Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know if the rest of the country celebrates the arrival of Super Bowl Sunday with a running race. But San Francisco does, with the half-marathon and 5K race in Golden Gate Park. Once again yesterday, I chose the shorter distance. Actually, I never even considered going 13.1 miles. Age brings wisdom?

The 5K course shifted a bit again this year, but it’s still slightly downhill overall and therefore the time is a salve to the ego. Official results have me at 18:37, for a 5:59 pace, and 15th overall. Compare to 2006 or 2005. My first mile split was 5:57, when I mistakenly hit stop instead of lap, so later splits were erratic.

Not sure what the next race will be, but I was pleased with this one.

When We Were Kings opened my eyes to why Muhammad Ali holds such a special place in the sports pantheon, and far beyond. While I’m too young to have first-hand knowledge of Ali’s flair and Homeric virtues, this documentary lets Ali entertain you. The fresh wit, the fierce fighting, the consciousness of his opportunities and the uniqueness of his role in American society… all comes through in this film. When We Were Kings was filmed mostly in 1974, but wasn’t finished and distributed until 1997, when it won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

The fight itself — the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” — is a frame for the film. But the story told doesn’t depend on the boxing. It’s about Ali, and the other figures who revolve around him (like it or not): Don King, George Foreman, and others. Even James Brown and other musical legends were part of the Zaire event. I had no idea the African stage became such a wide-ranging festival… all because Mobutu Seko, the Zairean dictator, offered Ali and Foreman $5M each to hold the fight in the middle of Africa. The more contemporary interviews with Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, both of whom covered the fight as journalists, were sparing, but provided useful background for the now-period footage.

The best parts, again, are simply watching Ali in his prime, both as a man and a boxer (at least, he won). These images help offset the Atlanta Olympics torch-lighting, and subsequent public appearances over the last decade, where the physical consequences of years in the ring are all too apparent.

Metacritic score of 83 denotes “universal acclaim.” Sounds right.

47 minutes at a leisurely pace in Golden Gate Park on a clear, crisp morning with Carla. Great way to loosen up for tomorrow morning’s 5K.

John Dunning writes mysteries set in the world of books. The Bookwoman’s Last Fling is the most recent of his novels centering on bookman Cliff Janeway, a more dramatic version of the author himself, who does run a bookstore. I was drawn into these via my mother, whose fondness for Dick Francis she inculcated early on.

In this book, at least, Dunning blends books and horses, so a good mix — although I really don’t know horses beyond what I’ve read in Dick Francis mysteries. This book is a pleasant enough read, but happy it’s going back to the library now.

Twenty-four minutes on the run home.

After much debate on Saturday afternoon, we agreed on seeing Le petit lieutenant that night. As the title suggests, this is a French film. Subtitles, even! Two attributes were even more French — or at least less Hollywood. First, one of the lead characters dies. Second, there are several scenes where no one is talking, just emoting for the camera. A bit of silence was fine, although my American impatience twitched a bit once or twice.

It was a good story, well told, if a bit quiet for a police movie. No need for the big screen, though. Which was just as well, since Opera Plaza’s screen wasn’t much bigger than a minivan. Oh well.

Metacritic score of 71 might be a touch high. The San Francisco Chronicle reviewer loved it, which tipped our scales enough to see the film.

On Sunday afternoon, January 28, 2007, a bit after 2pm, there was a house fire on the 2000 block of McAllister Street, just off Masonic Avenue, in San Francisco, California, USA.

The fire trucks’ sirens drew our attention to the black smoke pouring into the sky. We watched the ladder trucks arrive and extend, and the smoke choked off in under 30 minutes. This scene was visible from our house, and we walked over later in the afternoon to see the aftermath. Wasn’t much to see from the outside, beyond lots of ashy debris piled on the street in front of the house. The exterior was not breached, at least as far as we could see. It didn’t appear, from general attitudes of those lingering and watching, that anyone had been hurt. But I wondered.

In this morning’s printed San Francisco Chronicle, there was nothing at all. Not a word.

On the website, there were two or three paragraphs, noting that the two-alarm fire was brought under control in 20 minutes or so, and no one had been hurt. Nothing more. I noticed, sort of, the byline Bay City News.

When I went back this evening, to see if there was more, the information was gone. Why? Because the Chronicle doesn’t cover its own named city with anything approaching comprehensiveness. Instead, the Chronicle purchases some of its local news from a business called Bay City News, and if you look carefully here, you will (for a few weeks, I think), be able to see the headline in question: Buy – Jan 28, 2007 – BCN58 – UPDATE: TWO-ALARM SF FIRE UNDER CONTROL (108 words).

I’m not interested enough to pay $20 for the 108 words (~$0.05/word) I read earlier this morning for free, but I did click the “Buy” link to find out that price, and was accosted by this pop-up window.

By clicking OK you agree that you are not an employee or representative of a media organization and you agree not to reuse, republish or retransmit the information you receive without the express written consent of Bay City News Service.

I guess this counts as DRM on a budget: assert your copyright. I know nothing about Bay City News beyond what’s written there: 20 reporters, around since 1979. I wonder if any local news organization (print, online, radio, TV) is not dependent on this wire service.

So much for local news

In an era when the Boston Globe (among many others) is closing foreign bureaus for cost-cutting reasons, I would expect a death grip on the last “exclusive” a local newspaper has…local news. Instead, that grip has slipped. Or maybe it slipped long ago and I just noticed!

I’m well aware there are more important stories to cover. I just found a local fire something of immense interest to a group of people loosely coupled by geography, and little answer to this information need. Maybe there never was a time when the Chronicle and other big city papers covered this kind of event closely (or at all). But the myth, at least, of local news was that crime, fire, school boards, and the like were the foundation of a newspaper. If these “beats” have disappeared, then where is the heart of the newspaper?

More information about the fire

I don’t know the exact address, but the fire was right here, in the building to the right of the green arrow. You can see the five photos I took, although I apologize for their distance. I didn’t bring the camera when we walked over later.

All I could find on the web was this brief mention on a firefighter blog, which points to the local ABC TV affiliate website story, written by Bay City News (of course). At least I saved $20.

Pushing the girl in the stroller, trying to keep up with the boy on the bike… thirty-three minutes in Golden Gate Park, with a long interruption at the playground.

Cleaning out the inbox, we find…

• A formula for procrastination is a headline that just catches the eye. Especially when you’re supposed to be doing something else! No mention of RSS in the entire story…doesn’t seem right. I suppose procrastination existed before the Internet. 😉
• Optimus Prime iPod Dock would be the boy’s first choice for an iPod accessory…if he had an iPod. More than meets the eye!
• An entire film about “typography, graphic design and global visual culture,” all on the 50th anniversary of a font. Yes, that’s right, I want to see Helvetica.
• What does 200 calories look like? Hmmm… eight 15-piece rolls of Smarties candies.

Ten minute warmup, then 5000m on the ergometer in 19:02. Pushing the last 1000m got me a bit ahead of the target I had set beforehand, and was in danger of missing without a good finish. Once every two weeks won’t cut it for erging, if I want to improve here. I’m not sure just how much I want to do, though.