Tom McMahon

Some praise for this wonderful new book by world-famous travel photographer David Sanger and writer John Hart:

"This impressive collaboration between an environmental historian and a nature photographer is a celebration of the San Francisco Bay's natural beauty and environmental value. As a life-long San Franciscan who has a deep admiration for the Bay, I believe residents and visitors alike will enjoy this wonderful introduction to the Bay and will be moved to cherish and protect this California treasure."

– Senator Dianne Feinstein

"The bay is brought beautifully to life through Sanger’s eye for the spectacular vista and the unusual angle, as well as his passionate understanding of the details that make up the whole.”

– George Olson, Director of Photography, Sunset magazine

"John Hart and David Sanger bring us a deft blend of very readable history, accessible science, and alluring photography. More importantly, they remind us that an engaged citizenry truly can make a difference in preserving the Earth's ecological bounty."

– Steven J. McCormick, President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy

"For those of us born and raised along the California coast, this book confirms again, through the beauty of its photographs, the great natural treasure we have here in San Francisco Bay.”

—Leon E. Panetta, Director of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy

 

Authors is a popular card game that has been around for well over 130 years and is still a favorite for players both young and old. The game is very similar to “Go Fish” in where the players must request a specific card from the other player. If that player has the card her/she must give it to the caller. The caller continues until he/she does not gain the called card. When a player has all four cards in the “Book” (or set), he/she sets them aside and continues play. The card game continues until all complete “Books” are gathered. The player with the most sets of Authors wins the game.

Be sure to check out the other decks of Authors Cards too. 

BELVIDERE, ILLINOIS — Built by Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s believed to be the only chapel the famed architect designed and is an early example of what became his trademark “prairie” style.

But like many Frank Lloyd Wright designs, the Pettit Memorial Chapel in the Belvidere Cemetery fell victim to his love of letting nature flirt with man’s work. With no drain spouts and lots of square lines, the chapel was helpless against the onslaught of rain, wind and snow over the years, said Belvidere Cemetery board member Pat Purvis.

“Frank Lloyd Wright was all for the looks, but ... his buildings are hard to maintain,” said Purvis. As a longtime member of the Belvidere Junior Women’s Club, she helped raise money to restore the chapel once in the late 1970s. “He didn’t have rain spouts. He liked to see rain falling. He liked to see icicles. They were not built for good preservation.” 

From a lecture by Michael Crichton:

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

 

A very nice first-person account by a pediatrics resident 

It started selling the financial calculator in 1981, the same year IBM Corp. introduced the personal computer. Today, with very few changes, the 12C is still HP's best-selling calculator. With its mortgage amortization and bond calculation functions, it is as essential to many real estate salespeople as a smile and firm handshake. When introduced, the calculator sold for about $150 -- more than $305 in current dollars. Today it retails for about $70. (via Fark) 

A set of checkers with hand-sculpted bottle caps for checker pieces. The caps are custom painted with red Coca-Cola pieces and white Coke pieces.

Also, you might want to check out the Lord of the Rings Checkers edition. 

A new Dutch invention can make cars, busses and other vehicles no less than 50 percent more efficient and thus more environmentally friendly. Better still, the technology is already available; it all comes down to a smart combination of existing systems. (via SachsReport) 

. . . is a build-it-yourself TiVo 

From Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools:

In the summer of 2001, French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet began working on a profile of a rookie firefighter in New York City. They spent hundreds of hours filming an energetic probie named Tony Benetatos at a firehouse in lower Manhattan. It all was pretty standard, snoozy stuff: cooking meals, cleaning trucks, aligning boots. Then came the morning of September 11, when the company received a call to investigate a gas leak near the World Trade Center. Jules went on the call, heard a roar from above, snapped his camera skyward, and filmed the first plane striking Tower One. What follows was two hours of pandemonium, as the firefighters race to the scene, establish a command center and then watch all hell break loose. The most chilling part of the extraordinary 9/11 is how it captures the human element of a tragedy that is still unimaginable in its scope. Particularly eerie is the firefighter's slow realization that this is one blaze they won't put out. That's set against the steady and unnerving background sound of the bodies of tower jumpers smashing through the ground-floor atrium. Observes one firefighter: "How bad must it have been up there if the better option was to jump?" -- James Daly

9/11
2002, 120 min
By Gedeon, Jules Naudet and James Hanlon
$20
Amazon
 

The Vladivostok News:

Eleven participants in the Trans Continent Challenge Rally who headed all the way from Lisbon on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific arrived in the city on Wednesday and were welcomed by Mayor Yuri Kopylov as well as Father Frost (Ded Moroz) and Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) participating in Russian Christmas festivities on the central square.

The rally participants were treated to traditional bread and salt and received memorable presents and books about Vladivostok from the mayor after they symbolically poured the water taken from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific waters of Zolotoi Rog Bay in Vladivostok

 

Four player chess? Here it is. Two, three, or four players pit kingdom against kingdom. Play in teams of two or individual games. Capture a king instead of checkmating him, and use his pieces against the rest of your opponents. Challenging fun. Standard chess board is also included for traditional chess action.  

Weird, yet oddly satisfying Flash animation. 

Atkins Nutritionals:

A recent survey commissioned by Prima, a leading British women’s magazine, gives us our opportunity. The results may seem shocking to young women who imagine that a health-club membership and a good attitude entitle them to claim that they are fit. Prima’s team compared the activity level of women 50 years ago with that of the average woman in 2003. The results were enlightening. How about this for a partial explanation of our current weight troubles: Back in 1953, a typical woman’s physical exertions burned 1,512 calories a day. Fifty years later, the average is 556 calories burned per woman per day. How about food consumption? The average daily intake for a woman in 1953 was 1,818 calories. Today, we take in 2,178. As you can see, the bigger difference is in how much less we exert ourselves.

 

USA Today — Danish toy maker Lego said Thursday it was expecting a $237.6 million pretax loss, the worst in the privately held company's 72-year history. The company, whose colored plastic building blocks have been a favorite children's toy for decades, fired executive vice president and chief operating officer Poul Plougmann over failed marketing strategies. Lego also dismissed Francesco Ciccolella, who was responsible for corporate development. Additionally, the company said it would possibly lay off some of its 8,000 workers worldwide. The company now plans to stop making the electronics and movie tie-in products and return to its core mission: producing plastic building blocks for children. (via Fark) 

Mark Steyn:

Whether the terrorist (a) does the proper paperwork upfront, (b) applies for a retrospective amnesty, (c) gets rejected and ordered to be deported, or (bonus category d) gets arrested for immigration violations and then released (like Sniper Boy John Lee Malvo), it makes no difference: Whichever menu option he selects, the federal government will let him carry on living here until he's decided which Americans he wants to kill.

The world's most powerful nation has an illegal immigration problem because it has a legal immigration problem. Transferring millions of people from the unofficial shadow network to the arthritic bureaucracy that allowed the problem to get this big is unlikely to solve it.

 

With the Lego Digital Designer, you can build anything in your imagination using virtual bricks, right on your computer. Free download. 

"If a Boeing 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet what do you have? Answer: A 132 ton glider with a sink rate of over 2000 feet-per-minute and marginally enough hydraulic pressure to control the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. Put veteran pilots Bob Pearson and cool-as-a-cucumber Maurice Quintal in the cockpit and you've got the unbelievable but true story of Air Canada Flight 143, known ever since as the Gimli Glider." (via Incoming Signals) 

Lego Bible Stories from the Old Testament and the New Testament (via Cynical-C Blog) 

Replica of a human hamster wheel, used in the 1700s to 'put the sick person back on the right track'. From the Glore Psychiatric Museum. 

Mark Steyn:

In that sense, Dean is the perfect man to drive the party over the cliff. He says Vermont is the way America should be. You mean a land of broken-down farms for the natives and weekend homes for the wealthy? Where everyone in the eastern half drives out of state to shop, work and get medical treatment? Where the only kind of business is boutique mail-order specialities — the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Ben and Jerry’s Premium Ice Cream, Cold Hollow Apple Cider? Dean seems likely to complete the party’s transformation from a mass movement into an upscale niche business. Whenever he talks about the south, he sounds condescending. Likewise, the religious. Likewise, blacks. The Park Avenue populist is the perfect standard-bearer for an upper-middle-class college-town party.

 

When it comes to imperious skinflints, nobody played them better than Charles Lane.Thin-faced, spectacled Charles Lane was born Charles G. Levison in San Francisco, California.In a career that spanned almost sixty years, beginning in the early 1930s, Lane made a career of looking disgusted at the efforts of others.His hundreds of films include Ball of Fire, Mighty Joe Young, and The Music Man. Among his TV characters were “Homer Bedloe” on Petticoat Junction, “Foster Phinney” on The Beverly Hillbillies, and Lucy’s Boss "Mr. Barnsdahl” on The Lucy Show.
 

Ann Coulter: When they were fund-raising, the Democratic candidates for president all claimed to be Jewish. Now that they are headed for Super Tuesday down South, they've become Jesus freaks. Listening to Democrats talk about Jesus is a little like listening to them on national security: They don't seem terribly comfortable with either subject. . . . . Brent Bozell: What was true 20 or 30 years ago about public civility remains true today. Comparing American political figures or policies to Nazi Germany -- unless it's the actions of the American Nazi Party or their ilk -- is the first mark of a reckless kook. It's just too bad that the kooks now include the Democratic establishment and the liberal media. . . . . Jeff Jarvis: The ads all followed the assignment: Skewer Bush in 30 seconds. And it's the assignment that bothers me. The assignment only extends the problem with liberalism today: It's all about being against. It's all about no. It's all about bad dog, bad. How much better it would have been to assign these creative masses to come up with ads that present a positive view of a better world without Bush and with a vision we can grab onto and support with pride. But there's none of that. This is all about bashing.  

One of the many subjects covered at soyouwanna.com 

"September 10th, 1945 finds a strapping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyandotte rooster pecking through the dust of Fruita, Colorado. The unsuspecting bird had never looked so delicious as he did that, now famous, day. Clara Olsen was planning on featuring the plump chicken in the evening meal. Husband Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mission, to prepare the designated fryer for the pan. Nothing about this task turned out to be routine.Lloyd knew his Mother in Law would be dining with them and would savor the neck. He positioned his ax precisely, estimating just the right tolerances, to leave a generous neck bone. "It was as important to Suck-Up to your Mother in Law in the 40's as it is today." A skillful blow was executed and the chicken staggered around like most freshly terminated poultry. Then the determined bird shook off the traumatic event and never looked back. Mike (it is unclear when the famous rooster took on the name) returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feathers just like the rest of his barnyard buddies. . . ."

You might want to check out the sculpture done in Mike's honor as well. 

"A cross-country race through France sets the stage as you earn mileage points, overcome traffic hazards and sabotage your opponents! Play 1,000 miles of cards and you win the game. This special Collector's Edition of MILLE BORNES brings back the bright and charming artwork of the original 1962 cards. The 110 cards are poker-sized, the rules booklet is easy to read, and the score sheets are large and convenient - just like they were in the original game! " 

Selections from this comprehensive list:

• It is reasonable to assume that the quality of the training of United States Marine Corps pilots is such that any Marine fly boy could hop into an alien spacecraft and immediately be able to fly it into deep space
• High class strippers with a heart of gold can operate most heavy equipment
• It is not beyond the realm of imagination that the President of the United States would be a fighter jock and would be willing to return to active duty to do battle with invincible alien bad guys
• Alien spacecraft the size of Australia can be taken out with one well-placed sidewinder missile
• Most laptops are configured with interfaces powerful enough to override the communications systems of the most sophisticated futuristic societies
• The most sophisticated labs in the world have impenetrable vault doors buried 30 stories into mountains but use regular hardware store glass panes for observation rooms in the lab nerve center
• The correct military honor for a hero who saves the world by sacrificing his own life by flying directly into the alien death ray is to clap and cheer wildly in front of the hero's family immediately after he perishes

 

Mr. Toast Tours The Solar System! 

From Chris Pirillo:

Your prayers have been answered! "Fontifier lets you use your own handwriting for the text you write on your computer. It turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a computer font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica."

 

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch:

By now, many have learned about how a search for miserable failure on Google brings up the official George W. Bush biography from the US White House web site. Dismissed by Google as not a problem, it points out a case where the real miserable failure is Google itself. This Google Bombing was done by at most a few hundred links pointing at the biography, if that many. Google annoyingly makes it impossible to tell exactly how many links are involved using the term, but to say that this particular campaign is the same as the "opinion on the web" is absurd. So only a few hundred people are able to speak for millions of web users? This isn't the web's opinion -- it's a particular opinion on the web. Calling Google Bombing "cybergraffiti" as the New York Times does is appropriate. Google did have good listings for this query, for the few who were probably doing it before this prank emerged. Now, Google appears happy for this blogging campaign (and now new ones) to spray paint whatever it wants above more relevant listings.

 

From Mike S. Adams, an associate professor at UNC-Wilmington:

In light of the on-going problems with tardiness and cell phones, I am going to modify my class policies this semester. I am not going to follow the advice of my anti-war colleagues who think that we need to talk to tardy cell phone people in order to find out why they hate us. Instead, I am going to let them do most of the talking. The specifics of my new policy follow:

If your cell phone goes off in class, or if you are late to class, you must write a 2500-word paper (minimum) entitled “The Death of Civility at the Postmodern University.” In this paper, you will be asked to write about the decline of civility in our public universities in recent decades. Please note that if you are late more than once, or if your cell phone goes off on more than one occasion, your paper must be a minimum of 5000 words. If you have three separate transgressions, you automatically fail the course. Finally, the paper must be of “A” quality in order for you to stay in the course. You will receive no other credit for completing this project, except, of course, for its positive impact upon your character.

 

From a BusinessWeek interview with Sharper Image company founder Richard Thalheimer:

Q: You're selling a range of products at all different prices, and many of them are more practical than the high-end gadgets that dominated the store just a few years ago. Why?

A: We found that more useful products tended to sell better. It was a real awakening to me that useful products had broader appeal. Now we still have fun stuff and glamorous products, but we also have items you can use every day, like our ultrasonic jewelry cleaner.

 

"We've taken our popular Gold-Plated Kazoo and surrounded it with a custom-designed wooden executive display box. These wooden boxes are designed and individually hand-crafted in solid walnut by Canadian craftsman, W. R. MacTavish. Each box has a tung oil finish, a real glass top, and a padded velvet lining. The Gold-Plated Kazoo fits perfectly inside the box. They have hidden barrel hinges and a hidden clasp, so the box stays closed. It can be displayed flat or standing up. It can even be hung on the wall. This item is only available here at Kazoobie Kazoos. We are building 24 units for sale this season." 

Jennifer Nelson in SFGate:

Berkeley Bowl is a fabulous market. The parking lot and many of the patrons, however, are not. I have never seen such angry people as I saw on my first visit to Berkeley Bowl (and every visit thereafter). These are people who drive used Volvos plastered with bumper stickers that say "Wage peace," "The truly educated never graduate" and "Barbara Lee speaks for me." But many of them have no patience and don't seem to think the rules of the road apply to them. After parking and shopping next to these folks for three years, I'm starting to think that a steady diet of edamame, veggie burgers, organic greens and soy milk makes people really, really angry.

 

A learning and entertainment center loaded with features youngsters and their parents will both love, this 13" color interactive TV helps parents control their child’s viewing habits. Up-to-date technology allows parents to lock channels, limit the number of viewing hours, and prohibit use of DVDs and VCRs, while a V-chip blocks movies and shows based on their ratings. There’s even a "power-on" quiz option that requires children to correctly answer a math question on screen before the TV will function. Designed for ages 4 to 8.  

Robin Good on a very neat bookmark manager called "delicious":

In practical terms delicious allows me to bookmark on the fly any content, Web site, article or resource I find online. No matter on which browser or OS I like to work I can use delicious by installing a simple bookmarklet in my preferred browser. Once installed, bookmarking a resource is just one-click away. When clicked, delicious automatically records URL and title of the resource while prompting me for a short description and for any number of tags I may want to attach to this information item. Just like similar boomarklets from popular blogging systems.

As you keep bookmarking relevant sources online and tagging them with appropriate keywords you automatically generate a multiple set of delicious views of your online resources which can also be viewed/filtered instantaneously through the tags (categories) you have attached to each one. You explore, discover, review, filter and share with others while following your own personal interests and goals.

Is there a better way to learn while enriching everyone else? Very strongly recommended.