In which yhos challenges LA blogdom to a wager

October 16, 2002 – 12:00 am

Update: Tony’s agreed to the wager. My forfeit is now $20 if the Angels sweep.
So it’s a SF/LA series. Giants versus Angels. P2P versus the RIAA. Wine versus The Mouse. Software versus Hollywood. Liberals versus Conservatives. Tony says the Angels will sweep the Giants. Feh. He says the Giants’ pitching staff is overrated. Feh. Livan [...]

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Tony talks up those Angels

October 5, 2002 – 12:00 am

If all goes well, the hated Yankees will be gone from the World Series race this afternoon. Thanks Angels. However, Oaktown is going to 0wn you in the ALCS.
Oh fsck, I just turned on the game… 11 - 2 Twinkies? Come on A’s, don’t make me look the f00l.
Damnit. We’re going back to Oakland for [...]

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David D. Levine at Writers of the Future 2002

September 2, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via Anita Rowland, but Kate and David gave me the Bento version at WorldCon ] And now a few nice words about el Ron Hubbard’s empire. They do the Writers of the Future Awards. Portland Fan-transitioning-to-Pro David Levine was one of this year’s winners. He spent a week in LA at a workshop taught [...]

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Doc, meet Cintra; Hollywood, meet Flaming Death

June 23, 2002 – 12:00 am

Doc drops a precision-guided munition on the idea of celebrity:
Celebrity involves disconnected veneration, adoration and other forms of subordination to elevated status. We’ve made an industry of it, and that industry has caused massive economic distortions that cannot help but collapse — undermined by nothing more than what in Cluetrain we called “networked markets” that [...]

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Finding Rich Fodder in Nuclear Scientists

May 21, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via FoRK-list ] A graduate student in anthropology at Stanford, active in the anti-nuclear movement, chose the people working at our nuclear weapons labs as a research topic:
I was shocked to discover that I really liked him, as a person. Till that moment, people on the other side of the debate were very [...]

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Kim Stanley Robinson interview

May 2, 2002 – 12:00 am

I’m leading the discussion of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt at WisCon later this month, so this interview with him at Zone SF was useful:
On that point [ alternate histories ] irritate me no end - you know, Mark Twain guiding a riverboat up the Black Sea because the Ottomans conquered [...]

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Gary Snyder: Hay For the Horses

April 25, 2002 – 12:00 am

While I’m thinking about poetry, here’s another of my favorite poems. It’s by Gary Snyder, and is also about work.

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Six Years in California

April 13, 2002 – 12:00 am

I arrived in California six years ago today.

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Potato Guns, scourge of the West

March 31, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via Flutterby ] From the they-are-going-to-make-a-Libertarian-of-me-yet department, a San Diego undersherif turned legislator introduced a bill to ban spud cannons.
The former San Diego County undersheriff has introduced legislation that would classify the homemade guns as destructive devices — the same category reserved for bombs and grenades. Possession would be a felony, punishable by up [...]

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California: Top Soft Money Contributors

March 30, 2002 – 12:00 am

From Open Secrets, consider the list of the top ’soft money’ contributors to current political campaigns in California, especially the top three. Global Crossing has been caught using ‘creative accouting’, Propel’s an internet startup without an announced product, and Metabolife’s business model is a multilevel marketing scam. Disgusting.

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Walking through history at LAX

January 7, 2002 – 12:00 am

Rohit Khare peels back the layers at LAX’s Terminal Three.
Like most things in Southern California, a human structure has to be driven, never walked. It reveals too many of the seams of history to savor things on foot.

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Drop a dime on Enron

December 15, 2001 – 12:00 am

[ via RRE ] I’m posting this entry from Dallas, somewhat appropriate. Got the goods on Enron? Let the House of Reps know. However, as my 3rd grade teacher scolded us, nobody likes a snitch.

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Amory Lovins on Electricty Deregulation in California

November 8, 2001 – 12:00 am

Remember when all we worried about was keeping the lights on? I ran across this speech at the Commonwealth Club of California by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Lovins’ assessment of the problem: the new system was hoplessly flawed, and allowed a few companies to game the system.

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The Salon Guide to Mulholland Drive

October 22, 2001 – 12:00 am

I saw Lynch’s new movie, “Mulholland Drive”, this weekend. As is usual for his movies (with the exception of “The Straight Story”) the ending was a puzzle. Salon’s movie writers try to figure out Lynch’s vision.

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Tim OReilly on Kim Stanley Robinson

September 20, 2001 – 12:00 am

Tim O’Reilly, whose first publication was a biography of Dune’s author Frank Herbert, wrote an appreciation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Red Mars is an incredible book. If you are weary from all this business of terror and war, read it.

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