summer life in san fran, day 2

Just thought I'd share some information about my San Francisco experience so far. I'm living downtown, a block from the Civic Center BART stop (my transportation to work for the summer). The location is pretty good; there are lots of restaurants, museums, and the SF Opera house within 3 blocks. The neighborhood is a little more run down than I expected, but it's not too bad.

There is a bookstore over by the Opera Plaza called 'A Clean, Well-lighted Place to Buy Books', which I'm told is very well-known. It's one of the best bookstores I've been to in a while. They have a table of recommended fiction with authors I've never heard of. I get tired of the Barnes & Noble displays where their 'recommended fiction' includes Charles Dickens and whatever Oprah last put on her reading list. They also have a number of cards on the bookshelves with descriptions of selected books written by the staff. I've been there twice already, and still haven't really spent the big chunk of browsing time I'd like to.

My sublet is a comfortably large, sparsely furnished studio with an amazing view of downtown and the bay. It's in a 110 year old high rise building owned by UC Hastings. The building is funny - it narrows as you go up, so here on the 18th floor there are only 8 units. According to one of the security guards/doormen it used to be a base for military spy operations, because when UC Hastings bought it there were giant photo development fluid vaults in the basement (he had some other evidence for this as well which I forget). Now, though, there's a full-sized basketball court in the basement. I'm not kidding. Maybe it's where the spy photo developing equipment used to be. There's also a small room off to the left of the basketball court that has a large punching or kickboxing bag and a small upright piano that badly needs tuning.

I always have trouble adjusting to new environments. I'm not strictly a routine person, but I enjoy familiarity to a good degree, and being in a new place is both exciting and stressful for me. I expect I'll feel more at home after a few days, especially once I've made a Trader Joe's run and found a produce market of some sort near here or near work.

blogging from cali

I don't know how regularly I'll be blogging while in San Francisco for the summer, but while I have a couple things to say and plenty of free time I will post. The first is a little story I have to tell. I believe New Haven is generally considered to have good Thai restaurants. One of these (let's call it 'BG') is well regarded for its food and poorly regarded for its service. I've had a few nice dinners there before, and I'm sure I'll go again, but this experience was rather bizarre, and I would like to share it.

I went to BG with a group of people for dinner the night before flying to CA, to have a nice little social evening with some good friends still in town. The service at first was fine - they refilled the water glasses far more promptly than necessary, took our order and brought our food on time, and so forth. And then the bill arrived. We didn't look that closely at it; we just each figured out how much we owed, put it all together, and realized it was about $5 short. So I took the check and stared at it for a while, and realized they charged us for 3 beers when we only had 2. Helpfully, they had attached the original note that the waitress had taken our order on, which clearly indicated that 2 beers had been ordered, as 'Sapporo' was written down with 2 hash marks next to it. I called the waitress over, pointed this out, and she took the check back to 'fix' it.

To my surprise, when she returned, the bill was $1 higher. This was because one of the prices of the entrees had been changed from $9.95 to $10.95. As the prices were not labelled, but were labelled simply with 'Taxable #1' or something similar, I have no idea which one it was, and didn't feel that it was worth it to challenge the increase. What was worth challenging was the persistence of the third beer on the tab. I looked at the original, which had been reattached to this new receipt, and saw that someone had written a third hash mark next to 'Sapporo', clearly using a different writing instrument (the mark was darker and thicker). It's hard to describe my reaction to this. I'll borrow the words of one of my co-diners, who described it as 'comically unprofessional'.

So, I called the waitress over, pointed this all out, and she took the check back. This time, when she brought it back, the beer was gone. But guess what? They decided to include the gratuity this time. Let's hope that they generally have a policy of including the gratuity for parties of 6 or more, and that they honestly forgot it the first two times, as ridiculous as that may seem. Because the alternative is that they figured we would stiff them on the tip, and decided to include a gratuity in the check to forestall this. As the gratuity wasn't exorbitant (I think it was around 17%), and we were all frustrated and ready to go, we let it stand.

I must say, even though the food is good, it will be a while before I want to go back there.

what is your world view?

me (it even looks like me. don't you think?):

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Materialist 63% Cultural Creative 44% Existentialist 44% Modernist 38% Romanticist 19% Idealist 19% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

creative commons

This is the clearest article I've ever read about Creative Commons - about what it is, about what it is not, and about what many people incorrectly think it is. Creative Commons is not a step towards revolutionizing the music industry and putting the RIAA out of business. Creative Commons is a set of legal tools to enable artists (and scientists) to voluntarily release some of their legal rights, to take a personal stance that they choose not to charge people who wish to use their work in certain ways, such as non-commercial copying or derivative work creation. It is a tool to enable small-time artists to ensure that people who want to spread their music can do so. This benefits the artists, by spreading their name and allowing them to make more money off of their other works, such as non-CC music CDs and live performances. This recognizes that each CD is not a world in and of itself, but a piece of an artist's larger collection.

And it certainly does not advocate stripping copyright holders of their legal rights. This perversion in particular is disturbing. Liberty is only fully realized by allowing individuals to freely enter themselves into binding contracts of their choosing. Assuming that those who contribute their works to the CC do so freely, i.e. they are aware of their alternatives and of the pros and cons of both CC'ing and retaining full legal copyright (a concern which Lessig addresses - I told you his post had everything), their decision to do so, and the existence of legal tools to enforce their decision, is an ideal expression of freedom.

Now, CC's trickiest challenge is its marketing. There will always be people who CC works that they otherwise would abandon - but this isn't enough to make the CC domain rich, to make ordinary people want to explore the CC domain for music to listen to or scientific ideas to adapt and develop. But in order for CC to contain valuable content, and to continue to get valuable content, it must provide something of value to its contributors. I am skeptical that charitable contributions of valuable cultural and scientific material will continue once the heady initial enthusiasm and energy wears off; this has always been my concern. But if CC develops an active marketplace of content, one with an effective interface to allow contributions to be classified and to allow users to find what they're looking for, so that contributors of content find that their content is frequently downloaded and used, then it will continue in its significance long into the future.