http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-play-monopoly-american-style.html

Yesterday Colleen, the YD and I went to the local Greek Festival and dropped a sizeable wad of cash on yummy Greek food, while listening to Greek music. No formal walk, but I was on my feet for about an hour.

I also packed up a lot of the science books and most of my "to be read" stack. Triaging books is hard.

Lots of links. Including How Downsizing Gave Us More, which would be apropos except that it's entirely a "we did it" article, not a "here's how." It mentions the 1-year rule, but I'm not sure how well that applies to some of our stuff. For example, the 2x2 space frame from our old apartment, that let us put up shelves without driving screws into the walls. It's been 36 years, but that's going to be useful again.

[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has comments. Comment wherever you prefer.]

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/PnBUum1xAeY/-It-s-100-candles-for-the-minimum-wage

Children in a spinning room in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1912.
They were paid half the going rate for adult workers.

That pay could be reduced at any time on an employer's whim. Or the hours increased but the weekly pay unchanged. Workers could lump or leave it. The problem with  leaving being that it would land all but the luckiest of them in a job with equally measly pay and the same kind of verbal contract between unequals. The worker had to right to accept whatever the owner wished to pay. Period. Women, unable to even vote and only rarely represented by unions, were vulnerable to employers' whims and their prejudices, one of which was the view that no matter how hard they worked women simply should not be paid as much as men. As for children in sweatshops? Even worse off. Even more vulnerable. And paid even less.

Reformers saw need of many improvements for workers, but one proposal that struck a chord was a minimum wage for women. The Progressives made that a plank in their party platform in 1912.

Economists, businesspeople big and small, and the elected stooges for owners who hired these easily exploitable workers hated the idea of a minimum wage, as many still do. And had the Massachusetts law been drafted to cover a broader range of workers, that is to say, men, it would never have made it to the governor's desk. But it did and he signed it. Within a decade a dozen other states had followed in Massachusetts's footsteps. And in 1933, deep in the Depression, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the brains and heart of the New Deal, made the case for a federal minimum wage. I'll get to that in a moment.

The Massachusetts law didn't actually set a minimum wage. Instead, it established a three-member commission ("one of whom may be a woman"):

Section 3. It shall be the duty of the commission to inquire into the wages paid to the female employees in any occupation in the commonwealth, if the commission has reason to believe that the wages paid to a substantial number of such employees are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health.

Section 4. If after such investigation the commission is of the opinion that in the occupation in question the wages paid to a substantial number of female employees are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health, the commission shall establish a wage board consisting of not less than six representatives of employers in the occupation in question and of an equal number of persons to represent the female employees in said occupation, and of one or more disinterested persons appointed by the commission to represent the public, but the representatives of the public shall not exceed one half of the number of representatives of either of the other parties. [...]

Section 5. The commission may transmit to each wage board all pertinent information in its possession relative to the wages paid in the occupation in question. Each wage board shall take into consideration the needs of the employees, the financial condition of the occupation and the probable effect thereon of any increase in the minimum wages paid, and shall endeavor to determine the minimum wage, whether by time rate or piece rate, suitable for a female employee of ordinary ability in the occupation in question, or for any or all of the branches thereof, and also suitable minimum wages for learners and apprentices and for minors below the age of eighteen years. When two thirds of the members of a wage board shall agree upon minimum wage determinations, they shall report such determinations to the commission, together with the reasons therefor and the facts relating thereto, and also the names, so far as they can be ascertained by the board, of employers who pay less than the minimum wage so determined.

Laundry work was one of the few jobs open to women at the time, and the employers made the most of it. According to the Seattle Union Record women who worked in the laundries were “girls without any family support and many widows with babies to feed and clothe.”

During the first part of 1917, the state minimum wage for laundry workers was $9 a week for an eight-hour workday. [...] The laundries then paid less and less until they were paying far below the minimum wage and many workers were receiving the same pay as they had five years previously. In addition to lowering wages, the laundries used several other methods to get around the minimum wage provision.  

The laundry plants used a system of “splitting shifts.” This was a practice in which a laundry put the women to “work in the morning, rush them to top speed for a couple of hours, ring a gong and stop their time when the work immediately in sight was disposed of and without previous notice; after an hour or two again putting them to work and in that way compelling them to be present on the job for periods of from ten to twelve hours for pay for from four to eight hours.” This practice of having the women work faster over more hours for less money was upheld in the courts with the decision of Rose Bishop v. Model Laundry Co., in which the judge refused to hear the case.

When it became clear at mid-month that the owners weren't going to come around, 900 laundry-workers took to the streets. By the time the strike was settled four weeks later with full capitulation by the Laundry Owners Association on July 11, 85 percent of the women had joined the Laundry Workers Union. Their strike got apprentices paid $9 a week for an eight-hour day, $10 for women with experience, with a limit on the number of apprentices. All the dismissed workers were reinstated as part of the deal.

Frances Perkins at work for the
Factory Investigation Commission, circa 1911.  
Photo from the Frances Perkins Papers, Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

“...men of inferior business caliber who probably could not survive at all if it were not for their willingness to be entirely ruthless in exploiting labor.”

With Franklin Roosevelt reelected by a huge landslide in 1936 and talking about altering the balance of the court by appointing a new justice for every one of those on the court over 70 who did not retire, Associate Justice Owen Roberts ultimately changed his mind, at least publicly. He took the other side in a second minimum-wage case, reversing the Court's majority in 1937. It was a crucial turning point.

The decision meant the federal minimum wage being included in the multi-issue Fair Labor Standards Act would not be challenged in Court. The bill,which also included limits on child labor and set standards for overtime pay, ran to 40 pages. Eventually, it was boiled down to eight. Even in a Congress practically overflowing with Democrats, it took several tries before a draft suitable for full debate had been written. Seventy-two amendments were proposed on the floor of the House and Senate to narrow the bill's scope. By the time it was signed in 1938, it was a good deal weaker than when it had started out, in great part due to opposition from anti-New Deal congressmen from the South. But it still contained two important provisions, a 40 cents-an-hour minimum and a 40-hour-a-week maximum. Unions wanted more money and some on the left in Congress wanted a lower number of hours, but the principle had been set. The federal government now had the authority to make such rules.

Nearly 75 years after FDR signed the minimum-wage law, we're still fighting for it. Some argue it should be done away and replaced by guaranteed incomes, an expanded  earned income tax credit or left up to collective bargaining, a more European approach. But most critics who seek to ditch it have no intention of replacing it with something better. For them, it's just another New Deal thorn to be removed from the bottom line. Just as they'd like the minimum-wage to be zero, they want corporate taxes to be zero. Always on a search for balance these guys are.

Even when a majority of legislators, including many Republicans, support an increase in the minimum wage, right-wing maneuvers can squelch it, as just happened in New York.

Jack Temple, policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, says:

After several decades of congressional stewardship, the real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968. Since then it has trailed the rising cost of living: The minimum wage would be over $10 today if it kept pace with inflation, but it is only $7.25 an hour—just over $15,000 a year for full-time work.

We are now three years out from the official end of the recession, and workers’ wages are declining rather than rebounding: From March 2011 to March 2012, real average hourly earnings fell 0.6 percent for all private-sector workers and declined by an even greater degree—a full 1.0 percent—for nonsupervisory and production workers.

The website RaisetheMinimumWage.com is a project of the National Employment Law Project. Working with state advocates, it seeks to rebuild "the wage floor for low-wage workers in the U.S." with technical assistance, research, background materials, strategizing and coordination for campaigns.

One of the states partnering with RMW is Massachusetts. A bill introduced last year by state Sen. Marc Pacheco cleared committee in March. Deadline for passage this year is July 31. It would raise the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $9.50 on July 1 and to $10 in July 2013, indexed to inflation thereafter.

The foes of the minimum wage play rough. Here's John Stoher at The American Prospect examining one of the promoters of the corporate agenda on the minimum wage:

One of the most active in the propaganda industry has been the Employment Policies Institute, a so-called think-tank in Washington that serves as a front for Richard Berman & Co., a lobbying firm for major corporations in the fast-food, alcohol, and tobacco industries. The Employment Policies Institute studies essentially say: Raising the minimum wage hurts minimum-wage earners. We know, we know. That sounds counter-intuitive, but trust us. We're the experts.

“It is amazing how much money corporations will spend from their own pockets to make sure no additional money goes into their workers' pockets. It is appalling that the voice opposing the minimum wage increase will come from those making ten, twenty even fifty times what those on minimum wage make in a year. Any business that can only survive and profit by paying their workers poverty wages should either rethink their business model or consider another line if work. Regardless, their voices of greed will be drowned out by the voices of need.”

The minimum wage is no panacea. But raising it does not hurt minimum-wage earners, as Berman claims but surely knows is bogus. Work full-time at the current minimum and gross pay for a year will be $15,000. Raising that to $20,000 by making the minimum $10 an hour hurts that worker how? Contrary to popular belief, those making minimum wage aren't all kids on their first job or working their way through school. And they don't all work for mom and pop shops:

Many minimum-wage workers are in jobs we may not assume to be minimum-wage occupations, such as contracted workers at airports who handle our luggage, process tickets and clean airplanes. Or home health aides and office workers.

Most are not that young. Of the 40,000 in New Jersey who earn minimum wage, more than half are 25 or older. More than a third are at least 45.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/BBI4DyG1cPY/-Midday-open-thread

• Pam Spaulding:
  

  The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released its report, Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2011 on Thursday, and the statistic that jumped out is the rise in anti-LGBT murders, up 11%.

  And she summarizes the recommendations:
  

  The report also listed policy recommendations to bring these numbers down in the future:

  • Increase funding for LGBTQH anti-violence support and prevention.
  • End police profiling and police violence against LGBTQH communities.
  • End the root causes of anti-LGBTQH violence by reducing poverty against LGBTQH communities and systemic homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic discrimination in laws, policies, employment, public services, and education.
  • End the homophobic, transphobic, and biphobic culture that fuels hate violence.
  • Collect data and expand research on LGBTQH communities particularly data and research on LGBTQH communities’ experiences of violence.

  Also reporting this was Kossack rserven.

  Will anyone listen?

• A new carbon dioxide milestone:
  

  Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

  So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

  How big a milestone?
  

  It's been at least 800,000 years — probably more — since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

  Until now.

• Dreaming large:
  

  Young illegal immigrants, saying President Obama has done little to diminish the threat of deportations they face despite repeated promises, have started a campaign to press him to use executive powers to allow them to remain legally in the country.

  The campaign is led by the United We Dream Network, the largest organization of young immigrants here illegally who would be eligible for legal status under a proposal in Congress known as the Dream Act.

• Maybe Alaska should just abolish its office of governor.
• A political tumor.
• Missing the Gilded Age:
  

  To a remarkable degree, the challenges to the Affordable Care Act reflect an effort to codify legal nostalgia as legal doctrine. The opinions of some lower courts striking down the individual mandate, as well as the arguments of the States and private plaintiffs in the Supreme Court urging that result, repeatedly hark back to bygone eras of American jurisprudence. This legal facsimile of reincarnation seeks to revive not just the long discredited doctrines invoked by an ossified Judiciary to thwart the New Deal. It goes back further still, to the dogma of an earlier time when the Judiciary regarded its principal function as the protection of private property, even at the expense of social justice, democratic values, and other individual rights.

• Austerity as banking kabuki:
  

  The European bailout of 130 billion euros ($163.4 billion) that was supposed to buy time for Greece is mainly servicing only the interest on the country’s debt — while the Greek economy continues to struggle.

  If that seems to make little sense economically, it has a certain logic in the politics of euro-finance. After all, the money dispensed by the troika — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — comes from European taxpayers, many of whom are increasingly wary of the political disarray that has afflicted Athens and clouded the future of the euro zone.

  Actually helping Greece isn't part of the equation.
  

  In an elaborate payment system that began after the May 6 election that brought down the Greek government and is meant to ensure that the Greeks do not touch the cash, the big three creditors are now wiring bailout payments to an escrow account in Greece. There the money sits for two or three days — before much of it is sent back to the troika as interest payments on the Greek bonds that Europe accepted under terms of the bailout deal struck in February.

  And for this the Greek people are supposed to accept the continued deliberate destruction of their economy.
• Not a shock:
  

  Some major U.S. corporations that support climate science in their public relations materials actively work to derail regulations and laws addressing global warming through lobbying, campaign donations and support of various advocacy groups, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and scientific integrity group.

• The Milky Way and Andromeda are destined for a head-on collision. In about 4 billion years. But don't worry, there's no need to stockpile food and water:
  

  It is likely the Sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

• If you happen to be near Philadelphia:
  

  The richness of Cézanne’s legacy derives from the complexity of his technique, which combines linear and planar elements with passages of solid modeling and allows the white ground of the canvas to interrupt what is represented on it. This creates a picture space full of shifts and ellipses, especially noticeable in depictions of the human figure, where even small alterations in the shapes and sizes of body parts or facial features are conspicuous.

  Cézanne’s manner of building his forms with accumulations of small, planar strokes was as much a way of not fully defining objects as it was of depicting them. What results is a tension between the painted surface and what is represented on it. Consequently, Mondrian could write that Cézanne showed how beauty was created not by the objects he represented “but by the relationships of form and color,” while Kandinsky emphasized the content of Cézanne’s paintings, his “gift of seeing the inner life in everything.”

  The grandeur of Cézanne’s achievement and the tensions that underlay it are superbly exemplified in The Large Bathers, from 1906, which will be a key work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s forthcoming exhibition “Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia,” on view from June 20 through September 3.

• From a truly lovely appreciation of birding and birders, in the Wall Street Journal, of all places:
  

  From Peterson's "Guide" and Carson's "Silent Spring" a movement was born: environmentalism. It grew out of a new set of relationships between Homo sapiens and nature. Peterson invited the public to care enough about birds to identify them and, by extension, to identify with them. Carson showed that in caring about the fate of another species we were implicitly protecting our own fate as a species. The "Life List" that is kept by most birders acquired a double meaning: It names every live species seen in a person's lifetime.

• Genius:
  

  Some lawmakers will go to great lengths to deny the reality of climate change. But this week, North Carolina lawmakers reached new heights of denial, proposing a new law that would require estimates of sea level rise to be based only on historical data—not on all the evidence that demonstrates that the seas are rising much faster now thanks to global warming.

  The sea level along the coast of North Carolina is expected to rise about a meter by the end of the century. But business interests in the state are worried that grim projections that account for climate-induced sea level rise will make it harder for them to develop along the coast line. So policymakers in the state plan to deal with that issue by writing a law requiring inaccurate projections.

  Scott Huler, of Scientific American, a North Carolina resident:
  

  North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.

  Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/d1PJIOko9oo/-Daily-Kos-Radio-in-Wisconsin-The-Ministry-of-Truth

Here comes Daily Kos Radio . . . to Wisconsin

Jesse LaGreca, a/k/a Ministry of Truth, will be in Wisconsin for the fight in Wisconsin, the recall election that culminates the year-long battle against the anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-women, anti-democracy Republican Party project, spearheaded by the extreme, retrograde bully and liar Scott Walker.

How Tuesday will end is not clear. But how it began and how it will continue past Tuesday is clear. We will never stop fighting for progressive values!

We think no one exemplifies that fight more than our own Jesse LaGreca, Ministry of Truth, and are thrilled that he will be there for the fight in Wisconsin for Daily Kos Radio. You can listen here.

Jesse will be on as much as possible but stay tuned for times to listen to Jesse's reports for Daily Kos Radio. He will be providing reports Tuesday morning from 10 AM ET, and continuing, on and off all day and through the nightl LISTEN HERE.

Once again, our most heartfelt thanks to Netroots Radio, who will be hosting Jesse's reports from Wisconsin—you can listen here. Special thanks to Wink Edelman, who will be producing Jesse's reports, and Justice Putnam, the program director for Netroots Radio.

Consider this the pre-relaunch of Daily Kos Radio, whose official relaunch comes at Netroots Nation. More on that this week. Stay tuned.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/bRuz/~3/d1swZNgP_AM/afternoon-thread_03.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/bRuz/~3/RBZCKDg5mi8/maybe-if-people-had-some-money.html

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14150

• Collusion – iPad pen productivity solved by Collusion — Kickstarter
  @cstross: I just backed/ordered the Collusion iPad pen via kickstarter: http://t.co/LAxd0vAn http://twitter.com/cstross/status/209286678010015747
  (tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
• In lifelogging, you find your statistical (and egotistical?) self – latimes.com
  @jomc: I wrote about trying out a Nike FuelBand and the difference between lifelogging & digital hoarding for @latimes http://t.co/cOldtlRy http://twitter.com/jomc/status/209254549268074496
  (tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
• Quadcopter UAVs recharging your smartphone with wireless power
  "in the future, you might be able to call out a quadcopter to recharge your mobile phone"
  (tags:drones comms fairly+stupid )
• Attempted smuggling of cellphones by hexacopter into Brazilian prison.

  (tags:drones crime )

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/buncefield-bomb-garden.html

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/buy-underground-kingdom.html

No one knows how far the the network of burrows underneath 75-year-old William Lyttle's house stretch. But according to the council, which used ultrasound scanners to ascertain the extent of the problem, almost half a century of nibbling dirt with a shovel and homemade pulley has hollowed out a web of tunnels and caverns, some 8m (26ft) deep, spreading up to 20m in every direction from his house.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/op-tree.html

To develop the O.P. Tree, Royal Engineers representatives selected, measured, and photographed the original tree, in situ, extensively. The ideal tree was dead; often it was bomb blasted. The photographs and sketches were brought back to the workshop, where artists constructed an artificial tree of hollow steel cylinders, but containing an internal scaffolding for reinforcement, to allow a sniper or observer to ascend within the structure. Then, under the cover of night, the team cut down the authentic tree and dug a hole in the place of its roots, in which they placed the O.P. Tree. When the sun rose over the field, what looked like a tree was a tree no longer; rather, it was an exquisitely crafted hunting blind, maximizing personal concealment and observational capacity simultaneously.

• ZA: U.S. slang abbrev. of pizza. OED. [I should've remembered this one.]
• PE: the 17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Merriam-Webster [I could only think of this as a spelling for the name of the roman letter P.]
• OS: OED.
  1. A bone. Chiefly in names of particular bones with (usually postmodifying) classical, post-classical, or scientific Latin nouns and adjectives. [Latin for "bone"]
  2. external os: the opening of the cervix into the vagina; the os uteri or os externum. Also (in full internal os): the constriction of the cervical canal at its junction with the body of the uterus; the os internum. [Latin for "mouth"; I remembered this one, but not #1]

A week from yesterday, on Saturday, June 9th, we're having our last party at Grand Central Starport. It's been a long run, and a good one. We've thrown at least two parties each year since we moved in 36 years ago, and four most years. Over a hundred parties.

We're moving.

Moving out, moving North, and moving on. Parties at the Starport will probably continue -- our renters are fannish. We will certainly continue to have parties, though perhaps not until we move from our apartment to a house, a year or so down the road.

But... our household, our Starport... yeah. Last chance.

We're also downsizing. A lot. So a lot of things will be up for grabs. We're giving away a lot of books, because we'd rather see them go to good homes than get a few cents for them at a used bookshop. A goodly pile of other stuff. Get it while it's hot.

There will be potluck, and soft drinks in the tub -- bring something you know you can eat, plus enough to share. There will be filking. There will be nostalgia.

The maps and directions are, as usual, on the web at the Grand Central Starport Home Page.

Bonus Song for Sunday: "So Long It's Been Good To Know Yuh" by Woody Guthrie [YouTube].

[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has comments. Comment wherever you prefer.]

synecdochic

In conversation with someone tonight, I realized that I have finally been able to identify the single criterion that, above all else, governs whether or not I will keep a health care professional or fire them: if their response to me explaining my weirdnesses is not annoyance, irritation, or disbelief but instead they get that glint in the back of their eyes that says OKAY THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL CAN I POKE AT IT, I am way more likely to keep them.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/wkzQcxtWJHA/students-looking-for-easy-a-target-online-courses-where-cheating-is-easier

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/FlFG_4w085g/directv-ceo-scoffs-at-competition-from-apple-tv

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/_V4hdZlWsRs/despite-game-related-glitches-amd-discontinues-monthly-driver-updates

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/3J9Kjvz33FU/why-the-gpl-licensing-cops-are-the-good-guys

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/to/~3/hzkw6tJlM9M/how-chemistry-stymies-attempts-to-regulate-synthetic-drugs

FIONA APPLE was angry. Very angry. “Angry, angry, angry,” as she put it during a long, unguarded conversation on a Friday afternoon in SoHo. About a year and a half ago, after she had completed the album she’ll release on June 19 — a collection of stripped-down, percussive songs that’s as passionate, smart and cutting as anything she’s done — Ms. Apple got so angry that she started walking up and down a hill near her home in Venice, Calif.

The album was in music-business limbo. Ms. Apple was delaying it until her label, Epic Records, found a new president. She had not made a new album since 2005 and didn’t want her work to be mishandled amid corporate disarray. And she was in deep personal turmoil. “I just spiraled downward, and everything looked bad,” she said.

She started to climb that hill for eight hours a day, day after day, until she could barely walk, until she was limping, and then until she could not walk at all. Her knees required months of therapy. “Something about that was a rite of passage,” she said. “I think it’s really healthy to lose things or to give things up for a while, to deprive yourself of certain things. It’s always a good learning experience, because I felt like it really was like, ‘I must learn to walk again.’ I had to walk out all that stuff, and I knew it was stupid, and I kept on walking.”

I did not finish the Little Princess faux cashmere this week, because I’ve been working on another present for my mom. I told her I had enough yarn left after her hat for something else; she requested a matching scarf. So instead of spinning on the wheel much, I’ve been working on the scarf. I’m aaaaalmost done.

Ta da! They match. I still have to wash and block the scarf, once it’s finished being knit. I think they’ll make a nice set.

I also finished spinning the camel/silk, so I started the last batch of the corriedale wool I’ve been spinning off and on for a while. I haven’t spun much of it (again, focusing on the scarf so I can have it ready for my visit next week), but here it is so far.

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/raymigration.asp

So here I am back in the SF Bay Area. What goes around, etc. In related news, I’m employed again, so that’s good. The first week on the job was good; I am looking forward to making the second week even better.

We found a house up in Redwood City, which gives me a half an hour commute to Palo Alto for work and puts us in reasonable range of the city. It’s also pretty convenient to 280, which makes Santa Cruz and San Jose very feasible. I like the location — hadn’t ever lived up there before but I think we’ll enjoy it. Fingers crossed.

Hobee’s is still Hobee’s. Fry’s is still Fry’s. There are good farmers markets which I wasn’t smart enough to take advantage of the last time I lived here. Kepler’s has gone way downhill, which is sad.

Housewarming party to come as soon as we get settled.

Mirrored from Population: One.

Game Of Thrones: Tom Wlaschiha – Get To Know The Actor Behind Jaqen H’ghar

And playing the fascinating assassin in Arya Stark’s life has prompted an unusual reaction from German actor Tom Wlaschiha’s friends – compliments in Jaqen speak.

“I laughed,” Tom told AccessHollywood.com of seeing compliments like, “A man did a great job in that episode.” “I had a lot of emails and a lot of comments on Facebook [from] people talking to me in the third person.”

Source

• Sat, 18:36: Out on the deck. 70s. Sunny. Breezy. Perfect day.
• Sat, 21:43: Yanno, when I think of things that might make a lovely late spring evening even better, firecrackers do not make the list. #stupidneighbors
• Sat, 21:59: And now the sound of fireworks from the next town over. A good thing that King is too tired to get upset. #getoutofmyearshot
• Sun, 00:52: My old guy http://t.co/OCII3gIM
• Sun, 09:53: In other news http://t.co/TGRWLKY1