The National Hustle

Earlier this week, Sarah and I walked out to the bridge (Golden Gate, of course) and on our way back I looked at the City before me and started thinking about how dense a population sits on this 7-mile-by-7-mile square.  I thought, “Since we in SF depend on resources to be brought in and wastes to be shipped out, if we were cut off from the world around us, how many people could reasonably subsist in the City?”  Sarah indulged me and we agreed the number would be something south of the current one million inhabitants.

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After completing my graduate program last December, I decided to buy myself a present.  Rather than purchase a new suit or two plane tickets to a tropical destination (Note: Typically, one should have gainful employment prior to embarking on costly trips), I decided to shell out a few Hamiltons for a Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 high-definition dual camera.

As an amateur picture-taker (Camo is the more learned photographer) and wannabe video-maker, I was looking for an entry-level, compact video camera that shoots in HD.  Since it also shoots 10-megapixel still photos, the VPC-CG10 provided the best of both worlds. Continue reading

Most Americans recognize San Francisco as one of the most progressive, free-thinking cities in the country.  Some choose to lampoon this fact with seemingly innoccuous yet purposefully derogatory phrases like “San Francisco Values.”  No matter on which side of the fence you reside, we can all agree that you will see and experience things in ”Baghdad by the Bay” that you won’t anywhere else.

For example, earlier this year I was boarding the Muni (SF’s local transist system) and in place of a typical bus-side advertisement for McDonald’s or the current movie blockbuster, I had a simply advertised question staring at me: Why Islam?  Later in the day, another Muni drove by bearing an ad that read “Islam: Submission to God”.  In addition to these messages, each of these traveling billboards included a phone number (1-877-WhyIslam) and a web site (WhyIslam.org).

Even in an open-minded (sometimes to the point of apathy), yet opinionated (sometimes to the point of arrogance) city like San Francisco, this ad campaign somehow caught me offguard.  Perhaps I’m used to seeing only commercial messages pasted onto Muni vehicles and kiosks or maybe I have grown all too familiar with typical Western media portrayals of Islam, which is to say…that it is the religion of terrorists.  And although I’m semi-worldly enough to recognize the fallacy in this widely-held view (believe it or not, not all Muslims are terrorists and not all terrorists are Muslim), seeing Islam publicized in a positive light was unusually shocking. Continue reading