The Spam News

You know there's an interesting alternative reality in the spamosphere. If I'd clicked on the links to any of these emails caught by my spam filter, they'd have probably tried to install a Trojan on my computer. Some of them may be true, or kind of true. But when you look at the headlines together you get an Onion-like picture on what news stories people *would* click on:

A-Rod to wed Madonna in September
US surgical errors cost $1.5 billion a year: report
Cambodia attacks Thailand in Asia war
FBI agents patrol Facebook
Guy Ritchie to split with Madonna
McCain meets Dalai Lama amidst China protest (this one from phallus1966@25wayclick.com, a trusted news source)
Wildfires make hundreds homeless in Yosemite
Italy charges Google for espionage
Killer bees kill 4 in South America
Black dogs tear man apart
US Soldiers captured and tortured - pictures
Qantas CEO to quit following crash
Bishop sodomizes young priests

More on Nick & Kahoru's wedding

Our camera didn't work the day of the wedding, but they had pros there to capture the event.

in training

I've lived in San Francisco for 13 years now, but I'd never seen a cable car in training until Friday. Note the instructor, ready to jump off at any moment.

Below is one that hopped the tracks a few days ago.

In court

I filed a report from San Francisco Superior Court today, and through a well-planned fluke was allowed to take some photos there. It's such an intense place and the iconography is so well known, it's really easy to shoot interesting pictures there even if you're a crap photographer. Criminal court is filled with people who seem afraid or at a low point of their lives.

In Killings, Calvin Trillin talks about the court's appeal as one of the few places where people can really get into trouble if they lie. Today, it seemed more like a sleight of hand -- a place where those who have mastery of the law can completely dominate those who don't. It's so hard to understand how it works, as if in the pursuit of unfairness it has become an incomprehensible institution to most, which seems kind of unfair, doesn't it?

One reason it's hard to make it in SF

This was published in 2005, but it tells a story that's familiar to most people who try to raise a family in the City by the Bay. A great place to live when you're 30 & single. Tougher when you're 40 and raising a family. (not that I'm planning to move or anything)

George W. Bush Sewage Plant

It's now on the ballot for November, and I bet it will pass.

Battles the bad guys won

It's nearly 2 am, and I'm still up... waiting for a story about this very cool project to get edited and listening to some idiot's car alarm go off next to our house. Has a car alarm ever thwarted a criminal? Somehow, I doubt it.

So I'm thinking about the battles that the bad guys won. Can you add any to this?

1) Car alarms
2) Whether or not it's ok to talk on a cell phone when you have a captive audience (bus, elevator, restaurant, etc...)
3) Denim skirts down to the ankle

The greatest music video of all time

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

Well, at least of 2008. There's more on the band ANJ here. Does the lead singer look like Eddie Izzard or what?

(thanks Dragos for the link)

Fox news goes too far

I'm not a regular reader or watcher of Fox news, but I often enjoy the fact that it has a different perspective from other media. Maybe because I think that 99 percent of broadcast news is garbage, Fox doesn't shock me. Normally.

But this did. From reading the transcript of the segment, I'm still not clear on what the guy wrote to cause such offense.

Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered -- the journalists' teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe's hair moved further back on his head.
--Media Matters

It's not really clear to me whether or not viewers were in on the "joke" here, but Media Matters says they were not.

NY Times take on it.

Reading this, Fox really reminds me of certain technology companies I have covered, although this stuff is way more aggressive than what I normally deal with.

Meanwhile, Boingboing (which I like) has a little media controversy of its own. They're in the wrong. They shouldn't have unpublished these stories.

When one popular Web site, Boing Boing, was recently discovered to have unpublished all references to a blogger named Violet Blue, some of its readers treated the decision as a step of utmost consequence.

More Happy Canada Day

Canada awards its highest civilian honor to an abortionist who operated an illegal clinic.

Morgentaler, a trained family physician, argued that access to abortion was a basic human right and women should not have to risk death at the hands of an untrained professional in order to end their pregnancies.

Morgentaler's clinics were constantly raided by his opponents, and one in Toronto was firebombed. Morgentaler was arrested several times and spent months in jail as he fought his case at all court levels in Canada.

His victory came on Jan. 28, 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law. That law, which required a woman who wanted an abortion to appeal to a three-doctor hospital abortion committee, was declared unconstitutional.

Canada Day greetings from my mom (slightly edited)

Happy Canada Day

The tall ships were wonderful
Kathy & Noah toured them
And met pirates

We all went to the water last night to see the cannon war
Today they had free trolley rides
Later we are going to a neighbour's Canada Day Party

Please send rain.
Our grass is all brown
Shalom

Anna grade 7

God Facebook is amazing. I found this photo of Anna's grade 7 class at Face just now.

Because "gay" makes the sinner sound happy

In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site... [are] automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run.


e.g. this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”

Story here. Thanks to James for the link.