Greg Sanders

Pedido Street Station and the rules of the world

Perdido Street Station is the transportation hub the polyglot city of New Crobuzon and the name of a book by China Mieville about a scientist and artist that live in that city. I'm about halfway through, I started reading it as part of a blog book club hosted by Alyssa Rosenberg, a great culture blogger well worth reading at her site or at the Atlantic.

There's been three discussions sessions so far (part 1, part 2, and part 3) each pertaining to a section of the book. They're filled with spoilers, though only up to the relevant section. For my detailed comments, see the comments on those posts.

Of interest to both those who have and haven't read the book, much of the discussion centered around the rules for the world. Here's a blurb with slight spoilers by Chris Ashley, another commenter on part 3.

Of course it's a given that a government like this one would have formal diplomatic relations with hell. I say that lightly, but it's not really a joke. And again, given historical materialism as this universe's zeroth law, there can be devils, but they're just as subject to something that attacks consciousness as humans are. After all, this is a universe where consciousness, and everything else, is material-- and therefore something even diabolical bodies, however contrived, share with sentient mortals. There'd be a Gaimanesque short story in here, if Mieville wanted to tell it. [GS: I added the link].

Alyssa Rosenberg has pointed out that many of the rules of the universe aren't that clear. The city and the various fantastical elements of it are a hodgepodge: straight up magic, robotics, and horrific cyborg/genesplicing called remaking. We learn some of how these various elements interact, but we rarely get a formal set of procedural rules from which we can then see characters manipulate and exploit.

I do tend to like it when such rules are there, but I do think think having a firm approach to reality as a whole is another valid alternative. In many works, those the undergirding rules are shaped by drama or morality plays or other concepts that don't really contribute any robustness to the world. In games the zeroth rule is typically about encouraging certain types of player behavior. But in this book, I think the rule contributes to the reality of the work, even if we don't know how all the processes work it does limit the twists Mieville can employ but also makes it more conducive to think about how things work in our world.

Suffice to say, I'm quite enjoying the book, although I do think Alyssa is correct to say that acquiring some descriptive restraint would probably serve Mieville well. I think I may participate in more of these blog book clubs, they prompt me to do more book reading (at the expense of books and feeds) and if you have a good community like Rosenberg's site or Ta-Nehisi Coates' then there's also an interesting mix of people to talk to and learn from.

Photo of Wuhan, China, taken by Greg Sanders available under a creative commons license. I tend to think Industrial Revolution London as my mental model for New Crobuzon and some of the things I've seen in China are my closest real life visual reference.

2010-09-05-06 Final meals in San Francisco

  It was beginning to get dark after our visit to the Palace of Fine Arts and the Wave Organ, so we hustled through the Marina District to catch the Fillmore street bus to Japantown. The neighborhood was quite nice with a mix of styles even though most of the buildings looked fairly new or renovated. On the whole, San Francisco architecture had a mix of what I associate with the Southwest and a denser version of what I associate with beach towns. I don't really have a farm architectural grasp on the city.  I think that would take a lot more wandering. I have a feeling a lot of why it looks the way it does today was a result of the great earthquake.

After arriving in Japantown we went to get a meal at an Indian restaurant named Dosa after the large pancake-like wraps. There was a bit of a wait; it's quite a popular place and I should have tried harder to find them on Open Table an hour before. That said, they let us get an appetizer at the bar. There was also a communal table that perhaps we should have used. I do like the concept of a table shared with strangers as it has worked well for me on Amtrak. However, Dosa was the last place we were going that night and so we weren't particularly in a hurry. The food was quite good; I went for a chef's choice sampler platter of a smaller sort of wrap dish and Kate got more of a traditional dosa with a mix of vegetables. Afterwards we walked through Japantown but most shops were closed.

The next morning we walked back down towards city hall and BART and lamented that we hadn't found the time to hit the Asian Arts Museum and its fairly neat-sounding Shanghai exhibit. Fortunately our last meal at Brenda's French Soul Food was quite a treat. We'd found the low-key restuarant through Yelp, and I've got to say our mix of tour book, Yelp, and Google searches, and Opentable, didn't fail us once this trip. The meal left us with little need for lunch.  We started with a beignet platter. The classic and apple cinnamon beignets were a great introduction to them for Kate; the crawfish one was quite good in its own right if unusual, but sadly while the chocolate one was tasty, the filling overpowered the pastry. Kate had an omelet and I had Eggs Benedict; I had to restrain myself considerably to leave without being stuffed. We took a massive biscuit with us and enjoyed it later on the plane.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. BART served us well and the journey through the hills to the airport is quite pleasant.  It lacks the grandeur of the approach to Hong Kong, although looking back on my photos nostalgia may be touching those memories. All in all, an excellent trip and aside from not hitting the Asian Arts Museum my only regret was that we couldn't stay longer.

2010-09-05 Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts

The bus proved an effective way to see the Golden Gate Bridge. We caught a line that took us right up to the toll plaza which nicely made up for the fog on the day before. That said, anyone pulling this trick would be well advised to avoid rush hour even on a Sunday, though once the construction on the nearby highway is finished, things should greatly improve. Afterward we took the bus along the coast back in the direction of Hyde Pier. We got off at a stop near the Palace of the Fine Arts and the Exploratorium which was the source of all the cute little mini cars we'd seen before.

Friends of ours that had gone to seminary in the area had recommended the Palace of Fine Arts and we were glad they did. We approached around sunset, and while the buildings themselves weren't accessible due to renovation they were a sight to behold. Apparently they were a popular attraction at a World's Fair and were subsequently preserved due to popular appreciation for their grandeur. Looking at them from across the pond, it seemed as if they were the architectural legacy of some ancient alien civilization, perhaps one in a Lucas film.

After walking around the pond, we headed out to the shore and walked down a pier to the Exploratorium's wave organ. It was a neat walk, with only partially obscured views of the Golden Gate Bridge. However, while the concept of an organ made up of wave-powered pipes was quite enticing, it wasn't active at the time. The trick might be to time one's visits with the tides. Afterwards, we started our walk towards a bus that would take us to dinner back in Japantown.

2010-09-05 Muni N-Line light rail transit blogging

We came across the N-line by accident when grabbing breakfast at Art's Cafe. The cars were of a more modern make and quite a contrast with the historic menagerie that ride the F-line. I had been quite excited to catch a ride after seeing them in the morning, but near as I can tell the one we'd been going to catch just didn't come. We waited another 20 minutes or so to catch the next one and got better information from NextBus's GPS than from Google transit's schedules.

Perhaps as a result, the trolley was quite crowded. I took a couple shots of the interior, including one of a smart card reader that caught the kid next to it by surprise, and I failed to properly explain or apologize as I was in the process of disembarking. In any event, interior pictures when the car is crowded are always tricky so I think in the future I'll just skip them and not worry about troubling random children.

Etiquette embarrassments aside, the brief ride did teach me that even the 'flat' parts of San Francisco often have their ups and down. The trolleys were had pairs of linked cars, so it was possible to see some distance down the interior. As a result, the ups and down of the road were quite visible and they were not trivial. The other lesson was to do my research first, so that we could have caught the N-line on the way to Golden Gate Park and saved some time in traffic when we proceeded on to the Golden Gate Bridge. Various smart phone navigation sites aren't really meant to help you take a particular route or transit line. Fortunately, there are still good transit maps out there and the one we grabbed was quite useful once we figured out the basics.

2010-09-05 California Academy of Science – Rain Forest Critters and Aquarium

There were a plethora of wild animals at the Academy of Sciences. First off, one section of the first floor had the base of the tropical sphere with birds and butterflies flapping about inside. The other side had a planetarium, which presumably was wildlife-free, in addition to a terrariums which among other thing had a half-dozen tortoises. The back had a swamp with an albino alligator and koi while the middle sections allowed looking in to the large aquarium tanks from above.

The rain forest sphere was a multilevel affair full of small tanks with reptiles, amphibians, and some insects. Notable uncaged inhabitant included a macaw, which I photographed from the exterior of the sphere before getting in and seeing that flash photography could bother him. Hopefully I hadn't traumatized the poor guy. In any event, Hypnotoad demands that you enjoy this section.

After winding to the top of the rainforest sphere, we took the elevator down to the aquarium. Sadly, the octopus was in hiding, but Kate did get to see spotted rays, which are a favorite of hers. I'd taken a fair number of pictures; most didn't come out and at times it can be easy to overlook which animals are light sensitive. In the future I think I'll chill and moderate the number of photos. In any event, while we had begun to hurry by the end, you can't complain about the selection; it's quite good for a mid-sized aquarium. Particularly notable are the tunnel in the middle and the viewing walls at the end that present a beautiful panoply of fish and plants.

2010-09-04 Bus transit blogging

As an intermission to the California Academy of Sciences, I have been quite impressed with the local buses. First off, the infrastructure really stands out as while they are all electrified I'm not sure I've seen another city that had this many overhead wires. That said, they were often discrete with the main exception being intersections that bus routes traversed in several different ways. In addition, mainline stops at an electronic side that predict the time to the next two buses. While we heard others grouse, they always proved accurate for us. Finally, Google Maps transit lookups just work great, particularly for figuring out transfers. Oddly enough we only used nextbus for rail, so I can't speak to how good of a job it does for its original vehicle.

I also saw a few of the new variable price parking meters, but I didn't do any driving in the city so I've got no particular insight into them. In retrospect I think we should have considered doing a flex car to get out to the wedding site, but a full on rental wouldn't have been worth it.

Jumping back to buses, I may have already mentioned this, but I do wonder whether full size buses can out perform street cars when it comes to hills. Kind of a niche issue but I am curious.

2010-09-05 California Academy of Science

The California Academy of Sciences building is quite new and the interior reflects it. A large spherical planetarium adorned one side with a tropical forest enclosed in a second sphere on the other. There were a mix of exhibits, often aggressively asserting the state of science on issues like evolution and climate change. I just skimmed over most of the exhibits; there wasn't too much I was unfamiliar with, so I won't really try to review them although I was pleased to see Tom Toles' editorial cartoons featured prominently.

The building has, both literally and figuratively, a green roof. Somewhat more unusually, the roof had bumps, partially reflecting the spheres in the building, partially an homage to the hills of San Francisco. The views from the top were fairly good, as you'd expect. I do rather wonder what the nature of the hilltop three antennae tower is, but the roof exhibit didn't try to provide information on surrounding landmarks.

We had a quick lunch at the cafeteria. The selection and quality weren't bad. I think museum food has generally improved since I was a kid, although I am curious what the underground Moss restaurant would have been like. That said, the outside dining under a topographic wire model was neat, and I think the artist may have been the same woman that did the Vietnam War Memorial. For another touch of home, they had a Foucault pendulum, a display I've sorely missed since they took it out in the Smithsonian American History Museum.

Next Science Academy entry will cover the animals in the terrariums in the tropical forest sphere as well as some of the aquarium beneath the building. On the whole, I think I do better at architecture and plant photography than trying for the occupants of aquariums and terrariums. In summary the museum was quite cool to look at and the information seemed solid although there were fewer exhibits than you might expect for a science museum. That said, you do pay for the new and shiny: adult admission is $30 a person with discounts for various age groups.

The Train Home 2010-09-19

This might be getting to be a habit.

Since the last round up, I posted about my travels in San Francisco, notably on the varied attractions of Golden Gate Park writ large and the incongruity of the Japanese Tea Garden.

Commuter Rail

• How to make a proper power point presentation by Farhad Manjoo: Notable tips, lots of slides for a short amount of time each, no use of bullet points, make sure the material is appropriate.
• Dishwasher tips: "remove baked on food and large chunks, but for the most part, everyone I spoke to said prerinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher was not only unnecessary, it wasted thousands of gallons of water and could actually result in dirtier dishes."
• How to finish your game, many of the tips are applicable to finishing things in general by Derek Yu (via Eric Caoili). One thing I firmly believe, finishing things is a skill, I was terrible at it for years, I'm not great now but I'm getting better.

Heavy Rail

• Chinese youth are starting to mistrust Beijing according to an article by Peter Ford. Mistrust is highest among those under 25 and internet using, wealthy, urban, and educated citizens. Note that "starting" is a key term and that the distrust tends still to be aimed locally.
• Greg Mitchell tells the story of a U.S. soldier who killed herself after refusing to take part in torture.
• Ryan Avent reports that while congestion pricing is unpopular before implementation, commuters like it once it is in place because they value their commuting time. On the way to the Renaissance Faire this weekend, I was wondering if congestion pricing could work for events that run only a few months a year, or even one time a year events, that jam up the roads.
• Yglesias praises teachers unions because unlike other guild type organizations, including professional associations of teachers in non-union states, they fight for the larger interests of the laborer. This is of course in addition to favoring some policies that are in their interest but not in the general publics.
• Dave Roberts notes that the view that climate change is a conspiracy of scientists suggests that conservatives actually like post-modernism after all (via Sullivan).
• Sullivan again critiques the Obama administration embrace of many of the excesses of the national security state.
• Yglesias comments on the catastrophic consequences of Mao Zedong's economic policies and the incongruity of Mao still being a prominent figure when China's economic success was based in reversing his policies. Obviously the key factor here is Mao's rather effective role in China's consolidation as a modern state before he repeatedly destroyed its economy. By comparison, Stalin did play a vital role in winning WWII but even on that front he did a lot of highly unproductive things.
• Noah Millman provides an helpful model for thinking about allies: the tension "between effectiveness and pliability" with Turkey having steadily moved from pliable to effective and Pakistan effectiveness undercut by our desire to keep them pliant. He discusses some logical policy consequences of acknowledging this tension and our tendency to err towards maintaining pliability.
• Poverty stats over time from Yglesias, senior poverty was cut dramatically by the war on poverty, child poverty went up in the recession under Carter, stayed high under Reagan and Bush I, went down under Clinton, went back up under Bush II.

Light Rail

• Studio Ghibli has a pretty new game coming out for PS3 covered by Dan Luffey, it actually reminds me a bit of Kings Quest 7 in terms of high detailed animated characters.
• I'm generally a fan of team Ico games, but as Borderhouse points out, their explanation for why their latest game didn't go with a female protagonist is sexist nonsense.
• Alex Tebarrok provides an odd game theory challenge (quick).
• I'll be there on 2010-10-30
• Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity.
• Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive.
• Tetris coach reported by Michael Trei (via Dave C.)
• Disaster Report, a third person game focused on surviving a natural disaster. I tend to get interested in ideas that focus on non-violent mechanics but still look exciting. Interesting quirk, the role typically played by health points is instead played by the characters cleanliness and resulting stress.

2010-09-05 Japanese Tea Garden

Japanese gardens are known for a variety of elements, but also for an ornate austerity. They don't tend to be full of fancies in the way Chinese gardens are nor are do they have the flowerbeds typical in many American gardens. The Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park is an exception to this rule.  While still favoring shrubbery and trees over flowers, the density of the features of the garden are far more in keeping with the Chinese style or what you might see at, say, the Japanese section of a theme park.

This actually felt off to me, though not horribly so, in part because I do adore the kitschy overload offered by Chinese gardens. Buying the map also included the history of the garden, which explained why it was unusual. It originally had been owned by a wealthy and prominent Japanese family who were forced out of San Francisco during the Japanese internment of WWII. They had transferred it to a friend who ultimately had to sell it. The widow of the buyer later transferred it back to the city. A variety of designers had worked on the garden, including some that tried to play down its Japanese character. Notably, there's Buddhist statuary appearing in an area contained by Shinto gates and markings.

All and all, as the pictures show, it's still quite beautiful and the contradictions tell a story about its history. If you visit, I definitely recommend picking up the map and history as the writing has an undertone you don't normally see in park documents. After we finished walking, we stopped into the tea house for tea and mochi, both of which were quite good. I do wonder what the future will hold for this garden and I hope that whatever happens, visitors will still have the opportunity to reflect on its hybrid and at times troubling history.

2010-09-05 Wandering Golden Gate Park

After walking through the San Francisco botanical gardens, we went on to explore the park itself. Uphill and to the west was Stow Lake with Strawberry Hill island in the center. The leisurely walk around the lake gave a great foretaste for the features of the island itself which could be reached via bridge or approached via rented paddleboat. There was an intricately painted Chinese gazebo on the island, a gift from the city of Taipei, as well as a waterfall accompanied by a winding path to the top of the island. We left on the far side of the island and headed back east.

We walked over to the music concourse, a name which understates the appeal of the architecture, to grab a pretzel before visiting the Japanese Tea Gardens, which I'll cover in a future post. There was a performance going on in the concourse when we left the Gardens, which gave the place a lively atmosphere and made for a great walk to the Science Academy. After hitting the Academy, which will be covered in yet another future post, we cut through a set of back paths to get to the Conservatory of Flowers. The route I picked wasn't the most direct, although it did afford a few views of a heron in a pond and a mix of flowers that seemed a bit more in their natural element.

The actual Flower Conservatory had closed at four and we were about a half hour too late to get in. That didn't stop us from seeing the colorful mix of the outdoor flower beds, although as Phoenix Wright players, we were both on edge around the Dahlia Garden. By that point the roads had been closed to cars and were being used by bikers instead. While we liked the concept, we were a bit confused about what that meant for buses, so we ended up just walking back south to the Sunset neighborhood instead of trying to find where to wait for one.

The [Train] Home 2010-09-16

The latest in my regular efforts to do an end of day link round up. I think I like this title, but I'm up for suggestions. Wow, I shared way to much today. Although I blame some on one of my friend clearing out his Sullivan backlog (I'll check if he wants to be named and will update this accordingly). Well, if I start doing this regularly I'll get a bit more disciplined about sharing I think.

Heavy Rail

• Public Employees aren't overpaid (Kevin Drum).
• The Obama administration assassination policy continues to be scary (Tyler Cowen).
• Why did Mayor Fenty go down? Multiple overlapping reasons A bad economy helped (via Ezra Klein), a failure to respect seeking popular approval as part of the job of being a democratic leader (Ta-Nehisi Coates), but failing to use city government jobs as a make-work program isn't a good reason why (Matt Yglesias).
• Matt Yglesias asks why does the government run parking garages? Trading parking spaces for money is well within the capability of the private sector.
• Horrific story of prison rape in Colorado prompts successful civil suit (Zoe Pollock at Daily Dish) The fact that we treat widespread prison rape as a joke probably should have been an early indicator to me a decade back that things would be a lot worse than I thought on in terms of treatment of suspected terrorists.
• Democrats try to claim credit for Bush tax cutsshared for "Just because I'm the guy reheating a cold slice of Ray's Pizza on the third day doesn't mean it's now Ezra's Pizza." More important than word games, some Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee released a figure exploring the ties between tax rates and inequality. (Ezra Klein for both)
• Churchill on appeasement (Conor Friedersdof at Daily Dish) "Appease the weak, defy the strong"
• Alan Grayson debating a sharp tea partier (Chris Bodenner at Daily Dish) I only watched the first couple minutes, but Grayson handles himself well. I don't agree with him on all issues, for one I wasn't happy to see praise on his list serve about a suggestion to cut off aid to Pakistan over some latest outrage. Civilian aid is easier to cut than force levels, but that sort of meddling reinforces the militancy of U.S. policy. Still I think he plays a useful role and I'm glad to have him.
• Why didn't more African Americans leave the South after the civil war? Because they often weren't allowed to (Ta-Nehisi Coates).
• Finally, London didn't treat their city as hallowed ground after the battle of Britain (Patrick Appel at Daily Dish). He's quoting Stephen Budiansky who ends with a Spanish proverb: "To forget an insult is the greatest revenge."
• Deb Fallows on how to use that adult brain of yours to help learn languages (Ezra Klein).

Light Rail

• For all my Marylanders, Fort McHenry in lego brick (Brothers Brick)
• Rock Band 5 or so (Chris Bodenner at Daily Dish) Cute video aside, I'm really excited by the addition of keyboard and far more realistic guitars for Rock Band 3. I played piano as a kid and it would be good to get back to it.
• ESPN commercial on the effort to get Admiral Ackbar as the Ole Miss mascot (Alyssa Rosenberg) Sadly, Lucas sent a fairly good humored cease and desist, so this won't be happening.
•  There are limits to Aquaman's ability to talk to fish (Medium Large).
• For RPGs, how to encourage players to not constantly be taking extended rests (At-Will)
• A Salon bit of literary criticism that annoyed me (RideSallyRide). In response, I'd say that the mass audience doesn't demand sanded down, likable characters, see any number of genres and their often unpleasant protagonists. Instead, people like me just aren't that interested realistic literary fiction about people they don't care about.

[Update: Renaming these.]

2010-09-05 San Francisco Botanical Garden

After hitting Chinatown on Saturday we'd headed off to the wedding, which I won't be covering here, and then home for the night. Sunday morning we took a bus west to Golden Gate Park and then transferred to a different bus to go through the park to the Sunset neighborhood. The first order of business was breakfast, which we got at Art's Cafe, a lovely countertop diner that specialized in hash brown sandwiches along with Korean favorite bibimbap which I first learned to enjoy thanks to a work colleague. Nourished we headed into the park with our first stop being at the enthralling botanical garden ($7 for adults, deals for families, youths, and seniors). We didn't take an official tour, but even so found the docent just inside the gate quite helpful in briefing on park highlights, like the Asian Temperate Garden and Redwood Grove, and what sections were in bloom at that time of year, in this case the South African section.

I'm not a nature writer, so I'll leave the heavy lifting of this piece to our pictures. The park on the whole felt a bit lower-key than the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles. That park was featured what I'll call set piece gardens of the classical European, Japanese, and Chinese, and the like. San Francisco had some such features, but on the whole felt a bit more wild and very much had its own distinct charms. I like my botanical gardens like I like my RPGs, full of branching paths such that no two inquisitive visitors need take the same route. There were large trails, so getting lost was not a risk, but smaller diversions were a constant temptation. No scolding from nature aficionados is necessary; the small byways were also officially maintained and not paths blazed by plant-stomping rebels. My favorite spots were the bamboo-oriented Temperate Asia Garden and the eponymous Redwood Grove.

Because I am full of contradictions, I  also greatly enjoy boardwalks and stone crossings of streams. The appeal there is not the non-linearity, but the options to tread into marshes, swamps, ponds, springs, and the like without getting one's feet wet or demonstrating miraculous powers. My father had long ago claimed to have mastered that particular trick, but I do believe he later added a caveat that said ability only applied when the water was in solid form. This was not a boardwalk-intensive park, but the Moon Viewing Garden and Ancient Plant Garden both featured effective use of them. Specific walk elements aside, I would say that the garden is a good bit more geographically oriented than I normally see. Looking over the map, the vast majority of the sites are named after the part of the world that originated their plants, rather than a theme such as in the Moon Viewing Garden mentioned above. As past travel blogging has revealed, I do always tend to rush to the Japanese and Chinese gardens, but San Francisco gave me something different and I was well pleased.

Video game penalties for players short on time

So, on the occasion of dying from stupidity in an early Valkyria Chronicles level (I sent a key person out in front of a tank) I thought it would be worth mentioning an odd gaming quirk of mine. In games where you aren't really supposed to die often, normal and tactical RPGs and the like, I tend to quite for the day after a death.

While I don't make heavy use of quick save or equivalent in any games I play, I do tend to try to minimize time spent repeating sections of a level. The trouble with that is that failure can lose its consequence. Moreover, failing repeatedly in a row can breed frustration and make me feel worse about stupid mistakes. But, since I've got time and a range of games I can choose from, setting one aside after death seems like a proportionate penalty that doesn't have overall life affecting opportunity cost.

This actually is something that could be implemented in some games that want to emphasize punishment. Give an option to auto-save with a count down before reload is allowed. Sure you can cheat it by changing the clock, but that's obviously dirty pool. Metal Gear Solid 3 famously had a joke implemented by this method, with one boss dying of old age if you were stuck on his level for weeks. This is hardly the only method out there for making failure real but not having a real life opportunity cost, but I do believe support for such methods might make gaming more rewarding for those of us that do want a challenge but can't even consider the sacrifices demanded by Demon Souls or the like.

Quick reminder: Montgomery County Council at Large Endorsements

With the election today, I thought I'd briefly mention again that I was endorsing Hans Riemer and George Leventhal for County Council At Large seats in Montgomery County, Maryland. County residents get four votes, and I'm not specifically opposing anyone. However, I believe that Hans and George are the two candidates most in need of support from transit supporters (Dutchy Trachtenberg also got a perfect score from the Action Committee for Transit, but from what I hear she's a sure thing). Here's my rationale from an early post.

There are a lot of other strong Purple Line advocates, e.g. Tom Hucker, Ana Sol Gutierrez, and many others. For complete listings see the Action Committee for Transit scorecard and the Purple Line Now pledge list.

Regardless, if you haven't already, go vote!

Update: 10:44 I was apparently quite wrong about Trachtenberg's being a shoe-in. Well, I'm glad I mentioned her perfect score.

2009-09-04 Chinatown

While we hadn't hit Chinatown in L.A., we had been to the neighborhood in Montreal sometimes derisively known as China Block, and Chinatown D.C. has a great gate but seems to be shrinking as Gallery Place is redeveloped. Thus I think it's safe to say that what we saw in San Francisco was definitely the most impressive Chinatown we'd seen in North America. In terms of China proper I was actually mostly reminded of Kowloon and Hong Kong.

I mention the two places because there's actually some diversity in the several blocks that make up Chinatown, in addition to a whole other community in Oakton that we didn't see. The picture up and to the right was taken on Stockton Street which tended to be more crowded with a plethora of food markets which triggered my thoughts of Kowloon.  The food was so fresh that you could imagine the seafood flopping free of its confines; in fact, we didn't have to imagine as we saw one fish try to escape.

After walking on Stockton for a bit we headed down to Grant St. which tended to be a bit higher-end, particularly on the blocks shown on the left. I would have loved to make it back at night to see the paper lanterns and street lamps lit up, but sadly time didn't allow. Happily, we did have a moment to stop in a bakery and get a mix of pastries: a pork bun, a lotus pancake, a yellow soy bean cake, and a red bean bun. All were quite tasty and some of it lasted for a later meal. This was the area that reminded me of Hong Kong, not the skyscrapers in central but some of the small retail districts up the hill.

 

2010-09-11

[Three] pieces:

• [Dan Drezner on the Onion signaling the return of humor after 9/11. They really did do fantastic and necessary work with that first issue.]
• Ted Koppel's Washington Post op-ed condemns the U.S. response to 9/11 as driven by overreaction and not U.S. national interests. Ultimately, as a super power, our own mistakes can easily damage us more severely than most of our enemies could. We don't need to try to do the opposite of what those who are provoking us want, trying to figure that out is a mug's game. Instead we need to do the rational thing despite being provoked.
• In the same vein, James Fallows linked to an older essay by David Foster Wallace who described what could be an American version of the classic British stiff upper lip in response to terrorism.

Finally, and sadly, the recession has led to Islamophobia being more prominent now than in the years immediately following 9/11. Even so, I tend to agree with Dan Drezner and Shadi Hamid that we should keep national security out of the discussion of the book burner. Book burning merits condemnation regardless in its own right. Criticism from religious leaders is particular appropriate, but the fool does not merit significant attention by top civilian policy makers, let alone military ones. Similarly, I think policy makers shouldn't harass those Muslims trying to build at the Park51 site. Respectfully disagreeing with Heather Herbert, I'm not going to critique them for national security reasons. However, I quite agree with her that we should critique xenophobic bullying of minority groups. I also agree with her in thinking that strong pushback was necessary to get Park51 opponents to abandon attempts to use state power to block the building, but I don't think national security arguments were necessary to achieve that moderation.

2010-09-04 Cable Car transit blogging

Riding the Cable Cars is the quintessential San Francisco tourist activity for good reason. I prefer riding on the open-air benches and when not photography-focused I particularly enjoy hanging on to the side poles. At about 9 miles an hour, this isn't an especially frightening experience, but the hills themselves provide quite the thrill. We took the California line, the least crowded option, shortly after breakfast on Saturday morning. Later on, we decided to skip the Powell-Hyde line due to length of the wait and instead walked past Lombard Street and caught the Powell-Mason line towards Chinatown.

Along the way we stopped at the Cable Car Museum which is free and well worth the visit. As the photos show, it's the still-functioning power plant for the system. There apparently used to be multiple plants along with a mix of ownership, but it took a big referendum fight to preserve the remaining three lines in their present curtailed form. During our visit we saw the cable for one of the lines being repaired as a mechanic used a tool something like an awl to try to sand off a frayed bit of wire. Perhaps out of necessity, the cable car lines in San Francisco feel more transparent in their operation than even the most revealing of street car museums. Watching the engineer work at the front of the car work is quite a sight and involves a grabbing the subterranean cable via a lever which requires a mix of strength and finesse.

Happily, they have adapted the cable cars to the new smart card system. One gripe, however: despite rolling out a few months ago, the conductors still seem confused by the hand-held readers. The first time we both got charged cash despite having just bought cards with $20 each on them. The second time we got a free pass, which was nice, but is probably not what they're shooting for from a revenue perspective. This isn't a big problem for most tourists, as for now the unlimited ride passes are still on paper, but it was a bit annoying. I think the first guy may have been incorrectly assuming we had an unlimited ride monthly pass or something rather than having a balance, but I'm not sure why that should even matter.  Still, with time, all the workers should be trained or perhaps they'll simplify the reader.

2010-09-04 Muni F line transit blogging

I'm backtracking a bit to our ride on the F line.  The F line manages to provide useful service with the eclectic car mix of a trolley museum. The range of street cars is fun to see, although in this case I only rode in one of the models. It's somewhat amusing to see a variety of historical cars with onboard smart card readers, although by contrast the non-electric cable cars needed hand scanners.

The F-line runs from the central Castro district through downtown to Fisherman's Wharf. We'd caught it from the Ferry building and rode it most of the way to the end of the line. It seems to be quite a popular route; the car was quite crowded which is more noteworthy than with the cable cars as there's more room to start with. Interestingly, unlike the cable cars, the vintage street cars cost the normal $2 fare. I suspect that this is because it's easier to scale up a system with power transmitted via wire than one via cable.

One question I was left wondering after the trip: how many of San Francisco's hills could electric streetcars handle? I know that trains tend to be rather limited in the amount of incline they can handle, but I think a lot of that gets the length and thus the mass of the train. I'd suspect that a single car streetcar would have similar mass as a bus, so it shouldn't be an insurmountable requirement for force. On the other hand sharp ups and downs probably raises derailment risks. I'm sure these are all solved mechanical puzzles and there's probably a book that can answer my question somewhere in my father's library.

 

2010-09-04 Hyde Pier, Ghirardelli, and walking up hills

Hyde Pier is an unusual national park in that its main attractions float. There are a variety of historical ships that can be seen from the pier for free and toured for a fee. We were in a hurry so we just walked by, after devouring our bread turtle a bit too quickly to capture a proper photograph of it. The pier is near the terminus for one of the three street car lines. Specifically, they Hyde-Powell line which has a manually-operated turntable.

Ghirardelli Square is a fairly new-feeling shopping area on the grounds of the chocolate company's facilities [although apparently it's been around for a while]. There were a fair number of people and shops, so I think it's safe to say it's handling the downturn a bit better than the cannery. Kate had gotten some hot chocolate and I took the time to try to integrate into our plans some of the recommendations we'd received from our friends Ryan and Bre (thanks guys!).

Afterwards, we noticed that while the Cable Car turntable was a great deal of fun to watch, it didn't seem to do a good job of quickly getting the long line of would-be passengers on cable cars. So instead we wandered on to our next destination on foot. The hills up to the famously twisty Lombard street were a bit intimidating but were not so bad if you just aimed for the lower in altitude end of the block. On the way there we saw a neat park that was over brimming with flowers and had a few difficult to place pleasant scents.

After seeing Lombard street we wandered back downhill a ways and caught a cable car towards Chinatown and the power plant for the whole cable system, which will be gone into in more detail in future entries.

2010-09-04 Fisherman's Wharf

We took a vintage streetcar up to Fisherman's Wharf and then wandered through the tourist district. I'd been there before and even hit the cable car and lefty stores, but oddly enough didn't really remember the sea lions. In our approach through the commercial district we first saw a few pairs and small rafts of sea lions and I eagerly took pictures and videos of them with Alcatraz as a backdrop. As we wandered around the pier we reached the main habitat where dozens rested on a chain of floating docks. A few more outgoing ones also had taken up on the docks of the nearby marina. According to the sign, they started showing up after the 1989 earthquake so I suppose I had simply forgotten the ones I'd seen on a prior trip.

The next few docks featured older fishing and seafood establishments. The area is known for its bread bowl chowders. I didn't partake, because of a big breakfast and difficulty processing lactose, but the sourdough turtle we got from Boudin's proved an excellent snack. Kate had felt some Marylander solidarity with the prevalence of steamed crabs but also noticed that things smelled differently out here. She'd quickly deduced that the difference was the absence of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore spice of choice, Old Bay, apparently not popular at bays the world over.

The Musee Mechanique on pier 45 is a delightful tourist trap distraction. No cover charge, and a variety of arcade games, animated dioramas, and the like at fairly vintage prices. My favorite piece was a steam-operated motorcycle that if it doesn't prominently feature in any graphic novels bloody well should. Kate got in a game of skee ball and waxed nostalgic about X-Men vs. Street Fighter. As we got further west the boardwalk-style atmosphere faded a bit and we followed a walk guide, admired the architecture, and walked through a shopping district in a former cannery. The place had a neat outdoor bar, but seemed a bit vacant, perhaps due to the economic tough times and newly-opened competition. One odd feature we noticed in our walking: tiny little cars which gave their own tour of the area and apparently were rented from the Exploratorium in the Presidio. The riders all wore helmets and were getting a pre-recorded tour as they went.  It looked sort of fun but I was happier to keep my money and walk.

2010-09-04 Travelling from Pacific Heights and to the Presidio

Saturday evening was the time of my friend's wedding, so in the morning we set out to the east to explore the city. We got breakfast at a crepe place, The Crepe House, which offered a wide variety and was quite tasty. If I came back, I might pick one with fewer fillings, I do think overstuffed crepes is a risk, but in this case the ingredients were good enough that it wasn't a problem. I believe we saw three or four crepe places this trip, far more than the single dedicated cupcake place, and I hope that trend will make it back home. 

Afterwards we picked up a second Clipper Card, the San Francisco smart card, put money on both of ours, and as I'll describe in a future entry had them immediately rejected by a Cable Car conductor. Moving on, we took the California line downtown wandered around the market at the ferry building for a bit, then caught the Muni F line towards Fisherman's Wharf which, along with the rest of the day, merits a separate write up.

Late that afternoon we took the bus back to the Hotel Majestic from Chinatown and then after changing caught another bus in the direction of the Presidio. Our transfer was a bit unnecessarily complex because I'd managed to forget a tie; I don't normally grab them in the morning because I have a selection at the office. Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we were able to Google a few clothing shop locations and only go a few blocks out of our way to acquire one. We then proceeded on to the Presidio which was first founded as a Spanish military base back in 1776 due to its excellent position for protecting the entry to the bay. This position also entails great views of the Golden Gate bridge, but that night it was feeling modest and its top was shrouded in fog. The walk over to the chapel was quite nice.

The walk back later was not as fun as we grumbled about the unreliability of taxis. Thankfully, the bus system proved far better and after two nearly on time bus trips we were back at the hotel.

2010-09-03 Japantown

The Majestic Hotel is in Pacific Heights with a view of downtown to the East, but if you walk to the west you can get to the Japantown neighborhood.  That ethnic enclave was fairly tightly tied with San Francisco history and had been the temporary home of many city functions after the great earthquake. That temporary shift had resulted in a housing boom that left affordable places to live available to Japanese immigrants after the civic center of San Francisco was restored.

Japantown covers several blocks, including a a small mall which had corridors and central spaces made over with Japanese cultural themes. There were stores selling pottery, toys, candy, books in Japanese, and the like. One mall restaurant's claim to fame was that it was the first place to serve food via literal floating sushi boats. We got burned the last time I went to a gimmicky boat place, so we ended up going elsewhere.

Instead we'd eaten across the street at a place called Toraya, which I believe was family owned and was decorated by a variety of stained glass versions of classical Japanese woodprints. Our waitress was quite helpful and steered us towards good sushi selections including [tuna] that had a slow burn spice that was stronger than we normally go for. My entree was tofu with curry rice, which was the first time I've had that combination but certainly won't be the last.

After wandering and shopping for another hour or so, including seeing a fair amount of hare themed pottery but sadly not picking up any, we headed back to the hotel. On the whole I'd say that Japantown had the feel of an ethnic neighborhood with enough heft to target a mix of long time families, immigrants, and tourists like Kate and me. The architecture was a mix of Asian designs and Victorian row homes that showed the strength of the ties to San Francisco. Unlike Chinatown, it never was quite densely packed enough to remind me of the couple weeks I'd spent abroad, but that didn't keep it from being a fun change of place with much more depth than you get from enclaves in suburbia.

[Updated when Kate was awake to look it over.]

Late return: Quick transit blogging

The wedding at the Presidio was lovely. The bus system to get us  there and back was quite reliable. Everything was within a few minutes of schedule arrival times according to Google Maps and the Clipper card worked well for the buses. Even better, more popular stations have LED signs to give you a time estimate for the next few buses.

Taxis proved less reliable and the companies apparently feel no need to inform you if no one will be showing up. That's somewhat consistent with my DC experience so I suppose I should be used to it. Anyways, we're still on eastern time so we're going to bed. More travel blogging tomorrow.

Initial experiments with the San Francisco smart card, the Clipper card, were in good part successful, but some cable car operators haven't learned to use them yet. Others were just willing to give us a pass because we had one, so it partially balanced out.

Update: Picture added of the chapel, by Greg Sanders, available under a creative commons license. I won't be doing a full slideshow of the wedding pictures as that seems like it's outside the scope of travel blogging.

Travel blogging returns: Arrival in San Francisco 2010-09-03

We flew into San Francisco today for the wedding of a friend from graduate school. This was also Kate's first trip to the city and since we're just here for an extended weekend we're going for the whirlwind tourism approach. After arriving around 3 pm we took the BART into the city. That was a fairly good experience.  BART feels more like a commuter line than a subway to me; it's got upholstered seats and at the ends of the cars there are fixed benches facing one another which is handy for small groups but rare for short distance trains. You can also walk between the cars, but I'm not sure if that's indicative of anything.

We got off at the Civic Center station and took a nice walk up to our hotel in Pacific Heights. If my googling is correct, San Francisco just started having a smart card earlier this summer, so my timing for my collection was good. I ended up getting a 'Clipper Card' at Walgreens because it was sold out at the station. Unfortunately, I couldn't get one for Kate because they'd only give one per person and when she tried the lines were long.  Should be easily remedied tomorrow, though. Smart Card distribution does seem to be a bit tricky for transit systems the world over and the city didn't make their job any easier by giving them away for free which unsurprisingly seems to have caused shortages. Nonetheless, I had a far easier time than I did getting my L.A. Tap card, so I can't really complain. One other transit note, the overhead wires in the picture are not for street cars in this case, they're for electric buses. As a result the city is one of the more wired ones I've seen, particularly at a few intersections where buses could make a range of turns, which resulted in more complicated patterns.

The Civic Center and U.N. plaza were fun to see.  City Hall was particularly lovely with exquisite detail work. The U.N. plaza did a good job of commemorating the initial signing of the charter and was a fairly lively public space, although one that was also reasonably popular with the homeless community. We were quite pleased with our vintage hotel, one recommended by our soon to be married friends. After arriving and unpacking, we decided we didn't quite have the energy to meet up downtown and so instead wandered Japantown which will be covered in the next entry.

Programming note: I never properly finished L.A., let alone documented the two trips I took in between, because work has been quite busy of late. I intend to address that backlog, but figured for this trip I'd start fresh to better describe the experiences as they happened.

Photograph by Greg Sanders available under a creative commons license.

Newsrob for the Droid outdoes Google Reader

If you're a high volume RSS feed consumer like I am, managing all that comes in can get to be a real problem. I manage it by having a few topical folders, a favorites folder which draws from all topics, and a skim folder. Generally speaking, I want to glance at everything in the favorites folder while the skim folder often just gets reviewed on the basis of title.[1]

The trouble is that it's hard to go fast through the skim folder. Hotkeys help of course, but mark all read is quite a blunt instrument. Newsrob Pro is my droid reader of choice in part because it has two key tools that help:

1. Mark read until here. This marks all items above the current one as read. This is a vast improvement over Reader's options to mark all read or to mark items older than a week or two read. Now it's easy to clear out my skim folder in bite sized chunks rather than dealing with whole folders at a time.
2. Pin an item. Pin adds a third status to read/unread. The key point of pin is that ignores mark all as read and mark read until here. So if you're just looking to clear out items fast you can pin the ones with interesting sounding titles and then just mark read everything else.

Together, these have left me in the bizarre situation that I find my phone app has more functionality than the one I use via my web browser. Maybe that just means that I should switch to using my email client as a reader. I'm not claiming that Newsrob had these features first, so if anyone knows where they were invented let me know in comments and I'll update this. Similarly, if you know how to pull this off in reader please let me know. However, for now, Newsrob Pro makes me happy and I'm glad I dropped the fiver or so it took to get the full version. One caveat, you do need to login to your google account via the app and I know that's a legitimate concern for a lot of people.

 

[1] Admittedly, I do have some feeds that make both the favorites and the skim folder. These are ones that I like but are higher volume than I have appetite for. Also, most of what I get through friends' shared items goes in the skim folder.