Month: September 2007

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Sales Call

By way of MK: Mark Fiore’s “My Pet Legacy.”

Stop holding your breath: Make sure you talk to your kids and grandkids about Iraq, because someday, they’ll have to talk to their kids and grandkids about it; it would be great if they could understand how we allowed this whole thing to get started. So now we’re waiting for The Report on how things are going Over There. It’s another exercise in our national game of “who are you going to believe — me or your own eyes?” We’re not having a national debate or even a discussion about this anymore. We’re the captive audience for a national sales pitch. The war’s proponents are marketing the war to the rest of us, the reluctant buyers, with the underlying argument that they’re selling the only product we can possibly buy and that, even if it looks, smells, and tastes awful and the price is outrageous, we’d better sign up for a lifetime supply if we know what’s good for us. And besides, interest-only financing is available. So sure, let’s go ahead and do it; it’s an investment in the future, we hope, and maybe we can refinance next year.

Low, low easy payments: Like most buy-now, pay-later schemes, this one’s the gift that keeps on giving. Somehow, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get ahead of the payments and the upkeep. How long can this go on? Well, you might ask Israel. Mighty on the battlefield. Stalwart for democracy. Prosperous and inventive economically. And utterly unable to free itself from the deserts of its victory in the Six-Day War (if it took six days, why is it still going on?). That has all worked out beautifully for everyone, including we, the people who have dumped more than $100 billion into the Israeli project in the last 40 years. The Palestinians have rubble aplenty to go with a feeble, corrupt and blinkered leadership, and the Israelis have a militarized “democracy” that can only limit the unrest on its fringes by isolating the Palestinians with walls and separate highways. It’s a beautiful picture. Consider us sold.

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Berkeley Walk

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Tuesday, my friend Pete showed up from Portland. We went for a walk from our place in the North Berkeley flats, elevation about 120 feet above sea level, up to one of the ridges immediately above Grizzly Peak Boulevard but still inside the city limits, about 1,200 feet in elevation. On the way up Shasta Road, we spotted a pretty well-hidden (though marked) public path that cuts across a sizable loop as the street climbs toward Grizzly Peak (for local reference: between Sterling Avenue and Miller Avenue; picture from the top of the path is below). We took the shortcut, which seems to go right through several private yards (“Dad, the party crashers are out in the yard again!”).

The air was pristine Monday, a little less so Tuesday, but still bright and clear. We walked down to the Lawrence Hall of Science in search of a water fountain and didn’t find any that worked; there’s a nice fountain up there, though (above). The sun set as we walked down to Shattuck Avenue, where we finally found water — in the restaurant where we ate dinner.

Tonight, the sky is smoky. I assumed the source was a big fire burning in the scrubby mountains southeast of San Jose, the Diablo Range, about 60 or 70 miles away. The smoke rolled across the sky early this afternoon, and it’s thick enough this evening that you can see it in airplane landing lights as they head into Oakland and San Francisco. Checking the weather advisories, it turns out that the main source of the smoke up here is a fire about 250 miles from here in the northern Sierra. The blaze has got the best conflagration name of the summer: the Moonlight Fire (that link is worth checking — some amazing pictures).

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Tuesday Notebook

Vuelta a España: The race went into the mountains today (which mountains? Some Spanish mountains). The winner was a Russian named Efimkin, of whom, due to my thin knowledge of the pro ranks, I can tell you nothing except that he was in a long breakaway today and managed to stay away from a hard chase even when the final climb hit 14 percent. Yesterday’s stage went to Paolo Bettini, Italian of Quickstep, reigning world road race champ and member of my own Berkeley Bombers fantasy Vuelta squad. Of which, read on.

Fantasy Vuelta: Thanks to its second consecutive one-two finish, the Berkeley Bombers advanced from 58th to 35th place. Sunday, Oscar Freire won a finishing sprint with Bettini second. Monday, Bettini edged Freire. Of course, those are just about the only guys on my team of nine who have scored. And now that the mountain stages have begun, the sprinters are toast (for awhile) and the Bombers face a steady slide toward the middle of the 600-strong pack.

Today’s top doping news: Handwringing in Britain, by way of The Telegraph, over the case of sprinter Christine Ohuruogu. She was recently banned from the UK’s Olympic squad for missing random drug tests. But last week she went to the world track championships and won a gold in the 400-meter dash. Noting that Ohuruogu has never failed a doping test, the head of the nation’s track and field federation is making noises about finding a way to get her reinstated. The Telegraph argues, in its headline, that “athletics faces ruin if it keeps bending its rules.” Also today: T-Mobile fires another rider over a positive drug test.

Life in limbo: Floyd Landis raced this weekend, his new hip and ongoing problems with the sports doping cops notwithstanding. The event: a marathon mountain bike race, the Shenandoah Mountain 100. He came in third and according to the accounts you come across online left a pretty positive impression on fans and fellow racers alike.

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My Food Bar Has a Blog

I was looking for low, low prices on Larabars (oops, I forgot the pretentious umlaut thing on the initial A), the very good and very simple and very vegan answer to PowerBar, ClifBar, Odwalla bars, Balance bars, and such. The first listing on Google is for the official and very Flash-y Lara site, and I went there. I noted immediately the presence of a blog; no big surprise there, as blogs have become official marketing tools for many blogs (the one I’d most like to see, if not read: a Preparation H blog (the butt-comfort product does not have a blog, but its site features brief video clips of three demographically representative adults shifting uncomfortably in their seats).

So what do you get on the Larabar blog? Right now, testimonials to the product in video form and tributes to fans of the product. Seeing this made me wonder whether any of the other bars have blogs. The rundown: PowerBar: no. ClifBar: yes. Balance: no. Odwalla: no.

As to the original quest for low-price Larabars. The product is interesting because each bar contains just a few ingredients, all stuff that you could buy at your local grocery (for instance, the ingredients list for the Pecan Pie flavor is dates, pecans, and almonds; no sugar and nothing like “soy protein isolate” or anything else emerging from a food lab somewhere). The drawback is the price: Andronico’s, the small, upscale Bay Area chain that doesn’t blush to put $10 tomato sauce on its shelves, sells Larabars for something like $1.90 to $2 a pop. Ridiculous. Other stores aren’t a lot better. So what kind of prices can you find online?

The Larabar site offers 16-unit boxes for $27 each; that’s about $1.69 each. REI sells Larabars online for $1.80 each, or $28.80 for 16 (REI stores used to give a 20 percent discount when you bought 12 or more food bars, but I think that’s no longer the case). With those numbers for comparison, here’s a non-encyclopedic spot check of online prices found through Google:

Vitacost.com: $18.83

FifFuel.com: $18.95

Drugstore.com: $20.99

Amazon.com: $22.35

Webvitamins: $23.90

VitaminShoppe: $24.95

VeganEssentials: $25.76

EdinaBike: $34.95

And of course: Buying online usually means you have to pay a shipping charge; some sites will charge tax, too.

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Tuesday Notebook

Belatedly: Happy birthday, Dad. (And hey, this continues the celebration a day!)

My food bar has a blog: I was looking for low, low prices on Larabars (oops, I forgot the pretentious umlaut thing on the initial A), the very good and very simple and very vegan answer to PowerBar, ClifBar, Odwalla bars, Balance bars, and such. The first listing on Google is for the official and very Flash-y Lara site, and I went there. I noted immediately the presence of a blog; no big surprise there, as blogs have become official marketing tools for many blogs (the one I’d most like to see, if not read: a Preparation H blog (the butt-comfort product does not have a blog, but its site features brief video clips of three demographically representative adults shifting uncomfortably in their seats).

So what do you get on the Larabar blog? Right now, testimonials to the product in video form and tributes to fans of the product. Seeing this made me wonder whether any of the other bars have blogs. The rundown: PowerBar: no. ClifBar: yes. Balance: no. Odwalla: no.

As to the original quest for low-price Larabars. The product is interesting because each bar contains just a few ingredients, all stuff that you could buy at your local grocery (for instance, the ingredients list for the Pecan Pie flavor is dates, pecans, and almonds; no sugar and nothing like “soy protein isolate” or anything else emerging from a food lab somewhere). The drawback is the price: Andronico’s, the small, upscale Bay Area chain that doesn’t blush to put $10 tomato sauce on its shelves, sells Larabars for something like $1.90 to $2 a pop. Ridiculous. Other stores aren’t a lot better. So what kind of prices can you find online?

The Larabar site offers 16-unit boxes for $27 each; that’s about $1.69 each. REI sells Larabars online for $1.80 each, or $28.80 for 16 (REI stores used to give a 20 percent discount when you bought 12 or more food bars, but I think that’s no longer the case). With those numbers for comparison, here’s a non-encyclopedic spot check of online prices found through Google:

Vitacost.com: $18.83

FifFuel.com: $18.95

Drugstore.com: $20.99

Amazon.com: $22.35

Webvitamins: $23.90

VitaminShoppe: $24.95

VeganEssentials: $25.76

EdinaBike: $34.95

And of course: Buying online usually means you have to pay a shipping charge; some sites will charge tax, too.

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Cadel Evans: ‘100 Percent Clean’

The Adelaide Advertiser carries a brief interview with former Australian pro racer Patrick Jonker, who says that bike dopers robbed Cadel Evans of his moment of triumph in the Tour de France. Jonker isn’t saying that Evans should have won the Tour, but that his second-place showing has been besmirched by the doping charges swirling around Rasmussen, Vinokourov et al.

“Cadel (Evans) rode the race 100 per cent on weet-bix and water,” Jonker said. “I’m over a 100 per cent sure that Cadel has done absolutely nothing and he’s a 100 per cent clean. His performance should have been seen as one of sport’s all-time great performances – up with Ian Thorpe. Unfortunately three or four riders ruined it by trying to cheat.”

Thorpe is the great Australian swimmer (and national hero) who was investigated for doping after L’Equipe, the news outlet of choice for drug cops leaking test results, reported that a blood sample from May 2006 contained suspicious hormone levels. The Australian Sports Doping Authority announced Friday that Thorpe had been cleared of allegations that he used performance-enhancing substances.

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U.S. Americans, Helping the Iraq

So by now everyone has seen or at least heard about our national dunce of the week: Lauren Caitlin Upton, the South Carolina beauty queen whose brain shut down when she was asked to weigh in on why so many Americans can’t find the United States on a map.

The transcript: “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because … ah some … people out there in our nation don’t have maps and … ah … I believe that e-education such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should … our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or, or should help south Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future. … ” (YouTube video here.)

Sure, it’s kind of a funny moment, though less so when you realize that Upton nearly won anyway (she still looked great in her bathing suit) and that when she was brought on NBC’s “Today” show — NBC’s parent company also owns the Miss Teen USA pageant — to talk about the faux pas, she was smothered with treacly understanding for her moment of difficulty. With three or four days to think about it, Upton came up with this answer: “”Well personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography.”

Yeah, finding your native country on a map — that’s a real geographical triumph. And on top of that, she’s heard of Iraq and South Africa and wants to help them. She’s practically ready for a cabinet position. Or a network news anchor’s job.

That thought occurs after witnessing Katie Couric’s performance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” this morning. Couric, who has piloted the “The CBS Evening News” into a death spiral, is in Iraq to a) cover the big story — the upcoming report on the effectiveness of the troop buildup and b) to prove she and her show are heavyweights.

Tragically, serious news consumers no longer expect the the major TV networks or their cable counterparts to be sources for more than the quickest, sloppiest (and in the case of Fox News, grotesquely spun) sketches of a story. On Sunday, Couric demonstrated the state of the art: With the obligatory Baghdad skyline shot in the background, she began with an overly general background statement about the state of affairs in Iraq, including a badly flawed summary of the history of the conflict in Fallujuah (she skipped over entirely the battle for the city in November 2004, probably the bloodiest single engagement of the war so far).

Then, she got to the meat of her report: She essentially parroted everything our commanding general and his briefers told her and showed her during her “reporting.” The lack of skepticism — not the political kind, but the natural journalistic kind that would demand to know what one isn’t being shown, what facts the general and his staff don’t want us to see — was breathtaking. To her minor credit, Couric allowed that she was seeing “what the U.S. military wants her to see.” But that didn’t stop her from concluding that “there are definitely areas where the situation is improving.” (ThinkProgress.org has a post on Couric’s performance, complete with video clip).

Me, I’ll take the South Carolina Fumbler over the make-believe newswoman. The Fumbler will do no damage in the end, unlike the faux journalist who drops in to tell us that things are looking up in Iraq without even the pretense of some independent fact-finding.

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Sunday Notebook

Vuelta a España: Two sprint finishes in the first two stages, and lots of crashes in both, including one that ended the race and probably the season for Discovery’s Tom Danielsen. First stage: Daniele Bennati (an Italian from Lampre) won the sprint ahead of Óscar Freire (Spain/Rabobank). Second stage: Bennati crashed near the end, and Freire won, with Italian Paolo Bettini (QuickStep) second.

Fantasy Vuelta: Is the game functional or not? The Velogames site says it suffered a server crash on Saturday that blocked last-minute entries. After two stages, though, the site still shows no results. I’m impatient because two of the riders on my team, Freire and Bettini, have scored lots of points the first two days and I want to see where my managerial brilliance and pro-racing savvy (yes, that’s a joke) have landed my squad. [Update: The first results are up. My team, the Berkeley Bombers is ranked 58th. Context, however, is everything: There are about 660 teams entered, so 58th doesn’t look so bad. It must be noted, though, that just one rider, Oscar Freire, is responsible for about 70 percent of the points I’ve scored so far.]

David Zabriskie, sometimes described as a San Francisco Bay Area rider, successfully defended his U.S. pro time trial title yesterday, winning by a second over future Slipstream teammate Danny Pate. Slipstream is the official Team Clean of the future of cycling.

Floyd Landis Watch: If you’re interested in any aspect of the Floyd Landis affair — where he’s riding this weekend, his latest interview pronouncements, what bloggers and the media are saying about our great Tour non-champion — check out Trust But Verify. A great resource on the entire case to date.

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The Feral Parrots of B-Town

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A flying squad of feral parrots visited out street this morning. They’ve been around Berkeley for years, but we’ve never had them appear so close before. They sat up at the top of the power pole across the street and squawked; one peeled off and starting gnawing leaves or stems at the top of our neighbor’s oak.

These guys, of whatever gender, have been around the North Berkeley flats for years. It seems like they must have been successful reproduciing up to a point, because sometimes you’d see a dozen or more at a time, and I don’t think a whole flock escaped. But they don’t seem to have flourished beyond that. I don’t know much about how they survive in their native habitat, but I guess Berkeley offers slim pickings.

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