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Monthly Archives: July 2009

My Centenarian Blog

I just noticed today that this blog is 100 posts old (yesterday’s post was the 100th). I won’t do any navel-gazing the way I did last time I marked a milepost when the blog was a month old, but I do have some minor housekeeping matters to mention, and I might as well use this […]

Lessons from the Obama Campaign for Prop 8 Opponents?

Today’s New York Times has an article about the debate among supporters of marriage rights over whether to pursue a reversal of Proposition 8 in 2010, or to wait until 2012 when there will have been more time to recruit large donors, shift public support, build a broader grassroots movement, and so on: Marc Solomon, […]

So Quaint, Those Brits

Some eminent British economists sent a letter to the Queen explaining how they failed to foresee the financial crisis. (Here, we just give such people high government posts instead.)

Big Brother Google

Like a lot of other people, I have gotten used to the targeted ads that Google serves up as I make my way around the web. When I am using Gmail and get an email message about, say, Vikings, the message is invariably accompanied by a list of ads in the sidebar trying to sell […]

Painting San Francisco

This is sort of cool. I had to go out to the old Naval Air Station in Alameda again a few days ago (photos from previous visits are here and here), and I took some photos looking across the bay to San Francisco. Unfortunately, they didn’t come out very well, in part because some kind […]

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Parker Scorned

The Grand Lake Theater here in Oakland is well known for its political advocacy, from messages on the marquee calling for the prosecution of people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to anti-war events featuring Barbara Lee and Sean Penn. Normally the issues the theater focuses on are national, at a safe remove from the […]

Some Free Advice

If your mood levels are highly correlated with ups and downs of the S&P 500, then you are probably overinvested in stocks. Similarly, if your mood levels are highly correlated with the quality of your internet connection, then you probably spend too much time online.

Riddle, Mystery, Enigma

The photo in my last post is from a long walk I took with the dog the other day, a loop from my home east of Lake Merritt up to Berkeley and back (a bit over 10 miles altogether, according to the handy Gmap Pedometer). I had some errands to run along the way, but […]

Real Estate Collapse

On Telegraph Avenue in North Oakland:

Tykes on Bikes

They closed off a few streets of downtown Oakland for some criteriums today, the 5th Oakland Grand Prix. I only had time to swing by for a few minutes, but one of the races I caught was the “local kids” category (they did a single lap). They may not have been as fast as the […]