mroth’s Neighborhood

I ran across a post about why to live in Oakland, which mentions many outdoors and some other things to see and do.  I agree with some of it, but am not feeling quite such great love of Oakland, but it does have some practical advantages for me over living in San Francisco.

Let's quit the high school name calling.  "I wasn't a cheerleader in high school, so now I'm living in San Francisco and I can act like a cheerleader for my team (Yay! Goooooo San Francisco!!1!1!!1!1!!)."  Yeah, you're cool.  For the record, I've lived both places and been mugged both places.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each city, but if your identity is threatened by living anyplace but San Francisco, then please don't let it get damaged, we want you to feel good about yourself.  Here's a "feel good" medal for living there.

But I digress, so let me enumerate those reasons:

1. My workplace is in Oakland and I can get there in less than 15 minutes from my house (yes, without a car).  I can 85% reliably get to the Financial District in San Francisco in less than 25 minutes from my house.  If I extend the time to 30 minutes it's closer to 95% of the time.
   
   Even if I switched jobs and moved into San Francisco and worked downtown, I would have a longer commute anywhere to the west of Stanyan Street than where I currently live. This is a very optimistic estimate based on SFMTA's "schedules," not on what actually happens on that joke of a transit system.
   
   Muni/SFMTA is seriously FUBARed.  It's never going to get fixed.  They've been trying to fix it for at least 20 years and it just gets worse from year to year.  Yes, AC Transit also sucks, but I live near BART which is about the closest thing to a reliable and on-schedule transportation system in the entire Bay Area.  It has its problems, but it actually has a schedule and comes close to meeting it.
   
   
2. Any place of a similar size to my current apartment would cost me at least 25% to 200% more in San Francisco.  Even if I lived in suburban San Francisco in the Richmond or Sunset I'd be paying at least a little more than I am currently. And I'd have at least a 60 to 75 minute commute to my current job each way. Even to downtown San Francisco I'd have a longer commute to come close to the rent that I currently pay.  If I got a place with a much shorter commute, I'd for sure be paying at least 50% to 100% more than I currently pay in rent.
   
   
3. The crime problem can be bad in some places in Oakland, but honestly it's variable by neighborhood.  I'm pretty certain that the Western Addition, The Mission, The Tenderloin and many parts of Potrero Hill are worse areas for crime than where I live.  There are more parts of Oakland with bad crime problems than San Francisco, but Visitacion Valley, Hunter's Point and other areas aren't exactly great.  I'd think they compare to some of the worse parts of Oakland.
   
   
4. A bunch of my friends live over here in Berkeley and other places, so I can see them in 15 minutes or so.  I guess if I was into "scene" things than San Francisco might be more compelling.

Overall, Oakland is ok.  San Francisco has more quaint, trendy flavor, but it comes at a price.  It depends what tradeoffs you're willing to make to live there.

Maybe in the future I'd live there again, but probably at least not right now while I'm working in Oakland.

I haven't written much here in a while and I'm not feeling so inspired, so I'll quote another web page:

"You're running around with your friend, laughing your head off, when suddenly you trip over a rock and hit the ground." (http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/talk/yucky/scab.html).

Read the kids article about platelets and scabs if you want, but be sure to say the word "scab" repeatedly.  Doesn't it drop out of your mouth and into the air nicely?

Yes.  I still have the urge to rip healing scabs off cause they're stiff and itchy.  Maybe I'm still a kid with no self control, though I've managed to prevent myself from indulging so far.

Updating the Vox once a year whether it needs it or not! (my 2006 list)

• Palo Alto, CA*
  
• San Francisco, CA*
• Sunnyvale, CA*
• Taipei, TW
• Hong Kong, HK
• Singapore, SG
• Austin, TX
• Los Angeles, CA*
• London, UK
• Black Rock City, NV
  
• New York, NY
• Weaverville, CA
• Seoul, Korea
  
• Santa Barbara, CA

Notes:

• I moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco this year.  I've almost unpacked.
• I cut down the number of nights I spent in the office in Sunnyvale, mostly running events like Hack Days
• I went to my first Burning Man this year
• This coming year should be a more interesting travel year.
  

Made In China

For those who have been blissfully unaware, there have been some problems with products made in China recently.  I'm not sure how you could miss it, but lets refresh your memory: antifreeze in the toothpaste, date-rape beads for children, exploding candles, fish raised in sewer and toxic-waste-dump conditions.  There are more, but you get the idea. Did you actually just eat that Chinese-raised fish?  Personally, I won't take anything internally that I know is made in China.

Just why do you think things made in China are so cheap?  Little regulation in the country along with a desperate need to get bids seems to be one major root problem. It's hard to meet the cutthroat race to be the lowest bidder against all the other Chinese companies who want the contracts and have little understanding of what the costs really are.  As Businessweek noted, quoting a Chinese scholar, "given the low emphasis on profits and the unsophisticated accounting of many Chinese companies, often their pricing isn't based on a full understanding of costs" (see The China Price in Businessweek).

So what do you do when you can't produce something for the exaggeratedly low cost you agreed to?  It seems one popular solution in China is to cut costs by adding out-of-spec, cheap materials.  Simply do something like fill the pet food with plastic waste, or use a chemical that is 4 times cheaper than the one specified for the beads.  So it sends a few children into date-rape comas or kills some pets, so what?

Let's be clear, this isn't only China's fault and these things happen in all countries and all times.  US and multinational corporations do their part when demanding something be made for an unreasonably low price, in a country with little enforced regulation and when they fail to provide quality control of their own products or oversight in a poorly regulated country. When the only goal of these corporations and their Chinese counterparts is making money is it very surprising that life is as cheap as their products?  Like Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, which was based on a real incident of cost cutting and deception in the US, is it really so surprising when these things start killing our sons and daughters, as literally happens in his play?

The slew of problems hasn't been that much of a concern to most in the US since the problems and side effects haven't been obviously in our own back yard until now.  Finally, they've been very obviously exported along with so many cheap, defective and dangerous products to us.

In China, the side effects of their "economic miracle" have been clearer for the Chinese people as Pan Yue of the Chinese government points out:

• "Habitable and usable land has been halved over the past 50 years."
• "Five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China."
• "Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory."
• "Half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless."
• "One fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water."
• "Because air and water are polluted, we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product. And that doesn't include the costs for health."
• "In Bejing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment."
• "Lung cancer has emerged as the No. 1 cause of death."
• "We will need to resettle 186 million residents from 22 provinces and cities."
• "Economically we won't be strong enough to overcome [our environmental crises]."

Does this sound like an "economic miracle" to you or more like a cross between The Jungle and Silent Spring?  And these are only the problems that are being talked about, what about the ones that aren't? It seems that neither our sons and daughters, and especially not any Chinese sons and daughters are particularly safe from this situation.  Like the cathartic "miracle" of All My Sons, this miracle is sure to bring death and suffering if nothing changes and changes fast.  All of this tragedy in the name of the cheapest, most worthless baubles we can get made (in China).

Ok, so I ran across a Yelp review by a miriam b person.  If you don't know, Yelp is a hipster Bay Area review site.  Anyway, she trashed on a place but was the only review so I thought I'd check if she was reviewing things mostly positively or negatively to see how to take the review.

What I found was 1162 reviews with review dates starting from 2/14/2006 and ending 9/15/2007.  If you're doing the math, that's about 19 months or an estimated 575 days.  That comes out at about 2 reviews per day of a new and unique business.  Over 700 reviews a year.

This seems insane to me on so many levels.

That's got to be a lot of time writing reviews.

That's got to be a really huge amount of time gracing various and sundry businesses with her presence.  I mean how many hours a day is she spending shopping, traveling to new businesses and spending her time there?

Remember these are unique businesses, not simply business visits a day.  Two visits to businesses a day isn't hard (a meal, a coffee).  The unique aspect makes it hard.  If you said to yourself "I'll shop at two new places today"  how long until you started feeling annoyed because you'd have to go out of your way or shop at places you weren't so interested in or weren't located conveniently for your life?  For me, after maybe a couple hundred businesses, I'd have to start really trying to visit new places (or just take up shopping as one of my more major life activities for it to happen naturally).

People laugh about oddities like the Star Trek Dentist's office from Trekkies, the bear proof suit man, or their uncle who is inventing a perpetual motion machine.  Perhaps miriam_b helps demonstrate that the potential is there for even those who (I'm presuming) aren't obviously cracked to have a fully fulfilled, odd and eccentric life.

So you bought an 8 GB iPhone at $599 when it first came out and are whining your spoiled and stupid head off when it dropped by $200 just over two months later.  Now you're saying that Steve Jobs raped your virgin orifice when a few weeks ago you wanted to carry his babies.  What's wrong with this picture?

Then you were obligating yourself to a 2 year lock-in with AT&T/Cingular as your only possible mobile carrier.  I get the fact that the iPhone was shiny, hyped, and the nerd-herd status symbol of the week.  It is nice to look at and use, but what about that price point and all those restrictions?

You didn't understand the fact that a $600 phone with a very restrictive carrier options (one) and two year lock in with an expensive plan wasn't going to be hitting a mass market price range for the most of the market?  You thought everyone else in the world was hanging on Steve Jobs' every word like you were? You didn't realize that price cuts were inevitably coming very soon to try to create some sales volume?

So what happens when the price cuts come?

• Whine that Steve Jobs did something illegal by pricing it so high when it really should've cost $399 from the start.  Sorry, I have news for you about supply and demand.  Good ol' Steve-o could've priced them at $10,000 or $1 billion dollars if he wanted to, just you probably wouldn't have bought one at that price and he wouldn't have made money off the pathetically desperate for nerdly status who couldn't afford them at that price.  It is only illegal to price things high if there is some secret deal in the market for EVERYONE to price their phones this high so there is no competition and people have no choice but to pay high prices because of price collusion.
  
  
• Get insulted that (*gasp*) the unwashed masses might be able to afford an iPhone and it won't be so exclusive to your club anymore.  And you were so enjoying your conspicuous consumption and invidious consumption. But you bought it for the features, right?  Um, wait, those are still the same, so what has changed?  Oh, those people paying $399 weren't desperate enough to prove their coolness and were willing to wait for the price to drop. Unlike you, they didn't buy one for $599+fees, wait in line all night like goons for the privilege, and then rub it against their crotches and then shove it in people's faces for superiority points like you did.
  
  
• "But I didn't know it was overpriced."  So you're saying you're stupid and/or were so desperate to prove your worth that no price was too great to make yourself look cool, is that it?  Early adopters always pay a premium and early adopters of heavily hyped gear pay even more of a premium (such as for the original RAZR).
  
  
• "But I got ripped off."  No one had a gun to your head making you buy it.  You made your decision to buy it at a high price point.  I assume you can take any responsibility for your actions?  That was your decision not Apple's.  Evidently, Apple figured out the same thing that many people knew from the beginning: that the price point was too high for the long term sales volume they wanted to have.  You were just part of their little money-making experiment.  This isn't different than usual, it was just a little more obvious.  The problem wasn't that they priced high, it was that they went just far enough that you noticed instead of keeping you in blissful ignorance of how markets work.
  
  
• "Apple is a magical land of gumdrops and lolly-pops like Santa's workshop.  They shouldn't be shamelessly making money."  Puleeze. They charge whatever the market will bear and try to maximize their profits.  You paid.  Now shut your trap and quit trying to blame your own actions on someone else because you feel stupid now.  If it is overpriced and they don't get as many buyers as they want then they'll figure out ways to make more money--like lowering the price or getting it made for cheaper (or both).  They're not doing this for charity.  They're just as much of an evil corporation as anyone else--just one whose products are probably a little nicer to use.
  

Have you heard of "quicksilver" aka mercury?  It's a liquid metal that used tobe used in thermometers, batteries and other items that are being eliminated from the human environment as much as possible. It's probably sitting in your mouth if you have so called "silver" fillings which are really around 50% mercury and are probably the only kind your dental insurance company wants to pay for in non-visible back teeth.  It was also the substance used by hat makers in times past that caused them severe neurological problems and is the reason for the phrase "mad as a hatter" (as seen in Alice in Wonderland).

People have known mercury is bad for health for a long time. The US Environmental protection agency does not allow any more than 2 parts per billion in drinking water.   That equals about one drop of mercury from an eyedropper in 25,000 liters, or 1 drop in 6,604 gallons of water. 1 drop in small pool that is 8 feet by 12 feet by 8 feet deep would probably be slightly above this limit.  That's a lot of water and very little mercury!

It's also suggested to avoid eating too much of certain kinds of fish since they contain methyl mercury.  These are mostly larger fish that eat smaller fish and concentrate the mercury.  Even for less mercury-filled fish it's recommended to limit eating of them.

I'm sure there are arguments against the above video which seems based on fairly solid research.  In any case, when it comes to health and potentially disasterous and distructive consequences, it seems smart to err on the side of caution when the evidence is unclear.  Your dentist will likely be casual and non-committal about the consequences of mercury in your mouth for reasons such as they haven't studied the research, they may need to use alternative techniques and materials instead of mercury or they're afraid of saying anything that might suggest past liability.  But why are many countries discouraging these types of fillings?  Why do many dentists use other kinds of fillings for their own mouth or their children's mouths?

Before your enter the dentist's office and your dentist says "your insurance only pays for amalgam fillings on your back teeth" and herds you in that direction (with a footnote in a brochure about possible problems) you should consider what you want put in your mouth and make an informed decision.

The New York Times had this article about some philosopher who speculates that there is a "20% chance" that we're in some simulation (sorta like the Matrix, only that we only exist in the simulation, and are not really there somewhere being used as human batteries).

It had some funny implications such as the idea that it paid off to be more funky and interesting since then the creator would keep you around for more simulations in the future.

At the same time that the article was a fascinating thought, the way the whole article was framed was insanely human-centric.  It kept making statements that implied that we were little simulations of a world outside of our own and that we were imitations of that world.  And then maybe that outside world was imitating the world outside themselves. So, essentially in some way we were imitations of some "real" world.  Is this that different from some kind of assumption of Platonic Forms?  The assumption seemed to be that everyone was a shadow of a reality that was a shadow of a reality, etc.

What's to say that we would be a simulation of something real?  Why not a simulation of something completely unreal to the outside "reality"?  I guess maybe if the outside reality had as much hubris as humans have then maybe it's a safe assumption to think they would create imitations of themselves. But even then, if it is really based on many layers of simulation and they were loosely based on their realities it might change very significantly over the intervening generations.  Think the "telephone" game where you pass something along many times and by the end it's completely unrecognizable, even if you are striving for some fidelity to the original.

While it makes a good news story, my end reaction was that there was really nothing new to see here.  Just another philosopher trying to anthropomorphize gods in his own image as so many philosophies and humans have done before.  Only this time it's humans with one of our favorite pets, modern technology as an enabling factor in the myth.

Go team human.  You're the center of the universe.  And even if you're not the center of the universe than you're an imitation of the uber-human who is the center of the universe.  Like I said, hubris.

I ran across an an article about How to Make a Difference.  It's #49 of some articles or other about project management.  Surprisingly it is pretty well written and talks about figuring out things that matter, but not in the typical manager-manipulative-advice way of "if you compliment people exactly 23 times daily then they will seek to please you and be your slavish pets while you go sip Pina Coladas."  (Ok, I'm exaggerating, but you know the self-interested advice books I'm talking about that tell you how to be a really good manipulator.)

Some samples:

• "So why do we forget that it is these [small] things, not tools and toys, that hold the essence of making a difference?"
• "A little thank you note may have real power, especially if I don’t come off as a weirdo (e.g. avoiding phrases like "I want to live forever in your pants!" and "Here’s 75,214 pictures of the daily shrine I pray to naked in your honor") and have thoughtful things to say about how their work was of use, or made a difference."

Personally, I think I'll need to try this out.  I'm especially excited about the "I want to live forever in your pants" line.  Oops, I guess that's the line NOT to use.

Interesting reading, anyway and some good advice.