"That reads like a satire, written in the 1960s, about what nostalgia would be like in the future."

Link.

It is even more disturbing to learn that, while Mr. Hashemi sailed through Yale's admissions process, the school turned down the opportunity to enroll women who really did escape the wreckage of Afghanistan.

In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.

Link.

I’m writing by the light of the burning city. The fire is still twenty blocks from my house, but we came out here to spend the night because we have been afraid since the first earthquake shock. Then, the house swayed and creaked and trembled; rose and fell like a ship in a tempest. I couldn’t walk on the floor at all — had to crawl to the door on my hands and knees...

Link.


April 18 marks the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

"Sliced, the array included bold, thick lines of deep color running the length of vertically cut carrots. When chopped round, one carrot showed a deep, brown ring, a layer of persimmon/pumpkin-hued inner ring and a golden core. The outer skins of carrots come in mottled, speckled and evenly distributed jewel tones. Some colors are muted and dusty, others tropical, fruity and striking."

Link.

I have a weird allergy to raw carrots. They make my throat itch and nose run. Cooked carrots: no problem.

"The smallest MP3 player yet."

Link.

Geranium maderense.

"You're so right -- San Francisco is that cool kid in the back corner with the fuchsia scarf, and that is why I will always love it the best. But Los Angeles is the kid of indeterminate ethnicity, seated front and center with a pierced belly button and a couple of tattoos, who smells faintly of the beach, peeling an orange and smiling to himself while he rocks out to an Ipod. He's not such a bad kid."

Link.

"Sad news for sex-positive folk in Mississippi: a federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by an adult shop challenging that state's ban on the sale of sex toys. In other words, it remains a crime for responsible adults to sell vibrators to other adults there, but a gun? No prob!"

Link.

I shit a brick, because I thought she was going to report me for trespassing. Instead, she embraced me, stroked my hair, and said, ‘Oh, my God—the Marble Faun has arrived.’ I had no idea what she meant, but I was enthralled.”

Link.

The San Francisco Public Library has a collection of old San Francisco photographs online here. You can search the database by San Francisco neighborhood here. You can see old pictures of Bernal Heights (my neighborhood) here.

I'll have to post some "then and now" pictures.

"What did enlightened people do to support the [Iranian] strikers? Very little. Most Iranian intellectuals, former Marxist activists included, were consumed by polite electronic debates over the Dutch cartoons. Hundreds of striking drivers were arrested, as the cameras of the world's biggest news agencies shot images of the couple of dozen government-paid hoodlums throwing rocks at the Danish embassy in Tehran. Wives and children, even distant relatives of the activists, were hauled off into detention to force the union leaders to turn themselves in, as India's Communist Party threatened to leave the ruling coalition in New Delhi if India voted to refer Iran to the Security Council. Clearly, workers of the world ought to postpone uniting until other scores are settled."

Link.