January 2008 Archives

Obama and Clinton tie for delegates in Florida.

0 for Obama,

0 for Clinton.

Thanks to TPM Election Central

Is finally dead. I know many people will be sad, and I will mourn her passing. Actually, she's basically been living with a say of execution in Castro Valley for several months now.

Confused? I bought this RV back in July with the hope of taking it to Burning Man. It broke down before I was able to drive it away from where it was parked when I bought it. It seemed manageable to fix it, but alas when I was driving it to the mechanic's place it really died in a huge explosion of smoke while crossing the Bay Bridge. I wish I had pictures of that...

Oh well, I did get it to the mechanic, but he basically flaked on me, and it got towed to an impound lot in San Leandro. I decided to sign the pink slip over to the impound lot and have this mistake out of my life for once and all. I went into the RV one last time to collect some paperwork, and I remembered why I bought her in the first place. She actually was a pretty cool vehicle and with a little work, the interior would have been sweet. This wasn't much use however without a working engine, and this was sorely lacking. Oh, also there weren't any real breaks to speak of.

A few pictures:

Oh, and as to why she's called Wendy the Flying Whorehouse? Well that's another story.

This was the most amazing thing that happened at Burning Man this year. I've tried and tried to find a good video of it, and finally I found one at Current TV.

Watch and Enjoy

It's not Valentine's Day, it's

PILLOW FIGHT DAY!

Where: Justin Herman Plaza (Market & Embarcadero), San Francisco, CA.

When: February 14th, when the Ferry Building clock strikes 6pm.

What: PILLOW FIGHT!!!

How:

1) Tell everyone you know about Pillow Fight!

2) Tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW about Pillow Fight!!!

3) Nothing in your pillow but pillow.

4) Don't hit anyone with out a pillow.

5) Don't hit anyone operating a camera.

Last year's Pillow Fight was *amazing*! Let's make the magic happen again! Please bring a few trash bags to share and help pick up after wards.

I just returned Saturday (19 Jan 2008) from Mali. It was a really interesting, eventful, stressful, and ultimately, fun trip.

I left San Francisco on January 4th. It was pouring down rain here. There was talk about Tahoe expecting 10 feet of snow over the weekend (I'm told they actually got 11). I was really worried about getting out of SF. I tracked the plane coming into SFO that would become my plane leaving via Google Earth. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, FBOWeb is a cool service that allows you to track flights in Google Earth. I was at my office, getting ready to leave for the airport, when I realized I had left my anti-malaria drugs back at home. At first I reserved a Zipcar so I could drive home to pick them up, but then I didn't have my Zipcar card with me, having taken it out of my wallet since I was going to be in Africa. I ended up grabbing a taxi, running home, and grabbing the pills. During the drive to my house, the radio said that BART was closed down due to a train hitting a tree so I took the taxi all the way to the airport.

One of my rituals of leaving San Francisco is to stop at the sushi bar in SFO for lunch before my flight. I met up with Henry there, who was coming into town for a wedding and we had a nice lunch. I highly recommend the sushi bar at SFO in the international terminal. It's good sushi, particularly when you're leaving for a landlocked African country with bland food (more on that later).

After lunch I checked in with Virgin Atlantic for the first leg of my trip. I originally was going to take this trip with my (now ex-) girlfriend, Monica. She decided not to come, so I used the frequent miles that were going to her ticket to upgrade myself to business class. For Virgin Atlantic this meant "Upper Class," which is quite the posh experience. I was looking forward to the Upper Class experience. Upon check-in I was given an invitation to the Upper Class Lounge, which is a nice little lounge on the 5th floor of the SFO international terminal. They have a little bar along with a kitchen that serves a small menu of snacks. After a drink and a desert I picked up a copy of the Financial Times and waited for my flight.

One thing I should take a moment to comment on: Continental has a totally obnoxious reservations system for reward travel. It's horribly complicated, it doesn't show all the flights you can choose, it randomly will show a flight one day, and the next day, say it doesn't exist. It was really frustrating to make my reservations. I had wanted to fly Virgin Atlantic both to and from Africa, but I was told several times that there were no seats available on the return flight. I learned, just before leaving, and too late to change anything, that there were seats, everyone else just used the wrong flight number to look up the flight. Add this to the list of stupid and frustrating things with Continental reward reservations.

The flight from SFO to London was uneventful. I was unable to sleep despite having the lay flat bed. I think it's just hard to go to sleep at 6pm (as your body thinks). I've never really had any success in going to bed on eastern bound flights. I spent a lot of time thinking about luxury vs. money and my attitude about it, but that's a topic for a post on it's own.

Once I got to London I met up with a friend-of-a-friend who offered me a couch to crash on. We spent the afternoon cruising around London, had some awful Indian food and then I went out for a drink with a girl I met two days before I left on OkCupid. Anna and I had a great intellectual conversation over drinks in a pub and I eventually had to go find that couch. I really enjoyed London. I need to get back there to spend some more time in "Mirror World".

I left London Sunday morning, stopped in Paris for a few hours where nothing really interesting happened and then got on a flight for Bamako, Mali. I got into Bamako Sunday evening and met my Mom and brother at the airport. Then the real travel began. (continued in part 2)

Today is Blog for choice day, so I thought I'd do my part. I think the other blogs have done a great job of covering some of the more feminist aspects of the pro-choice debate. I don't think can add anything to the point that women should have control over their own healthcare decisions.

Freedom of choice is more than just what is morally right, It's actually also a good idea. I'm a huge proponent of what works, regardless of the ideological basis for it. Making abortions illegal doesn't make them less common, it just makes them less safe. There are studies showing the abortion rates for countries with legal and illegal abortion are about the same*, but in countries without legal abortion women have to turn to "back-alley" providers, or they try local remedies that may endanger their health.

Pro-choice, not just a good idea - one that actually saves lives.

(sorry, I'm too lazy to actually cite sources, but the interested reader can find the studies with little effort via google)

Adderall, originally uploaded by jisanna.

Wandering around flickr, found this cool photo.

IMG_0678.JPG, originally uploaded by Jonah Horowitz.

I just got back from Mali. Here's a link to my Flickr photos. I'll post a more complete story once I've recovered a little.

W00t.