Categories
Historical

Hangars

I hate hangars. I really do. They’re just so uncooperative, for pieces of bent wire or molded plastic. They cling to things you don’t want them to cling to, they don’t come when you want them, and you can never find one when you really need it. I mean, just because I actually washed all my clothes at the same time, and maybe bought a new pair of jeans, or a few new shirts, doesn’t mean when I go to hang them all up, I’m missing three hangars, does it? And then suddenly you find yourself looking through the closet going, “well, I don’t wear this anymore, I can just fold it up and put it in the drawer” or “My God, what possessed me to pick that out? Quick! Stuff it away where no one can see.” Honestly! Who needs that kind of crisis just because you want to hang up a few pieces of clothing?

Austin, a good friend from college who is moving to San Francisco in December (most likely, anyway), asked me what neihgborhood I would suggest he move to. I have to admit, I would probably look to either the Russian Hill/North Beach area, the Castro, or maybe the Haight areas. Those are the three parts of the city that I personally would probably look to first, as they’re in pleasant neighborhoods with events going on but not necessarily in the middle of the hectic parts near the Wharf or in Union Square or South of Market. And yet they’re generally close enough and accessible to those areas so that heading in to them isn’t difficult.

Categories
Historical

Kill Bill

A Times piece on Kill Bill with a reaction similar to my own.

Categories
Historical

It’s a Windy Day

More bluster from an old windbag. I wonder how long until someone in the administration becomes so desparate they start planting evidence.

Categories
Historical

Celldar?

BusinessWeek has a writeup on Celldar, a technology advance that uses Cellular frequencies as a form of passive
radar that can be used to track objects such as cars, trucks, and boats using low-cost equipment, regardless of whether any individuals are carrying cell phones.

The world where you have some relative annonymity in your movements, if it still exists, is dwindling fast.

And it might support schemes by Oregon and other states regarding “pay-for-use” road taxes. Many transportation experts assert that taxing actual driving distances would be a more equitable way of funding highway upkeep than today’s tax on gasoline and diesel fuels. That’s why the European Commission wants every vehicle in Europe to be fitted by 2010 with a black-box device that can be tracked by satellite. Germany is now testing such a system on trucks, and Britain plans to require it on trucks by 2006.

Besides all the obvious privacy issues raised by the technology, I gave some thought to the issue raised above about gasoline taxes as opposed to a direct “road use” tax. The advantage of taxing road use directly is that it correlates well with the consumption of the road as a resource. However, what I appreciate about gasoline taxes is that it can accomplish two goals. It is a rough approximation of how much a driver uses roads, since there is a correlation between miles driven and fuel consumed. And it also rewards those who give thought to fuel economy, by providing a tax break by way of achieving a further distance by using less fuel. Switching to a direct “road-use” tax eliminates or greatly reduces this indirect tax benefit for purchasing a more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Categories
Historical

Another Monday Morning

There are many things I could write about this morning. From the Pro-Israel rally at Rutgers to , and from California’s business climate concerns to this past BusinessWeek’s cover article on Unmarried America, there are more than enough topics to fill a few pages.

But all I really want to do is pass the day quickly and enjoy Monday Night Drinking. It’s Monday morning, after all.

Categories
Historical

Kill Bill Volume 1

I had the pleasure of seeing Kill Bill Volume 1 tonight. Or at least, I think it was a pleasure. The movie was essentially stylized violence from the opening scene through the breaking point where Volume 1 leaves off for Volume 2. I did enjoy the movie’s fusion of east-west, including the anime segment that fill the backstory of one of the main characters. And the movie played heavily on the theme that violence begets violence, this story being at its most basic level about revenge. And don’t go expect any groundbreaking dialog, as the movie really has only a small amount, and of that amount, quite a bit was surprisingly in Japanese. In fact, this marks the second straight weekend that I’ve seen, in theatres, a major American movie set at least in part in Tokyo. There were the musical “sequences” that indicate a particular scenario, that you will eventually come to recognize as significant. And the juxtoposition of the score with the violence only served to heighten the reaction to the violence on screen. The cinematagraphy, too, was fantastic, with wonderful sequences tied together, and with the looks, expressions, and actions of the chararacters often conveying more than any spoken words.

The only thing about the movie was…the violence. It was extreme, not unexpectedly, this being a Quentin Tarantino movie. But it was taken to a whole new level, far beyond the Once Upon a Time in Mexico I saw just a few weeks back. It was violence pushed beyond the initial disgust through the ridiculous barrier and back in to the horror realm. Desensitized though we may seem to it, the violence will likely ellicit a reaction from just about everyone. It left me wondering if Tarantino is merely ambivalent about it, if not simply enjoying the hacked limbs and spurting blood, as he certainly lets the camera wander over it at times.

Definitely a good movie, but you’ll want to make sure you have a strong stomach before you see it.

In other news, my car is repaired and returned and sitting in my driveway. Who would have known the damage that had been done. Now I only hope NJM can get some renumeration out of the driver who rear-ended me.

Categories
Historical

RAA Board Meeting

Tonight was the approximately monthly board meeting of the RAA, where the most interesting discussion took place around the NJ Higher Education reorganization plan. While much of the attention surrounding the plan has faded from public view, work in the political arena has continued to move forward, leading to a situation where acceptance of the plan as a concept to implement could occur eas early as January 2004 in the state legislature. For those who don’t know, the plan is to merge several higher education institutions in to three regional universities, in Camden, Newark and New Brunswick. There has apparently been an increase in support in both Camden and Newark, while there remain reservations in New Brunswick, given that of all three it has what it considers the stronger reputation.

Rutgers’ concerns come down to funding and organizational structure. Regarding the structure, the Board of Trustee has always had the ability to hire and remove the Rutgers University President. The fear of the university is that under the reorganization, that power will reside instead in a politically-appointed Chancellor based in Trenton, allowing the political administration of the day to use these appointments as political rewards and not necessarily looking out for the best interest of the higher education system in the state. The second concern revolves around funding, with the concern there being that NJ already ranks 41st out of 50 states in providing funds to public higher education institutions, and the price tag for the reorganization may be anywhere from $1 billion to $3 billion, with the funds necessary to then support the new structure on an ongoing basis in future years.

In other RAA news, anyone interested in volunteering time should check out the orientation meeting on November 5th. The RAA’s always looking for new volunteers, and those who attend get to find out the juicy tidbits like the one above.

In other non-RAA news, the repairs on my car are complete so I hope to be driving home tomorrow with my newly repaired old car. And for those who don’t know, Kill Bill Volume 1 is released in theatres tomorrow.

Categories
Historical

Israelstine? Palesrael?

The Christian Science Monitor proposes a single government for the Israelies and Palestinians:

If Israeli settlers want to stay in the West Bank – let them stay! But if they want to stay there and be part of a community built on long-term peace, then they cannot refuse to give equal rights within the whole of an expanded state of Israel/Palestine to all Palestinians who want to be a part of it.

The end of the dream of a monocultural “Jewish state”? Yes. But in the Holy Land, as in South Africa, it could be the start of a hopeful new chapter in human history. For Jewish Israelis, as for Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking South Africans, they could still be living in a multicultural state in which their language, their culture, and their religion would be fully embraced.

Categories
Historical

Tech Tasks at Hand

If I haven’t been writing very much in here, it is because I’ve been trying to keep up with the media consumption I’ve been feeding on (magazines, movies and tv galore) and trying to complete a half-dozen other things.

Specifically, I’ve been having a grand time configuring my new “Virtual Private Server”, which is neat in theory but difficult to set up. I have to configure my server to run as I see fit, and eventually migrate all my web sites (including this one) to. At least I have full control over the server now. I’m also trying to configure myEclipse, an open source Java IDE, to allow me to develop and debug web projects. Of course, that hasn’t been going swimmingly either. And then there’s the two computers I’ve been asked to try to repair.

So, yes, that’s where I’ve been hiding, when I’ve not been out trying to live a little!