Egyptian Lantern Slides – General Views & People – from the Brooklyn Museum plus lantern slides of Egyptian Places from the same source, flickr The Commons.
The Web. What a wonder.
November 14, 2008
November 13, 2008
Foggy day in town (and then not …)
The fog had been creeping in since we woke up. The radio said the San Mateo Bridge, south of us, was fogged in, but we didn’t have fog. Then. … The fog from the south showed up at our doorstep.
7:54 a.m. 
9:08 a.m.: The fog is hugging the underside of the Bay Bridge. The cars heading west come out of a cloud and into the sun, then head back into a cloud.
9:09 a.m. : Some birds hanging out in the notorious cypress tree down hill from us. Watching the fog that’s crept over the bay.
The cranes over at the Port of Oakland on the east side of the Bay are just barely visible above the fog.
10:06 a.m. An hour later, the fog begins to clear and a sunny, San Francisco fall day appears. Not unexpectedly.
The crows rule the cypress roost. Later they’ll make way for the parrots. There are a variety of bird types that share turns watching from the lofty perch. The only bird that’s unwelcome by all is the hawk.
This is our moment. This is our time.
I’m a huge fan of Paul Madonna and his ALL OVER COFFEE work in the Sunday Chronicle.
Got this note from him today (that would be me and the zillion others on his e-mail list):
I’ve had an overwhelming response to this week’s “Obama:Progress” All Over Coffee piece. Since the original sold within the first few hours it was published, (including a backup waitlist) I decided to make a fine art limited edition print of this particular strip to honor this momentous time in history.
The full-color print is 16×22 inches, signed and numbered in a limited edition of 100, at $195 each. Produced by the fabulous printer SF Electric Works, these prints are of the highest quality.
Follow this link to both view and order.
If you missed Sunday’s Madonna, check it out. If you don’t know ALL OVER COFFEE or Paul Madonna, check him out.
Pin the Tail — Patterns, Land Use
Pin the Tail — Patterns, Land Use
Interesting blog post from Sophia Travis @ Pin the Tail comparing red/blue voting patterns in the south for the 2008 presidential election and cotton production in the same region in 1860.
What does this mean? All those old plantation owners’ heirs and assigns are Democrats?
[via tweet fr Tim O’Reilly]
/ CONTEST / 26th Annual Delacorte Press Contest, for a First Young Adult Novel [Deadline: 31Dec2008]
26th Annual Delacorte Press Contest, for a First Young Adult Novel
Deadline: 31Dec2008
The prize of a book contract (on the publisher’s standard form) covering world rights for a hardcover and a paperback edition, including an advance and royalties, will be awarded annually to encourage the writing of contemporary young adult fiction. The award consists of $1,500 in cash and a $7,500 advance against royalties.
All federal, state, and local taxes, if any, are the winner’s sole responsibility. Prizes are not transferrable and cannot be assigned. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN.
ELIGIBILITY
1. The contest is open to U.S. and Canadian writers who have not previously published a young adult novel. Employees of Random House, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates, and members of their families and households are not eligible.
2. Foreign-language manuscripts and translations are not eligible.
3. Manuscripts submitted to a previous Delacorte Press contest are not eligible.
Suitable for readers ages 12 to 18.
100-224 typewritten pages. Double-spaced.
flickr and guesswheresf
I stash photos on flickr — not all the photos I take, obviously, but some. My “pro” account expired today and I need to get around to renewing.
“pro” accounts cost $24.95/yr and a subscription gets you an infinite archive of photos, infinite uploads, infinite … and the free version gets you a far scaled down version, but enough to see why you might want to spend $24.95/yr for the complete deal.
The time I spend roaming around on flickr, looking at other people’s photographs (oooh, look at all the photos labeled ‘Lake Baikal’) is a joy and an education, but most of my time on flickr is spent in one of their interest groups called GuessWhereSF in which the members (1213 at last count) upload photos taken within the city limits and the other members guess where the picture was taken.
I am amazed at the esoteric knowledge of the city and its back alleys some of these folks have. The group also has handy helpful tools like a list of “unfound” photos for those who are looking for the challenge of identifying a photograph that has so far gone unidentified and a comment searcher so you avoid, as much as possible, uploading a picture of somewhere that’s been photographed and uploaded ten times before. (Search for the street name of the place you took a picture of for the best results.)
Pictures that show up again and again and again eventually are nominated for “Hall of Fame” status. Scrolling through the Hall of Fame is a primer into how different photographers can photograph the identical location with widely varied results.
Fun? You betcha.
Like this: Sleepy lion. 3690 Washington @ Spruce, uploaded a day or so ago. (The address was added after the location was identified.) (Identified in like two minutes, I’ll have you know. Sheesh.) Comments follow.
Read the rules before playing!
my Twitterank is 14.52!
As it says over there >>>>> my Twitterank is 14.52! (that tweet, btw, was generated automatically by Twitterrank and was a surprise to me) and before you get all like wow! Sal’s Twitterank is 14.52! realize that the larger the number, the more tweet you are.
So, me … not so much.
[n.b. to get a Twitterank, you have to giveup your twitter name and twitter pwd. Not a good idea if you use name/pwd elsewhere OR if you don't plan to change your twitter pwd in the next hot minute.]
November 11, 2008
The Library in the New Age
by Robert Darnton. (The New York Review of Books. 12 Jun 2008)
Late on this. Just saw a May 2008 link from Robert Berkman‘s friendfeed.
The article concludes, Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don’t think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital repositories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don’t count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
Darnton also says (and I concur, oh, how I concur), Information has never been stable. That may be a truism, but it bears pondering. It could serve as a corrective to the belief that the speedup in technological change has catapulted us into a new age, in which information has spun completely out of control. I would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
Don’t trust the newspapers. Don’t trust books. For heaven’s sake, don’t trust blogs or online news sources or the story that a friend of a friend told your best friend.
Believe, but believe with healthy skepticism because the more I read and the more I know, the more I know what I read is at least twenty percent balderdash and another twenty percent complete fraud. (And despite her protestations to the contrary, the great great whatever great aunt did not trace his nibs’ family roots back to Lady Godiva and beyond.)
A reminder: Click to Give @ The Hunger Site
Click to Give @ The Hunger Site
from the site: The Hunger Site launched in June 1999 as the brainchild of a private citizen from Indiana, with the purpose of helping to alleviate world hunger by using the Internet in a creative way. A simple daily click of a button on www.thehungersite.com would give funding — paid for by the site’s sponsors — to the United Nations World Food Programme.
In its first nine months, the site funded more than nine million pounds of food for the hungry — an astonishing feat. Eventually the site became too large for one man to manage, and in 2000 The Hunger Site was sold to GreaterGood.com, which today operates as the GreaterGood Network family of websites.
The shopshopshop portion of this site is superb as well. Very cool stuffs for those friends and family for whom a gift certificate to Olive Garden just won’t do. Cheap shipping deals too.
Go there and check it out.
The court will overturn Prop. 8
The court will overturn Prop. 8 by LaDoris H. Cordell. (op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle)
I was reading this commentary in the Chron this morning — a commentary I agree with totally, btw.
LaDoris Cordell was a Superior Court judge in the south bay back when I lived in the south bay, so I was surprised when she mentioned she was lesbian.
That’s odd, I thought. I knew she was a woman judge, not all that common, and a black woman judge at that, even more uncommon, but I hadn’t realized she was a lesbian black woman judge. Huh. What do you know? Had I just not been paying attention? Was it just not important? Had I forgotten? (I’ve forgotten a lot of things.)
But then, I went to college, then to law school, opened a law practice in a black community, became a law school administrator, and then went on to a successful career on the bench. Along the way, I got married and had two wonderful daughters. I was perfect. And then one fine day, as these black voters would have it, I chose to simply throw it all away – to become an Untouchable? Ridiculous. I did not choose to be gay anymore than I chose to be black.
Ah. Penny drops. Cordell was married with a family when I knew of her, so I knew of the black woman judge aspect of her life but at that time, the lesbian side wasn’t front and center. I didn’t know and, frankly, had I known, wouldn’t have cared.
Good commentary.
I also liked Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Proposition 8 but for Pete’s sake, he can sure over-emote, can’t he? Easier to read his commentary than to watch it.