I’m not the only one.  Book borrowing is down; Internet use is up.  And for those folks who still go to the library, the waiting lines are not at the book check-out; they’re at the Internet terminals. 

Oh, the joys of browsing the stacks at the library, you say.  You can’t replace that.  But is this nostalgia really something worth spending millions of dollars to preserve?  The San Francisco Public Library cost $84 million to run in 2010 — and this doesn’t include expenditures to refurbish old library branches.  The budget shortfall for the City & County of San Francisco is $53 million for 2010.

What is $84 million minus $53 million?  It’s $21 million.  If the San Francisco libraries were to be closed, not only would the city of SF cover their budget shortfall, but they’d also have an extra $21 million to put in the bank.

So, what’s the solution for people who want to preserve books?  Private libraries.  These libraries have always existed.  Some, like the Mechanics Institute library, are very well-known.  Others such as the small mom’n'pop Prelinger Library are not so well-known.  But for those of us who want to preserve the printed word on paper, the best solution is the private library. 

Browsing through the Prelinger library (8th and Folsom Streets) I found huge numbers of books that I’d never find in the SF Public Library.  Why?  Well, the public library has to serve current tastes, whether they be the latest academic tome recommended by NPR, or a trash book about a pop star Oprah talked about.  The private libraries such as the Prelinger, are dedicated to preserving books of all ages, both popular and unpopular, in the truest sense of the library philosophy.  In short, the private libraries are more about knowledge than the current public libraries.

Maybe it’s time to turn the caretaker role of our society’s knowledge over to the people who already do it best: the private libraries. 

Mechanics Institute Library:  http://www.milibrary.org/

Prelinger Library: http://home.earthlink.net/~alysons/library.html

Creating the 21st Century Library:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3298/creating_the_21st_century_library/

Alas, Yahoo will be shutting it down come March 31, 2010 and replacing it with a lame Yelp-like service.  I don’t need this kind of “service”.  I want a simple no-frills yellow pages.

Naturally, there is nobody to contact at Yahoo to voice my opinion.  So, for better or worse I’m voicing it here: Don’t shut down yp.yahoo.com!

Back a long time ago, a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train ran off the end of the track in Fremont.  It seemed that the computer mistakenly sped up the train instead of slowing it down as it neared the last stop and the literal end of the line.  The train operator frantically pushed the STOP button, but it didn’t stop anything.  Why not?  Because instead of the stop button disengaging the motors and engaging the brake, the stop button simply told the computer that the operator wanted to stop the train.  The computer apparently ignored the request.

This sounds a bit like Toyota.  We think that when we press on the gas pedal we control a linkage that opens a valve and sprays more gasoline in the carburetor or something like that.  Not so.  Today, when we press on the gas pedal the pedal simply tells the computer that the driver wants the system to go faster.  It’s up to the computer to decide what to do.

It seems that most recent cars are controlled by computers.  This is the problem.  Computers can have glitches, simple mis-codings and electrical interference that can cause major problems. 

What I think it is:  Toyota engineers have been unable to figure out what’s wrong.  First they thought the floor mats were pressing the pedal.  Not true.  Then they thought the pedal was sticking.  Again, not true.  Today, not even knowing how to fix the problem, they are providing their dealers with little steel shims that are supposed to separate parts of the accelerator pedal and keep things from jamming.  But they don’t really know if this is a solution!

What I think it really is:  Radio interference.  CB radios, 2-way radios, hams, etc.  This can explain why the problem can’t be duplicated in the factory — the factory is isolated from those drive-by 2-way radios.  2-ways can cause all kinds of havoc.  Their interference gets into mp3 players and amplifiers, radios, and even burglar alarms!  Many car and residental false alarms are actually caused by the sudden burst of RF energy coming from 2-way radio transmitters.

So why not car computers?  I haven’t read about anybody figuring this out, and yet it’s so clear that this is the problem.  Look at the situation (1) it’s intermittent, (2) it can’t be duplicated, (3) it happens while the car is on the road (that is, nearby other cars, some of which have CB, ham, or 2-way radio transmitters), and (4) there’s no other explanation as to why the car always otherwise acts normal — so it’s not a software bug, which would manifest itself over and over. 

Am I the only brain who has figured this out?

For the future: Make the accelerator mechanical, not electronic.  There will always be electronic noise and problems like this will happen again and again.  Toyota should not trust the lives of its drivers to computers but instead have fail-safe accelerators and brakes.  This means mechanical, not electronic control!

Everybody wants to run a “social network” today.  Me?  I want a place to send and read mail.  Maybe I want a place to look up stock quotes.  Yahoo was fine with both of those.  But I don’t want anybody “spying” on me.  Period.  If I want my privacy to be invaded I’d have bought the new Google phone.  Google has every bit of information on everybody — not only what info you were searching for, but where you went to high school, where you work, what sexual proclivities you have, and now with their new Nexus phone, they can locate you minute by minute as your GPS-enabled phone tracks you. 

So, now Yahoo wants to be another Google?  Sorry, but if Yahoo continues this crap, I’ll drop their mail account, too, and move to some other less-intrusive mail provider.  There are thousands of them out there.  Inbox.com for starters.

It’s not as if Copenhagen does not have electric cars, hybrids, or bicycles available — they excel at being at the top in all of these per capita in the world.  It’s not as if Copenhagen lacks in public transportation — they have one of the most advanced systems in the world. 

But so far, only 5 hybrid cars have been reserved.  Five.

If spending is something that determines the success of a country, then it looks as if our country is downright successful. 

But there’s still deflation.  Wages are dropping.  People are being rehired at lower wages than before.  Prices are dropping at the retail level in a lot of stores and restaurants.  Should we worry?  Well, would you rather have a little sunlight or a thick gray cloud? 

America is on its way back.

All my life I’ve heard about variou end-of-the-world predictions.  Most seem to come from Harold Camping, patriarch of Family Stations, the first and largest group owner of religious radio stations in America.  Every night he hosts a call-in show, and I guess to keep his listeners coming back he occasionally predicts the end of the world. 

September 3rd, 2008 — that was one of his.  It didn’t come to pass.  He seemed to like September because earlier he had predicted the end of the world to happen between September 5th and 27th, 1994. 

This time, once again, he has one up on the people who interpret the Mayan calendar.  Not 2012, but either May 21, 2011 or September 21, 2011.  Poor Hal Camping can’t decide when the world will end.  He quotes the Bible as saying that “man will not know the day or the hour” when the world ends (but he will know the year and the month? How handy!)

For anyone who believes the world will end, please give me your worldly possessions.  Should the world not end on that date, I will cheerfully refund your worldly possessions to you, minus a 10% handling fee.  Agreed?

–david kaye

Examples of Christmas songs: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Jolly Old St. Nick.

Examples of Christmas carols: O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, We Three Kings, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.

Christmas carols refer to Jesus. Jesus, like Mohammed or Abraham, is not appropriate for pitching mattress sales. Christmas songs refer to the season, the cold, home and family, or to fictitious characters such as Santa Claus.

If you know any broadcasters please help spread the word about what is appropriate for use in commercial backdrops and what isn’t.

It appears that kindness is also a good negotiating tool, though the author didn’t recommend it for this use.  I play a lot of board games and card games.  I played some yesterday; I’ll play some tonight.  One of the things I’ve noticed was that in many games I actually get further playing co-operatively than playing cut-throat.  To me, anyway, it appears that kindness is the way to go. 

So, why be angry and pushy and obnoxious?  Well, there appears to be an immediate satisfaction of getting the upper hand against someone.  I say that it appears that way, because ultimately it seems that the pushy, obnoxious person doesn’t win in the long term.  I mean would you want to deal with someone time after time who is obnoxious to you?  Chance are they’ll get one chance and then you’d be through with them.

So, here’s to kindness.

Donald Fisher, the now deceased founder of the Gap, was a lying sack of shit and always had been throughout his life.  His purchase of virgin redwoods which he claimed he would preserve (only to be logged when nobody was looking) was just one in a string of lies he laid during his life. 

So, now the legacy of Donald Fisher continues at the Gap and Banana Republic.

How about some honesty in business for a change.  Is that so hard?