July 2009
31 posts
Long Awaited Geeky Gmail Update! →
Gmail finally lets you send email by proxy without revealing the Gmail account you’re actually using. That sounds suspicious, but it’s really quite a respectable practice. If you have your normal Gmail account linked up with other Gmail accounts so you can receive and send emails all in one place, this update clears up one of the little annoyances with the sending part.
For example,...
Maybe if we keep repeating, someone will hear.
Adam Voiland, fellow rider at WAGBRAD II, sounds off about obesity:
But for the vast majority of us, and for the country as a whole, the reasons we’re obese are obvious. It’s just that nobody wants to face them because they’re intertwined with the very marrow of modern American society. There are, making a very long and complicated story short, three of them: our food system
...
Koreans kinda beat us at everything -- spending,... →
So the entire country’s on a mad spending binge and then you have this:
South Koreans work more, sleep less and kill themselves at a higher rate than citizens of any other developed country, according to the OECD. They rank first in time spent online and second to last in spending on recreation, and the per capita birthrate scrapes the bottom of world rankings. By 2050, South Korea will be...
“The point Imhoff and others miss is that we don’t subsidize most other...”
– David Alpert, responding to Gary Imhoff’s comment about “smart growth” (Imhoff’s quotation marks). My $0.02: Imhoff conjures all the American romanticism with the automobile, and some aspects of cars are fun, but highways, even when not clogged, are kinda boring. If you want...
Another Reason to Eat Veggies →
So meat might not be so healthy and takes a lot of energy to produce, but apparently meat production also sucks down waay more water than all those water-saving tips your supposed to do. Who says you can’t leave a footprint in water?
WatchI collect library cards. And I have no qualms when crossing boundaries to get them.
“And here’s a fact that should get you thinking: when Social Security set...”
– George Friedman, The Next 100 Years. Just when I finally start to shore up my own finances, this guys tells me it’s up to my generation to fix the finances of my parent’s generation through the rest of my adult life. TOTAL DOWNER, GEORGE.
Idaho Stop = Good Bicycle Policy? →
Turns out evidence suggests a bicyclist rolling slowly into an intersection and yielding or stopping only when necessary is safer and more convenient for all. And judges actually pushed for this law because they were tired of technical violations clogging courts.
Why Modern Monarchies Are Cute
When the United Kingdom approves a new budget (Finance Act 2009), they do it with style and they do it like this:
Most Gracious Sovereign
We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom in Parliament assembled, towards raising the necessary supplies to defray Your Majesty’s public expenses, and making an addition to the public revenue, have...
“The chaos of the more highly educated classes can’t be called values yet;...”
– George Friedman, The Next 100 Years (my reading fare on the bus these days). So if I’m reading this correctly: today’s social liberalism = chaos + 100 years. And along those lines, does chaos + 200 years = social conservatism?
“As [the United States] becomes the center of gravity of the world, it is...”
– George Friedman, The Next 100 Years. Here I thought America was already in the decadent former-world-power stage. Friedman says we’re still in the barbaric stage with the decadence at least a century away. I can’t tell if I’m surprised or relieved.
Cheonggyecheon (청계천) Via New York Times →
I have mixed feelings about this. The water is artificially pumped in at great expense to recreate an historic stream. The original stream had essentially become an urban sewer, which I think is what happened to many streams in old cities. But otherwise it looks like a great reason to dismantle a highway.
An episode of the PBS documentary e2 series, “Seoul: the Stream of...
Growing My Telephony Empire →
I connected my Voice account with my long abandoned Gizmo account (Skype-like internet telephony service). I didn’t realize that my free Gizmo account got me a Los Angeles phone number. Plus, via Gizmo and Google, I could in theory keep doing telephony in the U.S., texting even, (for free!) without having a phone here — handy in case I decide to go abroad.
“…because people like things on a stick and the bigger the stick, the more...”
– Richard Crossley, tornado potato fryer.
BCycle →
I hope this bicycle-sharing service is as nice as its website!
Korean-Inspired 'Cram Schools' Still Pile on Tests... →
You can take the Korean out of Korea, but you can’t take her out of the hakwon her parents are forcing her to go to apparently.
Google Voice →
Oh, number portability maybe, too?
I’ve been waiting for Google Voice to go gold for months. I seriously hope that this service revolutionizes the whole telephone industry for the better.
And if the number portability does turn up, I’ll have to make a choice — new D.C. number or keep the Old Virginny number.
Northern Virginia is the New California? →
The only thing I can really get behind is the Asian food. Virginia blows D.C. away, with Maryland in a distant better-than-D.C.-and-suburban-America-in-general category. But I’ve heard that California Asian food blows the east coast away and may actually be better than Asian Asian food.
“Women [on bicycles] are dismissed as frivolous and their absence is mourned not...”
– Trisha of Let’s Go Ride a Bike, responding to the recently growing obsession with (1) lack of girls on bikes and (2) pretty girls on bikes.
National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation... →
I volunteered to count trail users on Independence Day. Come and be counted between noon and 2pm; I’ll be here.
Arlington County government no longer buys bottled... →
Wow, Arlington is taking a stand:
In a resolution, the Board said that the transport of single-serving bottled water ‘involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.’ Millions of such bottles are not recycled they have become ‘a prime source of litter and pollution in the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers,’ the Board noted.
Let’s raise our glasses (of better...