Open season on pedestrians ;)

Seen in Rome

Hey kids, stay in school, learn to write

Seen at the Silliman Recreation Center, Newark, CA. I like how they underlined the and in "Boys Ages 5 and Older".

As for the "evening lap swim hours" poster, there's a morning lap swim session too, and that poster was up in the morning.

"culturally determined meaning"

Seen at SF MOMA:

Grand theft pumpkin

NBC News reports

Thousands of dollars' worth of pumpkin seeds were pilfered directly from the source on Sunday when a person or persons unknown cut a hole into a 1,400-pound pumpkin at MarketBar at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

This afternoon I was able to confirm that story by walking to the scene of the crime and snapping this picture:

The hole isn't visible here as it's about 3/4 of the way around on the lower left side.

How do these giant pumpkin contests detect cheating? I could make a pumpkin a lot heavier by injecting water into it.

Are carpools bad now?

From http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/07/MNAP1LQQM0.DTL&tsp=1 (the San Francisco Chronicle):

Toll changes on the Bay Bridge have cleared out carpool lanes and improved traffic speed when the bridge is most congested, a study by UC Berkeley transportation researchers has concluded.

According to the study, ordered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission after it restructured and raised tolls at the Bay Bridge beginning in July 2010, charging a discounted carpool toll of $2.50 caused 4,365 vehicles to abandon the carpool lanes daily - a 26 percent decline.

"Alliance against the productive"

The best piece I've seen so far on the Occupy movement:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/oakland-325428-class-whole.html

The city's feckless political class are collaborating with anarchists against the taxpayers who maintain them in their sinecures.

When the rumor spread that the Whole Foods store, of all unlikely corporate villains, had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, the Regional President David Lannon took to Facebook: "We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today – rumors are false!" But, despite his "total support", they trashed his store anyway, breaking windows and spray-painting walls.

Random House "Living Language" series, Complete French

I'm a satisfied customer of Random House's _Advanced Russian_ and _Italian Beyond the Basics_. Both of those are serious books that can take a motivated student a long way. Unfortunately, those series are now out of print, replaced by this "Complete French/Spanish/Italian/etc" series. Judging from _Complete French_, which arrived today, the new series is seriously dumbed-down. Let's jump right into the last unit of the "advanced" book. Here's some of the new vocabulary: tete, oeil, nez, bouche, main, jambe, antibiotique, aiguille, malade. Now for some "advanced" grammar: reflexive verbs. "Ils se regardent." "Jennifer et Carol se voient de temps en temps." "Pour etre en bonne sante, il faut suivre un bon regime." You get the idea. The CDs, meanwhile, are 50% silence. Of the other 50%, half is English. Of the remainder that is French, about a third is isolated words, a third is one- or two-word grammar constructions. You'll listen to tracks that go "eux...them...me...me..." Actual running conversations in French are thus the remaining third of a half of a half. There are about three conversations in the entire "advanced" CD set (three CDs -- three conversations!?). Compare that to the twenty conversations that came in earlier editions (and those conversations were three times as long, besides being more interesting and using more sophisticated vocabulary and syntax). You're trained to always be translating to and from English -- exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. Random House's Living Language used to be a serious series and a great value. Unfortunately, the whole enterprise seems to be following so much else on a march toward some kind of Idiocracy future. Snap up the older editions, while you still can, used (here or -- where you'll find even more of a selection -- on Ebay). (amazon.com: 220 people found this helpful)