The Art of Being a Slumlord

I’m sure this eye catching building on the edge of Chinatown in San Francisco gets photographed a lot. It’s a vibrant, interesting paint job. But what I noticed after scanning the details, the colorful characters and the hanging underwear, was that each crappy looking apartment is lit by the same cheap florescent garage lighting you can buy at home depot for under thirty dollars. Perhaps it’s a radical artist commune that agreed at a 6 hour meeting to spend the least possible on overhead lighting so that they could use the money for the revolution, but I’m guessing slumlord.

 

Housing bubble

I was listening to a science show and the topic was bubbles, real bubbles, and how researchers have noticed for the first time that each time a bubble pops thousands of new very tiny bubbles are created, little bubble babies, and it of course makes one wonders if the same thing applies to economic bubbles. I suppose froth is the metaphor, no one can get traction in froth, people frothing at the mouth, froth at the factory pipe, all froth no beer.

Landing Practice

The Air Force came into town to make sure one little part of the killing machine is working well, practicing touch and go landings here in Juneau one evening (down from Fairbanks).  Easy to get caught up in the beauty of flight and the impressive engineering involved, and you can’t beat our background. Could be used for another public relations campaign. My wife said they look like death, and someone else said they look like freedom to him. Too me they look like missed opportunity, giant flying holes that we dump our money into and set on fire.

A few more photos of the planes are here.

Back from San Fransisco

No big news to report--just a fun vacation with Mary in the North Beach neighborhood. We tried to make up for Juneau's lack of decent food by consuming as much good food as possible.

For a complete, perhaps excessive, photographic account click here.

Sun Down, Sun Up

The earth continues to rotate, I have proof...

What it looks like facing Northwest near Sunny Point in Juneau on a sunny day shortly after the sun goes down...

And what is looks like the next day, facing South, about 8 am, January 23.

Main Street, Wall Street and Side Streets

Good old Robert Reich, the not-listened-to labor secretary of Clinton, has a piece on why Obama's new-found anti-Wallstreet populism is better late than never....

Looking up Juneau's Franklin Avenue, in the afternoon...

 Wall Street (photo by Rupert Ganzer on Flickr)

One of our neighborhood streets in the valley, Julep Avenue...

The People's Warf vs. The Supreme Court

So the supreme court says that corporations are free to spend as much as they want to influence elections. Maybe if congress now passed a law requiring that every person be considered a corporation--personal corporatehood--we can start over. Or something.

Greg Palast points out that this allows foreign corporations to spend freely on elections too, not that they are necessarily worse than our own. He also wonders if Walmart can run for president now...but I'd vote for McDonalds over Walmart.

The Third Rail

I try to keep things level, but my brain tilts way to the left, and today with the news that a pick-up driving corporate conservative beat the less inspiring corporate democrat, less than a year after the disaster that was Bush, I couldn't help but think that it's time for what remains of any kind of working class movement in this country to push its supposed party hard. When Cokie Roberts got on television after the so-called Republican Revolution of 1992 she said point blank into the camera that what Clinton needed to do was "move to the center." Clinton, of course, had long been a corporate kissing triangulating centercrat. What she really meant was, Clinton shouldn't even pretend to represent the people who voted for him. And he listened.

The "third rail" means instant death, or at least feared instant political death. But it's often an illusion meant to keep your from doing anything effective and brave. Stay away from actual third rails, and actual low ones, but grab all the political ones you want.

Blue and Fog

It is easy to get a little winter worn this time of year with endless gray, but there are often blue bits showing through down the road near Auke Bay.

Long Exposure at Auke Bay

A cloudy day and a setting sun allows for some decent long exposures at the shoreline, using a tripod and polarizer. It's pretty much the "blue hour," so the photo has a blue cast, but people seem to prefer the look to a corrected version I made.

Forest Photography

I'm starting to take more photos in the woods. I enjoy the challenges, and it's something different.