Aside

I just reviewed the Persian version of Rosetta Stone in this month’s issue of Macworld. Meanwhile, Slate takes on the Danish version. We come to some similar conclusions, including this one, from Slate’s piece: This Lesson 1 stuff is obviously useful—if you want to deploy your new language, the first step is greeting people. While Rosetta Stone’s initial vocabulary list includes “elephant,” “airplane,” and “boat,” it doesn’t have “hello.” Each lesson focuses on grammar building blocks, and there is no…

“San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.” — Rudyard Kipling From Sea to Sea March – September, 1889 No. XXIII How I Got To San Francisco and Took Tea With the Natives There

This weekend was absolutely gorgeous. Too bad I didn’t have my camera (Becky’s borrowing mine). But it looked a lot like my picture to the left. Yesterday, my Mom and I went walking around the Presidio and Crissy Field and then popped over to Muir Beach for the view. It was so clear that we could see the Farallon Islands, nearly 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Amazing. On Saturday, I spent the entire day running around dealing…

THE SCENE: Cyrus and Alan are waiting in line to buy $11 worth of vegetables at Berkeley Bowl on an early Saturday evening. They’re talking about how the parents of Cyrus’ friend Monica have a ginormous house in Castro Valley. A guy standing one checkout aisle over turns to Cyrus. GUY : Is ginormous in the dictionary? CYRUS: I don’t know. But it should be. GUY: Yeah man, we already got Webster’s on that. CYRUS: What about the Oxford New…

For those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s done a great series in The Atlantic over the past few weeks. He’s appearing at a Cody’s Books event on Tuesday, Feb. 7: BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY tracks AMERICAN VERTIGO: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. For the past year celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy has been traveling in the tracks of another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1831 wrote what remains the most influential book about America,…

My server apparently has been on the fritz for the last few days. Hopefully resolved now.

Ok, so I’m proctoring some Columbia J-School exams. One of the questions is to name all five parts of the First Amendement of the Constitution of the United States. Who’s up to the challenge? Leave your answers in comments. Check your answers here.

Osama bin Laden’s new album “More Attacks Forthcoming” on the iTunes Music Store! [Courtesy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; January 19, 2006]

My Corolla has finally bit the dust. So I’m looking for a Toyota Corolla (or something similar) with under 100,000 miles on it for $5,000 or less. If you find one in the area, let me know. My mechanic is in Berkeley, so in the nabe is preferable.

Today is one of those days as portrayed in the picture above. I just came back from climbing with Bhu in the City — and man oh man, is it clear today. Absolutely gorgeous. Although I’m dead from climbing, I feel like biking a bit today. I’ll head up the hill to my grandparents’ house instead of driving, which I couldn’t do anyway because my alternator is busted. But I won’t let that keep me down.