Michael O'Hare, professor of public policy at Berkley

"The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine."

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I nice editorial in the latest edition of Cooks Illustrated:

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"Conquerors immemorial have known that the secret to successful occupations is to let the guys who surrender stay in charge of the yokels."


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“a future where everybody has the opportunity to find (or start) one or more open companies in alignment with their passions, and make a living doing what they love.”


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"One of our biggest concerns is that once an ecological threshold is crossed, the ecosystem in question will most likely not return to its previous state."

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Touched by your goodness, I am like
that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby
that someone had smashed and somehow
heaved through an open window.

And you might think by this I mean I'm broken
or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't
know exactly what I am, any more
than the wreckage in the alley knows
it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.

Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.
But touching me, I know, you are the good
breeze blowing across its rusted strings.

What would you call that feeling when the wood,
even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?

Have you ever noticed that even at different points in your life there are
various parts of a person that might stay constant. The stuff that
can transcend time and is always out there with its string tied to you and you tied to it. The self comfort things:
The favorite book you keep going back to.
The movie that makes you laugh or cry.
Reruns of that old tv show.
The food that always taste good no matter when.
The picture you keep on the wall.
The t-shirt you wear to bed every night.
A certain pencil.
The street you like to drive on.
The old dream of doing something that always stays in that back of your mind but you never actually do.
That thing that has taken you 10 years to build.
The friend you always call.
The game you played when you were a kid.
Something you remember that can make you smile.
A piece of paper.
The night sky you stare at.
The path you like to walk on.
The warmth of sunshine on your skin.
The place you close your eyes and wish you where at.
A voice.
Your favorite drink.
The sounds you like to here.

For awhile now I have been trying to learn a song on the guitar.
Its haunting, extremely sad and beautiful all at the same time. It makes me feel a range of emotions in a short amount of time, only like music can do. But within that range you see clarity. It might go away when its over or you stop playing. But isn't that what self comforts are there for? Brief moments of clarity that keep you on track. The guitar was self comfort. But now what I want to know is, if a thing is no longer a self comfort, what happens to it? Is it lost forever? Does it never actually go away but just gets stuffed in the back of the closet waiting for you to bring it out at some unknown point in the future. Waiting patiently because it knows that some day you will dig it out and that the clarity it can show you will still be there? Is that how all self comfort things are? Treasured items that can easily be discarded to the back of your mind and brought out when needed. Or can the string unravel, the knot untie and it just floats away from you? I don't know.

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Very funny! Watch it!

I can see the street
from the window
cigarette smoke waiting
behind me
sheets crumpled, back bare
rain on windows
and sounds
in my head

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"As for shallow journalism that helps Big Oil, Steele makes the point that the newsrooms that were once staffed by the redistributionist children of the New Deal and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are now populated with the children of Reaganomics: "Younger reporters come out of a mind-set that the market rules, taxes are evil, and government ought to let these people in the oil industry go about their business."

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Resistance to ciprofloxacin has emerged in people without access to the antibiotic, but who have taken a related antimalarial

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One photo per mile from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate bridge.


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This is a different take on something I wanted to try when
I seen a recipe for potato salad using deep fried potato pieces.

But this looks even better!

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