apple juice

“46th Street Bridge across I-35W reopens July 31 “

(Via City of Minnepaolis.)

Thank goodness! Just in time for commuting to work again…

“I’ve reached a point where I can no longer just sit back and watch this. The iPhone ecosystem is toxic, and I can’t participate any more until it is fixed. As people have told me so many times: It’s Apple’s ballgame, and Apple gets to make the rules, and if I don’t like it, I can leave. So, I don’t like it, and I’m leaving.”

(Via stevenf.com.)

Probably not stuff that your average iPhone user cares about, but this kind of stuff bothers me too… so I chose not to go the iPhone route…

even though it’s the hated and despised white sox… mark buerhle pitched a perfect game yesterday. pretty awesome. and check out this catch made by Dewayne Wise to save the game in the ninth

The Pratt House project is an example of a burgeoning movement in the building industry. With the growing concern over the environment and energy, builders and architects are devising ways to dramatically cut the energy use in people’s homes, for both new construction and retrofits. In the U.S., all buildings represent about half of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.

Via: This Green Home Will Heat Itself

At some point in the future, we’re going to either convert or build a new house that is passively heated and cooled. All of the research I can find so far says that we will need an auxiliary heat source, but that we should be able to achieve a very energy efficient home in minnesota.

it is a minnesota state law that you must yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, correct?

actually…

Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop to yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a marked crosswalk or at an intersection with no marked crosswalk. The driver must remain stopped until the pedestrian has passed the lane in which the vehicle is stopped.

nobody seems to obey this law.

i’ve taken to standing and pointing at the sign, while staring disapprovingly at the cars driving past.

it’s called a parkway for a reason.

slow down.

“Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout.”

(Via Slate Magazine.)

The narrative the author cites is exactly the same story I heard from someone at a recent community meeting here in Minneapolis. The article cites Golden, CO as an example (which I remember everyone professing to hate).

I love roundabouts, for all the reasons listed… the only thing I don’t like is people who can’t figure them out.

“An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. ‘When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,’ he said.”

(Via Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle.)

Three things:

1. How hard would it have been for Amazon to email the customers in advance of the deletion? (BTW, I’m a big Amazon fan, but they totally screwed up here)
2. What do “U.S.” rights and “Australian” rights mean in today’s world? It doesn’t make sense. Movies that are released in one market but not another, books that are released on different dates in different countries, CDs that are released as “imports” with different tracks. Stupid.
3. How long is copyright anyway? I thought that 1984 was in the public domain? (I know I read it online, perhaps “illegally”)