The recent killing of ducks near a car wash in Campbell has spawned outrage and a reward fund of over $17,000. Now, I’ve seen enough of the security video footage to know that it was a barbaric act. But I strongly agree with those who say that people seem to care more about animals than other people. How did this end up on the front page, and not the thousands of people starving in Niger?
The Onion: “Intelligent Falling” Theory
The Onion hits the nail on the head once again: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory
Santa Cruz
Last month I visited Alex in Santa Cruz. (Yeah, it took me a while to upload the photos…) I hadn’t been there in years, and what struck me is how much the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk looked like an old photo from the 1920s. The crowds, the old buildings, the wooden roller coaster… it was pretty amazing.
Fun facts about sprawl
Via PLANetizen:
- The Los Angeles area is the most densely populated metropolitan area in the country. Surprise! San Francisco/Oakland and San Jose are #2 and #3. (Why they are counted separately, I don’t know.) New York/Newark (which also includes parts of Connecticut) is #4.
- A climatologist says that sprawl in Dublin, Ireland has resulted in its average temperature increasing less over the past three decades than other European cities.
Cryovacking our way to the future
Sous vide, sometimes called “cryovacking,” is a method of food preparation where food is put into a bag and vacuum packed. The bag is sometimes cooked later at low temperatures, or the process itself is used to infuse the food with flavor or to change its texture. When I heard Alton Brown explain sous vide on Iron Chef America, I assumed it was a well-known, frequently-used process among chefs.
Well, it looks like I was wrong. The New York Times Magazine has an article on the far-reaching implications of cooking sous vide, and how it could lead to everything from completely new textures and flavors to edible airline food.
NY Times: City Seeking Rich Designs Instead of the Lowest Bids
If only more city governments would do this: hire architects based on the quality of their work instead of the competitiveness of their bids.
Shiny happy redevelopment
The malls in Cupertino and Sunnyvale have been in the dumps for a decade, with promises of redevelopment come and loses Vallco – 2003″ href=”http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/06/09/daily55.html”>gone, over and over. But things are finally moving. The owners of Vallco Fashion Park in Cupertino have recently started a major renovation and expansion project, including a new movie theater. (Maybe we can finally get a decent bookstore…) It will look a lot more like a traditional commercial district. There is also a new mixed-use development being built near the city hall and new library, and there are plans for a new downtown at the Crossroads, the old center of town.
Meanwhile, the owners of Sunnyvale Town Center will start demolition of the old parking garage next week, and of the mall itself next year. In fact, the mall, which replaced the old downtown, is being replaced with a new downtown, complete with a replica of the old city hall. (Take a look at the nifty video.) It will also include a new movie theater — how many more can this area take?
Now if only Santa Clara can finish a plan to replace the downtown that it tore down for a mall that never came… By the way, the only reason Mountain View still has its downtown along Castro Street is because it ran out of money to mess with it back in the 1970s.
NY Times: To Woo Students, Colleges Choose Names That Sell
When Cal State Hayward changed its name to Cal State East Bay, there was a big uproar, especially in Hayward, but the name has stuck. Looks like it’s not the only one — more colleges are changing their names to something more marketable. (Goodbye Beaver College…)
A few books I’ve been reading
Nothing deep here, just some stuff that interests me:
- The Golden Ratio: The Story of Φ, the World’s Most Astonishing Number by Mario Livio. An entertaining account of the golden ratio, the author spends some time deflating the myths surrounding it, and then talks about its true significance and beauty.
- Language Visible (hardcover), aka Letter Perfect (paperback), by David Sacks. How did V and W develop from U? Why is tire spelled with a y in the UK? Did you know ye as in ye olde was actually pronounced “the”? Why does English have C, K, and Q when only one of these letters would have been enough? David Sacks does a wonderful job unraveling these and other mysteries of the English language and alphabet.
- Subway Style: 100 Years of Architecture & Design in the New York City Subway by the New York Transit Museum. Anyone who knows me knows this is my type of book: a richly illustrated design history of New York’s subway system that covers just about everything, including the stations, the trains, lighting, metalwork, signage, and maps. And not only transit geeks need apply: anyone with an interest in design and architecture will enjoy this book.
- America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction by the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Formatted in the style of an elementary school textbook, this is the funniest civics and history lesson since Dave Barry Slept Here. What a riot! Not for the easily offended.
Easy-to-use phone from Motorola?
Motorola announced a new cell phone, the E895, to be available in the last quarter of this year. It uses a combination of Java and Linux called JUIX, which Motorola claims is easier to use than other smartphone OSes. But Motorola doesn’t have a good history of easy-to-use phones — one of my friends said his RAZR had “wonderful hardware, horrible user interface.” And there are no screenshots of JUIX yet, so the jury’s out.