San Francisco News Blog

The San Francisco Transportation Authority has introduced a new iPhone app, CycleTracks, that lets users inform the agency how they get about the city day to day -- information that will make its way into designing San Francisco's evolving bike network. According to the TA (no, not that T&A, you perv) Web site:

CycleTracks uses your iPhone's GPS support to record your bicycle trips, display maps of your rides, and help transportation planners make San Francisco a better place to bike. At the end of each trip, data representing your trip purpose, route, and the date and time are sent to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (all data will be kept confidential). By using CycleTracks, you'll be helping San Francisco's transportation planners better understand the needs of cyclists--and you'll get to see maps and statistics of your rides.

Imagine, a city bicycle network that follows your every move!

© California Academy of Sciences

The Franciscan Manzanita

​The other day we reported on the apparent discovery of a Franciscan Manzanita in the Presidio -- the first wild specimen of the native San Franciscan plant spotted since 1947. But, in a development that appears to be ironic -- without any mention of diabetics being flattened by insulin trucks -- the manzanita is smackdab in the middle of the planned route for the billion-dollar Doyle Drive redesign. 

According to Al Donner, an assistant regional supervisor with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, a consortium has been cobbled together to decide what comes next. Representatives from the Presidio Trust, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fish and Wildlife, and expert botanists have a couple of weeks to bang out a conservation plan. Is it within the group's power to tell Caltrans to make costly and time-draining changes to the revamp of the state's most dangerous highway to save a single bush? Donner isn't sure -- but a member of the group told us it can. And yet, that group member also told SF Weekly that moving the roadway doesn't appear to be the route being taken with regards to saving the Franciscan Manzanita.

"The current location of the plant is a place where, even if you left it there, it's not really likely to become a functional population over time," said the group member, who insisted on speaking anonymously. "The goal should be the long-term persistence of the plant. Ideally, the recovery of the plant will involve essentially making it part of a population."

In short, many cuttings need to be taken of the bush and planted elsewhere, and an attempt needs to be made to replant the Franciscan Manzanita (this will be a risky maneuver). This is also the route favored by Professor Tom Parker of San Francisco State, one of the state's foremost experts on manzanitas. "I would rather see it moved to a place where it's protected better and plant more individuals next to it and basically start a population of them," he says. "There are a couple of different individuals in cultivation in botanic gardens. So it makes a lot more sense to me to restore a population into the wild rather than save a single individual in a place you can't really do that."

Dot what?

A portal to the soul

​The American Civil Liberties Union's San Francisco-based Northern California office is launching a campaign to beef up Internet privacy. In a statement released today, the ACLU seeks to "spotlight the need to upgrade laws protecting consumer data" and unveils its nifty new Web site, dotrights.org (try saying that URL aloud five times), which features a two-minute video primer on the issue.

The statement notes that the federal law which ostensibly safeguards Internet privacy, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was drafted in 1986, back when the only folks with Internet access were Army scientists and aliens. Today, companies and even government agencies take advantage of this lax legal landscape to collect, subpoena, and sell personal information gleaned from our Web-browsing habits -- such as what books we've recently bought.

That grabbed some headlines. But work recently undertaken by San Francisco State's Professor Tom Parker may change the way scientists think about evolution. Parker -- one of the aforementioned experts called in to verify the Franciscan Manzanita -- asserts that one of the key factors in manzanita survival is ... rats.

While supervising his students' field studies on seed predation -- in plain English, seeds being eaten by rats and other rodents -- Parker noticed something interesting about manzanita growth patters in fire zones. Emerging from the charred earth, the young plants came up in clusters of 10, 20, or even 30 plants packed together in a small space. It occurred to the professor that an odd, symbiotic relationship might be going on: Rats may be burying manzanita seeds deep enough that they survive fires and form the next generation.

It's a nifty idea. But to prove it, you need to follow around some rats. So Parker did. 

Robert Pedraza                      By C. Stiles

​In our cover story last week, Worms in the Apple, writer Tim Elfrink detailed the saga of the Rudy and Robert Pedraza, a couple of rogue computer programming brothers who hacked Apple's OS X and retooled it for use on cheaper PCs.

Elfrink wrote about how legal experts believed that the Pedraza brothers had a chance to prevail in San Francisco's Northern District Court, where Apple is suing them for copyright infringement. As of late last week, when U.S. District Judge William Alsup handed down a summary judgment in favor of Apple, that chance isn't looking so fat.

"Psystar infringed Apple's exclusive rights to create derivative works of Mac OS X," Alsup wrote, "by replacing original files in Mac OS X with unauthorized software files."

In an April cover story, we looked at the dilemma facing the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state agency created through Proposition 71 to fund stem-cell research: Should the landmark agency direct the remainder of its $3 billion in research funds towards "adult" stem cells -- which are closer to clinical applications, albeit for less serious ailments -- or to embryonic stem cells, which offer hope to intractable degenerative diseases such as juvenile diabetes and multiple sclerosis?

​

CIRM board member Jeff Sheehy told SF Weekly back in April that this was "an identity issue" for the agency, particularly since it was founded in response to Bush Administration restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research.

"If we are going to say that we're going to work with adult stem cells, we can be in the translational phase and the clinic now," said Sheehy, who is also communications director for UCSF's AIDS Research Institute. "While they're going to be of benefit to a great many people in California, these adult-stem-cell approaches are probably not going to have a big impact on these severe degenerative diseases that really motivated a great number of people to support Prop. 71, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal-cord injuries."

So, for what it's worth, Ketchum said he will unhesitatingly drive his car across the jury-rigged Bay Bridge -- though he's a regular BART commuter now rejoicing he can get a seat once again. Still, when asked what questions he had about the alarming failure of the bridge's Labor Day repairs, he answered "all of them."

"There's really no data out there on what broke, why it broke, how they tested the design and the new fabrication," said the engineer. "I think all bridge engineering professionals would be well-advised to be interested in that." Still, with the incredible scrutiny Caltrans was facing as a result of the internationally reported bridge failure, he's confident the bridge is as safe as the organization says it is: "In the light of this break and the copious quantities of egg everyone has to deal with -- I believe they really pulled out the stops on a conservative approach to the second round of repairs."

Oh, something else -- maybe we should get used to this. When Cassandras wail about America's crumbling infrastructure -- this is what they're talking about.

BeVideo, which also provides iPhone guides to bankruptcy and yoga, has produced a "complete guide on how to be a hipster."

By lowering the hipster bar, this app promises to spread ironically worn cowboy shirts beyond their Mission District confines. Lacking sufficient record store jobs, they'll open stores of their own, creating a local economic renaissance, making available money for Deep Vs and Phils.

N-Judah Chronicles/Lauren Oliver -- Used with Permission

The N is Near

​
UPDATE: Winner of our San Francisco-centric Fail-Object Contest gets tickets to this weekend's Mill Valley Film Festival. Get Crackin'!

We'll admit it -- we approach Twitter and the like with the apprehension of a troglodyte suddenly confronted with a Norelco electric razor. Sure, there could be a use for this thing -- but we're busy painting antelope on the walls. And that's a marketable skill!

Still, even we were enthralled with the above San Francisco-centric "Fail Whale" takeoff. It's the "N-Judah Fail!" logo, created for the quality local blog N-Judah Chronicles by designer Lauren Oliver. As a daily rider of the Fightin' N, we can attest that a flock of birdies would be most welcome on many occasions.

Incidentally, if you're looking for an explanation of what the Fail Whale is, you're asking the wrong guy. To the best of our knowledge, it's the cute image that comes up when Twitter is overloaded. It is much more appealing than the Blue Screen of Death.

Anyhow, this is hardly the only local version of the now ubiquitous Fail Whale. When you hear the term "Whale Rider," don't think of an adorable New Zealand Maori girl. Think of the erstwhile mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom!

Cassius V. Stevani / Chemistry Institute, University of Sao Paulo

The luminous Mycena luxaeterna (eternal light) owes its name to lyrics from Mozart's requiem

​Professor Dennis Desjardin is a well-named man. The San Francisco State mushroom specialist's handle, translated from French, literally means "of the garden." Earn a Ph.D in botany and people do point this out.

"I thought of changing it to 'De La Merde' -- 'of the shit,'" says the professor. "You know, people always comment how mushrooms are growing out of crap."

Desjardin, thankfully, has not seen fit to rechristen himself. But he has thought up names for the more than 200 mushroom species he's discovered. And the source of the name for a pair of the latest 'shroom species he unearthed is about as far from the earthiness of scatological humor as you can get.

The SFSU prof and four colleagues this week published a paper on seven luminous mushroom species in the journal Mycologia. Desjardin personally named a pair of those species -- Mycena luxaeterna (eternal light) and
Mycena luxperpetua (perpetual light) -- after inspiring Latin lyrics in Mozart's famous requiem.

His knuckles do not drag...

​Angry words continue to be exchanged about fiery Florida freshman Congressman Alan Grayson referring to Republicans as "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and Rep. Nancy Pelosi's refusal to compel him to apologize.

But a San Francisco State University professor has a problem with it. "I think it does Neanderthals an injustice," said Professor Niccolo Caldararo, a specialist in biological anthropology. Now, that's not meant to be too hard a dig at Republicans but, instead, a kind word for the much-maligned Neanderthals.

"We tend to characterize them as dull-witted because because when the first skeletons were unearthed, the [most publicized] one had been affected by a number of injuries and degenerative diseases," said Caldararo. This is just another example about our "ingorance about Neanderthals." 

There's an app for that...

​Calling all computer-whiz nerds: not one, but two Bay Area-based Web application contests were announced this week. First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been helping to promote the DataSF App contest, which challenges entrants to create civic-minded applications based on the newly available government data featured on the new clearinghouse of city data (he even wrote about it here, and tweeted about writing about it here. Naturally, we're writing about him tweeting about writing about it.).

Newsom's looking for more apps to add to the increasingly popular collection, as displayed by the DataSF App Showcase. Although Newsom has his name all over the contest to help it gather publicity, the real organizers include a long list of pioneering new media people and organizations like Craig Newmark, Spot.us, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Winners will receive a cash prize of an unknown amount, or an Apple gift certificate.

Meanwhile, down the road in Palo Alto, the start-up company Smule just announced its own Web application contest, called the "I Am T-Pain" contest. This one challenges entrants to use Smule's "I Am T-Pain" app -- which allows users to transform their own voice into the tinny, mechanical, robot voice most commonly associated with Kanye, Lil Wayne, Cher, and of course, T-Pain -- and use it to upload their own version of SNL's "I'm On A Boat" (featuring T-Pain) with their own creative version of the song and associated music video to YouTube. Winners of the T-Pain contest will receive $5,000 in cash, a "Big Ass Chain" that's worth $47 and weighs 10 pounds (according to the Web site), and a chance to hang with T-Pain.

You may have already read reports on a month-long police sting called Operation Safe School that started on September 15 and targets drug deals in the Tenderloin. According to the 1988 Juvenile Drug Trafficking and Schoolyard Act, if officers can prove that dealers are selling crack cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of a school while class is in session, offenders may have an extra three to five years tacked on their sentences.

Today, a Colorado-based company called SpacialKey demonstrated how interactive mapping technology, along with information provided by the new San Francisco data-warehouse, DataSF, can be utilized to reveal exactly what neighborhoods and schools police should be targeting to enforce this law. The SpacialKey mapping tool allows users to load and filter data from DataSF to show various distributions of certain crimes on a color-coded map of the city.

According to SpacialKey, of 14,653 crime incidents (i.e. arrests and citations) in San Francisco between June 25, 2009 and September 20, 2009, 166 of those were for crimes that fell under the criteria of the 1988 Act (and thus under the purview of Operation Safe Schools). In addition, the application found 21 schools of 243 in the city that the police may want to target for that specific drug dealing activity. Media reports indicate that, in the past fifteen-plus days of the operation, officers have run five stings and arrested 20 dealers -- total -- with just 13 qualifying for extra prison time.
 

Does this shoe fight germs or not?

​ ​If you're selling a shoe you say fights germs, you better be able to back it up. The North Face's parent company, VF Outdoor, Inc., learned that lesson the hard way recently when the Environmental Protection Agency accused it of selling and distributing unregistered pesticides (in the form of bacteria-fighting shoes). VF could face up to $1 million in federal fines.

"At issue were more than 70 styles of footwear that incorporated an AgION silver treated footbed," said an EPA press release, which also listed several public health claims that the company made online and on its packaging about the footwear's ability to inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacterial and fungal growth. 

The EPA collected its evidence against the North Face both online and at The North Face store on Post Street in San Francisco. When the federal agency notified The North Face of the violation, the company stopped claiming that their footwear protected against germs. All the claims were subsequently yanked from the company's Web site, and the product packaging was revised, according to the EPA.

​Nearly two decades after Diane Sawyer busted the Food Lion grocery store chain for selling rotting meat to customers, the company still seems obsessed with saving money on refrigeration,  according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1992, ABC's Primetime Live reported that Food Lion workers soaked rotten fish in baking soda, re-wrapped old chicken in barbecue sauce, and sold rat-gnawed cheese alongside rotting meat. The company sued -- not for libel, but on the theory that Sawyer's producers committed fraud when they signed up as Food Lion employees and hid cameras in their wigs. Food Lion's legal strategy threatened to set back American press freedom to a new pre-Constitutional era, where reporters seeking to going undercover to expose, say, abuse of mentally-ill patients, could potentially be punished for fraud.

A $5.5 million punitive verdict was eventually thrown out in federal appeals court, but not before undercover investigative reporting became largely passe in the nervous-nellie U.S. news business.

Fast-forwarding to the present, and the chain seems to still be determined to make every penny count when it comes to refrigerating food. According to the publication Biotech Business Week, the EPA earlier this month awarded Food Lion its Distinguished Partner Award at the Food Marketing Institute's Sustainability Summit in San Francisco. Food Lion was lionized for "deploying advanced refrigeration technology at new stores," the Biotech Business Week reported.

To answer the question posed in this article's headline: No. No it will not. In fact, if San Francisco State's greenhouse maven is to be believed, his carnivorous plants will be as far from vegan as possible, feasting on live prey by asphyxiating them in their lethal vise grip before digesting them alive in a slow and agonizing ordeal.

In fact, SFSU greenhouse manager Martin Grantham has invited members of the general public to bring their own live insects to sacrifice to his hungry carnivorous plants during a Wednesday feeding he's modeling after the since-abrogated San Francisco Zoo tradition of publicly offering the lions huge hunks of bloody meat while gawkers leered at the masticating cats.

"Actually this is worse, if you relate to the fly -- they didn't give [the lions] live animals," notes Grantham. "The flies get trapped, struggle and die slow." Is he anticipating any indignant protest from earnest San Francisco liberals? Not really -- "Gee, there are a lot of flies around."

Incontinence is a problem that even younger women can be afflicted with...

​ Dr. Jeanette Brown says, in all seriousness, she's out to make incontinence "cocktail conversation." Just what you'd offer a toast to at the end of such a discussion is yet to be determined, but Brown is adamant that people should find out.

The head of U.C. San Francisco's Women's Continence Center implored SF Weekly to call our mother or phone up our aunts and talk to them about incontinence. Up to half the nation's women have issues with incontinence, says Brown, but the vast majority are too ashamed to tell anyone about it. "The common thing I hear from patients is, 'You're the first person I've ever told,'" said Brown. "I say, talk to your bridge club, your mother, your aunts -- everybody has it."

The OBGYN is one of the organizers behind a just-announced San Francisco forum on incontinence scheduled for Oct. 3; the goal is to get women talking about the situation so they won't be embarrassed to seek treatment.

Just as comic Sam Levinson quipped that "Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children," you can also blame the kids for women's incontinence problems. This really is a situation that affects women vastly more than men, and you can chalk up the joys of childbirth for that (to quote another comedian, Bob Goldthwait, childbirth is "The Play-Doh fun factory of life.").

Following an explosion of social media outrage at a British car columnist who delighted in using a Tesla Roadster to silently run cyclists off the road, self-identified San Francisco Bicycle Coalition member Rachel Konrad stepped in to quell the storm.

"It's the most severe of the sort of comments I've seen from the petrol heads. We do get this out of Britain once in a while. It's often a great review of the car, and they put in an offhanded comment that smacks down cyclists. I just don't really understand it," said Konrad, a San Francisco Critical Mass regular who also holds down a day job as the Bay Area-based Tesla Motors' communications manager.

Konrad was a featured guest on the Monday edition of the Fredcast.com cycling-related podcast after British motor critic James Martin described in a Daily Mail column his ability to exploit the Tesla Roadster's silent operation to drive a group of cyclists into the herbage.

​Last week, as a San Francisco Whale Tours boat cruised into the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, a humpback whale surfaced in the distance. Then a spout of water, presumably from its blow hole, shot high into the air.

Wynne and Perry Moore, a tourist couple from Dallas on board, found this pretty great and whipped out their cameras. At that point, they had no idea that their vessel, a 65-foot catamaran, was surrounded by about 50 massive sea beasts.
 
​As the captain reduced the Kitty Kat's speed and shifted into neutral, passengers began to notice black backs rising on either side of their boat, and what looked like geysers shooting up in every direction. Some of the whales began lunging at surface, mouths agape. Others were rolling around, showing off their pectoral flippers.

"You couldn't look anywhere and not see whales," said Wynne Moore. When whales began coming in closer to the boat, she could smell their rotten fish breath. Then captain informed everyone that whales were also swimming beneath them. We're about to be whale food, Wynne Moore thought to herself.

Our future looms overhead ...

​San Franciscans lucky enough to be enjoying our lunch outside today were interrupted by the less-than-appetizing sight of a gargantuan pair of chromosomes looming over our heads. This zeppelin, which belongs to Airship Ventures, currently features advertising from the Mountain View-based direct-to-consumer personal genetics company, 23andMe, which -- for a mere $99 and a couple ounces of spit -- promises to tell you who you're related to and what genetic diseases you may develop (or already have).

For a company that has been known to push the advertising envelope (trendy spit parties in NYC anyone?), a zeppelin doesn't actually seem that far-fetched. In a recent phone conversation with Airship Ventures CEO Alex Hall, SF Weekly learned that the Eureka is the only zeppelin in the Bay Area, and 23andMe paid anywhere between $100,000 and $750,000 for the coveted ad spot starting at the beginning of July (Hall wouldn't specify the exact amount the company paid). Guess now we know where all of that Google money is going. Check out this cool stop-motion transition video to see how the latest 23andMe branding went up.

Prior to 23andMe, the zeppelin featured advertisements for Disney's latest Pixar flick, Up. Some might argue that the sight of a Disney movie advertisement on the side of a giant zeppelin in the sky is somewhat less disconcerting than the sight of an advertisement for a company that still has a ways to go in the regulations department. Still others seem to think, awesome new technology aside, the zeppelin thing is just plain creepy. Lemurs and chimps at the San Francisco zoo don't care what the heck is written on the side -- they just generally hate zeppelins.

B. Kliban

'The Bridge of Considerable Difficulty'

​

For flimsy bridge fetishists -- those sick, twisted daredevils who thrill at the idea of crossing a bridge in dire need of repair -- the ongoing Bay Bridge closure needn't be a killjoy.

Rather, it serves as a reminder that there are plenty of other local spans whose inspection rating is in the same "structurally deficient" range as the Interstate 35W bridge that two years ago sent 20 Minnesota commuters plunging into the Mississippi.

Structurally deficient means a bridge should eventually be replaced, but is safe for travel. San Francisco, a city crisscrossed with aging viaducts, is a veritable amusement park for thrill- seekers. For those in need of post-weekend adrenaline rushes, we provide a news-you-can-use list, gleaned from this database:

​You'd be smiling too if you were holding a walrus penis bone, a.k.a. an oosik. We caught sight of this incredible dickstick and other smaller ones on a recent Thursday evening at the California Academy of Sciences.

On the same day, we read this story about zoophilia as a sexual orientation (rather than a unspeakable perversion) in our sister paper, New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

Coincidence? Probably. Draw your own conclusions.

As it turns out, though, a lot of animals have these penis bones, which scientists generally refer to as baculum. Raccoons, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, cats, dogs, weasels, sea lions, and great apes -- and that's just for starters.

'Miracle Fruit'

​Our green-thumbed readers may remember the July saga of San Francisco State's corpse flower. The exotic Indonesian plant crossed up experts from every local university by stubbornly refusing to bloom. But, when it did, it sure lived up to its title. Visitors to the SFSU greenhouse were invited to write down their olfactory impressions of the flower; some submissions included "trash juice," "vomit," and "my pants."

After inviting the populace to sample a plant that actually emits two of the compounds secreted by decaying flesh, SFSU greenhouse maven Martin Grantham has a much sweeter deal in store for the general public today. From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. he's offering free samples of a SFSU-grown pineapple -- but, far more intriguingly, he has seven small "miracle fruits." These amazing West African plants flood the zone of one's tastebuds so thoroughly that even sour, nasty foods taste sweet and delicious for half an hour or more after eating one. Yes, that does sound Willy Wonka-ish.

The SFPD Web Page induces nostalgia for the 1990s

​When Police Chief George Gascon today announces San Francisco cops will soon have the ability to engage in real-time text message conversations with people who have witnessed -- or are witnessing -- a crime, it will be more than a technologically uplifting moment. It also marks one of the few socially redeeming uses for text-messaging.

The knock on the SFPD has long been that its hardware and IT systems -- and data compilation -- are more antiquated than the machines on the original Star Trek set. Adoption of this dirt cheap program helps in that regard. But it warrants mentioning that this concept was long ago utilized elsewhere; at Candlestick Park you can even text "badfan" to report the obnoxious drunk two rows over. And a Police Executive Research Forum paper exploring the "Stop Snitching" phenomenon -- in which former San Francisco Chief Heather Fong was prominently quoted -- recommended text-a-tip programs just like this to effectively combat the community's aversion to working with police.

Sacre bleu!

​Get ready for some serious galactic debris, San Francisco. According to NASA, the peak visibility of the Perseids meteor shower will come tonight around midnight (most visible after the moon sets), revealing dozens of streaming fireballs across the night sky every hour until dawn. Sound romantic? It would be. If only we could see it.

Although various forecasts are predicting a clear night in San Francisco for the show, all signs (i.e. looking out the window) point to the opposite. Plus, the lights never really go down in the city, despite what Journey tells us. Our skies may be darker here than they are in Vegas, but San Francisco definitely has just as much light pollution as it has very small dogs -- if not more. Perhaps next year the city could coincide one of those fun "Lights Out" events on the same night as a meteor shower. 

511 is the He-Man of websites

​Earlier today, Government Computer News named San Francisco's 511 transit page, www.transit.511.org, one of the top-10 great government websites. And not only that, but 511 was also designated fuckin' "heroic." 

"Although a number of cities offer Web-based trip planners," says Government Computer News, "San Francisco's combines the schedules of dozens of subway, light-rail, trolley and bus systems, a heroic act of interagency coordination."

Other winning websites included the USPS virtual post office, data.gov, science.gov, webcontent.com (a Web site demonstrating how to make better Web sites) and the site for the state of Utah. But none of them got the high distinction of "hero."   

News travels fast ... as fast as Freddy

​The other day, we wrote about how our "Google alert" shot us an article reporting that San Francisco had adopted mandatory composting -- a mere five weeks after it happened.

Considering the article ran in a Chico paper, and tabulating that the information had to travel there and back, we figured the speed of this article at 0.38 miles per hour (that's 346 miles in 38 days -- with no bathroom breaks).

Well, we're glad to say that virtual technicians appear to have taken note, and Internet news delivery time has markedly improved. Yesterday, our Google alert informed us that the San Francisco Giants had traded for Freddy Sanchez -- only 11 days after the fact. How fast was that? Let's do the math.

The illicit love of Howard and Safara

​Last night at the California Academy of Sciences, a group of spectators at the African penguin exhibit squealed and cooed as twenty blackfoot penguins bopped around their rocky enclosure like so many wind-up toys. These particular blackfoot penguins reside at the academy, and not on their native islands off southwest Africa, because they are classified as "vulnerable" and local ornithologists are trying to breed them.

To the right of the exhibit, some of the fact-seeking visitors studied an informational sign. Because the penguins bray like donkeys, it explained, they used to be called "jackass penguins." Awesome. The sign also encouraged visitors to check out the colored plastic bands on the penguins' wings. Birds with the same color bands, apparently, are part of a mating couple. Once coupled up, blackfoot penguins are monogamous for life -- or so ornithologists say.

"Look at that!" a woman cried. Back inside the exhibit, a male penguin with a white and green-striped band had climbed on a female, whose band was not in view. "They're doin' it! They're doin' it!" a young man said, as the male began to gyrate atop the female, slapping her side with his wing. Seemingly unconcerned with the laughing, gawking crowd, the penguin continued his business for a while, then backed off the female and took a celebratory crap.

The female remained on her stomach for several awkward minutes, then finally stood up to stretch, sending a crackle of disbelief through crowd. The band on her left wing wasn't white with a green stripe. It was unmistakeably scarlet.

Our loyal readers, as well as those with a disproportionate interest in malodorous local flora, remember a series of articles we wrote in early July about San Francisco State's shrinking violet of a corpse flower. After holding out for days past experts' repeated predictions of its imminent stinky bloom -- an event that only occurs once in a decade, if then -- the otherworldly looking plant noxiously opened over the July 4 weekend.

We were there with our camera to document the event. At the time, we noticed a camera (better than ours) mounted directly above the corpse flower and snapping automatically every seven minutes. We finally stumbled across the resultant stop-motion video -- and, like most stop-motion videos, it was a thrill. But it caught more than just a stinky plant. It caught ... some hippies!

What's that? Scoma's? Just up ahead on your right.

​San Franciscans looking for one more reason to preen can always flaunt the fact that they live in one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world. Online video archives of City Hall meetings? Check. Twitter-happy mayoral staff? Check. Animatronic dinosaurs that dispense friendly advice and directions to tourists along the Embarcadero? Not yet, but a guy can hope.

But when it comes to sucking at the federal teat, no amount of digital prowess is too much. So it is that city officials are preparing to woo newly confirmed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on his upcoming visit to the city, in an effort to snare what San Francisco Department of Technology Media Director Ron Vincent said he hopes could be "millions" of dollars in federal stimulus money for increasing access to broadband Internet.

Genachowski is slated to visit the Valencia Gardens housing project in the Mission District on Sunday, where city officials are going to treat him to a presentation on what they've done -- and still hope to do -- to expand broadband here. Vincent said that, San Francisco's status as high-tech hub notwithstanding, there are many neighborhoods that still lack high-speed Internet access, such as Bayview, Hunters Point, parts of the Mission, and parts of Chinatown.