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I saw some french fries scattered across the sidewalk on the morning walk with the dog today, but it was still too dark out to take a photo. Just half a block later someone had discarded a gas barbecue and a miniature cradle fashioned out of half-inch-thick rough hewn sticks.

Was this perhaps the residue of someone's voodoo moment?

Then it was back home to the NY Times, to read an editorial about George Bush's empty promises on the environment. It was enough to make you join the Sierra Club unless of course you already have.

The dog, a loyal Sierra Club member since birth, threw up on the floor. Perhaps she somehow sensed that by the time she could ride in a hydrogen-powered vehicle, she'd be dead.

Today's intriguing L.A. slice of life and photo... One Wilshire: Telco Hotel Central

A hot walk down to the supermarket for some bread and salsa took me past some Oakland Raiders entrepreneurs selling hats and shirts on the sidewalk. There were LONG lines at the market, so I decided to shop at the corner store instead of the supermarket. As I passed the entrepreneurs on the way back, one of them saw a Raiders fan waiting at the stoplight. She went wild, yelling and screaming!

On the way to the corner store I saw the Julie the Magnificent was selling her 1986 Honda for just 1400 dollars but with over 200,000 miles I wonder about her chances.

The woman behind the counter knew about scoring in football, but didn't know how the point system worked. I quickly explained the six-point touchdown, the 1 and 2-point point after touchdown, and the field goal. I forgot to explain the 2-point safety, but it doesn't seem to be too important since she won't be watching the game.

A quick call to Irene, onsite at the Beverly Hills library, revealed that The Threatening Storm: the Case for Invading Iraq [buy at amazon] by Kenneth Pollack had just been returned. I can page through it during some of the football episodes of the SuperBowl XXXVII commercial-fest, and then we'll invade after dinner.

Woops~! Game time, gotta go!

First thing on a brisk morning outing with the dog, I see a woman on the other side of the street walking her little old beagle. I've spoken with her before. The beagle is a canny one, the woman beautiful. We wave.

As we walk (the dog and I), we pass people sweeping the sidewalks. One man with a broom wears a shirt that says "Artists Management." Two women are sweeping in front of another house, and one of them smiles at nervously, as if her command of the language could be better.

The morning light is the wonderful warm light that I think of as "Mediterranean", its intensity muted by haze. On the sidewalks, mothers escort their children toward the elementary school in groups of two or three.

Looking out at the instant of sunrise, in a direction I usually think of as South, I notice that the sun silhouettes an enormous 'grasshopper' on a distant hill, rocking up and down as it pumps oil from the earth.

Could we be trying to use more solar power in place of oil? I take a snapshot with my digital camera, even though I know the juxtaposition of the oil well with the sun won't really show up.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m., and if you are in Culver City during these hours, you ought to go there. The research headquarters for the far-flung Center, the facility also sports a small museum which displays one of the Center's current projects.

The current exhibit at The Center for Land Use Interpretation is "Property in the Harper Lake Basin."

They have lots of great books; I was just barely able to resist getting a copy of a book called Slow Space. Instead I picked up a Center report: Nuclear Proving Grounds of the World.

Did you know there was an underground nuclear test in Rifle, Colorado? The real surprise, though, was the huge number of proving ground sites for nuclear explosions in the then-Soviet Union. They were spread all across that great big land.

This short pamphlet needs to be brought up to date -- only one Indian test ("smiling Buddha") is listed, and it was published just before Pakistan happily entered the nuclear club. But it's still worth having around, and an excellent venture in Land Use and the perception of how land is used, if you can somehow manage to limit your reflections on nuclear testing to that scope.

"George W. Bush's War on Women." I read this NY Times editorial when it was first published. Earlier this week Meg Hourihan wrote about it on "www.megnut.com", a daily weblog of her life in New York City. Now, I want you to read the editorial.

Here's the link to the NY Times editorial on just one of George W. Bush's missions, characterised by the Times as The War against Women

The horizon is a silhouette of the skyline. I look for a plane on approach to LAX, remembering how they stopped after September 11.

Finally I see an aircraft, its light a tiny jewel.

Remember what I said yesterday about tomorrow's peace march? Finally, coming home from work I heard an NPR reporter interviewing peace marchers on a bus from Mississippi to Washington, D.C. The commentator points out that it is fairly unusual for a protest to take place about an event which has not yet occurred.

Another interesting development. According to the NY Times, The University of California has reversed its original position on their attempted censorship of the Emma Goldman Archives fundraising efforts, and told Candace Falk that yes, after all she CAN put in those two quotes from Emma Goldman AFTER ALL.

It seems the chancellor of the University had to endure quite an outcry (no doubt with more on the way) over U.C.'s censorship.

When you visit the Emma Goldman site there isn't any mention of the controversy, but it is the reason the following two quotes are included on the site:

"We shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next door neighbors should hear that freeborn citizens dare not speak in the open."(Emma Goldman, "Free Speech in Chicago," Lucifer the Lightbearer 30 November 1902)

"In the face of this approaching disaster, it behooves men and women not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." (Emma Goldman, "Preparedness, The Road to Universal Slaughter," Mother Earth December 1915)

Framed by the window, the outdoor world looked beautiful this morning. Sunrises and sunsets, just one painting after another. When I got outside it was a cool morning with pastel clouds in a blue sky.

People were walking their dogs, getting in their cars and driving off to work. Across the street a woman was wheeling a tall stack of laundry baskets toward the laundromat. A bicyclist ogled an attractive Asian woman as she tottered off to the bus stop on high heels. Bringing the dog back home I met a neighbor on his way to work, hard hat in hand. This was fortunate, since I had forgotten my key to the security gate!

A quick reminiscence and a note about server logs before I head off to work. Ever since I read Joe Crawford's weblog over at ArtLung, server request statistics indicate that The WebMonster Web Design FAQS has been the most-searched page on this site. Even more than plain banana pancakes or the Winged Victory of Samothrace!

Maybe it's time to update that page, it's getting pretty long in the tooth.

I also saw a couple of searches looking for "Swift" and "Olmsted" on the page (yes, I do know what you're searching for, even if I don't know who you are). This reminded me of a quote I learned in college from John Olmsted: Thackeray's remark about Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels:

"Filthy in word. Filthy in thought. Furious, raging, obscene."

That always made me think a little differently of my mother's friend Emmy Patterson, slaving away at her PhD dissertation on Swift's marginalia.

Marginalia being his scribbles in the margins of his papers and personal library. Shame on you if you thought anything different, even for a moment. pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Today's walk with the dog yielded a count of three cars without occupants, motors running. One was a Volvo, its door left open, facing outward into the street. Getaway car! An inviting sight to someone with nothing to lose...

Does any industry devote more time and expense to "user experience" than the automotive industry? If software and web designers spent the same time on user experience as the automotive industry, people would actually pay BIG bucks to surf websites.

For a car that costs over $700,000, can we say that Ferrari's new "Enzo" is fast? It's not relevant anyway. It looks fast without even moving an inch. The internet is instantaneous by comparison, but consider what "user experience" might even make you think about spending that much money on a website visit.

If you're a web designer, visiting a car show is probably not a bad idea. pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Today we're headed off to the auto show to try on some vehicles. Among those we'll be scrutinizing are the new smaller Honda Element mini-SUV discussed yesterday on megnut.com. Meg didn't like it because it looked too boxy,

Hey Meg, you're in New York City! What are you doing thinking about cars? If you've got one, sell it and walk!

Had a lovely thought which came to me as hyperlinked haiku.

Spam haiku archive
three words you don't often see
God I love this book
 

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Would clouds be any less beautiful if we didn't know what they are? To put it another way, would they be more beautiful if we were ignorant?

This was just a random thought I had, looking at the sky before my morning walk with the dog. But on the walk I read the New York Times, and today had a front page article talking about increased secrecy policy of the Bush administration. Do you want a secretive government? Most people don't, and yet we've got one.

I don't usually link to today's stories in the NY Times; I figure you can read it yourself. Do me a favor today, and follow the link to Government Openness at Issue as Bush Holds Onto Records

Hey, guess what I discovered! Right on the computer in the kitchen!! Wait 2 seconds and you won't have to: a link to the Millard Canyon hike. We went there on New Year's Day, actually hiking up and down the canyon two times, just to prove that we were true enthusiasts of the outdoors. I took about 20 little movies of little peaceful rivulets with the Minolta DImageX. If your Quicktime is set up correctly you can see the one I posted a couple of days ago. (search down for "rivulets") pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Every year we go for a walk on the 1st of January, and then go to a Chinese restaurant to eat Dim Sum. A fine idea!

This year we THOUGHT we might not go because of sore throats, but we're fine!

We went to VIP Seafood and had some of the best ever bao (steamed dumplings), shrimp-and-vegetable dumplings, turnip cakes and sticky rice..

Then we circumnavigated the Rose Bowl area an went up into the mountains for a hike up to a waterfall. We saw lots of lovely rivulets (983k quicktime movie)

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby