It’s dead August. Congress is not in session, schools are empty, and your shrink is still on vacation. Without the Olympics, the newspaper would be six pages long, and four of those pages would be filled with wire stories about dead gorilla babies.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Wall Street Journal fills its Page One easy-reading column — a slot where whimsical news offers the ruling class a daily relief from the seemingly endless financial doom-and-gloom — today with a typically silly idea from San Francisco nutball Rob Anderson: Encouraging bicycle commuting leads to more pollution because “Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution.”

I guess by that logic, by driving less I’m actually encouraging drilling in ANWAR because my saving gas is hurting oil comapnies financially, thus making them more desperate for oil profits. Or how about this one: By giving the Olympics to China, the rest of the world is actually encouraging progress in human rights there, because the media attention will make them less likely to oppress people openly. D’oh!

Anderson mentioned previously on sf.metblogs here, here, here, usw.

Local photographer Thomas Hawk blogged 10 days ago about a confrontation he had at SF’s Museum of Modern Art with Director of Visitor Relations Simon Blint. After spotting Hawk taking pictures from a museum balcony and arguing with the photographer — who is well known for his strenuous defense of his right to photograph in public places — Blint had Hawk 86′d, asserting his duty to defend the museum’s employees from harrassment.

The incident became widely known after BoingBoing blogged about it. Last Thursday the incident was analyzed at 10 Zen Monkeys, which tracked down and interviewed a security guard involved in a 2006 confrontation with Hawk. The 10 Zen Monkeys post, by author “Destiny” (for that matter, “Thomas Hawk” is also a pen name), depicts Hawk as a hothead who used profanity in the 2006 incident, which ended with the security guard being fired by his employers. Hawk also recently called for a boycott of Hyatt hotels after security personnel in one of them forbade him to take pictures in the hotel lobby. And Violet Blue blogged about another 2006 incident here on SF Metblog.

Clearly he doesn’t shrink from confrontation. While I tend to admire loudmouthed people who call attention to the abuses of authority, I also think the tactic can be self-limiting. What looks heroic in the short run can, after many repetitions, wind up looking merely quixotic at best, and at worst become an exercise in Ralph Nader-type egotism. But as technology makes ever-more-intrusive inroads on privacy and organizations become more secretive, I’ll come down on Hawk’s side — especially when he’s attacking institutions and not just individuals.

In a town that loves people named Barry, the First Asian President visited San Francisco, cashing in to the tune of $7.8 million. Said Barack Obama to a heavily ethnic crowd: Ich bin ein desi.

The Giants’ Tim Lincecum struck out 10 over 7 2/3 innings, leading the Giants to a win over Atlanta, meaning that Georgia was having a bad day all over. Georgia does, however, have two golds and a bronze, one of the gold medals coming in women’s shooting. Maybe if that gold medal shooter were back at home, they wouldn’t have already lost the war.

One of the Dhaliwal brothers injured in the tiger attack is going to prison on a parole violation in a case that had nothing to do with the fatal mauling of his friend at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day.

Earlier today the Mayor signed into law the nations most ’stringent’ green building codes, for both residential and commercial construction. This being a continuing effort by the mayor to put San Francisco in the spotlight when it comes to progressive politics. All politics is local as they say, and energy policy is probably the most pressing issue the world is facing today.

From the Chron earlier today:

The new codes are to be phased in by 2012. Projects will be evaluated on a point system with credit given for materials used in the building, the location of the building site and water and energy efficiencies…..

Despite those predictions, the city’s Office of Economic Analysis estimated that the new codes would cost the city between $30 million and $700 million a year in economic output, as it could lead to higher rents and businesses choosing to locate elsewhere.

Newsom called that report inaccurate and predicted the new regulations would actually attract businesses to the city. That opinion was echoed by Phil Williams, an executive at San Mateo-based Webcor Builders, who sat on the city task force on green building that developed the new regulations.

The LEED certifications for green building will apply to larger projects, both residential and commercial and the Greenpoint system will apply to smaller projects.

The opposition are crying that the added expense will further drive up the cost of owning a home or a business in SF, and I cry bullshit on that. For far too long people have not paid the true cost of housing, energy and other resources. And this is where government certainly has a role, protecting the commons.

There will be cost savings aplenty as people fall in line with the added up front expense of building to codes that make sense in today’s world.

Elsewhere:

• Greener than thou:San Francisco Seals the deal on Green Building [SF Curbed]
• San Francisco Takes The LEED (And GreenPoint) On Building Codes [SocketSite]

Photograph CC by Chance Gardener.

Earlier this year Whole Foods and the owner of the propert where Cala foods is located proposed a new development, including housing and a full service Whole Foods market. The project has been met with deft opposition by the HANC (Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council). An organization that seems to largely be concerned with protecting their own vision of the Haight and their political clout is significant.

The Haight Ashbury Improvement Association is taking a much more progressive stance and is in favor of the project. Long story short, if you live anywhere close and have a point of view, the time to speak up is now, and the person to talk to is Ross Mirkarimi. Email him at ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org .

Statement to HAIA and poll

AT&T has backed down on their plan to install 850 large utility vaults throughout the city. As reported back on July 15th, there was a supervisors meeting on July 29th, and several neighborhoods organized a significant opposition and showed during this Supes meeting. The following report from one of my neighbors who was there:
Read more

[Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division. Photo attribution unknown; I found it here.]

If you’re looking for something to do tonight and you’re into Joy Division, SF360 is running a program at one of our favorite clubs, Mezzanine, all about the late-70s rock group Joy Division. Remember Joy Division? Sure you do. After singer Ian Curtis committed suicide a few weeks shy of his 24th birthday, the group re-formed as New Order. If you don’t know either one … where have you been, anyway?

The program consists of two films and a musical interlude. The first film, which screens at 7:30, is a documentary about the band directed by Grant Gee, the same guy who did the Radiohead doc, Meeting People is Easy. The second film starts at 10:00; it’s a biopic about Ian Curtis, called Control. I’m not much for biopics, but I’ve heard good things about this one.

The musical interlude is going to be a Manchester-themed set spun by DJ Axelson.

Event page here; tix $12. Hope to see you there!

Taken by Ville Miettinen, aka wili_hybrid.

If Metblogs is a city, hub.metblogs is the playground. We kept hearing from people that one of their favorite parts of Metblogs was meeting and interacting with readers and writers from other parts of the world, as well as getting requests for more ways that readers could be involved besides just posting comments. We thought about this for a while and decided that with a network like this, a giant community area where folks from all over the world could hang out, post photos and videos, talk with each other, form groups, play games, send messages, and do about a million other things was probably a pretty fun idea. The Hub is that.

If you have any tech ideas or suggestions join this group and speak up. See you on hub.metblogs!

It’s been a bad week for comedian Michael Weiner, whose national broadcasts as “Michael Savage” from a San Francisco studio have dirtied the airwaves for several years. First his network was forced to clarify and backtrack on his July 16 comments that children with autism are likely just “brats” who should be told to “act like a man” and “told to cut the act out.”

Protests against Weiner continued Sunday with a demonstration in front of San Francisco station KNEW, where he records his nationally syndicated program.

post continues after the jump