I’m in Seattle now and for the next six weeks. I’m working at University of Washington with Prof. Tanimoto, a great guy. Here’s my new address for you to send gifts and attestations of the void created by my physical absence from your life.
Turadg Aleahmad 608 21st Ave E Seattle, WA 98112
I write this from Victrola café. They got some good coffee. The vibe is like a less hipster hyper version of Ritual Roasters in SF’s Mission District.
It hasn’t rained yet today, despite the forecast, so I hope it stays clear through the fireworks. Well, clear as in no water falling from the sky. It’s quite overcast. Apparently, that’s something Seattleans get used to, mostly by mainlining caffeine.
The CS department has its own espresso machine. Not one of those press-the-button rigs like in Wean, but a real professional barista style machine. And everyone knows how to operate it. I hope I don’t return to Pittsburgh a caffeine addict, but I fear that experimenting with shots and foaming will be too seductive to forgo.
Note, I don’t think Ahmadinejad is right about what the world needs.
UPDATE: I asked Ally how she found that web page and then I tried to find it myself. I did, along with this SFist page using one of my photos of Boogaloo’s. Fun!
This message is to the 20 or so people subscribed to the feed for this blog.
I’ve been using FeedBurner’s Link Splicer to add into the feed a daily grab of my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia. I’ve been keeping those a while, and using the feed to share them with people who want to see the things I like to share.
Since Google Reader added sharing, and now notes, I find that I’m not using Ma.gnolia hardly at all anymore. For real bookmarks that endure, I’m using Foxmarks (which replaces Google Browser Sync because it works in Firefox 3). For timely sharing, that I used to use Ma.gnolia+Feedburner for, I’m using Google Reader.
If you want to see what I’m reading that I think is worth sharing, check out my Google Reader shared page. Better yet, load up Google Reader and add me as a Friend so my shared items will integrate into your other newsreading. While you’re at it, you can add the feed you’re reading, my personal about-me blog feed.
Tuesday I walked home and found my car up on the curb. I couldn’t possibly have parked that bad and forgotten it? Did it slide on the ice? Some damage on the driver side bumper showed it had been hit and pushed 2 ft onto the curb. No note on the windshield. Crap. Did I mention I don’t have collision insurance?
I go to my mailbox, and there is a note. The driver left their name, car make and year, their insurance company name and 800 number, and their own policy number. There are good people in the world.
And today Jack’s Towing came to tow it to Progressive’s repair facility. I don’t know if I got to speak with the Jack, but what a jolly Pittsburghy guy. And while I was standing next to the tow truck, hearing Jack’s story about a power tripping officer at the impound, a car pulled up with the window down.
“Is that your car?” “yeah, it got hit” “I saw her hit it! She was gonna write a note and I told her to call 911. What if that note fell off?” “Wow thanks! yeah, someone put it in my mailbox for me” “yeah I told her to call someone. what if it had fallen off!”
The TV on the Radioconcert at Mr. Smallswas great. They began by sharing that the singer and lead guitar (the essence of the band) are from Pittsburgh themselves. Even though this was a sold-out show, it then became the most intimate I’d seen at Mr. Smalls.
And now I’m listening to “King Eternal” and at 2:20 in I hear them sing “Pittsburgh, let her shine”. I looked up the lyrics to see for sure, and it’s not what they say, but it’s what I’ll keep hearing.
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely high rates of interest.
New definition:
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely low rates of interest.
The post above doesn’t allow commenting, but I’m compelled to say this somewhere: No.
Real New definition:
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely high rates of interest, or charges deceptively low rates at first and raises them unexpectedly.
I see Tabarrok’s point… it’s fair to say that Reich doesn’t trust the poor entirely with their money. But that’s good policy. The poor can’t afford to take the same risks as the rich because when they lose out, they’re not eating. It’s even worse since the last reduction of bankruptcy protections.
It’s in the interests of society that people are well-informed when making their financial decisions. That’s why you get all those little pamphlets with your bank and investment accounts. Why shouldn’t the poor also be informed in ways relevant to their decisions?
The idea was simple. I don’t have a lot of money. But I do have friends. And my friends call all the time.
What if I sold advertising on my phone? After all, I sell banners on my web site.
What if I could run ads for movies and music and stuff me and my friends like? My friends would think that was cool. And if I could get paid every time I get a phone call, THAT would be awesome.
So we built this service. Anyone can use it. We line up the advertisers for you. You earn rewards the very first time a friend calls you. And you get paid REAL CASH.
In the future, every interaction of humans and computers will be a monetary transaction. Yay.
“I decree the spirit of conviction on this intersection,” Mr. Williams boomed from a podium decorated with red, white and blue bunting. “This statue proves that Jesus Christ is Lord over America, he is Lord over Tennessee, he is Lord over Memphis.”
Referring to the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe recover from the economic devastation of World War II, Gore said what is needed today is a “global Marshall Plan” to save the world’s environment and give billions of dispossessed people the tools needed to participate in the marketplace in a rational way. “I want to challenge you to make a personal commitment [to this] regardless of where you end up,” he said. “Remember that right is still right even if nobody is doing it. Wrong is still wrong even if everybody is doing it. These values have to be integrated. It is not too extreme to say our survival depends on it. Be the change you want to see in the world.”
worthy article, though they soured it by closing with Trump’s vapid platitudes
His views seem to reflect those of many Americans. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken June 23-25 shows that most continue to embrace the core values espoused by the Founding Fathers. More than 70% say most Americans still respect freedom of speech and religion. But when asked to compare today’s values with those of five years ago, 68% say Americans are more materialistic now, and almost half — 48% — say Americans are less tolerant of the views of others.
If you think of Pittsburgh as an aging industrial relic, you might be surprised to learn that it ranked number one last year in a study of farmers’ markets and community gardens per capita. (Philadelphia came in second in the survey by SustainLane.com, an online resource for urban sustainability.) It’s no big news to locals, though, who have long enjoyed ready access to fresh food from nearby farms–including one within city limits. Pittsburgh and its surrounding area have 31 farmers’ markets and farm stands, many of which accept food stamps, and urban and suburban neighborhoods are clamoring for more.
In his mind, Carnegie had not earned this fortune as an individual, but held it as a “trustee” for the larger community, which was the source of all wealth. “Wealth is not chiefly the product of the individual,” he wrote, “but largely the joint product of the community.” [...] While we can only applaud the decision by Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates to give away so much of their fortunes, their gifts raise questions not unlike those that confronted Andrew Carnegie a century ago. Is society served by permitting so much capital to be accumulated by so few? Should we have to rely on the usually unfulfilled hope that fortunes of this magnitude will be put to a good cause? What becomes of a society that must rely on “gifts” from a handful of socially conscious billionaires to save its schools, cure disease and alleviate poverty?
In the process, Weems helped make Washington into the nation’s common father. “Our children,” he predicted, “and our children’s children, hearing the great name of Washington re-echoed from every lip with such veneration and delight, shall ask their fathers, ‘What was it that raised Washington to this godlike height of glory?’ ” His writings would provide the answer. Indeed, in many respects, the national symbols Americans revere today — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the founding fathers — entered our canon not through the work of men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Washington, but through the work of far less celebrated figures like Weems.
