on a bike ride to sausalito

treepreciation #2

Location: Fort Mason, SF

The Urban Forest Map launches this Wednesday, April 21, 2010. Their mission is to map every tree in San Francisco. The project recalls that omnipresent rose-out-of-concrete trope, but a bit less romantic. I'm working on contacting them for some advice on identifying trees like the leaning troglodyte pictured above. More on that to come...

BYOBW 2010

easter sunday 2010, bring your own big wheel race

el matate!

no pain no gain

the starting line

hills for thrills


thank you sf for my new easter tradition

science goes here

Noisebridge is a hackerspace in the Mission neighborhood of SF that I've been stopping by every once in a while for the past month or so. They define the term "hacker" broadly so as to include everybody who takes something, improves upon it, and then shares it with the community. Its the classic open source production model, or what some have referred to as the growing trend of commons-based production models. They basically liberate production from the constraints of, well... society... a "take your clothes off at the door" sort of approach to innovation.

I was there recently for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) workshop, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). More on that later, as I embark on a mission to discover who shot JFK and MLK, and in what California desert the 1969 moon landing actually took place.

Cheers!

Failed International Treaty #1

(Image courtesy of NASA Archives).

One of the scariest and most unsettling notions for legal studies – and for society at large – is the discovery of a new frontier. Prospectors see opportunity in the wide open spaces, but someone else is sitting in a glass house watching their control of the universe dwindle and slip away. Cue the legislative trumpets! History has shown, though, that not even the collective minds of a select team of brilliant international superheroes can agree on the best way to own treacherous new waters.

Thus, we arrive at Failed International Treaty #1 (of a proposed series of 297) – the “Moon Treaty.” To affect some historical context, the agreement was considered and amended by a Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs(I bet that office has a inter-stellar cafeteria) from 1972-1979. Australia was the fifth country to sign the treaty in 1985, and as of 2008 a whopping 13 countries have signed the treaty. Kudos to Pakistan, Morocco, and Uruguay for stepping the fuck up. In principle, the treaty sounds great – the moon will never be used for anything but peaceful purposes, its resources are the property of all mankind rather than any single nation, disruption of the environment through “extra-environmental” means is prohibited, and sex in 0 G’s is not only allowed, but encouraged. Theoretically, weightless mating produces more free-willed offspring. Unfortunately for mankind, those principles are unlikely to make it out of the realm of theory and science fiction utopias.

So how did it fail? Well, no countries with a history of space-exploration have signed on. My guess is the United States thinks it owns the moon, just like it owns New England, Texas, and Iraq. Maybe a few of those exploration-savvy resisters are already in violation. Uh-oh! Thus, it is a failed treaty only in the sense that it has no direct relevance, consensus, or enforcement. I’ll let you know, though, that the day I own my own republic is the same day I sign line #14.

treepreciation

tree, originally uploaded by imightexpl0de.

on the way somewhere... portlandia? point reyes? hoag's object?

cars are artifacts

Sunlight in the weeds...I wish that I was blind...
to the ghosts dancing in the breeze...
blowing through my mind.
Got a Corvair in my yard. It hasn't run in fifteen years.
It's a home for the birds now. It's no longer a car.

Last night I dreamed that I was swimming in a sea.
Like always, with everything I went in too deep.
Got a Corvair in my yard. It hasn't run in fifteen years.
It's a home for the birds now. It's no longer...a car.

Got a simple friend out west, and in the blink of an eye,
I'd swap him straight, his life for mine...and never wonder "Why?".

three years in san francisco

good friend katie just started this blog to reminisce about her three-year tenure in this truly unique city. a poignant denouement to three years well-lived.

i lived with her in the best apartment in san francisco for one year, and will miss her and jose even more than those infamous parties.

no touching!

in an unfortunate twist of events in my unending search for new shoes, i liked these today. it's worth the zoom, but probably not the money. in other news, i'm still a broke-ass law student.

more cool shoes by common projects

wisdomatic

this is an excerpt from an article on terry gross. not only does he kind of look like tim roth, he's about as cool.

guided by headphones

i'm re-falling in love with portable music blasting directly into my ears. random selection ('zufaellige titel' as my deutsche-pod puts it) is the only way go. abandoning choice, let sapphic gods control my experience. following are the last ten picks. no complaints when it works out this well...

my bloody valentine - when you sleep
high places - namer
the beach boys - here today
brian eno and david byrne - america is waiting
cornelius - i hate hate
fellini - rock europa
arthur russell - in the light of the miracle
disco inferno - the last dance
ariel pink's haunted graffiti- interesting results
primal scream - higher than the sun (a dub symphony in two parts)

random image hosting

threesix mafia

this pic is pretty outdated. got to hang wit threesix and anna nicole smith lookalikes all night long.

manimal vinyl

just did a little write-up on LA-locals label Manimal Vinyl for the tightrope crew. check it out here

new design

photoshop is cool and all, but i wish i had illustrator

collagescope

first experiments with cs4

as of 6/1, i'm addicted to photoshop cs4. i just started messing around with it, low expectations, and am finding out how to do some pretty fun things. it's the basics, ya, but i'm not looking to get much out of it.

man v nature

i suck at updates

vidal v buckley

check out this somewhat hilarious video... two of the twentieth century's greatest men of letters, gore vidal and william f. buckley, trading barbs at the 1968 democratic convention. vidal calls buckley a "crypto-Nazi" and buckley shoots back calling vidal a "queer." pretty amazing that two brilliant men could stoop so low...

vision tricks