In San Fran we stayed just off Union Square (centre of town) in a hotel called the Mosser which was the smallest room (outside of south Korea) I’ve ever been in. The toilet so small that the basin couldn’t fit in and had to be accommodated in the main room 
This was more than made up for by it’s great location however; we would literally walk out of the hotel into the hustle and bustle of downtown San Francisco. While in town we did the things typically expected of tourist, we drove across the Golden Gate bridge and spent some time exploring the Golden Gate park which is an enormous reserve to the west of the city which stretches right down to the Pacific ocean. We also had some fun taking a trip out to Alcatraz island which quite apart from it’s history as a jail has a very rich military history dating back to the Mexican occupation of California. We then jumped on a guided tour of the town given by a talkative chap named Dom who drove us around in an open top 1924 Ford motorcar which had been refitted with a new gas powered engine (they are big on green over in SF) which could drag it up and down San Fran’s incredible hills.
So we started off our overseas adventure in the city of angels, however our first day in the US couldn’t have been less angelic. At six hours, this was the biggest time shift that we had to do on our entire west bound journey and the excitement of the thing meant that we didn’t get much sleep on the flight. So when we landed in LAX at 7 in the morning we had a very long day ahead of us and not much left in the tank. It was in this sleep deprived state of mind that we arrived at our motel to be told that we were far to early for check in and that the best they could do for our luggage was a storage shed for their maintenance equipment – not having any better offers we decided to tote our laptop with us and chance it. Unfortunately this meant walking 4 blocks through the *very* hispanic neighbourhood to subway stop and being accosted by random crazy bearded beggars who were making us feel very uncomfortable and the laptop that we thought was safely away from the storage shed was making us feel very much like an ideal mugging candidate. Fortunately this appeared to be more hallucination than fact as we safely made it to Hollywood bollevade (spelling?) without incident where we proceeded to be very touristy and photograph our way up to the Chinese Theatre along the walk of fame. On our second day the walk to the subway seemed much less intimidating and we even stopped to check out some produce along the way before ending up back in Hollywood for the guided tour of the stars homes (so touristy I know). This was actually the highlight of the stay in LA as the Hollywood hills are beautiful and our guide was very charismatic.
The following is stolen, I mean borrowed from the wonderful Ars Technica…
When the State of Illinois was tardy in paying its legal bills after attempting to defend a law that regulated the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games, the Entertainment Software Association wondered about the reasons for the delay. Now they know: the state was scouring department budgets, looking for the $1 million it cost to defend the unconstitutional legislation in court. Yes, you read that right—the State of Illinois spent one meeeellion dollars of taxpayer money on the litigation even as the state budget was starved for cash in other, more pressing areas. And worse yet, they spent it on a bill which, when introduced, was plainly unconstitutional.
Was just doing some reading on practical uses of face-recognition and came across this article (not anything to do with automated Face-Rec). The girls in this article look so alike that I’m still not convinced that they aren’t the same person, I know that any software that I’ve written would have trouble telling them apart. Apparently the girl on the right spent a week in jail and had her name smeared in local media for a crime the other girl helped commit (despite the fact that she was 17 years old at the time)
Americans pride themselves on their institution of democracy, so much so in fact that they are quite willing to forcefully export it to as many countries as possible. But how democratic is America? It is no coincidence that politics is seen by a majority of people as being a dirty business to get into – the reins of power are never lightly seized. If you do some research on Gerrymandering you’ll find some interesting reading on how far the parties in power will go in order to stay in power. This brings us to an interesting article (“How to steal an election“) over at Ars Technica on how the advent of Electronic Voting (e-voting) has provided the potential for wholesale election tampering,. Forget just pushing all those left-wing nuts into one voting district, what if you could just swap their votes for a nice republican candidate? Scary, scary stuff and there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done to fix it before the upcoming midterm elections either. But I guess as long as the next episode of “The Biggest Loser” comes out on time and provides people with the heart-warming imagery of fat people becoming beautiful then the American public will be content.
My own personal fear is that, by the time a whistleblower comes forth with an indisputable smoking gun—hard evidence that a large election has been stolen electronically—we will have lost control of our electoral process to the point where we will be powerless to enact meaningful change. The clock is ticking on this issue, because a party that can use these techniques to gain control of the government can also use them to maintain control in perpetuity.
update: Another article in the NY Times has coverage of voter suppression, another tactic for derailing democracy. A particularly choice quote:
The type of misleading letter sent this month to 14,000 Hispanic immigrants in Orange County, Calif., threatening them with arrest if they tried to vote, was hardly a first. In 2004, similar fliers appeared in predominantly black neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, on official-looking letterheads. The fliers said that because of unusually high voter registration, Republicans were to vote on Election Day, and Democrats were to vote the next day.
THE United States has slapped a ban on Vegemite, outraging Australian expatriates there.
The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.
Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.
I don’t know how this can be construed as anything other than a dig at Aussie ex-pats, as no American I know can stomach vegemite.
update: AUSTRALIANS travelling to the US can breathe easy. So can the 100,000 or so Australian expatriates living in America. The US government today dismissed media reports it had banned Vegemite.
