we went up 15 to 50 and headed down to 70, where we took in the Castle Country, San Rafael Swell and San Rafael Reef… Continue reading
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Day one and done
Got off to a late start. Meaning, today (Sunday, as I write this) instead of yesterday. Got as far as Cedar City, Utah, where we’re camped for the night in a cheap but pretty good motel. Amazing weather — desert thunderstorms — most of the way. I’ll try to put some pix up before I… Continue reading
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A post for the road
On valuing freedom more than cushy jail cells is my latest at Linux Journal: a last post before hitting the road from Santa Barbara, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The post is an example of teaching best what we most need to learn, I guess. In any case, I’ve gotten a few lessons on lock-in through… Continue reading
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Not good
Riverbend hasn’t posted since April. Her last words: It’s difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain. She had her detractors. But I always found her reports to be powerful. And important… Continue reading
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Loose links
The New Yorker has a UI link to a category called “Online only” that has a URL directory level called “blogs”: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs. But that defaults to a series on New Orleans that ended in June. But the “more blogs” link below the BLOGS heading in the the top of the left column goes to http://www.newyorker.com/online/index/blogs,… Continue reading
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Remembering Majahual
I was sure Hurricane Dean wiped out these places here. All in the Playa Del Carmen area. But apparently not. [Later…] Turns out I was right in the first place and this setting (and everything around it) in the coastal town of Majahual is gone: The three pictures behind the three links in the first… Continue reading
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Tripping the fantastic light
One of my biggest rarely-fulfilled fantasies is visiting amazing places I’ve seen from the sky. Starting this Saturday we may do some of that. Or maybe not. Depends on how much we hurry on our road trip from Santa Barbara, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where we plan on living for the next year. (No, we’re… Continue reading
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Going for the record
The Zaca Fire will grow past 200,000 acres today. That makes it the third largest wildfire in California history. It has not only surpassed last year’s Day Fire (map), but is running into the Day Fire’s burned perimeter on its east flank. The danger now appears to be mostly passed here in Santa Barbara; but… Continue reading
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Hurricane Dean live from Jamaica
Sheila Lennon reports that Power 106fm in Jamaica is streaming live during Hurricane Dean. The site has links to Real and Windows Media streams, but the latter are .pls, which might be open-able by other players. Even if you can’t hear about the storm, you can follow it on the Go-Jamaica Hurricane Dean Blog. Continue reading
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An outside view on inside waste
Stephen Lewis has an excellent blog post on the declining U.S. dollar. Says Steve, It is an odd state of affairs when the US dollar is closer in value to the currency of a small and corrupt Balkan republic than it is to the common currency of its major economic rival, the European Union. He… Continue reading
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Latest on the Zaca Fire
At 8pm yesterday evening (Friday) Inciweb’s Zaca Fire section issued this: Effective August 17, 2007 8:00pm The Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Department and fire authorities have issued an EVACUATION WARNING for East Camino Cielo Road from Gibraltar Road east to the Ventura County Line including Gibraltar Reservoir and Jameson Lake. Residents of these areas should… Continue reading
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Today’s forecast: falling ash
I haven’t posted much on the Zaca Fire since I got back. One reason is that — for the moment, at least — civilization seems less threatened, even as the wilderness behind us burns away. The other is that I have a lot to say about it, and work with other locals to do on… Continue reading
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Skype takes baby bell steps, goes boom.
Skype is down. Worldwide. If Skype is your phone company, you get an interesting experience in a certain kind of absolute dependency — one we’re still all trying to work out. So consider this practice for when the same thing happens to services provided by Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Flickr or any other central point of… Continue reading
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Still at Newspapers 1.x
I’m late weighing in on the New York Times’ reported decision to drop Times Select. But not on calling it a bad idea in the first place. Nor on offering alternative ways of looking at both problems and opportunities for newspapers in a networked world. Rather than just point to what I’ve already said (in… Continue reading