The Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Antonio Spurs tonight to win the Western Conference and head to the NBA Finals. The Lakers came back from a 17-point deficit and made it look easy, almost like they were toying with the Spurs knowing they could come back at any time. Kobe dropped 39 points on the way to the Lakers 100-92 win. It was only fitting that an almost teary-eyed Jerry West presented Mitch Kupchak with the Western Conference trophy. Clearly, it was Kupchak’s trades at the beginning of the season that made this win possible. Even without their starting center, Andrew Bynum, the Lakers are in a good position to win the NBA Finals. The supporting cast members around Kobe have settled into their respective roles and have proven that they can perform under the pressure of the playoffs. Now they have to prove that they can handle the pressure of the NBA finals. Here’s hoping that the Lakers win four more. Go Lakers! |
First-year students in Medical School were receiving their first anatomy class with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet. The professor started the class by telling them, "In medicine, it is necessary to have 2 important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the human body." "For example," the professor continued by pulling back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck his finger in his mouth. "Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead body and sucking on it. When everyone had finished, the professor looked at them and told them, "The second most important quality is observation. Please note that I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now pay attention damn it!" Big ups to Wanda for sending me this joke via email. |
I was sitting around looking at prices for gold and was curious about the difference in density between platinum and gold. After a bit of searching, I found the best place for details about all of the known elements is this nifty dynamic periodic table. I spent a couple of hours reading about elements that I knew absolutely nothing about. When I went to high school there were only 109 elements on the periodic table and now there’s 118 of them. You know you are getting older when the physical world is very literally "changing all around you." |
Nobody really wants to say that we are in a recession. But all you have to do is read the news to know that things are not getting any better. Gas prices have made Americans drive 4.3 percent less compared to a year ago. This doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realize that 4.3 percent is equivalent to 11 billion miles! U.S. home prices just dropped 14.1 percent from a year ago last month, which represents the largest percentage drop year-over-year since they started tracking home prices in 1988. The recent drops in home sales and prices have essentially cleared all of the price gains from 2004 to the present. |
Here we all are at South Point Cliffs on the Big Island a couple of years ago. Our friends Larry and Tina were here today visiting us from Hawaii. We met up with them and a couple of mutual friends and had a nice dinner and some tasty beverages nearby, including some delicious champagne. We were very happy to see them and wish we could visit Hawaii more often to see them. It’s funny, we just saw them and already we miss them. |
Are you one of those people that can’t wait for the San Francisco International Film Festival every year? Well wait no longer. Do you wish there was a way to see films from previous festivals again? Well your wish has come true. The San Francisco Film Society will start showing weekly films from its film programs year round at a screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. The first screening will be a film that was shown at the 2007 Film Festival titled Times and Winds (Bes vakit, Turkey 2006) starting on Friday, June 13th. Check out the SFFS Events page for information on future weekly screenings. |
The Phoenix Lander successfully touched down onto the Martian Arctic a little over 16 hours ago. It is not as cute as the Pathfinder, which captured the world’s imagination 11 years ago, and it doesn’t look as robust as the exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still running after nearly 4 years. Still, the Phoenix has already started sending back photos of well, dirt. But most importantly, the Phoenix sensors will sample the dirt to see if there is evidence of organic life in it. I don’t think this thing has wheels so the mission is no going to be as exciting to watch as the previous ones. Scientists sure are excited though. |
There will be broken hearts all over San Francisco. I just saw the story that Gavin Newsom and Jennifer Siebel are planning on getting married this July at the Siebel family ranch in Montana. Wow, his self-professed girlfriend is gonna be pissed! The fact that she hasn’t posted an entry about the planned wedding is proof that she doesn’t know yet. Poor , poor Beth! But come on! We all knew that Gavin was likely going to get married before he ran for Governor. You know, family values and all that. Gavin knows that a bachelor is never going to be elected into the governor’s mansion. Well played Newsom, well played. |
The Bay to Breakers this year turned into a drunken mess with people crapping and pissing all over the entire race route and Golden Gate Park. Don’t they know we have the homeless for that!? Kids in their early 20s were being blamed for the mess and many in the Richmond and Sunset districts complained of drunk kids terrorizing residents while waiting for the N-train and buses back to downtown. A friend of mine that ran the race agreed that it was crazy this year with more booze and public drunkenness than ever. I for one am glad that we live near the start of the race and people have not had time to eat and drink enough to be a problem in SoMa. Residents of the Sunset and Richmond are pissed. Let’s see what if anything changes for the race next year. |
If I paid $175 for a burger, it better give me wings. Really, I am not joking! Deeyam! A place called the Wall Street Burger Shoppe is offering a burger made with Kobe beef, truffles, foie gras, fancy cheese and topped with real gold flakes. How much would you pay for such a fine burger? Well, the answer is $175, because they just raised their price from $150. Only investment bankers in New York would dare pay that much for a burger to impress their "friends." But a friend would never let you pay that much for a burger! That would never happen here in San Francisco since paying $175 for a burger would be so nouveau riche. |
Now that it’s legal, George Takei announces that he’s getting married. |
Ah yes, I can almost remember the moment 10 years ago. Via xkcd. |
This weekend was perfect! The weather was a sunny and warm 75F degrees with a soft cool breeze on Saturday and slightly cooler on Sunday, but still sunny. A stark contrast to the three days of 90F degree plus temperatures we had during the week last week. Anything past 85F degrees in San Francisco is oppressive because nobody has air conditioning here! |
Unless you have been under a rock this past week, you have seen the original Bill O’Reilly meltdown video that surfaced from his Inside Edition days. Now tribute and parody videos of the original are sprouting all over the web like wildfire, including the one seen here from Barely Political which is by far my favorite. Others include the dance remix edition and Stephen Colbert’s clever parody of the clip. |
A Swiss man died trying to win a spitting contest against his friend. Two grown men were trying to see who could spit furthest from the balcony they were standing, when one took a running start and…(you can see where this is going)…plummeted 19 feet head-first to the street below. He subsequently died from his injuries at the hospital. I bet he won the contest, too! Moral of the story: spitters never prosper. |
Gavin Newsom reacting to news of the The State of California Supreme Court ruled that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California earlier today. What started with Mayor Gavin Newsom performing same-sex marriages in the San Francisco courthouse in February 2004 culminated with today’s ruling. The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days. San Francisco is a madhouse right now with celebrations going on in the Castro and downtown at the Civic Center. You can feel the same excitement in the air as when the marriages started happening at the San Francisco courthouse in 2004. This is a historic event that would not have been possible without the dedicated activists and supporters from the city of San Francisco. |
This guy must have balls of steel. I just saw Iron Man last weekend and have to say that the video of the flight reminded me of the way that Iron Man flew in the film. Clearly there may be military implications to perfecting this technology. It’s hard to believe that this is real. Oh, and the guy has a website dedicated to his exploits too, but it’s in French. |
I am beta testing the new version of Movable Type, currently 4.15 Beta 5. As such, if you should happen to see something squirrelly on the site please email me and let me know. Thanks! |
I have to say that I have gotten used to using twitter and receiving updates from my friend in Hawaii on an almost hourly basis (he tweets a lot). So when twitter went down today I was a bit dismayed and shocked at how it slowed my front page load times to a crawl. Because of this, I have removed the twitter status from my blog pages until they get their act together. |
This new BlackBerry is way faster than an iPhone.
Compared to the Curve, it has much more internal memory, a glossy metallic look, and adds corporate-strength Wi-Fi capabilities to 3G cellular and Bluetooth radios. I cannot wait to get one of these to replace my BlackBerry Pearl. |
