Aside

Booya. Takes me back to Astro 10 all over again. Come party hardy with me at Chabot. I’ll be there sometime after 1 am.

by John Ashbery (1966) Barely tolerated, living on the margin In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso Before it was time to start all over again. There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils, And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting The whole thing might not, in the end,…

Reuters: The U.N. panel of 2,500 scientists said in February that summer sea ice could almost vanish in the Arctic towards the end of this century. It said warming in the past 50 years was “very likely” the result of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel use. “There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century,” Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told the seminar, accusing the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…

This past weekend I’ve been helping Aaron set up a new blog called “East . . . a windup chronicle of Baseball, Culture, Art, and Politics from the Pacific Rim.” He posted today about Yu Darvish, a new 20-year-old hotshot Japanese pitcher who has an Iranian father and a Japanese mother. He’s the ace for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. He’s got his own site, and his own fan site. I think he just might be the first pro baseball…

Foreign Policy Magazine NET EFFECT: HOW TECHNOLOGY SHAPES THE WORLD September/October 2007 The YouTube Clones By Cyrus Farivar YouTube may be the most popular video-sharing site in the world, but similar homegrown sites are popping up and gaining popularity in some of the world’s most illiberal locales. Just like YouTube in the United States, China’s 6rooms.com, Turkey’s Izleriz.com, and Jordan’s Ikbis.com make it easy for people to upload video of any sort, and the sites remain popular for their nearly…

If you’re in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can catch my piece at the top of the show on the Salinas taco truck situation at 6 pm tonight on KQED (88.5) or KPCC (89.3), respectively. It’ll air in Salinas on KHDC (91.5) on Tuesday at 5 pm. Or, if you don’t feel like doing that, you can listen on the Latino USA site here! Big ups to Melanie Wong, David Boyk (who if you listen hard can be heard…

SF Bay Guardian: But after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, residents found there was still a way to reach their loved ones and let the world know they were OK; they used an old-fashioned communications tool that’s low tech, securely grounded, publicly accessible, and reliable. It’s called a pay phone. NYT: There is a reason for their survival: Public telephones are one of the stranger cash cows in…

So Becky and I saw Sicko last night and it makes us (seriously) want to move to France. Our lack of EU citizenship, of course, makes this rather tricky. A little digging around the Internets turned up this, which is hopeful: A letter addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the press outlet designating the journalist as a permanent correspondent and specifying his duties and his salary. A minimum of €1,000 per month is required. The applicant must also…

The powers that be have told me that my piece on Yotel will air today on The World (and of course on the Internet on any of these stations’ streams.) New York – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 3 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM –…

Hey, so I didn’t know 100 percent that I was going to be on The World yesterday, so my apologies. But my piece talked about my recent trip to Rotterdam, and the Sites and Stories project that they’ve got going on there. One highlight? The Bram Ladage fries shop (pictured). Audio is here! Also, I will be on Latino USA with a piece on Salinas taco trucks next weekend.