NYT: Obama Unveils High-Speed Rail Plan

Obama Unveils High-Speed Rail Plan - NYTimes.com: "Obama Unveils High-Speed Rail Plan"

Bill Holloway would have loved this. The plan includes a Texas-Oklahoma stretch.

Sense of urgency... not!

Not to reopen old controversies, but if Dubya can get hustled into the White House on the most dubious Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott, why is it March and Al Franken still can't take his Senate seat?

Bailout for bloggers

Someone had to do it: Leigh Caldwell makes the case for a stimulus package for bloggers.

The last of the Mac productivity hack blogs?

Today I discovered John Chandler's Creativityist blog and quickly added it to my Google Reader subscriptions. The whole field of "life hacks" and "productivity tricks" has taken some abuse of late, even from the great Merlin Mann, who practically invented the genre. No one else seems to be writing much about nifty information and task management software and the cleverest ways to use them any more; the prevailing theme nowadays seems to be how tinkering with productivity systems is a waste of time. Point taken, but my own system still doesn't do everything I want, and there's still plenty of room for fresh ideas. Recently John has written about GTD contexts and weekly reviews, compared OmniFocus and Things, and written several posts on writing and creativity. I'm looking forward to more.

English supremacists lose one in Nashville

The more time I spend in the post-Bush era, the better I like it. Congratulations Nashville!

Slovenakia, a leading export market

I notice that ZPA Nová Paka, a.s., purveyor of fine meters and control systems, lists Slovenakia (scroll down) as an "export territory". I wonder what currency they bill their Slovenak customers in.

Coffeemaker

Bought a little one-cup coffee maker today and I'm now sipping my first cup of coffee from it. One by one you acquire these little assets that make life more livable. I should have done this weeks ago, but I still think it will pay for itself before I leave Europe.

5 Poor Excuses For Not Learning a Foreign Language

Steve Kaufmann at PickTheBrain has a post demolishing "5 Poor Excuses For Not Learning a Foreign Language". There are more than just a few countries where practically everyone knows two or more languages. In the United States, outside the Latino community, it's unusual to know even one foreign language. How many life-enriching (not to mention pocketbook-enriching) opportunities are we passing up because of our irrational aversion to language learning?

Photos from Rügen

Rügen is a Baltic Sea island belonging to Germany that I visited last Saturday.


Jaromarsburg
Site of the last major Slavic pagan temple. The ridge behind the tower is all that remains of the temple fortifications. Wikipedia has more on the Rujani, the Slavic inhabitants of Rügen from the 7th to the 13th century.



Svantovit
A modern interpretation of the four-faced Slavic deity Svantovit.



View of the Baltic
View of the Baltic from Cape Arkona.


Flickr won't let me create any more photo sets without a paid account, and I'm too stingy to pay up, but there are more photos from Rügen in my photostream.

Berlin photos, June 2008

Reichstag
The Reichstag, home of the German parliament.



S-Bahn
The S-Bahn (commuter rail) station near my hotel.



Soviet tank
A tank at the Soviet war memorial. I can still remember when the memorial was guarded by a bunch of not-to-be-messed-with Soviet troops. Back then this guy would have ended up skewered on a bayonet.



Hauptbahnhof
Inside the main passenger rail terminal. This building fascinates me, inside and out.


More photos from Berlin here.

Serbia June 2008

Family
A few photos from our stay with my wife's family. My daughter Valerie is on the front left; my wife Tanja is in the back in front of the little white truck. The rest are Tanja's parents and brother and his family.



From cave
The view from the mouth of a large cave in the Serbian mountains.



View from Zlatibor
View from a stop on the Šargan Eight narrow-guage railway on the mountain Zlatibor.


More photos from Serbia here.

Berlin June 1, 2008

Yesterday I spent more time searching for wifi hotspots than anything else. Hotspot, by the way, is accurate in more ways than one -- we're in the middle of a heat wave, practically nothing is air-conditioned, and the signal is usually not strong enough to sit outside.

The upshot is that I haven't been able to find anything near my "hotel" (more on that below) except one slightly pricey restaurant. At least the service is friendly. There's a cluster of cafes with free Internet across town in the Friedrichshain district -- I'll try to find accommodations there next time if I can't get wireless in my room.

My "hotel" -- Steven's Cool & Cozy Little Backpacker Hostel -- is about what you'd expect from literally the cheapest place in town. (I'm going ultra-cheap because I've got to stretch my funds for two months in Europe.) Imagine a couple of college-age guys with no experience and no money deciding they want to open a party hostel, then arriving for a room when the place is half-finished. I haven't seen any sign of about a third of the "facilities" listed on the website, including breakfast, linens or air conditioning. Luckily there haven't been many other guests while I've been here, so it's quiet aside from street noise. The management is friendly but usually not around. Hey, it's all good.

London May 2008

Tourists
A few photos from our recent visit to London. Here's my wife Tanja and daughter Valerie taking pictures at the Tower.



TowerBridge
The Tower Bridge.



Crepiste
A young lady making crepes at a booth near Parliament.


We mostly did the tourist thing in London. More later on Prague and Berlin -- I seem to be spending most of my time here searching for WiFi hotspots....

More London photos here.

Top lobbyist reveals views on democracy

Paul Miller, former president of the American League of Lobbyists, tells the Austin American-Statesman what his ilk really thinks of democracy:

"I don't think the way you advocate is to put everything online and say, 'All right American people, weigh in on that,' because then what's next?" Miller asked. "Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"

Letting the people decide, one shudders to think of it.

Homogen(e)ous

It seems homogenous and homogeneous are actually two different words with distinct meanings. Who knew?

Oxymoron?

Sorry folks, but somehow I can't quite take Blog Action Day seriously. "What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?" Prob'ly nothing. I do hope y'all prove me wrong.

Where's Janez?

Der Spiegel reports on the mysterious absence of Janez Drnovšek, president of Slovenia (not to be confused with that other place), who has not been seen in public since July. Presidential spokesman Ivo Vajgl explained the unexpected cancellation of a meeting between Mr. Drnovšek and Italian prime minister Romano Prodi scheduled for this Monday by saying the president was enjoying his vacation and that "something unexpected" had come up to prevent the meeting. I hope Mr. Drnovšek is well and will be able to resume his duties soon.