Well I’m finally back in the U.S. after what felt like a very long, but also highly fascinating and very enjoyable trip to St Petersburg, Russia. The seasons changed while I was gone! It was summer when left, but now it’s definitely Fall here in NYC.

Burning Man way back at the end of August seems but a dim memory, but that’s why I take so many photographs — some of my Burning Man pictures (the ones from my digital camera) are now up on Ofoto.

I also found out that my good friend Amy got married at Burning Man the day after I left — which is crazy but excellent news, congratulations Amy!

What a bizarre week or so I’m having! I’m writing this from the Marble palace of the Russian Museums, in St. petersburg, Russia, where I’m attending the CIDOC/ADIT 2003 conference on museum documentation. I gave a short presentation about ARTstor this morning, which was translated in real-time into Russian! St Petersburg is great — very beautiful.

Before coming to Russia, I had to fly on two red-eyes on two consecutive days, because I came almost directly from the Burning Man festival in Nevada — I was only back home in Brooklyn for about 8 hours!

Life appears to be pretty much back to normal here in New York after the big power cut (or “outage”) last week. Although it no doubt caused plenty of misery for lots of folks, I have to say I found the whole experience quite interesting and enjoyable (notwithstanding the disbelief at learning that the World’s only superpower relies on such an antiquated power grid!).

It started on Thursday afternoon about 4pm; I was in my office at 62nd & Lex working with my colleagues Emerson & Dustin, when my computer monitor and air conditioner suddenly switched off. We had some contractors in the building at the time, so naturally assumed it was a local phenomenon and went across the street to get coffee. However, our local coffee shop was also dark and uninviting…

As we ventured further and further afield in search of coffee, we gradually realized that the power outage wasn’t limited to our building or a radius of a few blocks, since traffic signals were out as far as the eye could see, and more and more people were clustering out on the pavements (sidewalks). Finally we overhead a news announcer on a parked car’s radio saying that the whole north east of North America was without power!

We returned to the increasingly tense situation back at the office, and after failing to find any beers to save from the now-inoperative refrigerator, a small group (myself, Emerson & Diane) resolved to start walking downtown. We took a fairly leisurely walk down past the Queensborough Bridge on the east side (Diane was looking for a friend), stopping several times to pick up bottles of beer from enterprising bars and bodegas along the way. Although now early evening, it was still a fairly hot day, and with the crowds and the impending sense of the collapse of civic norms, it felt a little like Notting Hill Carnival without the pumping sound systems.

Eventually I parted ways with my co-workers, and headed south to the Brooklyn Bridge, before finding my way back to my house just after dark, using the meagre light from the display on my mobile ‘phone to find more useful emergency lighting (a small torch and a candle) by which to shower and cook a meal of baked beans on bread.

The power finally came on at 8am the following morning, but because the subway was still not running, Mayor Bloomberg declared friday (somewhat perplexingly) a “snow day,” so we all got a free day’s holiday. Result!

After several intermittently frustrating weeks of being unable to get Blogger to publish anything new to my website (and with no response to my tech. support requests from either Blogger or Prohosting – on the web, like anywhere else, I guess you get what you pay for), I finally gave up and moved my weblog to Blog*Spot.

Fingers crossed, it seems to be working so far… I’ll just have to learn to live with the ad banner or cough up another $12 a year for my almost entirely pointless website!

My full-length “polemic” web page is still under construction, but I thought I’d post just one of the many possible inconsistencies in the “official” 9/11 story that are now starting to come to light, concerning the fact that many of the supposed hijackers were perhaps not involved at all, and in fact may well still be alive.

Flying school says graduate identified as hijacker is alive in Morocco

The Augusta Chronicle, 10 July 2003

Thanks to Andrew M. for finding this.

The following message from Moveon.org:

The President took the nation to war based on his assertion that Iraq
posed an imminent threat to our country. Now the evidence that
backed that assertion is falling apart.

If the Bush administration distorted intelligence or knowingly used
false data to support the call to war, it would be an unprecedented
deception. Even if weapons are now found, it’ll be difficult to
justify pre-war language that indicated that the exact location of the
weapons was known and that they were ready to deploy at a moment’s
notice. With a crisis of credibility brewing abroad and the integrity
of our President and our foreign policy on the line, we need answers
now.

Rep. Henry Waxman has introduced legislation to create an independent
commission to investigate the Bush administration’s distortion of
evidence. Please ask your Representative to pledge his or her support
at:

http://www.moveon.org/wmdpledge/

A President may make no more important decision than whether or not to
take a country to war. If Bush and his officials deceived the American
public to create support for the Iraq war, they need to be held
accountable.