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Friday, August 20, 2004
Stay tuned 
| | IT Garage is down, temporarily. It's just an outage. I'll let you know when it's back up. |
| | [Later...] Okay, it's restored, though it may not appear right away for you as the new IP address propogates. |
Show talk
Help in deed
| | High intensity events arrive with the force of dreams. You drive up a road to higher ground, hoping your home will be there when you return. After the hurricane, you drive back down the same road, but it is not the same. It is a vector of indices of power. The broken power and light poles, the crushed hardware store, the truck flung into the liquor store tell of something that has come this way and this way will never be the same. |
| | Tom is a first-rate journalist, and he's at his best here, giving deserved shit those who aren't: |
| | The most annoying element of this has been the headlines. Every day, newspapers tell us, in bold letters, there has been a RAMPAGE. we are BATTERED. We are COMING OUT OF OUR HOLE. We are starting THE PUSH FORWARD. BETTER DAYS ARE AHEAD. WE. WE. WE. The headline is an outmoded, fascist imposition of Order erected upon a lie about a fiction of disorder. |
| | The first moment after a disaster, we do not need news anchors unchained to any news, no shred of useful information, but plenty of unctuous sympathy. We do not need roads filled with NBC-2 vehicles containing anchorites powdering their noses in rear view mirrors. These we have, in droves. |
| | This is outstanding reporting and editorializing, complete with very helpful feedback to FEMA and simlar government agencies, as well as to the mainstream media. |
| | Is there a Pulitzer available for this kind of thing? Tom's writing here is a candidate. |
| | Thanks to Halley for the pointer. |
Or are you happy to televize me?
No kidnap victim is an island
| | I worked with Micah at Earthweb in the mid-90s. He's a really nice guy and a great journalist. Not only that, but he's also a great developer, who helped us launched the initial push channel for the developer.com network, back in 1997. Please help spread the word about this.... |
| | This story seems to be sitting underneath the radar as far as the alphabet networks are concerned; perhaps they still feel burned by their prior experience with an American "executee" (the San Francisco moonbat who faked his beheading). |
Ganging up
Love lives
| | One year ago this morning, I made my last post while Mom was alive. She died a few hours later. |
| | In Men: An Owners Manual (highly recommended, and long since out of print), Stephanie Brush says (I quote from memory), "There are two significant women in a man's life. They are both his mother." |
| | Mom was the most loving and sensible person I've ever known. Her laugh was a virus, and her smile was bright as the Sun. She had her flaws (couldn't swim, lousy sense of direction) but they were of types that didn't matter. She got a bit cranky in her late 80s, after her vision and hearing went to hell; but her spirit was on its way to heaven since Day One, and never flagged. Even on her last full day on Earth, after her power of speech departed in a stroke the night before, she found ways to entertain guests in the hospital room. |
| | In the long run, the best we can hope is to leave the world a better place than we found it. Of that, Mom was the best two examples I know. |
Irradiations
| | Three planes later, we arrived back in Santa Barbara. In the last flight, from Denver to SB, our CRJ (Canadair Regional Jet) threaded its way between thunderheads that were nearly as pretty as the deserts and canyons below. |
| | It's great to be back, and I've got some huge catching up to do. |
| | Meanwhile, I've had mail taking me to task for insulting Bayonne and failing to grok signage pointing toward alternate routes to New Jersey. I'll cop to the first. Judging Bayonne from 440 is like judging New Jersey from the Turnpike. I spent the first half of my life giving people shit for doing that; and here I was, doing the same. So, I drive corrected. As for the second offense, an explanation... |
| | There are only two Jersey routes off Staten Island: 440 South (West Shore Expressway) across Outerbrige Crossing to Perth Amboy, and 440 North (Willowbrook Parkway) across Bayonne Bridge. As I recall (and yes, I may have missed it), notices along 278 West (Staten Island Expressway) of the Goethals Bridge closing only pointed to 440/Outerbridge Crossing as an alternate route. Not to Willowbrook Parkway and Bayonne Bridge (as does the Port Authority in this small notice). When we got to the bridge, and were shunted to a side street by traffic cones, there were these tiny little signs, packed with text, naming 440/Outerbridge as the alternate route. Even though going to 440/Bayonne Bridge involves a short backtrack on 278, it's a much shorter route to New Jersey, especially for motorists headed toward Newark Airport. |
| | As for :30 or 1:00 traffic reports on news stations, I'm not sure I agree that "known" closures shouldn't be mentioned (though I understand the thoinking). I think the decision not to mention them has as much to do with tradition and style as it does with judgement about necessity. In Chicago the style is to list the inbound times on various roadways. In the Bay Area the style (on the big news/info stations) is to get chatty reports from various aircraft. |
| | My rental Chevy Impala (that's a .pdf) came with RDS, as do many GM cars. That means you can hit the "traffic" button and it will seek the next FM (not AM, unfortunately — RDS is FM technology) station carrying a traffic report. And even though a number of FM stations do carry traffic reports, the system never worked for me because too few (possibly none... I can't find any info on the matter) stations support RDS for anything more than listing the station name on the radio's display. You can use RDS to search for stations with particular formats as well. I tried that with "Classical," and even though there are dozens of classical signals audible in Long Island (especialy out in the Hamptons), none are using RDS to advantage, even though it's available in countless new cars. Since most of those stations aren't owned by giants like Clear Channel, it's wrong to blame ownership consolidation for the problem. A lot of the signals I heard are from noncommercial stations that are doing a good job building networks of secondary transmitters (stations carrying the same broadcasts, but with different call letters), or with translators (repeaters of home station signals, on different frequencies). This is resourceful and innovative engineering at work. Yet few of the NPR stations I've run across lately are bothering to use RDS to any advantage at all. |
| | My point: radio stations of all sorts could do a much better job. |
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