Here and There

Early reports show a 74 percent turnout.

Damn, sometimes that guy just nails it:

“A government with values this sleazy couldn’t possibly win a war.”

Was just reading Frank Rich’s weekly column on nytimes.com and came across a word whose meaning I was unsure of (sinecure*). My usual habit is to copy the word and paste it into one of two dictionaries: either Merriam-Webster online or Apple’s Dictionary application, which comes built-in with OS X 10.4.x.

When I went to copy the word this morning from my broswer, the Times site did something interesting. Following a double-click on the word, a new window popped open offering a definition from the American Heritage Dictionary.

I’m unaware of other sites using this feature, and tried the same on the latest releases of Safari and Internet Explorer (which, incidentally, I hadn’t launched since December and which had no idea how to even render the Times website…ugh). Nothing.

With Safari, you can set Dictionary to load definitions of command-clicked words on a Mac. Or you can set the browser to take you to the Dictionary application where you can read more about the word. Firefox doesn’t support that, as far as I know.

Anyway, just a spot of good geeky fun for Earth Day morning.

* n.

1. A position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary.
2. Archaic. An ecclesiastical benefice not attached to the spiritual duties of a parish.

[From Medieval Latin (beneficium) sine cūrā, (benefice) without cure (of souls) : Latin sine, without + Latin cūrā, ablative of cūra, care; see cure.]

First, I apologize to anyone out there who may be a devoted reader and who may have been wondering, Where is he? Why hasn’t he updated?

From time to time, I become the self-conscious blogger, and feel the need to explain my behavior. That said, these last eight days between posts can be explained by … well, simply the lack of a desire to post. It’s that simple.

But in just about the same window of time, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the new LP from a continual favorite ― Blonde Redhead.

23 begins with a piano-and-strings-filled bang, but no blunt edge. Immediately, it’s obvious the band is evolving away from the distortion and feedback that has marked most of their previous six full-lengths. They feel more organic, yet at the same time, more electronic.

Voices are filtered, layered, spun, woven, orchestrated into a wonderfully chaotic-yet-composed paragon of sound, melded succinctly with honestly pretty simple tones from the strings and gadgets. Most songs on the LP have limited tonal range, which as a musician I must say is difficult to pull off. But when done well, the effect is a smooth sway, an unwrinkled, stopless ride. You don’t need to know the lyrics to feel the music.

Standouts are: “Dr. Strangeluv,” “SV,” “Spring and By Summer Fall,” and “Silently,” which Applied Luck was kind enough to point bears an eery resemblance to “The Neverending Story.”

Floating space apartments? It doesn’t get better than this. And all it costs is $14.9 million.

Utter hilariousness that touches on why you can’t get a decent burrito in NYC (has a direct relation to why a cheap, decent slice of pizza is impossible to come by in SF).

I’m sure it’s the kind of thing that was determined, say, in ancient Greece …

But as I was attempting to get back to sleep around 5 a.m., I wondered for the first time really, Just how fast is the earth moving in its annual trips around the sun?

I set myself to the task of determining this on my own. Here’s my estimate:

Based upon three sources (1, 2, 3), I came up with an average for the length of the earth’s orbit of 580,705,545 miles. I then calculated the amount of hours per year (a simple 365 x 24 will do for an estimate, thank you), and got 8,760 hours. I divided the length by the number of hours and got 66,290.587 mph. I decided to take it a couple steps deeper: next was speed per minute (1,104.431 miles) followed by miles per second (18.414052 miles).

So there you have it. Since I started writing this post, the planet we’re all on has hurled about 5,522 miles through space. Thank you, sun, for keeping us in your orbit.

After waking up at the ungodly hour of 4:40 a.m. today and reading about the explosion inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, I just had to say something.

In this country, the talk about Iraq mostly revolves around what to do with the U.S. military presence in Iraq, at last count some 160,000-strong. Democrats swept congressional elections in November thanks in large part to the incompetence of the Bush Administration. But it was Iraq more than any other factor that gave Democrats their new and somewhat tenuous hold on Congress. The voting public in the U.S. wants to see the troops returned, and if it means Iraq falls further into chaos, so be it. Not our problem. We broke it, tried to fix it, it didn’t want to be fixed.

But of course, that’s irresponsible. No conscience-toting liberal can condone such behavior.

And that’s the tricky part. The damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of a pullout versus open-ended deployment has neatly established political binaries. It’s also a chicken-or-egg dilemma: Does the U.S. presence, seen as an occupation by most Iraqis, cause the violence, or would a phased withdrawal (or any type of redeployment) be seen as capitulation to the sectarian set in the midst of civil war?

Maybe the best answer I’ve heard lately is that we should continue to aid the Iraqi government and security forces until we get a real president, who will have been ushered into office based on the first real plan for what to do. Maybe. It’s true the 44th president of the United States will have the direct backing of the American electorate, the people’s will, if you will. But as of yet, no candidate’s position seems clear or different enough, but there is the fact that we’re 18 months away from November 2008.

The bottom line is this: There is no competence to deal with a seemingly impossible situation, neither on behalf of U.S. leaders nor the nascent Iraqi government. Perhaps both countries could use a swift political realigning.

Nothing really shocking or new in the latest UN panel of scientists’ report on climate change, but still, I’m depressed.

I like art, but I’m no patron. I just like what I like, for various reasons.

I just saw that Sol LeWitt, someone whose work I’ve come across from time to time in my life, most memorably at PS1, died.

I appreciated LeWitt’s fusion of color and geometry, his three-dimensional structures coming to resemble some vague advanced childhood toy, a la Erector Set.

A friend spotted Matt Gonzalez, former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and near-upset winner of the mayoral election of 2003, on Friday. In the years since his loss, Matt gave up his seat on the board and established a law partnership here in SF. But he also seemed to let himself go appearance-wise.

See, leading up to November 2003, part of his appeal was sexual. I have no qualms saying it. Rare was the female friend who would have shuddered at the opportunity of hopping in the sack with the good supervisor from District 5. And I have to admit, he had a charm, a charisma, and a natural handsomeness that helped him standout from the rest of the candidates.

Then, following the narrow loss, the weight came on, especially around the neck. The suits fit a lot more loosely, the hair tended to skew toward unkempt, and not in any ironic fashion. The hair also began to gray.

But the other night, at a wine bar in Deco Ghetto, my friend confirms what I saw for myself a few weeks ago (I work a block away from Gonzalez’s law office): Matt is back. He’s thinner, suits are fitting, hair is … cut.

Could it be that he’s beginning to groom himself again in anticipation of the kinds of public appearances that accompany a race for mayor?

I actually hope not. I do want a viable candidate to challenge the overwhelmingly popular incumbent, Gavin Newsom. But Matt Gonzalez may not be the one. He’s no Al Gore, using his time out of office to adopt pet causes and be spared political pressures that allow you actually get things done. No, Matt has more of less receded from public view, and I feel he lost a lot of his support to Newsom with same-sex marriage and the hotel strike, both of which were handled by the mayor in ways that swept former opponents into his camp.

It would be interesting if Matt resurrected his political career. He claims he’s not running, but hasn’t ruled out politics in general. All I know is he looks better these days …

I have to agree with The Chronicle’s Jon Carroll here. It’s one thing to make up stories when your job is to entertain, as is David Sedaris’s. It’s another when you’re the leader of the free world.

Apparently, The New Republic has run a story “debunking” Sedaris’s yarns. Oh really? I never thought any of those 3,034,583 stories of his were fiction. Not a single detail.

They can do almost nothing wrong …

Google Analytics is a traffic gauging tool. It comes with many bells and whistles (the important, useful kind), from basic page view statistics to marketing results.

And, there’s a nifty map of where in the world people are accessing your site.

I got really excited a few weeks ago when, on the same day, I got my first hit from Iran and Montana.

Maybe.

Scientists have discovered a single gene responsible for the greatest size variance found in any species of mammal. Behold, the dog … small and ferocious. Large and timid. And everything in between.

Those awaiting the utter demise of the Bush presidency may cheer low presidential approval ratings. I know I do from time to time.

But I often find myself wondering, Just who are these 1 out of 4? And, in California, no less. I could see 1 in 10, or 15, maybe. But there are approximately 36 million people in this state, so one-fourth is about 9 million people who still have their heads so far up their asses, they think he’s just doing a heckuva …

I am encouraged by the near neutering of the president by this Congress. Has a No-Duh realization yesterday that Nancy Pelosi (who happens to be my rep in the House) is the de-facto leader of this country until November 2008. She’s the winner of the latest popularity contest, if you think about it. And good for her for engaging in such traitorous activity as talking with leaders of other sovereign nations. I [heart] the House of Representatives.

Ah, I digress …