The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches 5
and then moves on.
The formerly-controversial Sutro Tower, as seen from the northwest through the window of an Emirates Airbus A380 super jumbo jet.
See the entire Sutro Tower mise-en-scene here, courtesy of Telstar Logistics’ Todd Lappin.
Or, How the Examiner Embarrasses Itself With Japanese Water Car Story.
Now, over at the Denver Green Living Examiner, writer “Linnae Selinga-Puyear” has this bit called “How Dasani, Fuji and Evian will replace Exxon, BP and Shell.” (Of course she probably means Fiji Water and not Fuji, but let’s not dwell on that as it’s probably equally stupid to get your drinking water either from the slopes of Mount Fuji or from the South Pacific.)
As stated before, you can use water to make a car go down the road, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s powered by water. If the Genepax company in Osaka, Japan were claiming something along the lines of cold fusion, then there’d be a chance they might actually have something.
Is this a real Japanese Water Car?
It must be tough to come up with “something green” on a regular basis for today’s demanding readers. Even if you’re sort of joking around, you’ve got to try harder to show you don’t believe in fairy tales. Especially automotive-related fairy tales in the age of $5 per gallon gasoline.
Don’t you think?
It’s been printed in the San Francisco Examiner, (so it must be true):
Captain James Dudley of Central Station in North Beach plans to ask the San Francisco Entertainment Commission to consider making mandatory handstamps specific to a bar or club so police can more easily make connections between specific locations and drunken behavior.
According to the Cap’n, “it would be helpful to be able to track people.”
Will this idea pass constitutional muster? Is it justified? Feel free to read the Captain’s weekly newsletters to see what he’s dealing with on a nightly basis in the world-famous North Beach area.
Will mandatory handstamps make your San Francisco bacchanal safer? Adamcomerford via Flickr
Be sure you don’t spend too much time showing off all your temporary tracking stamps to your friends on the street, as loitering too long in front of a club will soon get you into hot water as well.
Stay safe and have fun!
Here’s what they want you to believe: the route of the Bay to Breakers footrace is all downhill after topping the Hayes Street Hill. From the website:
ING Bay to Breakers is a 12K (7.46 miles) course. From sea level at the Embarcadero the course rises steeply along Hayes Street Hill. Around the 2.5-mile mark runners climb an 11.15% grade between Fillmore and Steiner, bringing them to the highest point in the race, approximately 215 feet above sea level. The remainder of the course gradually flows downhill alongside the Panhandle and through Golden Gate Park.
But that’s simply not true. Take a look at this elevation profile. See? After dipping down a bit the course continues to rise and reaches its highest point in Golden Gate Park. So there’s a reason why it feels you’re going uphill after conquering the Hayes Street Hill - you are going uphill.
Thousands of runners are in Golden Gate Park today preparing for tomorrow’s race. Going to the west uphill in the Panhandle:
Why does the mainstream media repeat a falsehood year after year? Laziness, mostly.
But check for yourself, if you want. Mike did last year and came to this conclusion:
According to the Garmin GPS I was using, the highest point is indeed in GG Park, not the top of Hayes Street Hill.
So plan your racing strategy accordingly.
Have fun tomorrow!
Local writer Anne Herbert, famous for coining the phrase “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty,” recently announced on her blog:
The closer I live to Sutro Tower, the more I think it isn’t dangerous.
O.K. then. But who says Sutro Tower is dangerous? Well, for starters, the people who live around it in the Twin Peaks area, in small neighborhoods like Clarendon Heights and Midtown Terrace. Among other things, they worry about EMF radiation. They worry that the tower might fall down.
Sutro Tower at night under a shooting star. Looks safe enough:
But there’s not much they can do about it. The time to do something would have been back in the 1960’s when it was being planned.
So, let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and check out this 35-year-old piece from Stephen R. Barnett. He alleged:
…the project was cloaked from public view by a media blackout, a conspiracy of silence hatched by the TV stations that own the tower and joined by the Chronicle and Examiner.
Them’s fighting words, don’t you think? You might not agree with his conspiratorial tone, but we all can appreciate little nuggets such as:
“It is ridiculous to assume the FCC will require the entire tower to be painted with alternate stripes of white and orange.” Wheat declared. It “will doubtless be painted a neutral color consistent with the surroundings,” he assured the Supervisors.
As you can see, it’s white and orange to keep the FAA happy. Note the newish 125-foot-long, 10-ton auxiliary antenna mounted vertically
More recently, a movement was afoot to prevent the tower from going digital, but that didn’t work out.
There are updates for the digital future slated and there’s a lot of life left in this structure, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
To find out, let’s hear from Jordan Kobert, former Strategic Operations Manager of the San Francisco Chronicle. After getting numerous phone calls to get him to sign up for six months of home delivery, he talked with a salesperson and then rejected the idea:
“Less than a dime a day and I said no.
Did I mention I used to work at the Chronicle…”
That’s got to hurt. Apparently, the folks selling subscriptions are wheeling and dealing, so you can get it for less than a dollar a week. They might even let you name your own price and they might even throw you a $10 Target gift card.
It’s quite obvious the Chronicle, like the free San Francisco Examiner, gets a great deal of value from your eyeballs reading their ads reliably on a daily or almost daily basis. Maybe this is a good deal for you?
Which job is lonelier - shilling for the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle? Tough call.
The headline? “Oil spill captain headed for brig/Feds charge man at helm of Cosco Busan.”
So let’s see here.
1. The captain of the oil spill ship Cosco Busan was actually Mao Cai Sun. The person referred to with federal charges was the pilot, John Cota.
2. It’s far from certain John Cota will ever serve any time for his actions. Perhaps a question mark after the would help make the headline operational?
3. Finally, John Cota wasn’t “at the helm” Here’s somebody at a helm, in this case the mariner is behind the wheel of a Doral.
The helmsman at the time of the accident was a Chinese national, not John Cota.
This explains it all: “Cadet Zack Townsend at the helm under the captain’s command with the pilot’s advice.” That’s how it usually works, anyway.
In another action concerning John Cota’s licensing status, things are bogging down:
“The tentative hearing date of April 28, 2008 was vacated. The ALJ ordered a new hearing date of September 2, 2008. Current estimates for the length of the hearing is 15 days. The hearing will be held for four days each week until completed as follows: September 2 - 5, 8 - 11, 15 - 18, and 22 - 25. The hearing will commence each day at 9:00 a.m. and will be held in an Office of Administrative Hearings’ courtroom in the Elihu Harris State Building, 1515 Clay Street, Oakland, California.”
Anything for a fair hearing.