Normally you get tens of thousands of people in one building over a weekend, you figure on a lot of garbage. At the Greenfest here in San Francisco (coming to Seattle in April), you get a glimpse into the future of trash.

It’s called compost. Inside the concourse are big bins for throwaways marked liquids, recyclables and compostables. Last year’s Greenfest managed a 96 percent success rate in keeping garbage out of landfills. This year they’re aiming higher.

Here’s how: All food is natural, much of it is organic and/or vegan, and there’s no meat (or animal milk). So all uneaten food is compostable. So are plates, cups, bowls and so on, most of them paper or a similar fiber-based product. As for utensils, they’re potato or corn. You’re done eating, you don’t have to separate out the plastics from animal byproducts and the dishware. It all goes into the compost bin.

Much of this has to do with screening of vendors by Greenfest organizers. The festival was founded, and remains spearheaded, by Global Exchange, which has done more for Fair Trade than just about any organization extant. Greenfests are billed as “parties with a purpose” to promote environmental, social justice and community causes around the world.

So what’s to keep this year’s Greenfest from reaching 100 percent sustainability — no landfill junk at all? “Well, there’s these things,” said one of the trash-monitors, holding out an energy bar wrapper. They may look and feel like paper, but they have foil liners, sometimes with plastic sealers as well. Their ingredients may boast organic this and natural that, but their containers are anathema. Maybe by the time the festival makes it up to the Convention Center April 12-13, even those wrappers will be history.

Random sightems: More people are bringing their families to Greenfest, so this year an entire section was set aside for “Green Kids”… I didn’t see any on display but ran across a card for Portland’s Natural Burial Company showing off the “Ecopod,” a coffin made of recycled paper. Fine for you and me, but would this make sense for Republicans — I mean, with all the toxins in their system?… You’ve seen electric bikes, you’ve seen foldable bikes. Now there are electric foldable bikes, tipping the scales at 37 pounds. That sounds lighter than it is, but for their intended use you’re probably not going to be racking up e-f-ables. The speed and range are variable depending on cargo and your BMI… I didn’t go hear him, but the line for Deepak Chopra stretched across and down the street more than a city block…

My wife Cecile, who was on the program here and is involved in the Seattle event planning, came up with a new rallying cry for localism. Talking about how we Phinney Ridgers had helped defeat the Zoo garage and turn relentless garage booster David Della out of office, Cecile said our new motto (inspired by Jesus in “The Big Lebowski”) is “You Don’t Phuck with Phinney!” Despite the fact there’s no Phinney in ‘Phrisco, it got a big laugh.

San Francisco’s sixth annual Green Festival opened today, cosmically juxtaposed with a nasty oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The best and worst, simultaneously in real time, that’s Cali for you. I wanted to be on hand not just because this is the grandaddy and you can talk to Kevin Danaher himself while strolling down the aisles, but also because Greenfest is coming to Seattle for the first time next April. “We think it’ll be huge,” Danaher told me, recounting how Chicago’s first event last May drew more than 31,000. “They were lined up two hours before the doors opened,” Danaher said. Keynoter Mayor Daley was going around saying “his festival this, his show that,” Danaher laughed. “I don’t care if he takes the credit, in fact, it works better if he does.” That’s good, Kevin, because we’ve got this Daley groupie mayor in Seattle…

I’ve been coming to the Greenfest since the beginning, when it was funky, crowded, sweaty and a bit contradictory as too many plastics and toxins were still in evidence. This year’s event, though, has to be the cleanest yet (last year only 4 percent of all the waste generated during the three-day event drawing 35,000 people found its way to the local landfill; we’ve come so far since Woodstock). On exhibit are flushable green diapers, highway-certified electric scooters (62 mph, 66 miles on a charge), artworks made of recycled chopsticks (so if you happen to get hungry…) and hemp oils, underwear, energy drinks, garden furniture, smokes. Er, I made that last one up. Unlike Hempfest, Greenfest is only about the planet.

Anyway, this year’s show is the graying of green, as it reminds me of the countless tech fests I used to go to back in the day. Free goodies everywhere, Clif bars, Organic Valley cheeses, Real Foods apples and bananas, Fruitabo fruit leather, Seeds of Change chocolate, lots of mags and lit, all portable in bio plastic or canvas bags. More suits (albeit natural fibre) than tie-dyes, and lots of big-ticket items like cars, adventure travel, homes. Green is going corporate all right, and no harm in that. Like I kept hearing, the price of oil isn’t going down any time soon.

A lot of the stuff here will be familiar to Seattle greenies, but a couple of booths caught my eye. One had paper products made from elephant dung all the way from Sri Lanka, which seemed fine till I caught myself unconsciously putting its promo sheet in my mouth to free my hands. Apparently elephants are being killed in Sri Lanka not for tusks (few have tusks) or for hides but because they get in the way of agro-business. If they can find a way to make money off elephants, the reasoning goes, the farmers will stop killing them. Not sure how many trees it saves, but one elephant churns out 500 pounds of poop a day.

My show fave is Reware, which makes solar-powered backpacks you can plug your cell phone or iPod or whatever into for recharging while you cycle along in the sunshine, or even, um, bright cloudy days like we have in Seattle (they’re waterproof too). There’s even a fold-out cordura panel for recharging laptops. The bags are pretty sturdy and you can even puncture a panel and have them keep working. You mainly want to avoid surface abrasions (like a sandstorm, for instance) on the clear plastic. A Kenya user sticks his on top of the roof of his jeep. Other folks use them to trickle-charge their car batteries parked at airports during long road trips. And so on. Really clever. I’d write more except my PowerBook is running out of juice…

I’m traveling and unable to divine the full gestalt of Tuesday’s vote, but from where I sit it sure appears that the electorate spoke with a much better vocabulary than the eighth-grade level usually assigned it. (I recognize I’m in the minority here but that’s the great thing about this blog, people can disagree. At least, that’s what I’m told. If the Cow of Political Correctness falls off a cliff onto my van, HA readers will know the reason why.)

Back to those astute voters. On Prop 1, they seemed to get that building more highways simply adds more traffic. They knew a Trojan Horse when they saw one — a blank check to the road lobby in the guise of a jolly green transit giant. My feeling is the region is ready for transit, yearns for transit, will vote for transit — but wants to proceed project by project, spur by spur, to keep the process on task and costs accountable. On R-67, who would’ve thunk? With all those ad dollars being spent on how the insurance industry is our friend! I wonder how many voters thought, each time they got hit with one of those commercials, “Gee, if only that money could go toward lowering my health insurance rates!” Or even — d’ya think? — providing coverage their policies say they’re providing.

David Della tried to smear Tim Burgess, but voters ultimately recognized Della as the feckless incumbent without a cause he really was. I’ve sat through entire Council committee meetings supposedly chaired by Della where he barely asked a question, and Jan Drago had to step in and run the thing. Our own little George Bush, an accidental officeholder with no political acumen or even an identifiable constituency, has been blessedly sent back to the private sector. Won’t we all be intrigued to see what it can do with him now.

As for poor Venus, can we please clarify why she lost so miserably? It was not because she was charged with drunk driving. It was how she handled the process and aftermath of being charged with drunk driving. When she said she was not impaired, what stuck in people’s minds was the word “impaired.” As further evidence of her ability to comport herself under pressure, she told reporters after results rolled in, “I am not talking to you tonight.”

Admittedly, my theory of an Enlightened Elector kind of falls apart with the school levy and Eyman measures. Maybe this crowd can see through hype and hypocrisy, but isn’t too good at percentages. Sherman should have won, and Jane Hague should not have been able to beat a garden gnome (maybe her secret was not saying the word “impaired”). Still, what I’m taking from this election is that not all campaigns are about big bucks. It used to be that dollars could deliver at the polls no matter what was right. This time around, people were talking, turning a lot of those paid political announcements into expensive white noise.

After more than three years of public protest, the Woodland Park Zoo’s proposed mammoth parking garage has been ruled illegal by the Seattle Hearing Examiner. This is a huge victory, not just for garage opponents but for Seattleites and citizens everywhere who care about parks and the pernicious trend toward commercialization of public spaces.

“The Zoo garage was one of the biggest threats facing Seattle’s parks,” said Jeannie Hale, president of the Seattle Community Council Federation, an appellant in the case along with the Phinney Ridge Community Council and Save Our Zoo. Had the garage been permitted, “every park in Seattle would have been vulnerable to mall-sized parking structures and other buildings that were never intended to be placed in city parks,” Hale added.

More to come, but today is a day of celebration for civic activists, neighborhood advocates and average citizens everywhere who dare to fight City Hall. For more information and background, see the Save Our Zoo Web site. The Hearing Examiner ruling and a press release both are posted on the Save Our Zoo site.

Postscript: Dampening celebration over the decision is that Seattle environmental attorney Mickey Gendler, who eloquently argued the public’s case before the Hearing Examiner earlier this month, suffered a tragic bike accident on the Montlake Bridge on Sunday, injuring his spinal cord. Partially paralyzed, Gendler remains hospitalized with an uncertain prognosis. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.

New York Times: “Dodgers Could Reunite Torre and Mattingly”. Almost makes you wish they’d never moved from Brooklyn!

Weeks at a time go by without a peep from Greg Nickels on anything. Then, on the eve of his hosting a U.S. Conference of Mayors “Climate Summit”, he’s everywhere, he’s everywhere!

Down at South Lake Union, symbolically test driving a new red streetcar. “It’s kind of like back to the future,” Hizzoner said. We could forgive him the cliche if it were actually true, but not even the most publicity-whoring fatcat of Seattle yore would have built a 1.3-mile glorified amusement-park ride for the equivalent of $47.5 million inflation-adjusted dollars. Back in the day, streetcars were for transportation. They ran across town, they ran to Fremont, to Phinney Ridge.

As for the SoLa streetcar, I’d rather walk a few blocks and burn the calories. Or ride my bike and get there a lot quicker, with zero! carbon footprint!

Speaking of which…no sooner had the Mayor relinquished the photo-op wheel of the streetcar than it was off to City Hall for the big Progress Report on Climate Change. The short take: Seattle is down 8 percent in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990, putting us within the Kyoto Protocol target of 7 percent reduction by 2012, as long as we don’t blow it in the coming four-plus years. The summary of the report does not give much actual data on how the figures were arrived at, and I’m skeptical that there isn’t some book-cooking going on here. But even if we accept the summary’s conclusions, it’s just plain crass for the Mayor to time this thing so close to the national hoo-hah. After this weekend I doubt we’ll hear a peep about the Kyoto Protocol till Nickels announces his candidacy for re-election in 2009.

Meanwhile, there was Mayor Nickels again yesterday, patting himself on the back for the city’s Bicycle Master Plan, another brick in the reduced greenhouse-gas wall. On Monday, the plan goes before the City Council, and let’s hope the Council can find a way to reconcile its worthy goals with its lousy (so far) implementation, starting with the mess at Stone Way. Originally slated for full bike lanes, this crucial north-south bike commuter route was pared back to the confusing, mixed-signal “sharrow” markings after Fremont mogul Suzie Burke complained the bikes would interfere with truck traffic. As a result, cars and bikes have to criss-cross each other’s right-of-way on Stone Way, creating a certifiable death trap that helps neither side and endangers both. From Erica’s report it seems light bulbs are going on in Council chambers, albeit dimly. The good folks at Cascade Bicycle Club, who led two protest/solidarity rides around Fremont this summer, are on the case as well.

To sum up: Is an ego made of carbon, and if so, does it have a footprint? I would love to give Mayor Nickels the benefit of the doubt in all things green, because I support what he supports and believe in what he says he believes in. On the other hand, I don’t promote a mammoth parking garage in Woodland Park Zoo while talking about the need to discourage car culture in Seattle. I don’t extol greenhouse-gas reductions while pimping a waterfront tunnel, a gargantuan SR-520 Interchange and a Trojan Horse highway expansion levy (Prop 1) in the guise of rapid transit. And I don’t talk about more liveable and lively neighborhoods while seeking to cram “69,000 new jobs and 56,000 new residents” into them.

“Trends indicate that Seattle will become even denser, and that’s good news for our climate,” the report states. Hold on: It’s only good news if the density in Seattle reduces suburban sprawl, halts highway expansion, diminishes reliance on the automobile and curbs wasteful growth. So far, the tradeoffs just aren’t there, and all the mayor’s press releases and all the mayor’s men can’t put that Humpty together again.

Following up on our speculation about a refresh of Macbooks for Leopard, MacRumors reports there may be an announcement as early as tomorrow. It looks like Apple held off coupling an announcement with the Leopard rollout, figuring they could sell a bunch of soon-to-be-outmoded Macs to the hordes seeking the new OS. Including around 200 who stood in line outside the U District’s Mac Store, aided by University Village’s Apple store being closed for renovation. The Mac Store folks parked their van outside the U Village Apple store to help usher Leopard buyers over to their outlet. Not that Apple stores were hurting: Buyers also lined up for nearly two hours outside Alderwood Mall and Bel-Square stores, as we reported.

Meanwhile, Ars Technica tosses its colonoscopy of Leopard into the ring. So far no real huge gotchas, although little annoyances are starting to surface (3-D being foremost).

Why give Apple so much attention in Microsoft country? As any local Mac user knows, there’s a huge disconnect between the 9-out-of-10 computers running Windows stat, and what we see around us. If you’re not on a corporate network requiring Windows, or your machine is not supplied to you by an employer, chances are much higher you’re using a Mac. Among my circle, here in Seattle, the stat is darn near reversed. And as Apple’s recent blowout quarter revealed, the Windows switch game is still going strong. From The New York Times story:

“One of the company’s strongest indications that it will see continued growth is its report that more than 50 percent of those who purchased Macintosh computers in its chain of 197 stores during the quarter were first-time Mac buyers.”

The Morning After: Engadget does an MRI and issues a clean bill of health. Seattle Times Mac heads Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Carlson weigh in and promise more to come, which is good. My chief complaint with tech reviews is that they’re superficial and way too early to be meaningful. Yet reviewers hardly ever revisit a system because there’s always something new and fresh to promote.

My early take: Leopard is a great upgrade, but Apple shouldn’t be charging $129 for these incremental pops. A $60 or so price tag would be more reasonable. Apple likes to talk about the fact it issues 5 upgrades to every 1 for Windows, but neglects to mention that means (using Apple’s own math) Mac users are paying $600 or more while Windows users pay $200 to $300. Of course, when the Windows upgrade is a turkey like Vista, you can certainly argue Mac users get the better value per buck.

Meanwhile, earlier on the same page:

UPDATE: Lines have been reported outside Apple stores in the Bay Area. But U Village’s store is closed for renovation, which a steady stream of disappointed customers today apparently did not know. Alderwood Mall had long enough lines so that folks were still waiting an hour and half after opening. Same story at Bellevue Square.

A friend reports his brother-in-law on Capitol Hill didn’t get Leopard, then called, and they re-delivered (FedEx claimed they’d been out but he wasn’t home, although the guy had been home all day). FedEx was delivering something like 135,000 in the region today, they told him…

Dave Winer will get his copy of Leopard today after all. But just in case, and as a great-idea, truth-squadding, follow-on to tonight’s rollout, Winer came up with a plan to “flash conference” Leopard on Monday. We’ll follow this with interest.

Chuck Shotton has discovered a bug! “Leopard’s “migrate user” function has failed 3 times on 3 separate clean installs. This is a seriously broken, critical piece of the OS.”

Meanwhile, Sylvia Paull has fallen victim to the Apple gateway drug.

And just be glad you’re not a Windows user: “Something seems to have gone horribly wrong in an untold number of IT departments on Wednesday after Microsoft installed a resource-hogging search application on machines company-wide, even though administrators had configured systems not to use the program.”

Apple releases Leopard, or OS X 10.5, tomorrow, and already there are reviews galore. David Pogue in The New York Times does a good rundown of features (and undoubtedly will soon issue a weighty tome on the operating system) and Steven Levy has a chaotic video review (not embeddable, sorry) on the Newsweek site which proves he should probably stick with print.

These early reviews are mostly promotional, of course. Reviewers aren’t supplied the software (which is usually pre-release, remember) far enough ahead to provide time for a thorough treatment, a practice aimed partly at preventing them from finding a real bug or gotcha. For a real hoot, go back and look at the early reviews of Windows Vista, compared with the universal disdain today.

Whereas you’ll be able to buy the system tomorrow, I’m told at various outlets that you will not be able to purchase Macs with pre-installed Leopard tomorrow. Instead, there will be a three-week (or so) waiting period while Apple sells off remaining computers with the old system. Of course, this is pre-sale information. Apple has a knack, courtesy of the Barnumesque genius of Steve Jobs, for popping the unexpected on a product rollout.

What may happen is this: A new line of re-upped notebooks, Leopard-optimized, at prices slightly higher than their existing, non-Leopard counterparts. You decide on price. That accelerates both ends. Gotta-have types who want the new system will pay the premium, but people who figure hey, I can install it myself, will go for the suddenly “bargain-priced” units.

I’d go further and say this might be the time to bring out the long-rumored Apple “flash” Mac (in whatever configuration) — the diskless (that’s right, no CD or DVD) cross of the iPod with a full-keyboard Mac. But it may be too early for that, and in any case such an announcement would be a blow-off-the-doors coup that deserves showcase treatment rather than a Leopard-rollout afterthought.

Looking around at photos and video from the SoCal wildfires, I don’t see too many black faces. In fact, I don’t recall having seen a single black face. Which makes me wonder if all the comparisons of the fires with Katrina, from the headcounts to the Bush Administration’s (supposed) response, are missing a singular point.

Not to minimize the plight of the wildfire evacuees, it needs to be pointed out that they are (appear to be, till statistical analysis is done) mostly white (undoubtedly Latino will tally as well), mostly politically conservative (with at least a tinge of religiosity), and mostly well to do (especially contrasted with Katrina victims) if not rich by general American standards. There’s some grim irony, too, in the “we take care of our own” pledges emerging from wildfire coverage. The caretakers and the caretakees look a lot alike.

Where are the stories of widespread looting? Where are the paramilitary and outside police forces called in to maintain law and order? How many bands of wildfire refugees have been blocked from crossing bridges into neighboring jurisdictions, or turned away by bayonetted soldiers from returning to the site of their homes? Where are the bulldozers, scraping down houses that might be rebuilt?

And the pets. Any pet owner (I’m one) was sickened by the wrenching site of animals wandering around lost after being forcibly abandoned by their owners. Remember the video of the little white dog jumping up to the closed doors of the evacuation bus? Cut to San Diego, where entire “pet evacuation centers” have sprung up.

You had people dying in the Superdome, while Qualcomm Stadium abounds with stories of Starbucks’ lattes and human kindness. You had repeated suggestions that Katrina victims would simply have to relocate elsewhere, that New Orleans could — even should — never be rebuilt in its former image.

In a way, it’s too bad that the SoCal inferno didn’t happen a couple of years before Katrina. Then the “lessons learned” mantra (which, of course, has yet to be proven sincere) would have a truer test, and more meaningful execution. As it stands, the still unwhole citizens of New Orleans must be viewing the collective response to their supposed brethren halfway across the continent with a mixture of envy and disgust.

Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley: “Zillow is emerging as the latest big threat to newspapers, which are watching a series of Internet companies go after their dominant share of advertising and undercutting them with free services.”

As someone who worked 38 years for newspapers, it’s tough to watch a hallowed industry melt to a puddle. If papers saw themselves as a service rather than a product, they might have a chance in the online game. Brier makes several good points about the changing marketplace, not all of them consistent: He goes from a header warning “Watch out, newspapers!” to a concluding sentence: “It’s hard to compete with free…but the site also has a long, long way to go before it has papers’ reach and market penetration.” (I guess Brier didn’t need a disclosure statement there!)

And that’s just the problem. If newspapers simply take the money while letting “free” services compete on price (or non-price), they’ll lose mindshare and brand value when, inevitably, critical mass shifts. Craigslist would not exist (in its current popularity) if papers had simply started giving away classifieds. But they couldn’t leave the revenues on the table.

(Another debate is whether, particularly in a down market, the Internet is changing the business of real-estate. I know three people who sold their homes via Craigslist and were much happier doing so — starting with, no seller’s commission. Dudley rightly notes the “channel conflict” Zillow faces as well in doing brokerage deals: Whose interests is Zillow defending, buyers or sellers?)

Dudley ID’s the progression here: Craigslist, Google, Yahoo, Zillow. I’d add Facebook to the list as well. But the real threat to newspapers began with the World Wide Web. The Web is the newspaper. Everything else is just a tweak in the machine.

This hilarious study somehow reminded me of an old feminist joke my wife likes to tell:

A man is feeling ill and goes to his doctor. The doctor asks to see his wife. “Your husband is very, very sick,” the doctor tells her, “and he’s going to die, unless he has a clean house, hot dinners and sex every night.” The wife goes back to her husband and he asks her what the doctor said. “He says you’re very, very sick,” she tells him, “and you’re going to die.”

It’s been rumored for several weeks, so may be anticlimactic, but AP is reporting that Microsoft is putting $240 million into Facebook for a 1.6 percent stake. (Local papers have versions on Web sites as well.)

There was a time when this kind of thing would have been suicidal for a young tech company. Microsoft would come on board, throw its weight around, take over projects, look at the code…then develop its own competing software. So times have really changed. Now you can view it as Microsoft simply trying to get in on an action it has no hope of branding on its own, as well as a jamming in a wedge against Google. You could certainly view this deal as a turning point in the Evil Empire stigma of Microsoft.

“Culminating weeks of negotiations, the investment announced Wednesday values Palo Alto-based Facebook at $15 billion — a stunning figure for an online hangout started in a Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.” Well, it does and it doesn’t. No sound economic valuation based on P/E or any other existing index (revs of $100M to $150M, give me a break) would put Facebook anywhere near that. This is all on the come, an act of faith that social networking technology won’t commoditize or be usurped by some new technology. But what both Microsoft and Facebook want to do in cases like this is pump the appearance of value, so why not go along with the hype?

Don’t believe the stenographic line that Microsoft “beat out” Google, however. Google would not have let Facebook slip if it really wanted it. Similarly, though, suggestions that Google let Facebook slip because it is developing its own social-networking site are probably off base. My view is that Google has little incentive to do a social-networking site, because that would cannibalize its own advertising market. Besides, with Blogger, YouTube, Google Pages and other powerful pieces, the Google sum is greater than any SN’s parts.

The SoCal wildfires are showcasing emerging Web 2.0 technologies — the first “Web 2.0 disaster” as Paul Kedrosky puts it.

Google Maps, courtesy of KPBS, has a mashup of fires, evacuations, response sites and so on. I like the idea of mashups but sure wish the map interface were snappier and a bit more sophisticated graphically.

KPBS, the San Diego NPR affiliate (someone knows what they’re doing there), also has a continuous Twitter feed (ticker). A great application for software in search of one.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a Blogspot (Google) blog instead of an in-house blog. I’m not as surprised as Kedrosky by this. In-house newspaper blogs for the most part aren’t even an echo chamber because there’s so little sound to begin with, leaving aside the issue of clumsy UIs. The U-T blog shows how a newspaper’s resources can really shine online when put to good use. Few services could assemble this kind of clearing house on such short notice.

Jim Forbes, a retired tech editor, is ‘fire-blogging’ the disaster from an evacuation shelter in Escondido with a Lenovo X60 tablet and integrated cell modem. A guy who can actually write, reporting in real time. What a treat.

Web 2.0 generally refers to the burbling “social networking” and digital-collaboration technologies all the rage now. It’s fine to call the wildfires a made-to-order Web 2.0 catastrophe, but networking technology proved its utility under societal duress long ago with the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco when The Well kept onliners in touch and informed.

What’s particularly intriguing, as Forbes notes, is how much more effective the Web is than cell phones, especially voice usage. The forced brevity and directness of IM, its multithreading capability and durability of communication all really come in handy during emergencies, and 802.x Wi-Fi apparently is carrying the day better than cell nets. If only the kids didn’t have to IM while they drive (thereby creating emergencies).

UPDATE: Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has a personal perspective on the SoCal fires, a moving rebuttal to right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck’s unfathomable comment about fire victims encompassing “a handful of people who hate America.” Beck apparently is carried on KTTH-AM 770 in Seattle, if you want to register a complaint. (Clarification: The Orcinus post, as noted in comments, is by-lined Sara.)

And yes, Clinton was in town. But I didn’t go (read not a fan) and so far haven’t found any report that gives me a real sense of what Her Hillariness was like, in the real. I’ll let you know when/if I do, but why didn’t anybody live blog the thing?

FOLO: Michael at Blatherwatch has a good report.

Meanwhile, earlier on the same page…

It’s Tuesday morning and sheesh, I would have hoped for a better news day for my HA debut. Didn’t any candidates go out drinking last night?

Instead, I’ve got what: A baby gorilla born at the Woodland Park Zoo (cute photo!). The P-I, acknowledging being scooped by Sound Politics, says Rossi will announce he’s running again for governor on Thursday (knock us over with a feather!). And the burning question of the day: Did David Copperfield cancel his Asian shows because of the rape charges or not?

Maybe they did you (although, since you’re here, I doubt it), but none of these stories interested me much. They could have, though. LIke most of what passes for “news” these days, these reports are primarily stenographic accounts with virtually no context. And in the age of the Internet, what makes real news is not the ability to accurately, or even inaccurately, quote an official source as he or she spins faster than a Maytag washer. What makes real news is the backstory, the truth-squadding, the angle that officialdom is trying to conceal.

A baby gorilla is a cool thing, especially in its natural habitat. In a zoo…well, that’s a bit more problematic. The first question to ask is, what’s the baby’s chance of survival? Not all zoo newborns make it, or last into adulthood, the most visible example locally being Hansa the elephant. There are separation issues, habitat issues, feeding and health issues, and then just the whole incarceration thing. We hear a lot about the births at a zoo, not so much about the deaths. (Woodland Park has lost at least a dozen animals in the past couple of years.)

Then too, there’s a growing movement, not just in the U.S., that questions whether large-animal zoos are really sustainable, especially in metropolitan environments. These are not just animal-rights folks. They’re greenies, they’re neighborhood activists, they’re global warming activists and they’re financial bottom-liners as well. Zoos are incredibly expensive. The Seattle City Council turned the Woodland Zoo over to a private non-profit mostly in hopes the Zoo Society could run the operation in the black, or at least break even. The Zoo Society has not helped its cause with costly boondoggles like the proposed mammoth parking garage, which will require millions in city funds. And the Zoo keeps bumping up entry and parking fees, which lowered attendance figures this year.

Not to go too global here, getting back to our point: Even a baby gorilla story can have some fascinating backstories. How much does a birth, and additional life at a zoo, cost? Will the gorilla spend her whole life at the Woodland Zoo (where are the previous 11 gorillas born at Woodland)? What do zoo skeptics say about in-zoo births? Any of these angles would give life to what otherwise is what a great reporter I once knew called a “real thumbsucker.”

As for Rossi announcing his already doomed gubernatorial campaign, I’m curious about the counterpoint here with John McKay and Alberto Gonzales. Maybe there isn’t one, but the timing could be more than coincidental. McKay was on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown tonight, in a follow-up to last week’s speech, saying he believes Inspector General Glenn Fine’s report on Gonzales is near, and could recommend prosecuting Gonzales, based at least in part on McKay’s being fired for “allowing” Gov. Christine Gregoire’s victory over Rossi in 2004 to stand.

As a somewhat informed reader, I wonder about the timing. I’d like not to have to rely on Sound Politics’ take, though. Even a line or two along the lines, “Rossi’s bid comes as a report on Gonzales, blah blah” in a mainstream story would help non-junkies like myself watch for and even understand a connection between the two. Otherwise I’ll have to turn to a (gasp) blogger like Goldy or somebody to explain it all.

Again, though, the word is “context.”

Then we have David Copperfield, who if he only had “sexually misconducted” a woman from Vegas would blessedly never have made the pages and Web sites of local media at all. I have to take huge exception to his lawyer’s line that David has never forced himself on anyone. Many times, innocently watching late-night TV talk shows, I have felt violated by Copperfield’s cheeseball tricks and hammed up showmanship.

If indeed it is at all meaningful whether Copperfield canceled his shows because of the charge, I would have hoped for a broader treatment, maybe checking with ticket outlets on how sales were going, asking sources in the “magic community” what they hear, etc. etc. Quoting predictable sources saying predictable things just doesn’t make it news.

In these cases I am always reminded of the tennis great, Boris Becker, the youngest Wimbledon male winner ever, who was charged by a Russian model with fathering her child. Becker denied it, saying he had not had vaginal sex with the girl. It turned out she had given him a blow job, kept it in her mouth, gone to the bathroom, spat into a syringe and…well, you can just imagine the rest. (At least, that was the rumored version. Becker has denied it.)

If media are going to “report” the Copperfield story, they really need to tell me whether any documentation exists, what it says, and so on down the line. In these cases we seldom learn the truth, it doesn’t matter anyway, and there’s almost no real point in attempting to learn it.

As for me, here’s what I found interesting on the overnight ticker:

Microsoft is capitulating on its European Union antitrust fight…or is it? The landscape has changed so dramatically over the past 9 years that you can argue Windows server code no longer has much competitive edge to it. And even if it did, Microsoft has to open it up to ever-greater degrees or face more usurpation from open-source solutions. The key declaration in the New York Times story: “Microsoft said it would not pursue a final appeal to the European Court of Justice, which could have drawn the case out another two to three years.” Any time Microsoft pitches on a chance to draw out an antitrust action, you know it’s become irrelevant to the company.

Web pioneer Dave Winer is organizing The New York Times‘ news feeds in what he terms “river” technology. I don’t claim to fully understand what’s going on here, and it may well be one of those things that lead to places we simply cannot foresee (including a dead end). But Dan Gillmor has it right when he lauds The Times for opening up its data stream to outside resources — in the cause of better journalism. I read virtually all my news online with an RSS reader, as admittedly few others do (for reasons I cannot understand, other than RSS still hasn’t clicked with most people). I remain convinced, though, that RSS will channel journalism in ever-enriching directions. We’re still, in Howard Rheingold’s immortal phrase, all beginners here.

We end where we began. “River” technology seems to be more about putting the news in a greater context, with related links and prioritization based on timeliness and demand. It could help address blogging’s big weakness, the perpetual scroll that relegates posts, no matter how significant or enduring, to obscurity merely as a factor of churn. When you’re up against information overload and the constantly refreshing feed, you need all the tools you can get to figure out what’s meaningful to you and what is not.