via flickr.com
Thanks to Ray I finally figured out that this is a #passionflower. Growing on a fence in #Berkeley. #Gardens
Berkeley flowers Jun 2010-4 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!
Mission Buddhist temple
via flickr.com
Architecturally, this is one of my favorite houses of worship in San Francisco. Not because it is the most beautiful, but because it is a Buddhist Temple occupying an old Victorian church. The brightly painted Victorians are tied to the city’s extravagant gold rush history. It also touches on the city’s long bohemianism, as the Hippies were the first to paint their Victorians in bold color schemes—the English stuck with somber monochromatic grey-white. But while the bold red paint fits in nicely on this Mission street, it is clearly chosen to mark the space for what it is today, a Buddhist temple. The influx of Chinese is also tied to the Gold Rush, since migrant workers from China built the railroads. Migration from across the Pacific is equally important in Modern San Francisco now it connected to the Brain Drain of Asia’s best and brightest to work in Silicone Valley tech jobs or prestigious Stanford and Berkeley universities. The neighborhood where this structure is planted is certainly bohemian but it is far from Chinatown and Japantown, making its neighbors mostly Central American.
I took the picture on this particular day because it was recently repainted. The building’s Buddhist remake has gilded lion-head knockers on the side doors. At the top of the steps the glass double doors are filled with a giant laughing Buddha.
The tendency to naturally blend eclectic cultural influences marks this temple not only a beautiful representation of San Francisco, but a great piece of Americana as well.
We Are All Accelerated Readers
Here’s a little snippet from my journal from the night of the Los Campesinos show June 26, 2008.
Definitions!
skanking: V. The dance you do at the Los Campesinos! show when you are hysterical with joy and you have leg room.
pogo: V. The dance you do at the Los Campesinos! show when you are packed like Mentos in a Coke bottle with other joyful fans.
mosh: V. What happens when the whole crowd fizzes over, bounding off walls and fleshy sweaty bodies all singing “It’s you…It’s me…It’s dancing!”.
drum solo: N. When the drummer for Los Campesinos runs into the audience and the whole audience keeps the beat with hand claps.
the Jane Fonda Workout: N. What you get when you pogo through the cacophonous segment of “We Throw Parties You Throw Knives”.
thirsty: Adj. How I feel when I see Tom Campesinos! sweat.
ugly: Adj. What your chest will look like when you proudly brandish your new Los Campesinos! T-shirt, for all their merch looks like nightmares illustrated by pre-schoolers.
satisfaction: N. The feeling associated with having shouted and sang and squirmed your heart out. Synonyms: spent, glowing, Rawr. Cross-reference to: Los Campesinos!, “with your chin on your knees like you belong.”
Los Campesinos! Don’t Tell Me to Do the Math
Los Campesinos! – We Are All Accelerated Readers
Some Predictions About Books By Way of Some Predictions About Music
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the “future of publishing.” After all, books have never had as much cash to spare as the recording industry, and look at the mess they’re in. Already it is not so difficult for a self-published manuscript to sell itself on Amazon.com. What will happen when everything goes digital? The suggestion is that there will be an opening of the gates, and the latest best-seller will stand on the same virtual shelf with thirty self-published manuscripts. The optimists claim that this is where the great unpublished books will be discovered and pessimists point to the unleashed masses of poorly thought-out, half-written tomes filled with spelling errors. But it doesn’t matter if fantastic self-published books are available if they’re drowned out by countless other books vying for the consumer’s attention.
I’m thinking of this issue again because Chuck Wendig just wrote a post on this very subject. I must requote a quote that he included in his piece from a Salon.com article (“When Anyone Can Be A Published Author“)
Furthermore, as observers like Chris Anderson (in “The Long Tail”) and social scientists like Sheena Iyengar (in her new book “The Art of Choosing”) have pointed out, when confronted with an overwhelming array of choices, most people do not graze more widely. Instead, if they aren’t utterly paralyzed by the prospect, their decisions become even more conservative, zeroing in on what everyone else is buying and grabbing for recognizable brands because making a fully informed decision is just too difficult and time-consuming. As a result, introducing massive amounts of consumer choice leads to situations in which the 10 most popular items command the vast majority of the market share, while thousands of lesser alternatives must divide the leftovers into many tiny portions.
Chuck says in response, ” that doesn’t sound like what will happen when the FUTURE OF PUBLISHING is made manifest. It sounds like what happens right bloody now.”
As it is, there are about 100,000 brand new titles published and printed every year, and it is fair to say that even the most devoted readers may touch 1/100th of that. If you include self-published books, the number of books published is 600,000 to a million. That doesn’t take into account the thousands of reprints of absolute classics that exist. I am pretty sure that if I devoted my entire life to reading I would not get through every book on my imaginary wish list before I breathe my last breath. Now imagine compounding this with an onslaught of unpublished manuscripts, from gorgeous to garbage, that would land on the market place if the result of this revolution were a totally leveled playing field. What would happen?
Continue reading Some Predictions About Books By Way of Some Predictions About Music
Digression, Regression, Return
If there is a reason I don’t finish the-Great-American-Novel it is because I live in a world where I can track down lost sit-coms from my childhood. The kind like this episode of Square Pegs, wherein Bill Murray plays a substitute teacher who tells his student, “OK chocolate lady, do your thing to me.”
This whole Square Pegs thing came up because my sweetie had a childhood crush on Jami Gertz, who plays a supporting role as the prissy gossip (yeah, I’m his type). I’m all, “oh, yeah, I do remember a show where Sarah Jessica Parker plays a nerd.” How could I resist looking that up?
The acting is terrible (except Bill Murray here, but he’s a guest) but the writing is good enough to pull you through. The music is terrific and terrifically eighties. But the true joy is the sheer nostalgia.
The clothing alone is a nostalgia trip. You can’t believe how awful their outfits are. Women in the eighties always seem to wear clothing that’s too big for them. These people have professional costume designers and they all stand around wearing brightly colored sacks and grandpa’s vests. The eighties have already come back in fashion and I still think Molly Ringwald’s character butchered that dress in Pretty and Pink.
But don’t let me digress. Or let me, and let me be grand about it: one of the greatest joys of hitting the big 3-0 is the constant influx of nostalgia (see video above) and the joy of sharing it with the next generation. Continue reading Digression, Regression, Return
Why There Are Riots Tonight in Oakland
I wasn’t surprised that officer Mehserle wasn’t convicted of murder despite all the video footage and witnesses of him shooting an unarmed teenager. I first had my suspicions when Forum reported there wasn’t a single black person on the jury. But then I took heart in thinking that the prosecution would want a whiter jury so it would be harder for the defense to appeal. Besides, the victim, Oscar Grant, was hand-cuffed face down with another police officer’s foot on his neck. So for weeks I held out some hope for a verdict of second-degree murder.
Mehserle claims that he accidentally grabbed his gun when he meant to grab his taser. I asked an ex-cop about this and he doesn’t think such a thing is possible. For one thing, a gun is much heaver than a taser and tasers are designed to have mechanisms that don’t work like firearms to prevent exactly this kind of situation. Moreover, officers’ training drills into their heads over and over the exact location of such things. The location of a cop’s firearm should be second nature.
The defense’s case is based on the very idea that Mehserle was poorly trained. Ironically, the prosecution’s case was based on this too. He probably was, since LEOs receive inadequate training in economies far less strained than California’s. In the last big election there was a measure to give more funding to California’s police force but that didn’t have a hope and a prayer of passing when the budget is taking huge cuts in education and social services. So he probably was under-trained.
When you get down to it though, why the hell should he be reaching for his taser in the first place? It’s not like they were busting an armed robbery. They were responding to a call that a fight had broken out on the BART train. A simple fight, possibly nothing more than kids horsing around—and on New Year’s Eve, the night everyone horses around. If you watch the video it doesn’t appear he’s resisting arrest. So there were lots of reasons to believe that the jury might hand in a murder verdict.
But I gave up hope of that when I heard on the radio that Mehserle cried on the stand.
I don’t think the jury was a pack of outright bigots. Surely they recognized that what happened was a tragedy. But racial identity is a powerful thing. Simply put, they saw Mehserle as one of their own. When they listened to him talk they tried to imagine themselves in his situation. “But it was an accident!” Aw, gee, poor guy, he was scared, the jury thought, I would be too. We can’t put him in prison with those people. Just imagine what they’d do to him! On the contrary, the victim was one of “those people.” They see a boy but they don’t see their own child. They don’t see themselves.
If you don’t believe me, try to imagine it if the situation were reversed. Imagine a black man claiming he “accidentally” shot a white man who was lying on the ground completely defenseless and over-powered. That case would be a joke. It would be a guilty-verdict hands down, case closed. No way it would be a story the media clamor to cover all across the country.
Of course all this is conflated by the fact that Mehserle wasn’t just any white man but a man of the law. One could argue that a black cop who shot a young white man would get just the same sentence. Though I find that very hard to believe, it really doesn’t matter. Because black police officers aren’t shooting white men. Tends to happen the other way.
This sends a very clear message to black folks: the law does not protect you. It is here only to convict you. Protection from crime is for “those people.” They already knew this of course. America doesn’t need another black martyr. Hell, Oakland has enough to last us for the next hundred years, ThankYouVeryMuch.
Maybe that’s why there’s no part of me that cares whether Mehserle deep down and truly meant to reach for that taser. He knows that his behavior was inexcusable and unforgivable. He also knows that his identity as a white police officer is the key to him escaping a life sentence. If he had been a man of honor, he would have settled this case quietly, explaining his side while taking a guilty plea. I’m not saying I would have had the fortitude to do that if I were in his position. But it would have been the right thing to do for Oscar Grant’s family. Sure it would have been a sacrifice, but taser or no taser he took this boy’s life and he shouldn’t have, and he knows it.
So I don’t want to hear a word about how the jury are the only ones who saw all the evidence. Mehserle had a chance to step up and offer himself as America’s white martyr. Because everyone knows we have plenty of slots available.
Watch climate Change Happen: Breath-Taking Time-Lapse Photography
This TED talk includes footage of mile-long chunks of glaciers falling into the ocean. If you’re feeling impatient, the photos start about half-way through the video.
We Don’t Need Facebook
Facebook has given privacy a kick in the groin. If this is news to you, you should probably check out:
Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative [Wired]
or
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook [Gizmodo]
or
Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information [EFF].
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FB Privacy Policy: Longer Than the Constitution
FB Privacy Policy: Longer Than the Constitution
Those who’ve been watching the plucky start-up were already aware that Facebook is mired in accusations that it was founded by a crook and funded by a nut and some gooks. Into this fray comes Facebook’s controversy over their privacy settings. It used to be that Facebook provided a space that was just for friends and family. “Just” as in “only.” As in, not public.
The new privacy settings even led to a movement last month to have a “Quit Facebook Day.” Even if you manage to tackle FB’s labyrinth of privacy settings, don’t use any apps, or never use FacebookConnect you still can’t control what happens when your friends fail to make their stuff private. You can’t stop Facebook from censoring your messages. Even if we all flock back to Myspace or Friendster or Tribe [or Whatever] we have no guarantee that that data won’t be given away. It would probably be wise to consider anything hosted on a faraway computer you can’t control as potentially public, even email. At the very least we should commit to using sites that have consistent and reasonable privacy policies (thus the total opposite of Facebook [1][2]).
But entrusting Facebook is clearly no longer the way to go. Here’s why. In my myriad conversations about this issue, I get one of three responses:
“I don’t care about who sees my data or my friends’ data. I posted it so anyone could see it.”
This person shouldn’t be on Facebook. There are much better public sites that do everything Facebook does but better and more beautifully (more on that later).
“Privacy isn’t a big deal to me but there are some things I’d like to put online that I don’t want the whole world to see.” 
This person shouldn’t be on Facebook. These are the people Facebook seeks to confound with their myriad privacy on-off switches, e.g. most of us. Because these folks aren’t too concerned about most of what we put out there, we won’t be meticulous about making sure everything is set to private. We won’t think of our Facebook stream as a blog for all the world to see and eventually we will accidentally post something that will get us embarrassed, fired, divorced or deported.
“privacy is very important to me. I only want to share stuff with my friends.”
This person shouldn’t be on Facebook. Because this person cares about privacy. If anything, they should be boycotting Facebook. Wake up: Facebook wants our info to be public so they can make more money on their ads. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted he’s ok with the whole thing being confusing because he doesn’t believe in privacy.
Oh the outrage!
But alas, Quit Facebook Day has come and gone and your account still remains. Don’t feel too bad…so does mine.
Now that Facebook has decided to make it standard to share people’s stuff, why are we still using Facebook? Simple: because no matter how much better the other sites are, Facebook is where the people are. But having all the people didn’t stop Myspace fom sinking or Friendster before it. We just need a critical mass of people to join these other sites and Facebook will be history.
The thing is: we don’t need Facebook! Even if Facebook were offering a reasonable privacy policy there are much better sites. And here’s the good news! They all allow automatic posting to Facebook. For those of us not boldly motivated enough to quit Facebook, we can follow our friends on these sites while automatically sending updates to those still lost in the land of blue and white status updates. Eventually these sites (which are all still relatively new) will grow full of enough users that we can all jump ship.
“But,” I hear you asking, “what are these wondrous websites?” Patience, dear reader, for you have discovered the subject of page two…
Photos: Maker Faire Saturday
What is the Maker Faire? It’s bad-ass-art and tech-as-art.It’s steampunk and 8-bit. It’s hackers and coders. It’s robots and lasers and explosions. It’s cities built of legos or recycled cardboard. It’s the art of Burning Man without the burning heat. It’s zinesters, knitters, stitchers, and crafters. It’s virtual reality and 3-D and glow-in-the-dark LEDs. It’s giant Tesla Coils. It’s long-lost arcade games and the technology of tomorrowland. It’s gadgets and gizmos a plenty, whosits and whatsits galore. And more specifically, it’s Make Magazine’s huge conference celebrating acts of glorious creation.
I was fortunate enough in that this year I was able to attend both days for free because I was helping out with my pals at Simbol Rides. So I alternated between helping folks in and out of their personal motion simulators and checking out the hundreds and hundreds of booths that make the Maker Fair so overwhelmingly nifty. Our booth was in the big room between the woman who grows her own sheep to make her own wool, the museum of Pinball, and the city of Legos.
Overcoming Writers Block: Tickling the Muse II
In last year’s TED Talk speech the author of Eat, Pray, Love explains how she is able to handle the terrible pressure to make something genius after having a huge breakout bestseller. Her solution is to do as folks did before the Age of Reason, and think of your genius as something outside of yourself (the bonus is a great Tom Waits story).
This has been unbelievably helpful for me lately. If you are a creative person who has been haunted any kind of creative block, I highly recommend you watch it.
Don’t worry, the rest of my post will still be waiting below…
Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on Finding Your Genius
To open in a new tab: Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on Personifying Your Genius
Finding Your Genius
In short, she suggests that artists need a way to “create a safe distance” between ourselves and the anxiety we feel about our work. Thinking of genius as some kind of separate entity frees us from our fears that our brilliance won’t match our expectations.
It also means I get to have a new imaginary friend, a Puckish deity that hops like an invisible monkey around my computer desk, taunting me with unfinished sentences and half-baked ideas.
After I began to think of my own creativity as this impish being it assumed a greater importance in my life. My art and my creative space was no longer a task to be mastered or even a puzzle to be solved. It was demigod as revered as Dionysus (I suspect they’re cousins). It was also my oldest and dearest friend. In both cases, the measure of time and respect I had to give to the creative process increased dramatically, as it would if the Macy’s window mannequin came to life and offered to be your sweetheart.
So I would like to take a moment to speak to you about your demiurge, the fiery creative beast who lives in your belly, showers you with presents, abandons you for another woman, only to wake you from a dream as if she’d never left.
You know you, your muse. Let’s talk about her.
Have you been treating her right? Or have you been resentful? Avoiding her calls? Talking trash about her to your friends? Putting off quality time so you can watch telly, play Spades, or other trivial nonsense where she’s clearly not invited? Do you really think a Goddess, no matter how lonely, wants to hang out while you update your Facebook page? And if she did, you’d likely be annoyed that she showed up at such an inopportune moment.
Remember, time devoted to your genius need not be a two-way street: she is a demigod, and under no obligation to hang out with the likes of you in the first place. Know that there are many whose shrines to her greatness far surpass yours, that there are those who have devoted whole temples to her—and so many of these devotees with their trinkets and their affirmations have only seen the brightest glimpse of her visage. She owes you nothing, wretch.
Is your shrine tidy and free of cobwebs? Do you offer her gifts? Do you meditate daily on her awesomeness? If you hesitate (as I do!) to offer anything but a resounding “Yes!” to these queries, consider yourself lucky, chump. Lucky that she comes to you at all. Considering your petulance, she probably has a thing for you.
Don’t make that face, I’m sure you’ve had your suspicions. You wouldn’t have gotten into this whole creation thing in the first place if you hadn’t suspected the Muse pays more attention to you. Admit it, she makes you feel special. All those nights facing off with the keyboard to create something that will likely never put a penny in your pocket or a lover between your sheets were only fun when she was there. And when she didn’t show up you resented her. Who the hell was she, besides a Goddess, besides the very thing that makes humans beautiful and inspirational, who the hell was she besides the reason we have libraries and museums and video games and Cathedrals—so what to all that, you could have gone drinking with your friends, both of them.
No matter that when you’re swilling Cosmos at cocktail parties you slur that her creative spark is your goddamned reason for living.
Here’s what I believe: you like her; she likes you. When you are ready to settle down and put her first in your life, she will be there for you. When you are a monk in your devotion and a lover in your ardor, when each day begins with an act of devotion to your creative urge, she will reward you with all the brilliance of your ego’s fantasies. You know, and I know, she will be waiting.