Zoo news, part 2

Hmm. In contrast to the Bronx Zoo, which has had a problem keeping the critters inside its boundaries, the Oakland Zoo is taking in non-paying guests.

(You’ll recall that within a couple of months last year the Bronx Zoo lost both a cobra & a peahen. Both restored (so we’re told); but who knows what other exotic animals got out that the press never got wind of?)

No—Oakland Zoo has apparently become a destination for local fauna. Skunks, foxes, coyotes, wild turkeys & deer—they’ve all found ways to break into the zoo. & stay. & enjoy relative security & seemingly never-closing buffet.

I like the idea that the zoo co-exists with the natives. 

Midsummer musing

KQED, the local NPR outlet, runs listener commentaries they call “perspectives”. Yesterday, summer solstice, the contribution was from a Southerner about summer. & summer.

Basically, how summer in the Bay Area just doesn’t cut it. It’s not particularly different from any of the other seasons here. & she longs for the languid days & nights of the South.

I’m not really a Southerner (unless you count Southern Californian, because I am that), but I so agree with her. My years in Virginia & an unnamed state to the south of there have spoiled me when it comes to expecting changes as the seasons roll round.

Around here, spring, summer, autumn—all pretty much of a piece. During winter the temperatures dip…might reach the 50s or 60s. Boo-hoo. Otherwise, just unremitting cloudless skies & really dry air.

In Virginia, right about now hot, sticky days carry on into warm, sticky nights, but fireflies are lighting up the twilight & in wooded areas bats are coming out to catch their mosquito dinners. You can buy corn at roadside stands that was picked just this morning; it’s so sweet you almost don’t have to cook it to gobble it down. If you walk down the town street, people greet you, whether they know you or not.

When mom turns on the sprinklers & lets the kids run through them, it’s a joyful relief for all concerned.

I understand that air conditioning has changed a lot of the south—people go indoors & glue themselves to Netflix on 52” flat-screens instead of lounging on front porches drinking lemonade & watching their kids play. & now that places like Friendly’s are in bankruptcy, I’m not sure where you’d get your ice cream & grassy slope to cool down the evenings.

But I still miss it & I’d trade this dry, dusty paradise for the Old Dominion in two blinks of a June bug’s eye.

Drama in the town square

Here’s a different sort of flash mob for your entertainment, courtesy of my friend the Pundit's Apprentice.

Well—more street theatre than flash mob. But still—mixing it up for the Belgians, who don’t ordinarily get a whole lot of excitement in their town squares.

Ritz à la Russe

If I had a bucket list, I believe I’d have “be part of a flash mob” in the top third. I recently received links to a couple, via my friend the Pundit’s Apprentice. Here’s the first: “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, in Moscow.

Now, leaving aside the fact that the video editing on this sucks, there are a couple of things I find interesting about this.

The number & variety of digital devices that are being used to record the event. Even a few tablets. I'm thinking that the recording is an integral part of these things.

Then there's he curious incident of the bride & groom. Hard to determine whether or not they were intended to be part of it—the two of them left standing at the end tends to indicate that they weren’t.

But I bet they’ll remember this day for a long, long time.

Also, if this video goes viral, I’m betting that bridezillas all over the country are going to demand a flash mob at their receptions.

News of the good, Part 3

Really an amazing event this past week: Burmese opposition leader & holder of the high moral ground for decades Aung San Suu Kyi finally accepted her Nobel Peace Prize in person.

When you consider what this woman has endured—her house arrest was only lifted two years ago by the military dictatorship, & she was elected to parliament but two months ago—it’s just astonishing that things have shifted such a distance that she’s in Oslo to accept her prize & will be able to return to Myanmar.

Considering everything going on in the world, it’s really heartening to have this story to put things into perspective.

Linking wonder, Part 5

Another helpful hint from a LinkedIn user, this time on qualifications for being a proposal manager:

Yes, it's kind of a basic requirement of sales proposals that you submit them on time.

Not much in the way of actual, you know, details, though.

Puppies for panhandlers

I don’t really know what to make of this: starting 1 August, the City of San Francisco is going to try to stop people from panhandling by paying them to adopt shelter dogs.

Here's what concerns me about this story: “The applicants must…show they’re not severely mentally ill, aren’t hoarders, don’t have a history of violence & are seeking treatment if they have addictions.” Who decides the severity of mental illness? Shelter animals can be pretty stressed & have all sorts of behavior & socialization problems. I’m not sure I could handle one right now; are the barely out-of-homelessness going to be mellow enough for it?

Plus—the last few times I’ve adopted shelter cats, I practically had to prove membership in the DAR with respect to my moral rectitude & ability to pay for the animal’s veterinary care. How do the panhandler set pass such requirements? What does "seeking treatment" mean? & what kind of addictions? 

I'm pretty sure that the Montgomery County shelter came close to wanting to know how many glasses of wine I had per week; now addictions are okay? Are they weighting the scales toward this category of unemployed over the employed?

Finally, frankly, even though they say they’ll remove any dog found being a party to panhandling, I don’t know how they’ll ever enforce that. They don’t police the begging to begin with, & a sizable number of panhandlers use their dogs as a prop or sympathy ploy. (There’s a woman at the Sunnyvale Safeway who has her shopping cart, her sign & her dog out there a lot. She seems to specialize in rainy weather.) I just don’t see how the cops are going to distinguish between a non-shelter panhandling pup & a shelter one.

Plus, I'm betting these guys make heaps more than the $50-$75 per week this program is going to pay. I can't imagine they'd forgo the enhanced revenue-driving capability that having a dog would bring, especially if they know they're going to get the base salary (so to speak) that pays for the puppy chow.

But I guess we’ll see.

What's cooking at Walmart

Well—it turns out that Walmart is good for something American-made.

Seems that various stores have been used by their customers for manufacturing methamphetamine.

Back in December, a woman was arrested in Tulsa for shoplifting the various ingredients & then, you know, making it.

(Well, I suppose that it’s not technically “shoplifting” until she transports the loot out of the store without paying for it, & she was nicked before she actually got outside. But still.)

Then, in April, a janitor at a Walmart in Boaz, Ala., discovered a meth lab in the women’s room.

Okay—so, twice could just be a coincidence. But wait—there’s more.

Last week employees at a Walmart in a suburb of St. Louis detained a woman for shoplifting. While she was in the store holding area, she started cooking up a batch of meth.

Turns out she was carrying the lab works in her purse, but she still chose that particular retailer to as her supply chain resource & manufacturing site.

I don’t know what to make of this. But these women are just living the Walmart motto: Save money. Live better.

Sign of the times 4

You’ll recall that in California you can vote in seven languages.

  

So it should come as no surprise that the “wash your hands” signs in public restrooms are also multilingual:

So people can ignore the instructions in whatever language suits them.

Matters of drink

I came across something rather interesting the other day. Well, interesting to me, and you know how easily amused I am.

I always ask for water when I go to a self-service coffee shop. And usually that means they give you a cup and you get it yourself from the soda machine. Typically, that would look like this one, at the Panera Bread in Sunnyvale:

I’d consider this a mechanical version—the dispensing of the various types of beverages is managed by pushing a mechanism.

But a couple of weeks ago I went to Le Boulanger in Mountain View—which they’d obviously revamped since the last time I was there months and months ago. And I found a state-of-the-art electronic self-serve machine:

The only mechanical element is pushing your container against the lever to get ice. For the beverage you use the touch-screen to make your choice and hold until you’ve got enough. Here’s a close-up of the panel:

Twenty-two options, compared to the eight of the old-style machine.

I’m kind of curious how it works behind the shiny screen—I suppose no differently, really, from the mechanical version. The ability to have nearly three times the choices is probably a function not of how it’s mixed on the back end, but of how many spigots you can put on the user side.

Certainly looks cooler, too.