Mexico City cyclists rally to reclaim the streets | Ela Stapley | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Mexico City cyclists rally to reclaim the streets | Ela Stapley | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
The radio journalist’s call to “squash cyclists” were for nothing short of murder. And he was and is not alone. Here in Toronto, the lack of consideration shown to cyclists, including those who commute and deliver parcels by bike, not by drivers but by the mayor and his cronies, and the preference instead shown for cars over and against cyclists, is appalling. But in keeping with what Ford wants for Toronto: to drive it into a ditch, to make it not the shining beacon of modernity and cosmopolitanism but an abscess.
Even in Tory led London, as in so many other cities, the trend is to favour the bike over the car, the ped over the wheel. This is a logical and worthwhile goal, and it even increases the urban business. Peds and cyclists are likelier to stop and shop. But in Toronto, the fat mayor has decreed otherwise.
When can we recall him?
UK Government: Open Standards Must be RF, not FRAND – Open Enterprise
UK Government: Open Standards Must be RF, not FRAND – Open Enterprise.
I suppose I’d like to agree that Royalty-Free standards are always preferable to Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND), and certainly in the standards to which I lend my voice (ODF), I argue that it must be RF. But what holds for ODF need not hold for all standards; not all things are the same. Being pragmatic means accepting that. And it means, too, that you try to surf a wave, not cut a channel to the island or continent where we live together, not apart. Florian Mueller, in a blogpost of last October, perhaps accidentally uses his mobile to illustrate the advantage of FRAND. A mobile connects, and yet it is in and of itself, isolated.
Chez Panisse\’s \
Sigh. I used to live not far from Chez Panisse and remember fondly when the café (upstairs) opened: friends of my friends worked there, as servitors and also bakers. This was when I was in my baking and cooking phase, and wanted to go pro, something I did achieve in NYC not long after, as a baker. But in Berkeley, early 80s, I’d go to the Café often–free or very inexpensive food, see, and it was good–and very seldom (like, never) to the restaurant below. That luxury was deferred until years later, when I could actually afford it. And by which time, alas, my passion for food had been subsumed by my passion for bike racing and running….
But my passion for cooking, and for tasting, has oddly returned. I spend the time I’m not thinking of politics, economics, law, copyright, open source, management, on recipes, combinations, tactics, styles of cooking and food preparation. And to say that there is a coherence to all this is simply to state what is obvious–to me, for so long, to more and more; and it has nothing really to do with middle-class gourmet-gulch fantasies of political importance. I hope.
Osborne signals U-turn on economy with growth plan – UK Politics, UK – The Independent
Osborne signals U-turn on economy with growth plan – UK Politics, UK – The Independent.
Finally, a move that seems to be in the right direction: Keynesian.
Starkness Falls – NYTimes.com
Starkness Falls – NYTimes.com.
Suppose the euro falls apart. The primary engines, Germany and France, no doubt have anticipated this and probably think: so what.
I suspect there is more to the what than the so.
Doors of Perception weblog: Open: a survival issue
Doors of Perception weblog: Open: a survival issue.
Of interest. As is the to me newly discovered “Doors of Perception” site.
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist.
Once upon a time, we’d have thought of this as the “missing link,” but we don’t think that way any longer. In fact, it’s not entirely clear how we ought to think, as the narrative continuum given by fossil evidence–a layering, articulated by time’s measured deposit of dirt and other crud over the bones of interest–is inadequate. It does not give us a sense of the horizontality of genetic movement. Each layer, rather, is a black box from which we can induce a cause producing the effect, but it’s never adequate.
So we learn, instead, that humans were always promiscuous and that they were not, it seems, particularly selective. How could they be, in an age when there really were not that many? So that what counts now as H. sap. is snap, shot into the present, of the past episodically expressed, with no clear memory of how it got here, let alone there.
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist.
Once upon a time, we’d have thought of this as the “missing link,” but we don’t think that way any longer. In fact, it’s not entirely clear how we ought to think, as the narrative continuum given by fossil evidence–a layering, articulated by time’s measured deposit of dirt and other crud over the bones of interest–is inadequate. It does not give us a sense of the horizontality of genetic movement. Each layer, rather, is a black box from which we can induce a cause producing the effect, but it’s never adequate.
So we learn, instead, that humans were always promiscuous and that they were not, it seems, particularly selective. How could they be, in an age when there really were not that many? So that what counts now as H. sap. is snap, shot into the present, of the past episodically expressed, with no clear memory of how it got here, let alone there.
Ejecutan a hijo de García Paniagua / Nacional :: Impacto Diario
Ejecutan a hijo de García Paniagua / Nacional :: Impacto Diario.
I know this area quite well. My mother, who died a couple of weeks ago, lived not too far from here, and on while we were down in GDL for the funeral, we went to this quite fancy, very costly, but not bad, café/bistro. It’s therefore all the more shocking to read of this. But it does remind me of similar events/atrocities that occurred in any gang-controlled domain.
The problem is of course that the gangs act with confidence of their impunity. And they have that confidence not because the police are incompetent or unable but because the politica and economic structure, one built over more than half a century, has all but insured them against reprisal. The police are underpaid and undertrained and understaffed for a reason. Same with other governmental services Mexico (and so many other similar countries) offers. Such a situation gives lip service to bureaucratic norms and expectations while still providing for–encouraging, actually–the traditional system of patronage and petty bribery. And as long as this system did not raise the legal or whatever hackles of Mexico’s powerful neighbour, it was okay, part of the beautiful characteristic, not a (contagiously) fatal flaw.
But then things changed. And in rooting out the “evil,” in a format that at best resembles the war in Iraq and at worst that in Afghanistan (or vice versa), but in either case *wrong*, as seen by the 40K killed over the last 6 years, and for zero real gain, the depths of the corruption become clear. But not clear enough. The logic motivating the killings, the structure and its history–and its history is deeply buried in the everyday and very important–need more exposure, explication, so that a more accountable system, even democracy, can be realistically imagined and implemented.
Firefighters balk at new digital radios, as failures risk lives | McClatchy
Firefighters balk at new digital radios, as failures risk lives | McClatchy.
Standards matter. And the lure of the “digital” is really pretty dangerous, if it is thought of as more or less the same way any product from the Jetson’s would be: with excited awe that the future is finally here.
The issue is of course also one of cronyism and profiteering. We see this in developing regions, which are (or were?) colonized by this or that new and seemingly heroic technology that is, in fact, quite wrong for the market, the environment, the milieu. It only wrecks the good and makes it that much harder to become better, and does little to solve the problem of the bad.
newspeak 