Friday, October 30, 2009

Almanacs “Sen. Yee proposes 'opt-in' phone books - The Almanac Online” plus 4 more

Almanacs “Sen. Yee proposes 'opt-in' phone books - The Almanac Online” plus 4 more

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Sen. Yee proposes 'opt-in' phone books - The Almanac Online

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 07:41 AM PDT

By Bay City News Service

Piles of unwanted phone books littered throughout the Bay Area and the state could soon be reduced under legislation proposed Thursday by state Sen. Leland Yee, whose district includes Portola Valley and Woodside.

At a news conference on the steps of Millbrae City Hall, Sen. Yee announced that he will introduce in January a bill that would allow California residents to request a copy of the phone book each year instead of automatically receiving them from phone companies.

If adopted by the state Assembly and Senate, and signed into law by the governor, the law would take effect in January 2011.

Currently, a phone book is sent out for every phone line in each household unless the resident chooses to "opt out" of receiving one, Sen. Yee said.

The new law would instead have residents "opt in" to receive a phone book.

"This is more about saving our natural resources than anything else," Sen. Yee said in a phone interview after the news conference. "The bottom line is that we're going to save natural resources and save money. It's a win-win for everyone."

Each year, roughly 147 million phone books are made nationwide by cutting down about 5 million trees, with California accounting for 10 percent of that, said Millbrae Councilwoman Gina Papan, who announced the legislation with Sen. Yee.

"Only about 16 percent are getting recycled," Ms. Papan said. "The rest get dumped into landfills."

Sen. Yee emphasized that the white pages are accessible on the Internet, and that residents who request a phone book would still be able to get one every year.

"It's not about preventing people from getting information," he said. "It's about how to do it efficiently and smartly."

Hébert: Different situation for Donolo this time - Toronto Star

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 07:26 AM PDT

There comes a time in the life of a beleaguered opposition leader when he or she becomes a magnet for party knives rather than talent. The fact that Michael Ignatieff still has enough drawing power to attract a chief of staff of Peter Donolo's calibre is the strongest signal in weeks that his leadership has not yet reached the point of no return.

Donolo's return to Parliament Hill will not cause the Liberals to lay down their election sabres. They had already set them aside some weeks ago. But his reputation, combined with his close ties with Jean Chrétien, should ensure that those unsheathed sabres are not turned upon the leader. It is from the Chrétien side of the Liberal family that recent leadership hopefuls such as Bob Rae and future ones such as Martin Cauchon draw their primary support.

But Ignatieff would be naive to think that a reprieve on the front of Liberal unity amounts to a token of establishment loyalty to his person. It mostly stems from the cold realization that the survival of the party commands it put its energies into trying to shore up the leader it already has rather than divide itself further in the quest for yet another potential saviour.

This fall, the Liberal Ontario red line has been becoming thinner by the week. And this week, the first CROP poll on Quebec voting intentions since the Denis Coderre episode had the Liberals down to 23 per cent, one point below their score in the last election.

That dismal picture will not be changed by a mere shuffling of the top deck. When all is said and done, Donolo's arrival in Ignatieff's office will likely register as weakly with the public at large as it resonates loudly within the bubble of Parliament Hill.

But it should at least ensure that the Liberals use the time between now and the next federal campaign more productively than in plotting to unseat yet another leader.

For that to happen, though, Donolo's first order of business will have to be to fend off a new attack of magic thinking on the part of the Liberals.

The formula that worked the last time he helped bring a leader of the opposition back from behind will not be replicated. Too many key ingredients are missing.

In 1990, Chrétien became Liberal leader on the very day where the seeds of the future destruction of the Mulroney alliance were decisively dug into the Conservative soil by the failure of the Meech Lake accord.

The Liberals cannot expect a similar gift from Stephen Harper, a prime minister whose government is largely sheltered from its most dangerous instincts by its minority status.

Chrétien also brought more political experience to the fore than Ignatieff can ever expect to accumulate. In particular, no one in his palace guard was more Quebec streetwise than the leader himself.

Some of that savvy has rubbed off on Donolo. This week, the media reaction to his appointment was positive on both sides of the language barrier. It is a rare occurrence for a federal political operator to be in such good standing in and outside Quebec.

But that should not obscure the fact that much has changed since Donolo fought the last unity war under Chrétien.

The Liberal playbook on Quebec is as out of date as last year's Farmers' Almanac. Ignatieff has so far demonstrated no capacity to rewrite it on his own. Filling the Quebec intellectual vacuum at the top of the Liberal pyramid should be an absolute priority.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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Movies - Review - The Almanac Online

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 07:41 AM PDT

A Serious Man

The camera pulls back from the wall-sized blackboard that college physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbar) has covered with numbers."Even if you can't figure anything out, you're still responsible for it on the midterm," the professor says to the stunned class.

In Ethan and Joel Coen's latest film, "A Serious Man," it's not only the students who are baffled.So is Larry, who's like the schlemiel -- the guy to whom everything happens -- in a thousand Jewish jokes. His wife wants a divorce so she can marry smarmy family "friend" Sy Ableman; Larry's bar-mitzvah-boy son Danny is smoking dope; his daughter Sarah steals money from his wallet to save up for a nose job. One of his students is trying to bribe him to change a failing grade.And on it goes.

Larry consults three rabbis, one of whom advises that "you have to see these things as God's will." The other two aren't any better help. Since God gives the questions, wonders Larry, why doesn't he give the answers too?

Set in an arid, practically treeless Minneapolis suburb in 1967 -- the kids listen to transistor radios, a doctor smokes in his office -- "A Serious Man" is based much more closely than the Coens' other films on their own childhoods, and many of the actors are local talent. But the subjects it deals with are far from provincial. In their unique blend of black comedy and existential bafflement, the Coen brothers pose no less than the ultimate question: What is the meaning of life? (Without, of course, making it seem as portentous as that.) "A Serious Man" is a serious film that makes you squirm, laugh and ponder all at the same time.

Rating: R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. 1 hours, 45 minutes.

--Renata Polt

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These days, does the Old Farmer’s Almanac really matter? - Journal Times

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 06:58 AM PDT

Here are three words you might expect to cause instant seizure with an Internet search engine: Old. Farmer's. Almanac.

And yet, those canny New England Yankees who publish the annual Old Farmer's Almanac have just put out No. 218 in seeming blithe indifference to the seismic shifts that have rocked traditional print media in the digital age.

The almanac ($5.99 at http://www.almanac.com), as it happens, predicts earthquakes and a lot of other natural phenomena, and describes how we should live with them, advising on such things as the moment to start a diet and the best day to slaughter a pig (for you, presumably, not the hog). It all has to do with the alignment of the firmament, or something like that.

Its philosophy is a bit weird and wacky, but it reaches deep into the agrarian roots and folkloric traditions of America, and it still resonates with more than 3 million readers.

An almanac is an astronomic and astrological calendar of the heavens. That was the core of the first almanac, published by Robert B. Thomas in 1792, and remains the heart of the current one. The look is still old - cheap paper, black ink and lots of charts and symbols - though I wish the editors would go back to styling the letter "s" as "f." Mr. Thomas admonished that May "is a very bufy month with farmerf and gardnerf (sic). Uncover your afparaguf bed. Turn your young cattle into the wood landf, fo af to fave your pafturef." Mr. Thomas was one fmart cookie.

And what of the pastures of our weather? Long-range weather prediction is the stock in trade of almanacs, and though the Old Farmer's Almanac claims with a straight face 80 percent accuracy, and its rival, the Farmers' Almanac, 80 to 85 percent, their forecasts for the coastal mid-Atlantic region this winter are quite different. The Old Farmer's Almanac, published in Dublin, N.H., predicts a cold and snowy season; the Farmers' Almanac, based in Lewiston, Maine, forecasts one of normal temperatures and precipitation.

Janice Stillman, editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac, said that "we use satellite data, state-of-the-art information. It's just the interpretation of that information and the inclusion of activity of the sun into our forecast that distinguishes us from just about everybody else." Did we mention the ace in the hole? "We have a secret formula," she said, "the calculations of which even I don't know."

The Farmers' Almanac ($5.99 at store.farmersalmanac.com), which uses its own top-secret formula, mentions that in 2007 its winter forecast was even more accurate than Punxsutawney Phil's, contradicting the Pennsylvania groundhog in forecasting six more weeks of winter.

I agreed to meet Stillman, wondering if she would arrive looking like Betsy Ross, but her hair was close-cropped and she wore a chartreuse designer leather jacket. She gave me copies of the 2010 almanac, but the one I was salivating for was the 2009 edition, so I could check its accuracy.

I have figured out that the key to weather forecasting in general and the almanacs in particular is to hedge your bets. The Old Farmer's Almanac lumps the country into 16 regions.

"Anybody can put out a forecast, but the issue is the track record of verification," said Antonio Busalacchi, a professor in the University of Maryland's department of atmospheric and oceanic science.

The forecasts and long-range outlooks of the National Weather Service, for example, have improved in recent years through new skills and technology. "They are certainly not ironclad, but they do have a documented track record," he said. One of the basics of science is that you give your experimental data to others, Busalacchi said, so they can reproduce the results. "That's not the case," he said, when you have "a secret formula."

Perhaps I'm missing the point. "It's about the belief that nature has its ways," Stillman said. "If you think it's going to rain because the cows lie down."

What's important about the almanac, apart from its place in American culture, is that it continues to transport us back to a time when we were much closer to the cycles of nature; our ability to feed ourselves depended on that. That's also the enduring value of gardening, of being in sync with the seasonal cycles. The closer we look, the more we see, for example, next April's viburnum flowers now in nascent bud or the young raspberry canes, which will bear the fruit of June, among the spent ones.

I am not guided by folklore, being more willing to consider soil moisture and temperature before sowing beans, for example, than the phase of the moon. But for those who do embrace that, more power to them. Plants have their magic; that's what makes them so alluring.

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HDTV Almanac - Fall Back — Bah, Humbug! - HDTV Magazine

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 06:00 AM PDT


And now for a public service announcement: Don't forget to turn your clocks back an hour on Saturday night (unless you live in one of those areas that does not observe Daylight Savings Time).

And now for my semi-annual rant: Why should I have to reset the clock on anything? It seems that I have more and more devices in my home and office that have clocks of some sort. Some of them — like my computers — have finally figured out how to keep track of the correct time on their own. A few — like my clock radio — don't know what the time is for sure, but still are able to change an hour automatically when Daylight Savings Time begins and ends. But far too many of them don't have a clue and have to be reset twice a year.

Here is Alfred's Rule for Clocks: No clock should ever have to be reset if:

1. It is in a device that is connected to the Internet.
2. It is in a device that receives television signals.
3. It receives cell phone signals.
4. It receives GPS signals.
5. It is in a device that is connected directly to any device covered by points 1. through 4.
6. It has a network connection – wired or wireless — to any device covered by points 1. through 5.

While I'm at it, there should be a powerline network device that gets time and date information from one of the above sources, and then makes it available to any device that plugs into the home electrical system.

With so many technology systems depending on accurate time these days, it just makes no sense that we have to run around the house resetting all the clocks, and then trying to figure out how to change the time on our car clocks since we only have to do that twice a year. It's a colossal waste of time, and these devices all are smart enough to know better. That's something to keep in mind as you wander around your home with your cell phone (my most accurate portable source of time information) this year as you reset your clocks.

At least we get an extra hour of sleep this time.

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