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Posts Tagged ‘invasion’
NHI: NoPA Hipster Invasion, Chapter #3057 – As Seen in the Western Addition
Friday, May 10th, 2013The Sad End of “Interim” Mayor Ed Lee’s “Run Ed Run” Website: “This Website No Longer Exists” – Really?
Thursday, August 18th, 2011So let’s take a trip down memory lane to check out what that Run Ed Run website, you know, looks like, see whazzup these days:
Uh, but website, you do exist. You’re right there. How can you be able to say that you don’t exist if you don’t exist?
This one’s a stumper.
It’s like saying, “This photo of a MUNI underground entrance no longer exists.”
And yet, it does exist.
(What did the Run Ed Run people change the website for? To kill the cached images of the site?)
Oh well.
Here’s my version:
All right, I’m off to make a $5000 political donation, you know, under someone else’s name.
May I borrow your checkbook? I’ll pay you back up front…
San Francisco’s Composting-Related Fruit Fly Invasion Solved With Home Remedies
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Now, here’s what I mean about “composting-related” – our new initiatives in San Francisco are going to take a while to get used to, and during this transition I’ve noticed a whole bunch of fruit flies that weren’t around before. Maybe this is just me, but the guy at Cole’s Hardware says the $15 cure they have just for San Francisco’s fruit flies is hard to keep in stock due to enormity of our current invasion.
But there’s Hope. It seems that fruit flies are the stupidest animals in the world, so pretty much any attempt you make to outsmart them will work like a charm. The only way to lose this game is to not try. So, why not get some apple cider vinegarand then put some cling wrap punched with toothpick holes on top, thusly?
Here’s the reverse angle – the wrap is still there, but it’s hard to see. They check in but they don’t check out!
Is this an obvious solution? Well, not to me, not ever having a problem to this extent before.
But what’s this? Toothy, toothsome CHOW Food Editor Aida Mollenkamp prefers an alternative approach? She shows us how to get rid of fruit flies here, using a bit of wine and dish soap.
So toothy:
That looks like it would work too, what with surface tension ‘n stuff. Thanks for the tip, Aida.
C’mon, you makers. Start making your fruit fly home cure today!
The Rule of Three: Counting People at an International ANSWER March
Monday, March 23rd, 2009The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition organizes a lot of protests here in the Bay Area, as is their right. And they seem to consistently exaggerate the number of souls who participate in their marches, as is their right. O.K. fine. But Saturday’s march down Market Street on the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War had such small numbers compared to the big antiwar marches of 2003 that a person could have easiy tallied up an accurate estimate, if only to see how much the ANSWER Coalition exaggerates.
The “answer” is this: they overestimate by 200%. It’s the Rule of Three, just like in the movie American Pie 2. So, take the “official” estimate of 4000 marchers, divide by three to get 1333 and there you have it. Bingo bango.
Here’s Saturday’s march from above. The 440 or so people marked with white circles represent a third of the total number. (It took about 4 minutes to tally this shot and another ten minutes to tally folks in other photos.) Click to expand:
(Of course lots of people want to give President Barack Obama some time to have a chance to deal with matters, and it was raining, and yada yada yada. The point is that it shouldn’t be so hard to say that the crowd was slightly bigger or smaller than last year – there’s no reason to lie about it, is there? Moving on…)
Kudos to the Socialist Worker, which came a bit closer with an estimate of 2500 people. Perhaps they use the Rule of Two.
Double kudos to local journalist and photographer Josh Wolfe, who came in with “maybe 1000 people” as his honest estimate. Bay City News kept it conservative with “hundreds,” which is literally true, but that word could also suggest 200 or so. Oh well. The San Jose Mercury News played it safe with no estimate at all.
And SFGate / San Francisco Chronicle? Well, they originally went with “massive” as a description of the masses (which was particularly inappropriate given that similar marches six years ago had numbers about 50 times greater), but then pulled back a bit later to just talking about the “crowds.” All of this is ably documented by Robert B. Livingston here on the IndyBay.
Check it, before:
And after:
Originally posted by Mr. Livingston, I presume.
Robert Livingston is also correct in stating that writers Heather Knight and Steve Rubenstein produced a bit that was “well composed, accurate, and captured much of the essence” of the event, so that’s a good thing. It’s not clear who came up with the boner “massive.”
Chronicle Editor-at-Large Phil Bronstein has recently opined on these kinds of issues – here’s a re-hash of a count controversy back in 2003.
Anyway, the correct estimate is 1330 marchers, mas o menos, depending whether you include the cops, the undercover cops, the people who didn’t have the chance to march because they were setting up in Civic Center, the people who left early, the people who arrived late, the marchers without signs who happen to be on the sidewalks, the photographers, the videographers, etc.
The Rule of Three has been tested and proven. Would certain people have more credibility if they didn’t spin so much? Yes, yes they would.
Jessica: “If a guy tells you how many girls he’s hooked up with, it’s not even close to that. You take that number and divide it by three, then you get the real total. OK, so if Kevin is saying it’s been three girls it’s more like one or none.”
Vicky: “None?”
Jessica: “The rule of three. It’s an exact science. Consistent as gravity.”
What If They Called a War Protest and Nobody Came? Sixth Anniversary of Iraq War
Saturday, March 21st, 2009Well, of course, it wasn’t actually like nobody came, but the crowd at today’s International Day of Action on the 6th Anniversary of Iraq War had an unexpectedly low turnout, even considering the spates of rain. Was the crowd “massive,” as indicated by the San Francisco Chronicle? No, not at all. Do some people at the Chron have a “massive” problem estimating crowd size? Yes, apparently.
Did 4000 people march? No. Did at least a couple thousand march? No. Not to belabor the point, but you don’t need to hire a helicopter to accurately estimate the size of a march. Moving on…
Where’s Waldo? Sadly he wasn’t there. But, where’s Code Pink and the Black Block? Click to expand and you’ll find them. This was the bulk of the crowd just after the speakers stopped speaking, with the insular International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) camera left, out of frame.
So yes, there were other groups around the Ferry Building area but they were much smaller. Oh, here’s Code Pink:
One of the speakers was a San Francisco Chronicle employee(!) From her, the crowd learned that “health care is free and will always be free in Cuba.” She urged listeners to defy the current ban on travel to Cuber by visiting this year, specifically July. O.K fine.
Heading up Market Street in light, on-again-off-again rain:
And here’s el bloque negro:
The 911 Truth crowd was there as well – it handed out varying denominations of Truth Bucks, sadly disintegrating in the wet.
A terrorist is “what the big army calls the little army.”
“Jail Greedy Bankers”
“Queer Israeli” vs. “Queer Palestinian”
Speaking of which, you had a good 50 or so counterprotesters with Israeli flags penned in right in front of City Hall.
The Green Line of Polk Street. There was a scuffle between these groups later on, resulting in a handful of arrests. See the “Footage of Chaos,” if you want.
This green-hatted NLG “observer,” avec “Specs” brand goggles, was briefly enthralled by an exchange between the blonde and the cop, who wanted her to stay on the sidewalk. She could probably get the Lieutenant for battery and maybe even false imprisonment, if he weren’t an on-duty, uniformed peace officer. See? There’s always a catch…
So there you have it.
