From Wired News comes How Does Fat Kill Thee? Many Ways. This information is just the extra kick in the butt I need to lose a few and get in shape for the excursions planned for later this year in Iquitos, Lima, Guayaquil, Cuzco and points N E and W. I’d already decided I didn’t really feel like dragging around anything extra at 11K feet, but now knowing that all those “oily, yellowish globs of fat” are churning out “a stew of hormones and other chemical messengers” that muck up my health … well …
May 12, 2004
May 11, 2004
Freecycle
Ever heard of Freecycle?
The worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It’s a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is run by a local volunteer moderator (them’s good people). Membership is free.
The groups are run through Yahoo! groups, which means you can access your local group through the Web or have offers and followups sent via e-mail.
As an example of what goes down, here are some recent bits from last Friday through today from the San Jose Freecycle group:
TAKEN: White 500W Halogen Torchiere Lamp
TAKEN: car seat stroller
Taken: long black plastic trough
OFFER: 900W microwave oven (not working)
TAKEN: 12 gallons of chile red paint
Offer : 4 bicycle innner tubes with holes
Offer: empty rusty propane tank
OFFER: Dinette Set, 70′s style
OFFER: Ugly Green Giant Carnival Monkey …..
OFFER: Maternity blouses
OFFER: Metal Storage Cabinet
TAKEN:Samsung microwave
offered- Queen size futon with frame
wanted:torch
Needed: wire hangers
Offered – Stationary Bike
WANTED: Electric Mobility Scooter
See how it works? Easy, isn’t it? Posts are labelled OFFER: TAKEN: WANTED: or some variant thereof, depending on whether someone is offering something, someone’s taken an offered item and it’s no longer available, or someone wants something.
The San Francisco Bay Area has a number of groups and there’s been on-going discussion about whether some of the groups should meld, but the question always is, do you want to wade through hundreds of offers within an hour’s drive or a smaller number of offers that are close to you?
I’ve been a member of various local Freecycles since last December and wholeheartedly support the concept.
“Think globally, recycle locally,” as the Freecycle folks put it.
Craig’s List and the future of newspaper advertising
Randy Shaw at Beyond Chron (‘The Voice of the Rest’ – San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily) writes about Joe Cassidy, the developer of the Ironwork Lofts on Harrison Street, who spent $75 on Craig’s List to advertise and sell all 28 units in his live-work loft development (for prices from $450K for a 700 sq ft studio to $700K for a 1500 sq ft 2BR) rather than run $10K worth of ads in the Chron.
After getting such great results for only $75, Cassidy calls the Chronicle ads a “waste of time and money. The whole country checks Craig’s List so you’re reaching a much larger audience than the Chronicle for a fraction of the cost.”
The San Francisco Chronicle is heavily dependent on real estate ads, which is why it makes sure its editorials and endorsement follow the positions of the San Francisco Association of Realtors. But once word gets out about Cassidy’s success through the Internet, expect other cost-conscious developers to follow suit.
Uh. Oh.
Actually, it’s already happening. When we contracted with Saxe Real Estate to find us a tenant, vet the tenant, and lease out the condo in Pacific Heights, Thom O’Brien didn’t run ads in the papers, he ran ads on Craig’s List.
Hooray for Craig Newmark and his list(s).
Alarming debate – Audit: No use for street fire alarm boxes
Alarming debate is an article by JK Dineen in the Examiner re a proposal to close out the street fire alarm boxes.
[...]
[City Controller Ed] Harrington argues that fire alarm boxes generate thousands of false alarms every year. Of the more than 22,000 calls coming in from street boxes, 87 percent are false alarms, according to Harrington. Furthermore, of the 15 percent of calls that are legitimate, 80 percent are medical, meaning only 3 percent are fires.
Um. Does Harrington realize he’s saying that people use fire alarm boxes to report at least 660 “real” fire calls a year and that almost 2700 calls a year are medical emergencies, albeit not fires? Is there really a problem with people using fire alarm boxes to call in medical emergencies, if they have no other way to quickly contact emergency services and a life is saved?
San Francisco has 2,040 fire alarm boxes, with a concentration in densely populated neighborhoods. The boxes, maintained by 16 electricians from the Department of Telecommunications and Information Service, are part of a 300 mile copper network that also carries the mayor’s emergency telephone system.
Defenders of the boxes argue that the copper-wire system is The City’s most reliable form of emergency communication. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, for example, phone service was out for 24 hours and fire alarm boxes were used to report dozens of blazes..
Sounds like a good enough reason in our earthquake-prone ville to keep the boxes, but wait, there’s more …
Jack Donahoe, who manages the system, said eliminating the fireboxes would not cut costs at the telecommunications department. He compared eliminating the alarm boxes to “unplugging” an appliance from an outlet where other appliances are also plugged in.
“We can tell you that there is not a direct correlation between shutting down the fire alarm and the cost of the operation,” he said. “The cost would stay very nearly the same.”
Telecommunications Director Denise Brady called the copper network, “an important asset for public safety.” “We should be careful that we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” she said.
You heard it here. If the city takes out those “old-fashioned street boxes,” we’ll have an earthquake or some other catastrophe that swamps or takes out the landline/cell phone system and there will be a huge roar after the emergency is over as people search down the bureaucrats who decided on this “cost-saving” measure.
Penny-wise pound-foolish anyone?
Bush Prefers the Sports Pages
Bush Prefers the Sports Pages [from washingtonpost.com]– an article by Dan Froomkin, commenting on Bill Sammon’s new book, MISUNDERESTIMATED: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters.
[...]
Sammon of the Washington Times writes that Bush gets four newspapers — and reads the sports pages. As for the front pages? He scans and skims.
“Mr. Bush thinks that immersing himself in voluminous, mostly liberal-leaning news coverage might cloud his thinking and even hinder his efforts to remain an optimistic leader,” Sammon writes.
“I like to have a clear outlook,” Bush told Sammon, who is also a political analyst for Fox News. “It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody’s false opinion or somebody’s characterization, which simply isn’t true. . . .
[...]
Maybe washingtonpost.com and its parent company are just peeved Bush doesn’t read their political coverage. Lucky thing Bush watches 60 Minutes II or he’d really be out of the loop.
‘Sven, you didn’t do anything stupid, did you?’
Sasser virus launched to help mum’s business [from the Sydney Morning Herald]
[...]
“About four months ago he was over here for a visit and said ‘Papa, I’ve put out a computer worm’,” his stepmother said. “And then my husband said ‘Sven, you didn’t do anything stupid, did you?’. He just kind of laughed nervously.”
[...]
Google Alert – automated ego surfing
GoogleAlert is an automated Google search that sends “new” results to you by e-mail.
Want to know who’s mentioning you on the Web but don’t have time to parse through the Google search results to find “new” mentions? Signup for Google Alert, pop oh-say /”sal towse”/ or /link:www.towse.com/ into the search settings, select how many results you want sent at a time and how often to run the automatic searches, and sit back. GoogleAlert will e-mail you results whenever anything new pops up on their radar.
Some times GoogleAlert comes up with results where you just have to wonder why it took them so long to notice such-and-so site had mentioned you. Other times, GoogleAlert comes up with mentions you probably would never have seen — http://www.fusion.com.au/f3/q/news/display.taf?fn=detail&iss=41, for example.
Peregrines thrive amid high-rises
According to KCBS this morning (in a news item probably lifted from the Chron), peregrine falcons are thriving amid the high-rises in downtown San Francisco and, in fact, are nesting at the PG&E HQ at Beale and Mission.
The word is that the skyscrapers are a lot like cliff edges and the pigeon population makes for wonderful snacking.
Thirty-some years back there were two pairs of nesting peregrines in the state. The species was facing extinction because DDT weakened the peregrine egg shells and eggs were smashing before the eyasses hatched. DDT was banned in 1972 and now there are more than 220 pairs of nesting peregrines in the state with the numbers increasing.
I knew those pigeons were good for something.
Rolex Awards for Enterprise
The Rolex Awards for Enterprise celebrate an interesting collection of people with useful ideas to solve problems at low cost that affect a number of people. Hans Hendrikse, the featured inventor on this page of the site, developed a new way for South Africans to fetch water over long distances. “Thousands of rural women carry water containers on their heads, risking major injuries. Carrying containers weighing between 10 and 25 kg (22-55 lbs) for an average distance of 2km (1.24 mi) per round trip, they can seriously damage their necks and spines. And the salvaged plastic containers they use are often unhygienic.”
Hendrikse came up with a relatively cheap solution. Other inventors, other projects, other award winners are described on this site. Cool use of Flash.