Without a Traceroute

This is a photo taken inside the Baquedano metro station in Santiago. It’s a little library kiosk, where commuters can pick up books to read on their subway ride. I saw them at several of the larger metro stations in Santiago. It seemed like a really smart idea to me, putting libraries in places where people can access them easily. There’s probably many people who would never go out of their way to visit a library, but who’d be happy to pick up something to read on their way to work. Judging from the books they had on display in the window, it wasn’t all Dan Brown’s airport bookstore fare either. They stocked quite a bit of more serious literature (both Spanish-native and translations) as well.

Well, I’m off to São Paulo, Brazil in a few hours. I’m going for the You Sh0t the Sheriff hackmeeting/conference. Unfortunately, due to fire code/occupancy limitations, I probably won’t get to attend many of the presentations in person unless some people don’t show up. But I will get to meet a lot of interesting people, and I’ve been invited to the after-party, which will probably be more fun anyway.

If anyone has suggestions for a crash-course in Portuguese, let me know!

For reasons that make no sense to me, buying a one-way ticket from Santiago to São Paulo on LAN airlines costs almost 650 USD, but buying a round-trip ticket with a return leg on some random date in August cost only 400 USD.

One of my friends claims that this pricing has to do with market variation and flexibility: the airline is better off getting that August ticket sold now, since they don’t know what the airfare market will look like in August. I still say there’s something really screwy going on when two tickets cost less than one ticket.

Here’s some photos from Cerro Santa Lucía, a park on a hill in central Santiago. It’s a really interesting place, with dozens of different levels, narrow passageways, crumbling stone stairways, fountains, statues, a cannon, a church, and lots of secluded corners where Chilean couples go to make out (PDA is huge in this country). The whole place has kind of a Love in the Time of Cholera feel, there’s lots of shady courtyards with ice cream stands, and it’s probably my favorite place in Santiago to hang out and read a book.
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NOTE: If you came here from a search engine or elsewhere looking for things to do to help in Iran, and don’t care about my opinions (I don’t blame you), skip to here.

In the wake of last Friday’s presidential election, Iran (or Tehran, at least) has erupted in massive demonstrations over the very questionable results. Much has been made of the use of the microblogging site, Twitter, as an organizing tool by the protesters. The mainstream media have gone on at great, irrelevant length about how wonderful this is. What’s a bit distressing is that bloggers, tweeters and other Web 2.0 types seem to be buying into their own hype as well.
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In some ways, Santiago is an attractive city. Air quality, however, is not among them. Santiago is one of the smoggier cities in Latin America. According to a 2004 World Bank study (PDF link), it even beat out former reigning champion Mexico City in “particulate matter,” which are the little bits of crap that make it hurt to breathe (as opposed to gaseous toxins which just quietly give you cancer).

You might think that 4 years in the LA area would have conditioned me to accept a little bit of grit with my oxygen, but you’d be mistaken. Los Angeles, the United States’ smoggiest city, clocks in with with a measly 34 μg of particulates per m³ of air. Santiago boasts a robust 60 μg/m³, but still doesn’t come anywhere close to the big leagues of “developing” [lung cancer] cities. Cairo puts them all (or, really, itself) to shame with a whopping 169 μg/m³, nearly 5 times the level in Los Angeles.

Breathe deep, son!