The San Francisco Citizen

Well it’s on over at the Asian Art Museum. The fantastic new show is Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.

Now it’s got its fair share of bling, more than enough to hold you until King Tut hits town in 2009, but all these golden treasures come with a story. Read all about it over at the National Geographic and look at some high resolution photos here. And see what San Francisco Art Examiner Marisa Nakasone thinks about it here.

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Pair of pendants depicting the “Dragon Master” (Tillya Tepe, Tomb II). 100 BCE–100 CE (or 100 BC-100 AD, if you swing that way). Gold, turquoise, garnet, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and pearl, National Museum of Afghanistan, ©Thierry Ollivier / Musée Guimet

There’s a whole series of related programs and events, including An Evening of Poetry and Music tomorrow and a showing of The Kite Runner movie in November.

And don’t forget about Target First Free Sundays at the Asian. It could be a good way for you to spend a rainy day weekend?

See you there!

It looks beter in person. Check it out.

The whole thing runs through January 25,  2009. 

$12 for adults, $8 for seniors, $7 for youth 13–17, and free for children under 12. Thursday evenings after 5 pm admission is just $5 for all visitors except those under 12 and members, always free.

The museum is in the Civic Center area: 200 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

It’s open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, with extended hours until 9:00 pm every Thursday.

The Mother of All Museum Exhibitions is coming to Golden Gate Park’s de Young Museum in June 2009. It’s Tutankhamun! It’s on! That’s right, the King of Bling is coming back to San Francisco for the first time in 30 years.

Well, maybe not King Tut himself:

“Tutankhamun’s mummy and the inner sarcophagus are still located in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The outer sarcophagi and shrines are at the Cairo Museum. Neither the mummy nor any of the sarcophagi have ever traveled.”

But this show, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, is going to be way better than The Treasures of Tutankhamun, which is what what people were able to see the last go around three decades ago.

Check out this gorgeous gorget. Wouldn’t you like to hang it on your chest?  Bling bling, baby. Click to expand:

Pectoral with Solar/Lunar Emblem and Scarab. Dynasty 18, reign of Tutankhamun (1332-1322 BC). Gold, silver, electrum, semiprecious stones. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Carter 267d. Photo: Kenneth Garrett © 2008/National Geographic.

O.K., people, now brace yourselves. Tut is going to cost you some coin. Yes, even if you’re already a member. But this show might be what it takes for you to join the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (800 777-9996) As they say, membership has its privileges and you might appreciate that when all the madding crowds surround you.  

Here’s what you need to know now. The exhibition opens on June 27, 2009 and runs through March 28, 2010. And the ‘zeum will be open until 9:00 PM every day for months just to accomodate all the expected people. So, you’re going to need to get your tickets early for best results. They’ll be available sometime near the begining of 2009.  

If you want to know the moment tickets go on sale, then sign up for the e-newsletter why don’t you?

More details here at the mainstream media’s SFGate, where they (remarkably) cite Wikipedia as a source of information.

See you there in 2009!

Full details after the jump.

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Click here to see the latest version of the proposed Chevy Volt “series hybrid” gas-electric car from General Motors. Yes, that’s a fake grill on the nose of the car - apparently, all Chevies gots to have a grille whether they need it or not.

But that’s the way this “boring, boring, boring” vehicle will look once it gets to production.

But look below to see what the Chevy Volt looked like less than a year ago when it visited San Francisco.

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Nobody expected these 22-inch wheels (complete with ”not for road use” Michelin Green-X tires”) to make it into production, but the folks at Chevy could have tried a little harder to drag the show car dream into existence.  

Comes now Toyota with the third-generation Prius that might get a plug-in option at the end of next year. GM better hurry if it wants to get the Volt on the road before then.

But at least Hollywood’s Michael Bay is doing all he can to help. Having honed his skillz directing Scarlett Johansen (as Jordan Two Delta) in The Island, he’s now working on fitting the Chevy Volt into Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

But sadly, this little Chevy will just drive around and not transform into a robot or have any lines with Optimus Prime (known as Convoy in Japan).

Oh well…

Back a half-century ago, Oklahoma Senator Almer Stillwell “Mike” Monroney gave us the ubiquitous window sticker that you’ll see on the side of just about every new vehicle for sale. For your protection, of course. Thanks Mike.

But window space is going to get a little more crowded with information now that California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board have teamed up to give you DriveClean. Now, you’re your going to get a SMOG score plus a Global Warming Score:

SMOG
Smog is a haze-like form of air pollution produced by the photochemical reaction of sunlight with volatile organic compounds (including non-methane organic gases) and oxides of nitrogen that have been released into the atmosphere, especially by automobile operation.

GREENHOUSE GASES
Greenhouse gases (ghg) emitted from vehicles include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) from air conditioner refrigerant. Greenhouse gas emissions are the sum of all the ghg emissions and are identified as the CO2-equivalent value.

So, something like a giant hybrid Lexus LS 600h L, which gets a relatively good Smog Score of 8, will get a poorer Global Warming Score. On the other hand, if they ever tested an old school Honda CRX HF, it would get a very poor Smog Score and a very good Global Warming Score. So it’s educational to have two separate scores.

The all-electric “2008 Tesla Roadster” (both of them! haha!) has a rating of a perfect 10 due to its “0 lbs.” of Annual Smog Emissions. The catch is this: ‘Does not include upstream emissions.” Uh oh. It’s a little funny how some people will bend over backwards to come up with a nonsensical 135 MPG figure for an all-electric car, but other people can’t even hazard a guess as to “upstream emissions,” which exist. (Of course, you power your Tesla with solar, of course, but averaging out emissions from coal fired and nuclear panner plants and the like wouldn’t be a crazy thing to do.)

So, check it out. And don’t miss the acronym page, with plenty of fun phrases like “Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicle.” (How would that compare with something like “Partial Herpes-Free Sex Partner?”).  

During a confusing time when an outfit like Lexus categorizes its hybrid products separately, (as if they’re an entirely different species of vehicle even though they are pretty similar to their gas-only stablemates), these ratings from DriveClean could have merit. So far, so good.

Check it. Your old-school TV, the kind that most Americans have, will stop working next year as we’re going to transition to digital service in 2009.

That means that your grandmother, who watches her stories on a TV with a “rabbit ears” antenna, is going to need your help. So you’re going to get her a Digital Television Adapter for free, or almost free, courtesy of Uncle Sucker.

How? Just go here and sign up for your nifty $40 coupons and then head on over to Circuit City, RadioShack, or the Best Buy.   

And you’d better hurry before the Department of Commerce runs out of money.

Wait a second. Don’t sign up for your DTV coupon yet, because better, cheaper boxes are coming. The problem is that these coupons expire three months after they’re sent to you.

If you sign up too early, you’ll have to shell out your own money to supplement the coupon and your box won’t be all that good. If you sign up too late, then you’ll miss out on any subsidy. But if you time things just right, then you’ll get a sweet converter for free.

Or, you can just buy her a new digitally-enabled TV.

Choose wisely.