1. The argument's been made so often, it needs a macro.

2. See http://laeastside.com/

3. The real Eastside is east of the LA river. It's had this name for around 50 years. The area around Silver Lake is not the Eastside.

What a strange new years. I'm sick with some flu or something. Congested and coughing. Toast with a store brand "Robitussin DM." My GF broke her hand, so it's in a cast - the cat's paw.

A pair of websites about the Chinese community in Calcutta. Chinese have migrated to India for some 230 years, and there is a Chinatown in Calcutta.
Kolkata Chinatown
Dhapa - Kolkata Chinese Community Blog

I was sitting with my mother, watching some TV, talking about how when she was a child, she used to collect wood for money, which was s

It's one of those "synchronicity" weeks. Robin Bloor wrote a quick bit about a fundamental error with the "cost of copying is zero" argument, and he's right. The cost of copying is not free, but very cheap. Computers, electricity, and the internet cost money - in my case, over $100 a month. So, copying some songs is not "free" - I paid others so i could copy. (FTR, I just signed up to Napster, and used to sub to Emusic, both decent song sellers.)

Coworking spaces are rented offices that are more formal than a cafe, and try to be more social than a regular shared rental office(and cheaper too). Here's a list of three:

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), is software produced primarily for social benefit, rather than profit. Over the last 30 years, different organizational structures have evolved to produce this software. Most of these organizations fall squarely in the category of "civil society", though they exist in a realm dominated by for-profit corporations.

If you're cheap and have a low-end, generic MP3 player that will also display text files, you can read your RSS feeds on it with the help of this script.

Salt of the Earth

Labor History

What's up with all the fast-food donburi out there?

This is the map, based on description from Eric Garcetti's site via Metroblogging.

I got into a discussion about fertilizing with human manure, and defended the practice, mainly because my grandmother did it.

Tech Republic article seeking sympathy for managers who lay people off, turns into a thread about layoffs in general.

I don't know what it is with college students these days. They were pretty illiterate when I went to school, but, today, they're displaying their ignorance online.

Stolen from tje Washington Post

Portsmouth, Va.: An Olde but a Goody

By Diane Daniel
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 26, 2008; Page C02

My Aunt Margaret was aghast. A couple of years ago, I introduced her to a friend and mentioned that she and my mother had grown up in Norfolk.

"Portsmouth!" Aunt Margaret barked. She was used to people getting the two confused or, more often, simply overlooking Portsmouth for larger and wealthier Norfolk. But her own niece?