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February in SF
We have unusual seasons in San Francisco. We always have a couple warm brilliant weeks in February. The plum trees come into pale purple flowers all over town, even in our foggy econiche. Rootlesscosmo always breathes a sigh of relief that we made it through another winter.
This month the newspaper published a map of what will happen ( Read more... ) -
Three cheers for democracy
California's use of electronic voting machines is very problematic. In the past, we knew ballots were faked or ballots were destroyed. It was not easy to spot the fraud but it was possible. Now the software is proprietary and unavailable for independent review. We have to rely on federal and state authorities to "certify" the machines that are ( Read more... ) -
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Someone who is usually pretty reliable said that they like Law and Order: Criminal Intent becasue of the actor in the series. I have occassionally watched the original Law and Order and found it, how shall I say nicely?, "not to my taste." The reverence for the prosecutors, the DA's ethical struggles, and the sneering tone taken by the ( Read more... ) -
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rootlesscosmo and I have gone beyond the nuclear family. We are the sub atomic particle family. He is "Strange Quark" and I am "Beauty". -
January book reviews
I plan to keep listing and commenting on my reading this year. This is mostly for my own record of what I read. I have gotten some good suggestions from other ljer's and want to return the favor.
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The Sunday paper here is trumpeting on the front page that the housing market might be cooling. This means that you might be able to buy a 2 bedroom 1 bath stucco undetached 1100 square feet for under $800,000 next month. This neighborhood is just nuts. There's a 3 bedroom "split level" on a tiny corner lot on the busiest intersection that is ( Read more... ) -
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When my sister was about 4 years old, she turned to my mother with some irritation and asked for a definitive answer. She asked, "What are we? Are we Irish, or Democrats, or Catholics". She was tired of the adults switching around from one to the other. In our house, we were definitely into identity politics of this sort. Our ethnicity, our ( Read more... ) -
Time for a universal draft
Several times recently I have heard someone say or I have read that the people who support the wars now underway by the US can’t be expected to change their minds until it “affects them”. I think that this is a serious overgeneralization. A significant number of the parents of injured and killed GIs continue to support the war and military ( Read more... ) -
Meme Panic
I have been worrying over the meme from rootlesscosmo and finally decided to go with the incomplete version below. In my twenties I realized that although I had developed a strong "no", I had not really developed any preferences. "Resist" became my motto, but that doesn't lead to a list of favorites. This is not simply a matter of gender - although I think ( Read more... ) -
Co-tenants
My office building is special in many ways. It was once a famous hotel in downtown Oakland. Even in the 1950's, there were dances held in the ballroom on the first floor. There is a beautiful apartment on the top floor with a working flagstone fireplace. The building fell on hard times. For a while it was a halfway house of some kind. Then it ( Read more... )