randomwalks/dj

This is an essay written by Eric Triantafillou that is included in Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today. Eric wrote the piece as a provocation to political printmakers, asking all of us to think deeper about what we do, and question whether it is accomplishing the things we think it should or we want it to. I find it challenging and valuable, and want to post it here in hopes of starting a broader discussion. Please give it a read and chime in. I know a number of artists that have read it and have questions and conflicts, so here's the place to raise them!:

All The Instruments Agree
Eric Triantafillou

The façade of a now-defunct police station in San Francisco’s Mission District is plastered with street art. It is a visual cacophony of posters, flyers, stencils, paintings, drawings, and the hand-scrawled responses of passers-by. A remnant of the housing struggles that began in 2000, today this wall is a public commons that transmits information about everything from legal rights workshops to communist party meetings and yoga classes; also occupying its surface are corporate ads cloaked in DIY lino-chic. It is also a screen onto which people project thoughts and feelings about the world they fear and visions of the one they want.

From a distance, all these competing images and ideas side by side create an uneasy harmony, like a Jackson Pollock painting—a kind of abstract social expressionism. Up close, reading the messages, you see a lot of contradiction and tension, evidence of the wall’s messy and contentious evolution. The tactile beauty of the wall is immediate, and yet you realize that this wall is not just a space; it also reveals a history—it is a process in time. But what kind of process? Is the wall a representation of a public and participatory experiment, or its actualization? Is the wall a truly democratic space in a society that only claims to be democratic? Do these disparate images and contradictory ideas illustrate the diversity of our social, cultural, and political perspectives?

We could view this form of public communication not as constituting a consensus, but as proof that we can have dissensus and yet still coexist. After all, no one has to listen to or agree with anyone’s opinions; they simply need to tolerate them being expressed. Any idea, any image, can simply be covered over by another, ad infinitum. We could celebrate the wall as a bastion of diversity and dissent, a toehold in a society whose public space is increasingly privatized and controlled. But we also have to recognize that the wall can represent a norm for controversy in a society that has not found a way to resolve its conflicts, a society that easily recuperates the meaning of experiments like these and then sells them back to us as aesthetic commodities.

The book you hold in your hands is also a kind of wall. At one time or another, many of the images in this book have appeared in public spaces across the U.S. and other countries. Like layers of time, these images have been peeled off the palimpsest and placed next to each other on the page. These juxtapositions are both powerful and problematic. Like the wall in the Mission, this book represents a diverse cross-section of ideas and practices that together form a loose aggregate that we could call “left political art.” However, viewing all these images next to each other can give the appearance of political unity when there may actually be none.

As printmakers, most of us produce our work with an understanding that we are contributing to and continuing the tradition of politicized printmaking that Deborah Caplow discusses in her essay—a tradition that began with Goya in the early nineteenth century. I often think that we are more preoccupied with continuing this tradition than with asking why the promise it holds out—the promise of universal emancipation—remains so elusive. Our need to be constantly busy, to always be making more, is endemic to the activist compulsion to keep a movement alive, with little sense of what we are moving toward or why. I would go so far as to say that we, the producers of images that are meant to represent social conflict and its antidotes, may actually be complicit in prolonging, as opposed to fulfilling, this broken promise. How could this be?

The graphic art of dissent over the past century and a half is an endlessly twisting, impossibly varied, and fantastically inspired and inspiring maze of imagery. Yet within this multiplicity of signs, symbols, and slogans there are clearly many that are used again and again. The images of past struggles comprise a kind of inventory of left visual tropes that are continuously recycled. New generations of makers adapt the images of previous generations to the social conditions and aesthetic sensibilities of the present. This is in part what it means to operate within a tradition. Images of the past are re-used in order to commemorate them, to create symbolic continuity, to inspire new social movements with the knowledge that they are rooted in the past, to prevent historical amnesia.

Left graphics regularly portray the relationship of social forces as a conflict between two sides: Us­—children crying, clenched fists, crowds amassing, plants growing, doves alighting—versus Them—bombs falling, smoke stacks spewing, barbed wire, prison bars, skeletons. In nineteenth-century France, left political cartoons frequently characterized the bourgeoisie as a parasite that sucks the blood of the workers. Many early anarchists and socialists believed that if the workers—whom they believed produced all the wealth—could rid society of the bourgeoisie, they would finally be free. In the history of left political art, this opposition is played out again and again in expressions like “Capitalists need workers, but workers don’t need capitalists.” It is probable that in a society in which workers controlled production there would be a more equitable distribution of material wealth. But I don’t think it helps to think of capitalism as something that some people do and others don’t. We are all subjects of the same socioeconomic system. The captains of industry and finance are no less dominated by this system, regardless of the fact that they benefit more, than the billions of people with far less. We are all bound to a system characterized by a blind march toward profit, one that must constantly revolutionize or perish.

In early 2000, during the housing crisis in San Francisco that was caused by the new Internet economy, I produced the image Cleaner, Brighter, Whiter Tablecloths. An ironic jab at the hipsters who were moving into the neighborhood, it refers to the ethnic bleaching of the city’s predominately lower-income Mission District. The image portrays the immediate reality that was visible in the streets, representing gentrification as an opposition between those perpetrating it and those fighting against it. Representing the “gentrifiers” makes it unnecessary to represent those fighting against gentrification; the latter are implied. If as a viewer I don’t identify with what the symbols in the image signify, I am against them; I am one of us. And since we tend to affirm symbols of resistance as authentic expressions of suffering, joy, and indignation, we rarely question the thinking or the politics that are bound up with these symbols.

Cleaner, Brighter, Whiter Tablecloths only mirrored the way things appeared on the surface: young, white, urban professionals move into a “Latino” neighborhood, driving up real estate values and disrupting the sense of community. This conception reinforces the idea that capitalist society operates and can be understood through binaries like gentrifiers versus indigenous residents. What gets lost is the understanding of gentrification as a consequence of a socio-historical dynamic that shapes the actions of everyone involved: the venture capitalist who invests; the politician who frames the change as the natural course of economic development; the planning commission that rezones the neighborhood to pave the way; the banker who lends; the property owner who borrows to flip a condo or the first-time home-buyer who takes out a mortgage she can barely afford; the developer who controls the building trades or the independent contractor who hires cheap immigrant labor; and the community coalition attempting to get a temporary moratorium on the construction of market-rate housing so a few lower-income families can stay in their homes a little longer. The image of colonizing yuppies in search of authentic cultural interaction flattens this complex set of actors and interests into an easy-to-digest call to action. The more complex challenge of addressing gentrification and anti-gentrification struggles as systemic, as part of a process in which capital moves in and out of the built environment—the spatial component of capitalism’s necessity to continuously accumulate and expand—is something these symbols cannot communicate, and, in fact, obfuscate.

What is driving capitalism’s imperative to continuously accumulate value and increase that value? Is it old-fashioned human greed or something else? Why does gentrification specifically, and capitalism more generally, appear as a struggle between two opposing sides? Exploitation and social conflict are real and ever-present. But the socio-historical dynamic that structures all relationships, a dynamic that has become increasingly abstract over time, is concealed when it is understood through simple oppositions. This dynamic is rooted in the contingency and symbiosis of all social forces, classes, and interests. To reduce it to a conflict between good and evil does not help explain how this dynamic mediates social life, its origins, or how it has changed over time.

If we continue to express our politics as either choosing to do good or choosing to do bad, we will continue to think of the problem as one of being, as something in us, and not as a relationship between us. Good decisions by good people do not alter this dynamic in any fundamental way. Our focus on the ethical or unethical character of capitalist development, expressed in symbols of altruism versus greed, implies a politics of technocracy (an increase in social services here, a tighter regulation there), but also has the effect of closing off possibilities for more radical politics. Reform that ameliorates immediate material conditions strengthens the dominant thinking that our socioeconomic system is fundamentally sound, that it just needs some tinkering around the edges.

What if our images could do more? What if they had the potential to be radical, to go to the root, to try to represent the relationship that is hidden behind the binary idioms of our tradition? What if we were able to know what determines, and to clearly express, that which is truly wrong with capitalist society? As negative as our thinking and our images might become, they would point toward what is right and better.

At the same time artists are working through problems of representation, we must also think about how we produce images. What are the contexts in which our images are made? Who are the images for? Are they just preaching to the converted? If Cleaner, Brighter, Whiter Tablecloths was problematic as an image, the context in which it was made—as part of a larger effort to mount a visual response to what was happening in San Francisco’s Mission District—had far more potential. In 2000, some fellow printmakers and I began making posters about displacement and evictions. One of the places where we put them was on the old police station wall. Our group, the San Francisco Print Collective, became the propaganda wing of a neighborhood coalition that had come together to fight gentrification. SFPC members were united by the idea that art is an incredibly powerful tool when rooted in a social movement. We didn’t always agree with the political positions or tactics the coalition adopted, but we shared a common goal. The SFPC’s images and messages were composed by multiple voices within our collective, but when they hit the streets they spoke with one voice. Our work’s constant visual presence in public space helped communicate to others what was happening in the neighborhood. It also inspired and motivated people in the movement, inextricably linking our effectiveness and longevity to the wider community’s struggle.

Artists of the past organized large-scale unions and popular fronts in response to the social conditions of their time. Although these forms of organizing shouldn’t be ruled out, they haven’t materialized in the present. Many artists already work in small collectives, organizing themselves around shared affinities, social values, mutual support, and resource sharing. This doesn’t mean that as artists we automatically share a common political vision because of our backgrounds, a certain temperament, the media with which we work, or our relationship to other social actors and institutions. But what if we did? What if, instead of letting this book or the Mission District wall represent our differences—our pluralism—we began to work towards articulating a shared commonality?

I advocate that we, left printmakers, develop a set of shared goals, and use our powerful ability to intervene in public space, to create new ways of thinking and new meanings that refuse the dominant ones, and to develop tactics that can help us achieve those goals. The voices in this book and on that wall give the appearance of unity, of a unified opposition to capitalist society. But on closer examination, you can see fissures, fractures, and contradictions. If we began to organize ourselves, to create spaces for collective reflection and political education, I think we would find that ideologically we are very atomized, and that many of us would rather remain this way because the concept of unity (and all the past failed attempts at it) means a loss of individual freedom.

The collective articulation of a set of goals (which in and of itself would be an incredible undertaking) would necessitate an in-depth analysis of all the practices we’re engaged in. It would mean that we would have to confront the fact that some ways of thinking and some practices are probably better than others, as instruments for achieving our goals. This doesn’t mean it is wrong to make images that advocate that we “Support the troops, send the politicians to war” or “Knit for the revolution.” But it does mean that if these are the kinds of stories we tell ourselves and we attempt to fashion a politics out of them, we may not be getting any closer to our goals. In their broadest sense, these goals would have to involve creating the social conditions in which someone’s desire to make whatever she wants, to think and act as she sees fit—without being dominated by time, space or someone else—will have been gained for all.

The wall insists on an encounter. It wants to be used. But it is a space that gestures toward something beyond itself. It is not an end. It is a process of becoming. At the same time we create spaces of dialogue and public commons, at the same time we continue our tradition as the archaeologists of dreams and the farmers of inspiration, we can realize the force of unity that lies dormant in our fractured and individualistic practices. Let’s investigate our own thinking. Let’s look at our practices. Let’s collectively reflect on the images we make, and how and for whom we make them. Let’s ask if they could do more—if they could reveal the abstract barbarity of our social reality, and still incite and inspire us. As long as our goals are based on an intransigent desire for total social freedom, we have nothing to fear.

Eric Triantafillou lives in Chicago where he teaches and writes. He cofounded the San Francisco Print Collective and Mindbomb, a collaborative political activist art group in Romania.

If you are interested in the book this essay came from, which includes two other full length essays, 200 color reproductions of political prints, and a dozen short pieces of writing by printmakers, please check it out HERE.

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on February 9, 2010 2:38 AM

I don’t think I’m all that different from most fans who glance at stats — when I see them, I automatically view them as a player’s real talent. But one thing I’ve taken away from my reading of baseball analysts far more intelligent than I (granted, that’s not a very high standard), is that there’s an important distinction to be made between observed performance and true talent. Past performance should certainly inform how we estimate future performance. But it isn’t enough on its own. One of the most important tools for estimating true talent relative to observed performance and its sample size is regression to the mean. A good place to start reading with reference to the current discussion is The Book.

One bad habit many of us might get into it looking at the platoon splits of two players at the same position, one with a career wOBA of .390 vs. RHP, the other with a career wOBA of .400 vs. LHP, and thinking, “Wow, that platoon would be almost as good as Ryan Braun!.” It isn’t that simple. As in most other things, regression shows us that the distance from average is closer than it appears. Technical explanations aside, I’ll simply summarize what is relevant for estimating platoon skills.

How much we regress depends on the variation of skill in the relevant population. The less variation there is, the more likely deviations from the mean are random occurrences. Practically speaking, left-handed hitters display more variation in platoon skill than right-handed hitters, so in estimating the platoon skills of left-handed hitter, we use less regression.* According to The Book, we regress lefties’ platoon skills against 1000 PA against LHP of league average splits for left-handed hitters, and righties against 2200 PA against LHP. This means that when hitters have less than 1000/2200 PAs vs LHP, we estimate their platoon skill to be closer to league average than to their observed platoon performance. In practical terms, it also means that for righties, we’re usually save in assuming they have near-average platoon skills.

* Switch-hitters display the most platoon skill variation as a population, but that is a can of worms for another day. The Book writes that after 600 career PA against LHP, one has a pretty good idea of a switch-hitter’s platoon skill.

Some concrete examples might help. For my league average, I’ve taken MLB-wide splits from 2007 to 2009 from Baseball Reference and converted them to wOBA. This is just going to be a very basic demonstration, as, e.g. I wasn’t able to exclude pitchers from the splits, or remove switch-hitters, or leave out steals, weighted, and so on, but I think it will give the general idea. From 2007 to 2009, the average wOBA split for left-handed hitters was about 8.6%, and for right-handed hitter, about 6.1% (following The Book [I think], I use a percentage split to avoid potential logical absurdities and to reflect the reality that better hitters usually have larger splits.

We’ll begin with everyone’s favorite example of a “big splits” guy: Curtis Granderson. For his career, Granderson is a .358 wOBA hitter. However, while he has hit a robust .380 vs. RHP, in 685 versus LHP, he’s been 2009 Yuniesky Betancourt with a .270 wOBA. That’s a whopping 110 points of wOBA difference, about 30.7% in observed performance.

But remember — skill is closer to average than it appears. Regressing Granderson’s 685 PA of 30.7% against 1000 PA of league average (8.6%): (.307*685+.086*1000)/(685+1000), indicating an estimated platoon skill of 17.6%. “Centering” the split is a bit of a challenge, but I weighted it by the number of PAs the player has against LHP in his career (for Granderson, about 23.7%). For Granderson’s split, then, I have +4.2% vs. RHP, and -13.4% vs. LHP. Applying this to his 2010 CHONE projection of .359 wOBA, we’d forecast his 2010 wOBA against RHP as .374, and against LHP as .311. .311 is below average, but it’s far better than .270, and given Granderson’s skill in the field, you’d be hard-pressed to find a right-handed platoon partner that would offer an overall advantage to just playing Granderson. You’d also need a pretty good right-handed bench bat in order to overcome the “pinch-hitting penalty” when hitting for Granderson.

For a right-handed example, let’s use Ryan Garko, recently acquired by the Mariners as a platoon 1B/DH. Garko has career wOBA of .347, .332 vs. RHP in 1229 PA, and .382 vs. LHP in 485 PA — a 14.4% difference. But he’s a righty, so we regress toward 2200 PA of the average (6.1%): (.144*485+.0611*2200)/(485+2200) for an estimated platoon skill of 7.6%. Using the CHONE projection of .345 wOBA, we’d estimate Garko to be a .338 hitter versus RHP, and .364 versus LHP. That’s a good hitter versus lefties, and while the .338 isn’t great for a 1B/DH, it isn’t as if he’s useless against RHP.

Before I call it a post, I thought it would be interesting to quickly estimate the platoon skills of two players who have “reverse” splits for their careers.

Right-handed hitting Matt Holliday has a career wOBA of .400, but has hit .402 vs. RHP (2793 PA) and and .377 vs. LHP (845 PA), a -6.3% split (negative indicating “reverse”). After regression, we get a 2.7% estimated platoon skill. Given CHONE’s .389 wOBA forecast for Holliday, we’d estimate his skill as .387 wOBA vs RHP, and .397 vs. LHP. Not quite a “reverse,” but you don’t really want to “burn” a ROOGY against Holliday, either.

Colorado’s Ian Stewart has a career .337 wOBA, .334 vs RHP (655 PA) and .346 vs LHP, a -3.6% split. After regression, it comes to a 6.7% split. Given CHONE’s .358 wOBA forecast, we’d expect Stewart to his around .363 vs. RHP and .339 vs. LHP, a nice split for a lefty, but not a reverse one.

Like all forecasts, these are estimations (and crude ones, at that). To be more thorough, we’d have to assign confidence intervals/reliability scores. We’ simply trying to minimize our error. But keep in mind that splits in the retrospective mirror are almost always smaller than they appear.

[Note: After completing this post, I realized that Tom Tango had already posted about this on his blog, using Granderson as an example. D'oh. Fortunately, my results are almost exactly the same]

Originally posted by Matt Klaassen from FanGraphs Baseball, on February 8, 2010 11:00 AM

Via Kottke comes info about deckle edges, the imitation in modern books of what sliced pages would look like. Which makes me wonder just why the iPad -- with its faux bookshelf and its faux page turn isn't going all the way to having the user cut the edge of the virtual page with a virtual knife before being able to turn it.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on February 8, 2010 9:23 AM

I've posted about hikaru dorodango a couple times before but they're always worth another look. Dorodango start out as sloppy mud balls but through careful shaping and polishing with dirt and sand, they end up perfectly round and shiny. Here is a particularly beautiful and unusual example, made some yellow soil in New Mexico:

That totally looks like leather! Here is a more traditional (and shiny!) example:

Both of these were made by dorodango artist Bruce Gardner. Here's some video of how the balls are made:

This video is good as well but if you want to create your own, these detailed directions will be a better guide.

Tags: hikaru dorodango   how to

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 8, 2010 9:19 AM

davidkaneda:

Panelfly, a beautiful comic book app for the iPhone, has announced their plans to support the iPad. They’ve already mocked up a great selection of screens—each showing incredible attention to detail and level of innovation for a yet unreleased OS.

(via Soup)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net reblog, on February 8, 2010 9:17 AM

According to Brian Costa of the Star-Ledger, “The Mets’ equipment truck is scheduled to leave for Port St. Lucie tomorrow at 11 am.”

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 8, 2010 9:03 AM

Whether you want to be a monster like Gaga or a humanitarian a la Angie, Charity Buzz's latest offer is a win-win.

Lady Gaga is auctioning off her Gary Card-designed skeleton corset (shown) on the site. The money raised will go to Oxfam International, benefiting the victims of Haiti's earthquake.

The bid is currently at $5,000, which is $3,000 over the estimated value, but it's for charity, so keep bidding!

Think about it: Can you really put a price on lip-syncing "Bad Romance" in Gaga's own corset?

Haiti - Lady Gaga - Oxfam - Bad Romance - Caribbean

Originally posted by Steff Yotka from Fashionista, on February 8, 2010 8:22 AM

2009 was filled with so many wonderful cookbooks but Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home has to be one of the most eagerly anticipated and well-received. Right now it's sitting happily on Amazon's best seller list alongside other media sensations of 2009, including the Twilight Saga, Sarah Palin's biography, and the latest from Dan Brown.

Not bad for a cookbook written by a chef who doesn't double as a television personality.

Thomas Keller has been making his presence known since he took over the Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry. Winning international accolades and three Michelin stars, Keller helped transform his unique style of American cooking into something that was taken seriously not only here but all over the world.

Even if you haven't had the pleasure of dining at The French Laundry or Per Se, chances are you've seen or heard about his playful signature dishes, Oysters and Pearls, and Coffee and Doughnuts.

After years of fine dining and indulgently epic pre-fixe menus Keller decided to open a restaurant that served the simple comfort food he enjoyed cooking on his days off. Ad Hoc started out as an experiment, a temporary casual restaurant that served simple family-style meals, a dining experience more similar to eating at home than at a restaurant.

This temporary project was so successful it became a full-fledged restaurant with rotating weekly menus and dishes to fantastically well-received that the next logical step could only be publishing a cookbook.

Ad Hoc at Home is filled with recipes for the dishes served at its namesake restaurant, including that incredible Fried Chicken that was good enough to warrant a make-at-home mix. Similar to other cookbooks written by restaurant chefs for home-style foods, the recipes accessible but punctuated with tips and techniques that only come from years of cooking behind the line.

Keller keeps the book plenty lighthearted with informative and oftentimes hilarious photos of himself in front of a blackboard, reminding you to let your meat rest and professing his love for the saucing spoon.

This week we are going to share some of Keller's favorite home-style meals with you. Keller's Michelin-starred signature dishes might not lie within the pages of Ad Hoc but you will find delicious, approachable recipes that are entirely doable and have no need for fancy restaurant-style equipment. It's going to be a week of haute comfort food from America's most talked-about chef and I for one can't wait to get cooking.

Win 'Ad Hoc at Home'

Thanks to the generous folks over at Artisan Books, we are giving away five (5) copies of Ad Hoc at Home this week. All you have to do is tell us about your favorite neighborhood restaurant in the comments section below.

Five (5) people will be chosen at random among the eligible comments below. We're sorry, but entry is only open to residents of the U.S. and Canada. Comments will close Monday, February 15 at noon ET. The standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.

Originally posted by Caroline Russock from Serious Eats, on February 8, 2010 8:00 AM

Last year's trashy GoDaddy SuperBowl commercials annoyed me enough to switch domain registrars; this year's just confirmed I made the right decision. If you want out, here's what I posted about it last year:

Yes, I knew that popular, cheap domain registrar GoDaddy always used sex to sell their services, and yes, their bullying upsells always bugged me, but yesterday’s Super Bowl ad shot my “Stop doing business with GoDaddy” to-do to the top of my list. But where to transfer to? I polled my Twitter friends on which registrars were the best alternatives. Here’s a spreadsheet of the full vote tally; turns out the least expensive, top vote-getter was Namecheap.com.

Been very happy with NameCheap ever since, and their "Not happy with your current registrar's advertising methods?" switching coupon code, SWITCH2NC, still works. Sorry, Danica: I like looking at beautiful people, just not at Hooters.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on February 8, 2010 7:37 AM

This is, by all reports, an actual billboard on I-35 in Wyoming, Minnesota:

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Originally posted by webmaster@nationalreview.com (Daniel Foster) from The Corner on National Review Online, on February 8, 2010 7:30 AM

The way that books used to be printed, the reader would have to cut open each page with a paper knife before it could be read, every page a tiny gift from the writer.

The printing happened on large sheets of paper which were then folded into rectangles the size of the finished pages and bound. The reader then sliced open the folds. Paper knives, variants of letter openers, were used for this purpose.

The deckle edge on modern books is an imitation of what those sliced open books looked like.

Tags: books

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 8, 2010 7:26 AM

Um, Adam Gopnik kind of liveblogged the Super Bowl? No matter. NOTHING can take away my joy over the Saints' victory.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on February 8, 2010 7:15 AM

The most obvious next step for Bobby Valentine is Flushing, says Bob Klapisch in a report for FoxSports.com.

According to Klapisch, “Jerry Manuel has two months, at best, to prove he can reverse the Mets downward spiral, which began all the way back in Game 7 of the 2006 NL Championship Series.”

Klapisch feels one long losing streak could get Manuel fired.  “Question is,’ he asks, ‘would ownership have the guts to re-hire Valentine?’

…i want to give Jerry Manuel the chance to be successful, and i wish him the best… but, if he does end up being fired, i think i made myself quite clear, last October, here, that i want bobby to be his replacement… i know some people will like the idea of doing a total 180–degree turn from manuel with Wally Backman… but, i just can’t see wally getting promoted so soon… i mean, backman’s Cyclones do not play their first game until mid June… so, backman in Queens during 2010 doesn’t seem to make sense…

…as i explained in October, to me, valentine is more than a manager, he’d be a shift in brand, a change in the type of player acquired, etc., and it would have to part of a larger organizational shift… and, i’m not sure the Mets are ready for such a bold move, though they should be…

…by the way, thank you, klap, for the shout out in your report… much appreciated…

Updated at 12:25 pm:

Anthony L: Klap is right, would the Mets even hire Valentine?  Or is it a pipe dream?

Matthew Cerrone: Frankly, I don’t think such topics are being talked about over there, as they have faith in Manuel and, obviously, think he will be successful this season.  That said, from what I can gather, Ownership still thinks very highly of Valentine, and so, in the event the team is looking for a new manager, I do think he would be seriously considered.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 8, 2010 7:07 AM

The number of city workers pulling down $100,000 or more jumped more than tenfold in the last decade, largely because of hefty raises won by schoolteachers and principals. Figures compiled by the mayor's Budget Office at the request of The Post show that just 2,059 employees broke...

Originally posted by By DAVID SEIFMAN City Hall Bureau Chief from NY Post: Local News, on February 8, 2010 6:24 AM

We all experience it at some point in our lives: Who am I? Why am I here? What gives my life meaning? Oh the angst and torment of the existential struggle. But isn't it kind of comforting to know that bars go through it too? Case in point, the Belgian Room. The recently re-opened spot started as the Belgian Room, tried a Latin theme on for size for a month or few, and ultimately realized it had to go back to its roots. A coming of age story if I ever heard one. But the identity crisis doesn't seem to be over yet. The drunken monk statuettes and beer signs galore give the front a more casual pub feel in front (as does a digital jukebox with ads involving scantily clad ladies) but once you make your way to the back, unexpectedly bouncy white banquettes, framed vintage beer ads, and sleek wood panels create a decidedly lounge-y atmosphere. Fortunately, the one thing the Belgian Room seems absolutely sure about is its beer. Its mile-long list of Belgian bottles on offer is the bar's showpiece, and its tap with Delirium Tremens ($9) and Maudite from Unibroue (pronounced "unibrow"; $7) isn't half shabby. And $2 off all beers until 8pm should help you figure out exactly what you're doing there, if not the meaning of life.

Belgian Room
121 St. Mark's Place
(212) 533-4467

Photo from www.newyorkontap.com.

Originally posted by Alexis Swerdloff from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on February 8, 2010 6:15 AM

All nine of the planets in our solar system are represented in these wonderful posters by Ross Berens.

Pluto. Never forget.

Tags: design   Pluto   Ross Berens   space

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 8, 2010 5:54 AM

Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson has a blog to which he posts quick snaps. Sorta like everyone else on the planet except that oh, there's Kate Moss and there's Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and there's Justin Theroux and there's Doutzen Kroes and there's Tracy Morgan.

Somewhat NSFW in places.

Tags: photography   Terry Richardson

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 8, 2010 4:58 AM

(re-published from the Flickr Code Blog

This is the first post in the Using, Abusing and Scaling MySQL at Flickr series.

Ticket servers aren’t inherently interesting, but they’re an important building block at Flickr. Among other things they are core to topics we’ll be talking about later, like sharding and master-master. Ticket servers give us globally (Flickr-wide) unique integers to serve as primary keys in our distributed setup.

Why?

Sharding (aka data partioning)) is how we scale Flickr’s datastore. Instead of storing all our data on one really big database, we have lots of databases, each with some of the data, and spread the load between them. Sometimes we need to migrate data between databases, so we need our primary keys to be globally unique. Additionally our MySQL shards are built as master-master replicant pairs for resiliency. This means we need to be able to guarantee uniqueness within a shard in order to avoid key collisions. We’d love to go on using MySQL auto-incrementing columns for primary keys like everyone else, but MySQL can’t guarantee uniqueness across physical and logical databases.

GUIDs?

Given the need for globally unique ids the obvious question is, why not use GUIDs? Mostly because GUIDs are big, and they index badly in MySQL. One of the ways we keep MySQL fast is we index everything we want to query on, and we only query on indexes. So index size is a key consideration. If you can’t keep your indexes in memory, you can’t keep your database fast. Additionally ticket servers give us sequentiality which has some really nice properties including making reporting and debugging more straightforward, and enabling some caching hacks.

Consistent Hashing?

Some projects like Amazon’s Dynamo provide a consistent hashing ring on top of the datastore to handle the GUID/sharding issue. This is better suited for write-cheap environments (e.g. LSMTs), while MySQL is optimized for fast random reads.

Centralizing Auto-Increments

If we can’t make MySQL auto-increments work across multiple databases, what if we just used one database? If we inserted a new row into this one database every time someone uploaded a photo we could then just use the auto-incrementing ID from that table as the primary key for all of our databases.

Of course at 60+ photos a second that table is going to get pretty big. We can get rid of all the extra data about the photo, and just have the ID in the centralized database. Even then the table gets unmanageably big quickly. And there are comments, and favorites, and group postings, and tags, and so on, and those all need IDs too.

REPLACE INTO

A little over a decade ago MySQL shipped with a non-standard extension to the ANSI SQL spec, “REPLACE INTO”. Later “INSERT ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE” came along and solved the original problem much better. However REPLACE INTO is still supported.

REPLACE works exactly like INSERT, except that if an old row in the table has the same value as a new row for a PRIMARY KEY or a UNIQUE index, the old row is deleted before the new row is inserted.

This allows us to atomically update in a place a single row in a database, and get a new auto-incremented primary ID.

Putting It All Together

A Flickr ticket server is a dedicated database server, with a single database on it, and in that database there are tables like Tickets32 for 32-bit IDs, and Tickets64 for 64-bit IDs.

The Tickets64 schema looks like:

CREATE TABLE `Tickets64` (
  `id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `stub` char(1) NOT NULL default '',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `stub` (`stub`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM

SELECT * from Tickets64 returns a single row that looks something like:

+-------------------+------+
| id                | stub |
+-------------------+------+
| 72157623227190423 |    a |
+-------------------+------+

When I need a new globally unique 64-bit ID I issue the following SQL:

REPLACE INTO Tickets64 (stub) VALUES ('a');
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();

SPOFs

You really really don’t know want provisioning your IDs to be a single point of failure. We achieve “high availability” by running two ticket servers. At this write/update volume replicating between the boxes would be problematic, and locking would kill the performance of the site. We divide responsibility between the two boxes by dividing the ID space down the middle, evens and odds, using:

TicketServer1:
auto-increment-increment = 2
auto-increment-offset = 1

TicketServer2:
auto-increment-increment = 2
auto-increment-offset = 2

We round robin between the two servers to load balance and deal with down time. The sides do drift a bit out of sync, I think we have a few hundred thousand more odd number objects then evenly numbered objects at the moment, but this hurts no one.

More Sequences

We actually have more tables then just Tickets32 and Tickets64 on the ticket servers. We have a sequences for Photos, for Accounts, for OfflineTasks, and for Groups, etc. OfflineTasks get their own sequence because we burn through so many of them we don’t want to unnecessarily run up the counts on other things. Groups, and Accounts get their own sequence because we get comparatively so few of them. Photos have their own sequence that we made sure to sync to our old auto-increment table when we cut over because its nice to know how many photos we’ve had uploaded, and we use the ID as a short hand for keeping track.

So There’s That

It’s not particularly elegant, but it works shockingly well for us having been in production since Friday the 13th, January 2006, and is a great example of the Flickr engineering dumbest possible thing that will work design principle.

More soon.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on February 8, 2010 4:53 AM

(re-published from the Flickr Code Blog

I like “NoSQL”. But at Flickr, MySQL is our hammer, and we use it for nearly everything. It’s our federated data store, our key-value store, and our document store. We’ve built an event queue, and a job server on top of it, a stats feature, and a data warehouse.

We’ve spent the last several years abusing, twisting, and generally mis-using MySQL in ways that could only be called “post relational”. Our founding architect is famously in print saying, “Normalization is for sissies.”

So while it’s great to see folks going back to basics — instead of assuming a complex and historically dictated series of interfaces, assuming just disks, RAM, data, and problem to solve — I think it’s also worth looking a bit harder at what you can do with MySQL. Because frankly MySQL brings some difficult to beat advantages.

• it is a very well known component. When you’re scaling a complex app everything that can go wrong, will. Anything which cuts down on your debugging time is gold. All the of MySQL’s flags and stats can be a bit overwhelming at times, but they’ve accumulated over time to solve real problems.

• it’s pretty darn fast and stable. Speed is usually one of the key appeals of the new NoSQL architectures, but MySQL isn’t exactly slow (if you’re doing it right). I’ve seen two large, commercial “NoSQL” services flounder, stall and eventually get rewritten on top of MySQL. (and you’ve used services backed by both of them)

Over the next bit I’ll be writing a series of blog posts looking into how Flickr scales MySQL to do all sorts of things it really wasn’t intended for. I can’t promise you these are the best techniques, they are merely our techniques, there are others, but these are ours. They’re in production, and they work. I was tempted to call the series “YesSQL”, but that really doesn’t capture the spirit, so instead I’m calling it “Using and Abusing MySQL”.

And the first article is on ticket servers.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on February 8, 2010 4:52 AM

Really, this excellent piece by Paul at Old School Tattoo in Bellingham, Washington had me at "AT-AT," but this collector's idea to make it unique by incorporating elements of Salvador Dali's recurring spindly-legged elephants is pretty awesome. Ink Nerd has migrated to TypePad. It's an excellent blog! There are some seriously nerdy tattoos on that blog. Think triceratops, twenty sided die, etc. then get nerdier. When you find yourself at Mario as a Jedi (light saber and all) you're still not at the nerd end. via thisboelterfamily.typepad.com

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on February 8, 2010 4:33 AM

I was once again struck by the complete absurdity of sports fandom last evening when I heard someone behind me (actually, it was Awl pal Meghan Keane) saying, "I think that's the most excited I've ever seen Alex Balk in my life."

Tracy Porter had just intercepted the ball, essentially ending the game and giving the New Orleans Saints their first ever Super Bowl championship, and I had performed a vertical leap which was astounding both because of my lack of agility and the extremely rare display of emotion expressed therein. I say "extremely rare," but the fact is I was not very far removed from a massive and embarrassing display of fist pumping (I know) when the 2-point conversion was ruled valid a few plays earlier.

And that's the thing. It is completely illogical for most people to get so animated about a sporting event, even one as COMPLETELY AMAZING as this was. I had no money on the game. I am not a resident of New Orleans. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Saints organization. But in those moments—and even still right now, although that may have more to do with the fact that a significant amount of alcohol remains in my bloodstream—there was absolutely NOTHING ON EARTH that was more exciting. Hopefully we all have something in our lives that can occasionally give us those sharp bursts of pure joy. I guess it is harmless enough that there's no reason to be ashamed of it, but, yeah, I was pretty much a kid for the entire second half (I was a regular foul-mouthed adult during the first half.) When you think of the ridiculous lengths people go to to celebrate an event like this—hell, look at the ridiculous lengths people go to just for the ads—you have to believe there's some larger, animating purpose to it.

But who knows? Maybe I'm just another schmuck. That said, there's is no happier schmuck this morning than I. Except maybe for the guys who actually played the game. Probably.

[Oh, yeah, right, a deal's a deal. Kim Kardashian, will you marry me? Don't worry about hurting my feelings if your answer is no. I'm just SO DAMN HAPPY.]

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on February 8, 2010 4:20 AM

Originally posted by THE NYTPICKER from the nytpicker, on February 8, 2010 2:05 AM

There's something really nice going on in this series of zooms around San Jose Ave and 280. I like the introduction of layering as the details move into focus:

Comments (1)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on February 7, 2010 10:34 PM

City of Sound's Dan Brown has a long, thoughtful piece on the iPad. There's much worth quoting; I'll just snip this little bit:

As software becomes a service, data resides in the cloud, various forms of wireless connectivity coalesce over the city, and yet face-to-face physical connection becomes more important than ever, a device like the iPad becomes obvious. The cloud is the connective tissue between these spaces, the software provides the platform for interaction with information, the tablet is the tool, and the forum is the city.

Go read (or Instapaper if you must) the whole thing. (And art geeks will appreciate the "Apologies to Bill Viola" bit.)

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on February 7, 2010 9:09 PM

I've been hearing about Siri for a while -- a friend works for the company, and the app's been in development for a long time -- but it was absolutely worth the wait.

Siri is young and, like a child taking its first steps, may be awkward at times. Siri may occasionally misunderstand things you ask it to do even within its range of understanding. Nonetheless, Siri will improve quickly by getting to know you better and understanding a broader set of tasks. In fact, right now, Siri’s learning how to handle reminders, flights stats and reference questions. Our vision is that, over time, you’ll trust Siri to manage many personal details in your life - from recommending a wine you might enjoy to managing your to do list.

Since Apple won't let users customize what's triggered with a long press of the iPhone's home button, they should just buy the company and turn this into the default Voice Control app.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on February 7, 2010 8:11 PM

Reblogged from duplo (who wrote, “Cuter than the Puppy Bowl”) and about 400 other people.  Gavin said it best, though:

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net reblog, on February 7, 2010 7:06 PM

How the Letterman-Oprah-Leno Super Bowl Ad Came Together:

NY Times’ Bill Carter’s got the whole story: “The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the theater, while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net reblog, on February 7, 2010 6:54 PM

“That Kwedit score will go with you,” Mr. Sorochak said, “so, long run, if Kwedit is successful, that becomes the de facto virtual credit score, like Experian’s and the other FICO scores.”

via www.nytimes.com

The cloying name should already set off alarms and the article only gets more disturbing. I can only imagine the fights when parents refuse to give their 11 years old money and force them to declare bankwuptcy and a life of bad kwedit ratings.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on February 7, 2010 6:37 PM

For a couple years now I’ve wanted to get better splits up and running on FanGraphs, but other things have taken priority. We’ve had Lefty/Right and Home/Away splits in the graphs sections for almost four years, but never have there been any tabular splits.

In the player pages, there’s a new section called “Splits”. It’s right next to the season stats tab:

Give it a click and you’ll have access to Lefty/Righty, Home/Away, Monthly, Batted Ball, Location, and Leverage splits, with the full selection of stats from the “Standard”, “Advanced” and “Batted Ball” sections.

You can then browse the splits by individual season, comparing one split to another, or you can take a look at the career tab, where you’ll be able to see how a player has fared in a particular split over time. If you just want to see the career total lines, you can collapse the individual season by clicking on the “Show Season Splits” button.

Splits are currently available for all Major League players dating back to 2002. As always, if you have any feedback, or notice anything’s not working as expected, just let me know.

Originally posted by David Appelman from FanGraphs Baseball, on February 7, 2010 5:25 PM

Oh, there'll be more on this tomorrow from the straight man, if he doesn't die from excitement and alcohol poisoning tonight, but meanwhile, let us officially give a big HELL YES to the Saints win tonight at the Bowl That Finally Deserves To Be Called Super. It's sure nice to see New Orleans get a little attention after a few years of deadening quiet! (This, by the way, is what it sounds like inside a New Orleans household. Right???) Still, because this is America, tonight everyone's a winner! (Even losers from Indiana.) Everyone's a winner, that is, except anyone who wants to pay for sex in Miami tonight to celebrate.

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on February 7, 2010 4:56 PM

Steps were takes [sic] to contact Ms. Winfrey, who agreed immediately, Mr. Burnett said, and then Mr. Leno. Mr. Burnett said he spoke with Mr. Leno’s executive producer, Debbie Vickers. “She asked if this was for real and then she laughed for about 10 minutes,” Mr. Burnett said.

via mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com

I'm a bit frightened by the idea of Oprah Winfrey laughing for TEN MINUTES STRAIGHT. Also, how much do you think CBS paid Leno?

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on February 7, 2010 3:59 PM

If Gov. Paterson has to resign maybe we just put Spitzer back in and pretend the whole thing never happened?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 7, 2010 2:36 PM

Love: minimalist Star Wars travel posters by Justin van Genderen.

---

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Design, Justin van Genderen, star wars

Originally posted by John Martz from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on February 7, 2010 11:25 AM

Sorry Adobe Flash, your days are numbered.

Originally posted by pt93903 from dzone.com: latest front page, on February 7, 2010 7:01 AM

I was too busy tapping away at my laptop to notice this little high-school trick. Having mocked president Obama for using a TelePrompter - not long after he made mincemeat of Republicans with no such TelePrompter at their retreat - she had to scribble down her priorities as president on her palm for the truly tough-as-nails Q and A she had to endure for ten minutes or so last night.

Written on her hand:

"Energy"

"Budget [crossed out] (Cuts)"

"Tax"

"Lift American spirits"

My favorite detail is "[Budget] Cuts". Which just about sums up the real Tea Party agenda on spending. But it also suggests that she was told in advance of the questions she would be asked, one of which was what would be you priorities if you were elected president? Now think about this: she had to write on her hand her priorities as president.

I stand by my belief that none of this matters to the people who support her, and that she remains a very potent, content-free and destructive force in American politics.

But remember too that even before her Glenn Beck interview, she was furiously Googling the Empire State Building in case she was asked any obvious universally known facts about it, and before her debate with Biden, she was buried in little post-card notes on factual basics that most Americans know - but she, of course, didn't.

My live-blogging of this riveting event - and a brilliantly delivered speech full of nothing but slogans, pandering and zero policy specifics - can be read here, here and here.

Originally posted by Andrew Sullivan from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan, on February 7, 2010 5:29 AM

I was honored and excited to present on the topic of Managing, Measuring, and Marketing with Data for the MidemNet Academy last week in Cannes, France. I crafted the presentation to be more of an educational tool, which shares data from our Topspin direct to fan marketing campaigns and related best practices. There are links in the presentation to other resources and third party sites that are pertinent to the topic of marketing artists with data. Many thanks to Adam Bates and Vivek Agrawal on the Topspin team who mined all the data in this presentation.

The full presentation in its slide form is below. It reads better in full-screen and even more so if you download it in Powerpoint or PDF.

The point I highlight in the presentation is to approach your first direct to fan campaign as more of an investment in data gathering to understand your fanbase and less of a silver bullet for overnight marketing and distribution success. With each subsequent campaign you’ll gain more intelligence on the unique dynamic you have with your fans. This will lead you to formulate more compelling offers for your fans and drive higher conversion rates over time as you become savvier in your segmentation and target marketing.

At Topspin we approach our data gathering efforts from a funnel perspective where we baseline and improve each of the following variables in a direct marketing campaign:

The original vision for our Topspin product is based on this approach. The idea is to get your artist into as many eyes and ears on the web as possible and get prospective fans to play or share your media. This level of engagement converts those impressions into permission marketing relationships, which ultimately translates into recurring revenue from your fans.

As you think holistically about the funnel, conduct your direct to fan marketing campaign systematically through a series of scientific experiments to increase each of the variables above in every subsequent campaign:

1. State your hypotheses or goals
2. Craft your offers to meet those goals
3. Collect data
4. Measure your performance
5. Optimize your campaign
6. Repeat successes, iterate improvements, and constantly experiment

This process should be circular in that you’re frequently re-starting the cycle for constant hypothesizing, measuring, and optimizing based on your previous campaign data.

The goals you set will depend on whether you’re prioritizing on fan acquisition for emerging artists or monetization for established acts. It’s helpful to define these goals from the beginning in a clear, quantifiable way so you have something to benchmark against.

When crafting offers marketers should consider their artist as a brand with many products to serve a variety of customers. These range from new prospective fans who want to hear the music for free before pulling out their credit cards to hardcore fans who place a premium on collectibles from their favorite artist. The best practice we’ve realized is to authentically connect with your fans and give them a range of tiered offers that will generate more revenue and margin for the artist than just selling the same product that’s available in all other channels.

Here’s some interesting purchase data that show how fans consume offers from Topspin artists and how it breaks down in revenue:

It’s clear that including physical goods in your offers will increase your overall revenue. Our average revenue per transaction at Topspin is over $20, and it’s $50 for some branded artists who follow best practices. This is significantly higher than other digital channels where fans are buying a track or two at a time. Here’s more Topspin data to reinforce the point of higher priced goods driving more revenue for artists:

As you can see,  slightly more than half of the transactions at Topspin are under $10, but they only account for 17% of the revenue. In fact, offers priced $25 and over, which include physical items represent the majority of revenue. The hope is that you take these data insights and plot your own demand curve to serve your spectrum of fans.

Once you’ve crafted offers to meet your goals, you need to collect data, and there’s no better tool available than Google Analytics. It’s free, simple to use, a universal standard, and offers third party integration. Our Topspin purchase flow has integrated with Google Analytics so you can see those transactions as ecommerce metrics reported in your artist’s Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics lets you identify sources of traffic to your website and offer page. More importantly you can assess how this traffic converts to new emails and active paying fans. Here’s a Topspin Knowledge Base article on tracking website conversion by source traffic. Google’s Analytics is a powerful platform for measuring the effectiveness of all your online marketing activity. We recommend using Google’s URL Builder to create unique order page URLs for more granular tracking in your campaign. Here’s a more comprehensive and detailed Topspin Knowledge Base article on Tracking Sales and Conversion by Marketing Activity. You can use your own stats on traffic and conversion to project demand for your direct to fan campaigns. If you do not have a handle on your own traffic or conversion rates, here are Topspin averages across across a variety of channels for you to jump start your own projections:

According to the above data, email has the best conversion followed by direct traffic, and search. Given the lower rates of conversion across third party sites, it’s important to drive your fans directly to your offer page at every opportunity. In order to demonstrate this point, we depicted the difference in conversion of an artist broadcasting their video on YouTube vs. their own direct to fan video player on Topspin where they control the redirect which goes straight to the fan offer page:

Both video players performed equally well on click-throughs at a 10% rate, but since the YouTube player redirected fans to the YouTube video page, there was a 100x difference in purchasing conversion since fans had to click one more time on the YouTube video page to get to the artist’s offer page. By using your own video player and directing fans straight to the offer page, you can be assured of higher purchasing rates. Of course, you should definitely have your videos on YouTube as it’s a destination site for music discovery, but when it comes to your own website or social networks, you should broadcast and encourage sharing on your own players since they lead fans directly to the destination of your choice, specifically your offer page.

After the data is collected, you’re in a position to measure performance across channels. The goal is to identify the major drivers of conversion and prioritize on those channels that show the most promise in acquiring active paying fans. You can compare your performance against Topspin’s revenue distribution across all our artists and fans:

It’s no surprise that email is the highest driver of revenue at Topspin followed by direct traffic and Google search. What’s enlightening is that MySpace is still holding strong as a source of revenue compared to the much publicized growth of Facebook and Twitter. It will be interesting to revisit this analysis in a few months to see if Facebook and Twitter increase in share over time.

As soon as you get a sense of your campaign performance, it’s time to optimize. Focus on SEO since it’s imperative that your artist name and offer page are at the top of the search results given the volume of traffic and revenue generated by the search engines. You want interested fans coming immediately to you without being diverted to a third party site. A great web resource for SEO tips and best practices is the SEOmoz Blog. Another good resource is Rank Checker, which tells you where your artist site or offer page ranks in search results for different key words.

Now to touch upon one of the most exciting data topics for me personally: understanding the metrics for the new music business. We’re just scratching the surface in figuring out how to measure success for marketing artists online, and here are a few one-off stats from some of our campaigns. Topspin’s goal is to establish norms around these metrics to let you assess your own performance around indicators like these.

The first is the Play to Purchase ratio. When David Byrne and Brian Eno released Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, they released a streaming player with full-length streams, which was embedded far and wide. This proved extremely effective in that 1 in 5 plays led to a purchase in the first few weeks of the campaign. I would consider this highly successful, and since their average transaction prices was over $15 , that means each play was worth about $3.

A metric from the Fanfarlo campaign that signaled  strong performance was their ability to acquire fans at a rate of 49 fans per 1000 impressions of their widgets. This included both new email opt-ins and purchasers. We found this number to be extremely high compared to our paid advertising tests, where we purchased inventory across music services to acquire email addresses at less than 1 per 1000 impressions (0.7 per 1000 to be exact). Fanfarlo’s widget impressions from Topspin may have been lower in volume, but they were FREE and 70x more effective in acquiring emails and paying fans.

“Dispersion” is the artist’s ability to get picked up and embedded in other websites. David Byrne and Brian Eno’s streaming widget was embedded in about 160 blog sites, and Fanfarlo’s streaming and email for media widgets were embedded in more than 248 sites. Once again, great metrics for widgets that ultimately directed fans back to their artist order pages.

Another mind-blowing Fanfarlo data point was their Shares to Sales ratio at 1.1. It means that for every one person who shared, more than one person purchased. This most likely had to do with the exceptional quality of their music, their fanbase of tastemakers who influenced their own audiences to buy, and their offer price of $1 for their campaign during a 3 week promo. The data has shown that Fanfarlo’s campaign worked wonderfully and is a great case study on viral promotions for an emerging artist.

These are just a few of the interesting metrics we’re getting our heads around at Topspin. We’re at the beginning phase of the direct to fan era, and as I said in my talk, I feel that we’re all in this together in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I’m hoping the data in this presentation will help you generate more insights, which can ultimately be shared back with the community at large. Feel free to join us in the Topspin Green Room to share your ideas or ask questions.

Shamal
@shamalman

Originally posted by Shamal from Topspin Media, on February 7, 2010 2:30 AM

And this isn’t just for startups, the times when we’ve lost track of our ability to fail have been the most difficult times at Flickr.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on February 6, 2010 8:57 AM

Petty bribery is common in India, but the introduction of a zero rupee banknote has given some would-be bribers pause.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.

[ via kottke]

Originally posted by Administrator from Turbanhead, on February 6, 2010 6:59 AM

Originally posted by Michael Baron from MetsBlog.com, on February 6, 2010 4:02 AM

Petty bribery is common in India, but the introduction of a zero rupee banknote has given some would-be bribers pause.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.

Tags: crime   economics   India

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 5, 2010 12:39 PM

My iPhone buzzes every 28 seconds. This is not popularity. Obviously. This is the NFL emailing me another Super Bowl quote sheet. And another. And another. Remi Ayodele! Raheem Brock! Jeff Saturday! Queen Latifah!

Super Bowl quote sheets are one of the many things that stunned me when I started to cover the Super Bowl. If you cannot talk to the players (or get to the all the players you needed), the league will go and talk to the players for you. They would get you quotes. Free. Incredible. Now, true, these were not always the most compelling and enlightening quotes …

Sample quote from Indianapolis tight end Dallas Clark quote sheet:

(On how the Colts adjust during the game)
“There’s a lot of adjusting and making moves on the go.”

… but, seriously, how could you beat this? They would get quotes for you … from virtually every player on both teams. Plus coaches. Plus celebrities. One of the things I would do at every Super Bowl I ever attended was collect all the quote sheets — I do go back to that era when we would read things on this substance called “paper” — and read through them to see if I could learn anything about the game. I did not learn anything* but it was fun.

*It was also dangerous. The thing about reading all the quotes is that, at some point, you start to buy into the cliches and the hype and you can begin to lose touch with reality. I remember the San Francisco-San Diego Super Bowl here in Miami in 1995. Coming in, everybody KNEW the 49ers were going to wax the Chargers. That game had no chance to be close. I knew this on Monday. But during the week, I talked to a lot of players and I read all the quote sheets and by Thursday, I started to think that, hey, maybe the Chargers had a chance. By Saturday, I had so much knowledge and perspective that the game seemed to be a toss-up.

Then, on the first play on Super Bowl Sunday … San Francisco’s Steve Young threw a bomb to Jerry Rice, who was open by about 45 yards. And I thought: “Hmm, I guess I was right the first time.”

They still have the actual Super Bowl quote sheets — they cover about 10 picnic size tables — but now the league magically transmits them right into my phone and … hold on, my phone’s buzzing. Hey, it’s a Super Bowl quote sheet from New Orleans coach Sean Payton. Let’s see what it says.

(Opening Statement)
“It’s been a good week of practice. We have two more; one today and a walk through tomorrow at the stadium.”

Riveting. OK, so now I’m going to attempt the ultimate Super Bowl magic trick … I’m going to write a Super Bowl XLIV story with XLIV quotes in it. Please, don’t try this at home.

* * *

Well, we know the cliches. We know, as New Orleans receiver Courtney Roby says, “Special teams will be very, very important.” We know, as New Orleans backup quarterback Mark Brunell says, the teams have to “go out there and execute.”*

*Or in the words of Indianapolis defensive back Antoine Bethea “Go out there and make plays”.**

**Or in the words of New Orleans linebacker Scott Shanle “I think you make your own luck”.

We know that turnovers will play a major role in the game because both offenses are so good. “The name of the game in football, especially for defense, is creating turnovers,” Saints cornerback Jabari Greer says. It’s an interesting twist adding that “especially for defense” in there.

Colts defensive back Kelvin Hayden is even more direct. “We want to force turnovers,” he says.

But these things are basically true of every Super Bowl — of ever football game, really. Special teams. Turnovers. Make your own luck. Whatever. The question is: What makes THIS Super Bowl special? What defines this matchup between a Saints team that on its first 13 games this season and a Colts team that won its first 14 games? What makes Super Bowl XLIV different from the XLIII games that came before?

Well, you have to start with Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. It’s a funny thing: When the season ended, people were discussing who should be MVP. Seriously? What would the Indianapolis Colts’ record be this year if they had even an average NFL quarterback? Before you answer, remember: The Colts finished dead last in the NFL in rushing offense. They had one proven wide receiver — Reggie Wayne — and a couple of young guys with unlikely football names: Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie. Their defense finished 18th in yards allowed and 18th in forcing turnovers and 17th in sacks.

And that team won its first 14 games and is in the Super Bowl. Peyton Manning isn’t just the league’s MVP this year, he might be the league’s ALL-TIME MVP.

“Unlike everybody I’ve been around,” Colts quarterback coach Frank Reich says. “He knows everything that’s going on, on the field. Everything.”

I believe Manning will go down as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. He might already be there. And while, yes, it does something seem that Manning is overexposed — you can’t escape Peyton Manning — he is probably the best spokesman for any sport in America right now. What’s not to like? He’s classy, he’s funny, he’s an incredible player. A lot of that, of course, comes from his father. I really like this quote from Peyton on what it was like Archie Manning would come off the field after a game.

“My dad would always come out and get us on the field and take a little time to be with us,” Peyton says. “He always would sign his autographs for all fans after the games.  Most of these times after tough losses.  But I couldn’t tell at the time.  I didn’t really know if they won or lost at the time.  I was 3, 4, 5 years old.  He was always the same.  So that always had a positive influence on me.”

Manning, of course, is unlike any other quarterback. He knows. He maneuvers. He may be funny in commercials but not on the field (“He’s not really cracking jokes in the huddle,” Colts Offensive tackle Ray Diem says). Before every play, it seems, Manning points this way. He yells that way. He waves his arms. He shouts what sounds like nonsense.

“Everything Peyton does means something,” Collie says.

“Ninety-five percent of the time, it’s real,” running back Joseph Addai.

Yes, even Colts teammates disagree about how much of Payton’s motions are significant. There are many people — Saints included — who think A LOT of Peyton’s act is a bluff, empty audibles, football fog.

“You can try to play that chess game and go back and forth with Peyton,” Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma says. “I don’t know how long you want to do that.”

“I don’t know how you match wits with the guy,” Saints safety Roman Harper says. “The guy is all over the place.”

Well, one thing the Saints hope to do is hit Manning — early, late and often. When the undefeated Patriots faced the Giants in the Super Bowl two years ago, it was widely believed that no team could intimidate Tom Brady or slow down New England. But the Giants pressured Brady relentlessly, and under that kind of heat even the best offenses and most brilliant quarterbacks can wilt.

“We need to deliver some remember-me hits,” New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said on a radio show … a bit of Super Bowl bulletin board material that inspired Saints coach Sean Payton to send him a shut-up breakfast of peanut butter and sand. But Williams is exactly right. The Saints have built a reputation as a defense that plays on the edge, maybe even over the edge, maybe even dirty …

“I wouldn’t say we’re dirty,” Saints defensive end Will Smith says. “I’d just say we’re a team that plays hard.”

Well maybe dirty is overstating it a bit, maybe there’s a better word …
“We don’t know if we want to call ourselves dirty,” Saints safety Darren Sharper says, “but … it is like taking a shower when you get up in the morning and are going to cut your grass. You are nice and fresh when you cut the grass. But at the end you have a little griminess to you. We want to call ourselves a little grimy.”

OK, fine, grimy. Whatever the word, the Saints best hope of slowing down Manning is, like Gregg Williams says, to knock down Manning.

“Look, everybody talks about disrupting Peyton’s rhythm, getting him hit, making him nervous, making him get happy feet, all of those things that you would say about every other quarterback,” Colts center Jeff Saturday says. “The good thing is that Gregg doesn’t play.”

Of course, there are so many other stories besides for Manning. There’s the city of New Orleans — lots of talk this week about how important the Saints have been to the city rebuilding itself after Hurricane Katrina. “All the time, they’re telling us we inspire them,” Saints center Jonathan Goodwin says. “And they inspire us.”

Yes, the Saints players have talked a lot about their chemistry. New Orleans guard Jahri Evans summed it up: “We hang out together – go to the mall together, chill out together, play video games together. We do it all.”

Hang? Check.
Chill out? Check.
Go to mall? Check.
Play video games? Check.
Yep, that’s just about everything.

The Saints also have a female owner, Rita Benson LeBlanc, who has been quotable this week. “I wasn’t very athletically inclined,” she says. “I was a manager, that kind of thing. So, I would be involved, but I have very interesting peripheral vision. I’m one of those people that will duck away from the ball.”

But the two big stars on the Saints side — for two very different reasons — are quarterback Drew Brees and running back Reggie Bush. Brees has been one of the tall-time overachievers. He was lightly recruited out of high school, told many times that he was too small to play in the NFL, and suffered a shoulder injury that many thought could end his career. Only here he is, a superstar quarterback leading the Saints to the Super Bowl. I think you can learn a lot about Brees by just reading a quote he gave when asked about the fleur-de-lis symbol on the Saints helmet. That’s one of the Super Bowl questions that usually gets a quick and dismissive answer. Brees offered a history lesson instead.

“The fleur-de-lis symbol dates back to the French monarchy,” he says. “So much of New Orleans’ culture comes from the time when we were under French rule. That’s just a big part of the culture. It’s a big part of what New Orleans is all about. So when you look at that symbol, it is the symbol of the city.”

That quarterback can lead my team anytime.

Reggie Bush, on the other hand, has been a chronic disappointment. He came out with, what Brees calls, the highest expectations of any player in the history of the NFL. And I think that may be right, or its certainly very close. Bush, mainly, has not met those expectations. He has had injuries. He does not seem to have the durability or makeup to be an every down back. Hey, he can be a gamebreaker. He’s fun to watch and an exciting player as a receiver, third-down back, kick returner. But as of right now he seems more in the Eric Metcalf mold than Barry Sanders mold.

“I kind of imagined that I’d have a couple Super Bowl rings by now and a couple Pro Bowls,” Bush admits. “It’s a tough league.”

On the Colts side, much of the talk has been about pass-rusher deluxe Dwight Freeney, who has a nasty ankle injury and may or may not play.

“You want him,” Colts defensive end Robert Mathis says. “If he is not in there it has to be next man up.”

“Freeney’s got some voodoo witch magic,” Colts linebacker Gary Brackett says.

“I think this is part of the game,” Freeney himself says. “You don’t really want to reveal everything.”

Yes, secrecy is another part of Super Bowl week. Or as Saints tight end Jeremy Shockey says, “Even if I had the answers for you, I would never tell you.” The coaches — particularly Sean Payton — would like to keep things quiet. With Payton, this could be because his particular genius seems to be his ability to line up and create match-up problems for the other team.

“Coach Payton does a good job of different formations and plays every week to create the match-ups that we are looking for,” Saints tight end David Thomas says.

“He knows how to scratch where it itches, so to speak,” says Colts defensive coordinator Larry Coyer — a quote so good I don’t even have to understand what it means to use it.

Yes, Payton seemed to turn around the Saints using his strategic skills and his remarkable memory for detail. “He was telling a story about when he first got into coaching,” Saints GM Mickey Loomis was saying. “He was talking about the breakfast that he had eight years ago, and he knew exactly what he had for breakfast. If he could remember exactly what he had for breakfast eight years before, then I knew he was detailed because I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. ”

Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell is a bit tougher to explain. He was a longtime college assistant who coached at Wake Forest for eight years, posted a 26-63 record and got fired. That hardly seems to lead to Super Bowl glory. But Caldwell’s particular strength seems to be a certain steadiness … the players feel like they can count on him all the time. Listen to his quote when someone asked how he would feel if the Colts lost:

“Would it be okay if I didn’t answer that in that regard,” he asked back. “I’m a big believer in self-fulfilling prophesies. There is a Chinese proverb that says ‘be careful if your life is shaped by your thoughts.’ So, I stay away from that kind of ending. I haven’t seen that ending in my mind or am I contemplating or thinking about it at this point in time.”

There is something about being positive … something about never letting small problems slow you … something about a constant force of optimism that can make good teams and veteran teams respond. Tony Dungy had it. Jim Caldwell, apparently, has it too.

So, what else have players been talking about. Well, they have been talking about how important vision is for a football player.

“The biggest thing is your eyes,” Saints corner Tracy Porter said about being a shutdown corner.

“Vision is imperative,” Colts running back Donald Brown says. “Holes don’t stay open for long so you need to be able to see everything.”

OK. And, of course, many players have been talking about the hype of the Super Bowl, the significance of it, the honor of playing here.

“It’s the Super Bowl,” Saints defensive end Bobby McRay says. “There is really nothing that can overcome that.”

“I have been trying to soak it up without acting like a tourist,” New Orleans guard Carl Nicks says.

“Let me tell you something,” Colts receiver Reggie Wayne says. “I turned my phone on this morning, the first thing that popped up was 40 text messages. I immediately cut it back off.”

Then, there were these two quotes that seem to play well off each other. Someone asks Colts linebacker Clint Sessions about fame. He shrugs.

“People  really don’t know who you are when you play defense,” he says. “Unless you are Ray Lewis or Darrell Revis people don’t know who you are.”

OK, fine. But someone asks Colts defensive tackle Daniel Muir how he gets fired up.

“Looking up,” he says. “Looking up in the stands you see thousands of people and you’re just like, ‘Man, they’re all here watching me.’”

Of course … you know all those people in the stands are probably NOT watching Daniel Muir. But I prefer his line of thinking.

And finally, there are a few straggler quotes to help up get to the 44 we need to finish off this baby.

Here’s New Orleans receiver Marques Colston on his philosophy of playing receiver: “I like to see myself as a guy that can be open even when I’m not open.”

Here’s Indianapolis’ ancient Matt Stover — who is actually two years younger than I am — on what kind of pressure a kicker feels when trying to make a game-winning kick: “If you’ve ever had a 10 foot putt for 100 dollars with a close friend, multiply that by 1000 and that’s what it’s like.”

Someone asks New Orleans tackle Jermon Bushrod to grade his performance: “The only grades I need to know is a ‘W’ or an ‘L’.”

Many people ask Indianapolis receiver Pierre Garcon, who is of Haitian descent, how he feels playing here with the devastation in Haiti. This answer, I think, sums up his thoughts: “It means a lot. To make it to the Super Bowl is very tough, but too be here with everything that’s going on in Haiti, it means a lot for me and the Haitian people that are dealing with it. It is probably bringing a bit of happiness to them dealing with what they’re dealing with right now.”

Here’s Colts defensive end Raheem Brock on the Colts playing outdoors: “They have a good field here in Miami. It is nice to play outside. Hopefully it is not raining.”

And finally, a quote from Colts legendary offensive line coach Howard Mudd. He has been coaching offensive lines in the NFL since 1974, and he has seen everything, coached every kind of player, had every kind of success. If you can follow the scheme of this quote, I suspect you too could be an offensive line coach:

“You have to be willing to throw the ball in the dirt and go punt if you have to.  That is a characteristic, if you can’t get them all blocked, you have to be able to do that.  If you stand there and hold it that is when people have the most problems with that team is when they have unblocked guys.  Maybe the quarterback thought he was going to be blocked or they have them all blocked and they aren’t.  You can see play after play with other teams.  Not all other teams, but in situations they get caught without knowing who wasn’t blocked and they raise havoc.  In a different, but similar way, that sounds contradictory but it is not.”

Well said. Yes, well said.

Originally posted by Joe Posnanski from Joe Posnanski, on February 5, 2010 11:21 AM

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Developments over the last couple weeks really showcase how Google's other innovation focus areas — including Search, Mobile and Chrome — help make Google Apps even more useful.

Updates to Google Search in Gmail Labs
On Tuesday we made some helpful changes to the Google Search feature in Gmail Labs. The search gadget now runs some of Google's most popular search features, like dictionary definitions, spelling suggestions, calculations, local results, weather info and news. You don't even need to type your search query anymore; just highlight text in the compose area and click the multicolored "g" button to run a search on those terms.


Gmail Chrome extensions
Several convenient extensions for Gmail are now available to Chrome users. The "Google Mail" extension adds a small button next to Chrome's address bar that displays your unread mail count. "Send from Gmail" makes Gmail your default mail program, and opens a Gmail compose window when you click an email link on a web page. The button for this extension helps you quickly share the web page you're viewing over email.


Easier file location in Google Docs
Last week we introduced a pair of improvements to make finding files in Google Docs easier. First, we launched an option to show file thumbnails in your Documents List, which is great for quickly spotting what you're looking for. Just click the view option buttons in the toolbar to toggle between thumbnails and the standard text layout.

Also released last week: search spelling suggestions help you find the file you're looking for, even when your typing is off. The Google Docs search spell checker is powered by the same technology that helps you get better search results on google.com.

Scripts for Google Apps Standard Edition
At the end of last week we launched application scripting for Google Apps Standard Edition. (Before it was only available to businesses and schools using Premier and Education Editions.) Scripts can be triggered from spreadsheets to perform automated tasks and calculations, but scripts go far beyond spreadsheets; they can be used to fire off automated email messages, create appointments in Google Calendar and accomplish other actions across the whole Google Apps suite. We've written up a few script tutorials if you have the itch to give scripting a try.

Mobile device management
Just yesterday, Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers got a boost in their ability to manage mobile devices synced with Google Apps. Right from the online control panel, IT admins can remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile phones, configure devices to lock after a period of inactivity and set password strength requirements. These new capabilities are available for iPhones, Windows Mobile devices and Nokia E-series phones. Stay tuned for similar features for Android devices.

Who's gone Google?
It's been another very active couple weeks helping more businesses and schools move to the cloud. The team is happy to welcome the latest crop of Google Apps customers, including Complinet, The Open University, Villanova University, Small World Financial Services, Tuskegee University, Clemson University and the New Zealand Post.

Saline Area Schools in Michigan has an especially impressive "gone Google" story. They're saving $400,000 in the first year, spending much less time on server administration, keeping spam at bay and fostering better collaboration among faculty.

Fairchild Semiconductor also recounted their experience switching 6,000 employees spread across 20 countries off their legacy Lotus Notes installation, selecting Google Apps and Postini over hosted email alternatives from Microsoft and IBM. Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild summed it up best: "Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money."

Hope you're enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues, or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Originally posted by A Googler from The Official Google Blog, on February 5, 2010 10:26 AM

A friend emailed me last week. The subject line read: "Have you seen this?" The body of the email was without text—just a pasted in Wikipedia entry for “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

This is what the body of the email looked like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo.

What the fuck, I thought, before actually clicking on. Who was mocking my city like this? Buffalo, NY has a proper Wikipedia entry; I’d read it countless times before. This “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” entry then must be a joke.

But a joke about what? Was the Wiki entry mocking how people who are from Buffalo always tend to find a way to bring up their city in conversation? Or was it a virus meant to trap people who are from Buffalo, NY? Surely the only people to click on such a ridiculous link are those with a severe complex about where they are from. Those who remember with pride, for instance, that Governor Mario Cuomo announced he’d be rooting for the Buffalo Bills in the 1991 Super Bowl, a historic game, where we’d play the New York Giants. Mario’s reasoning was that the Giants played their home games in New Jersey, and as such the Bills were New York State’s home team. Well?

Finally I opened the link. (Not to real talk, but even if it wasn’t safe for work, I don’t have a job anyhow, so no harm in boldness.) And it turns out the eight Buffaloes actually comprise one grammatically sentence. It took be a really long time to understand how this was so. Apparently my attention span is so warped that a string of eight words, even if they’re all the same word, is difficult to read.

To read the sentence properly, it helps to know that “buffalo” can function as a verb. When it does, it means “to bully” or “to intimidate.” For example, the bar exam I will be taking later this month still buffaloes me.

Also know that in this particular sentence when “buffalo” is capitalized it functions as an adjective, and not as the city Mario Cuomo considers part of New York State. As an adjective it means “from Buffalo.” Think Buffalo Bills, or even Buffalo wings. (That is, by the way, why they’re called that.)

If you wedge an imaginary “that” (or a “who,” if you really want to anthropomorphize the buffalo) between the second and third words of the sentence, it reads better. Which is to say, Buffalo buffalo [who] Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. However, the sentence remains slightly odd: the city of Buffalo doesn’t have buffalo of its own. In fact, the ones at the Buffalo zoo are actually American Bison. (Note though that in the preceding sentence, “Buffalo” is functioning as an adjective.)

It would be really useful to diagram this sentence. Luckily, we learned how to do that in 10th grade. Unfortunately, like many things about high school, I don’t remember how I did it. Just that I did. For instance, that year we also read Macbeth, but all I seem to remember was that the emo kids were all “out, out brief candle.” This too, even after we had to read it and then listen to it read to us, and then read it again. There was possibly something about a porter who took a whiskey drink and then a vodka drink. And a Banquo. But how to visually conceptualize a sentence? That memory faded quicker than Mario’s presidential prospects.

OK so if you are in fact able to wrap your head around the sentence, you’ll see it’s quite the circle jerk. Buffalo who get bullied by other buffalo bully more buffalo. It’s kind of similar to how one kid bullies another kid and then that kid who just got bullied goes and bullies me. Lord of the Flies meets Western New York, if they were buffalo native to this corner of the world. A pecking order of bullshit, that exists primarily within a made-up universe.

That’s sort of what grammar is. Right?

Luke Mazur is getting back on the bar exam bandwagon, by George!

Originally posted by Luke Mazur from The Awl, on February 5, 2010 9:20 AM

At first I was fairly heated up about the Sports Illustrated cover shot of shredding sensation Lindsey Vonn. Absurd from every angle—and boy, are there ever angles—it's got her all glammed up in a pretty power princess kind of way, all glossy hair and painted lips. You have to squint your eyes toward the base of her Red Bull-endorsed headthing to see, but I'm pretty sure she's wearing diamond hoop earrings. All that aside, there's other bait: consider, as someone pointed out, the unfortunate juxtaposition of a certain set of letters.

But now I'm pretty much over it. For the real crime, as it turns out, is the blandest of all: unoriginality.

For just as the 90's are BACK in high fashion and literature, so too have we trawled them for cover design. From 1992:

He's wearing a helmet, but still, fair enough.

(Props to the mag, by the way, for the slick and searchable "SI Vault"; it's amazing the number of outrageous ski-themed covers from the 50's and 60's. Should you be so inclined, do check out 1957's "New American Look in Ski Clothes". Ooh, I like this lady's lipstick! And I know 1968 wasn't the brightest of years, but come on: Jean-Claude Killy sure makes up for a lot.)

It's always so awkward when athletes doll up. Was there anything worse than Kerri Strug in street clothes? Vonn pulls it off mostly, but for all of her marketable polish she remains kind of a goof. A goof who likes to go 150 on the autobahn!

But enough about skiers. I've covered that ground, which is more than can be said for the snow in Vancouver. Things are getting so bad that they're building jumps with hay bales and trucking in snow. Olympic officials (who must be freaking out) are gritting their teeth and making harried statements. "It's beautifully white and clean and it looks great on television," said Renee Smith-Valade.

She meant the snow, not Joe Biden, who will be leading the US delegation in Vancouver. Given his considerable foreign relations expertise and his ongoing involvement with the Special Olympics, I can't think of a more suitable man for the job.

As far as I have been able to ascertain via Google, this particular diplomatic assignment involves hanging out with Mike Eruzione and Peggy Fleming, and oh my God, is Biden going to wear a warmup and march in the parade!? This column on the wonderfully manic Brian Burke seems to suggest as much, but I'm not going to get all my hopes up just yet.

Given the lack of meteorological cooperation—cue the "shoulda had the Olympics in DC!" yuks—many athletes must be glad they're competing indoors. And while someone has already got the Johnny Weir beat covered, less attention has been paid to some other blade-wearing athletes.

The US speedskaters, who along with Vonn are the country's top medal contenders, got bad news in October when large sponsor DSB, a Dutch bank, went kaput. The speedskating federation, faced with a $300,000 hole in its budget, was bailed out by an unlikely benefactor: Stephen Colbert. No stranger to odd publicity stunts, Colbert used his powers for good in asking viewers to donate to the cause. In the first week alone they raised $202,000.

It was not without controversy. Shani Davis, who holds several world records in long track and is widely expected to take home some gold medals, went on record against the talk show host. "He's a jerk," he told a reporter in early December. "You can put that in the paper." No one, including Davis's pal Apolo Ohno, was quite certain of the reason for the rancor; as it turned out, Davis was likely reacting to a 2006 bit in which Colbert faux-chastised him for not skating in the team pursuit event in Turin.

It was a touchy subject. The team pursuit "flap" in Turin resulted in a public feud between Davis and teammate Chad Hedrick that overshadowed Davis' gold medal in the 1000m (the first gold to a black athlete in an individual Winter event in Olympics history) and culminated in a press conference so horrifically painful that it moved ESPN writer Eric Adelson to reach deep into history for a suitable comparison:

It's funny. This type of rivalry goes all the way back to the beginning of U.S. history. More than 200 years ago, a Northerner named Alexander Hamilton and a Southerner named Thomas Jefferson disliked each other so intensely that a new nation nearly crumbled in their wake. And even though that rift still exists today, we have both of them to thank for the role they played in building America.

We can only hope to eventually say the same about the fallout from SkateGate II.

While Davis and Hedrick have yet to forge a new republic, they now exist on civil terms. And the rift with Colbert is a thing of the past—Davis even agreed to appear on the show.

Still, Davis remains a bit of a lone wolf, self-coached and self-represented. He has no ties to the US Speedskating Federation, and by request does not even appear in the media guide. His mother handles his press, which is to say: she is the one who denies the requests. (This go-it-aloneness, apparently, is like catnip to the Dutch: this ABC piece introduces us to characters like Ruud Bakker—no relation—the "leader of Kleintje Pils, a [Dutch] band that travels to most major skating meets and has serenaded the American for years.")

The issue of Sports Illustrated pictured above contains lengthy profiles of Davis as well as Vonn; expect them, along with Ohno, Evan Lysacek, Shaun White—and who knows, maybe the bobsledder dudes?—to dominate coverage.

And in spite of my reluctance to reward the SI cover designers for their uninspired choice, it's worth getting a copy of the Vonn-fronted SI, if only as a guide to who's who in all the random sports, but also so you can flip to a second photo of her on page 52.

Because while much is the same as the cover shot—Red Bull screams prominently from the front of her head, her legs splay in impossible angles, and she's still wearing pink; no word on the earrings though—in this one she is actually in motion, leaning into a turn, glaring out from behind her goggles, pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth with the concentration of a four-year-old learning to write out her letters.

It's a much better look.

Katie Baker writes mostly about sports and weddings and so the Winter Olympics just kind of seemed like the next logical step.

Originally posted by Katie Baker from The Awl, on February 5, 2010 8:30 AM

Timothy McSweeney, after whom the McSweeney's literary magazine and web site are named, died late last month.

As a young man, Timothy was an artist of tremendous talent. The canvases he leaves behind are filled with haunting and beautiful imagery. They are also filled with a palpable desire-to be heard, to connect, to be understood better by others and himself. The letters that inspired this journal's name were a continuation of that same lifelong effort to more intimately know the world and his place within it.

Dave Eggers tells the story of the real Timothy McSweeney and why he named the magazine after him.

Tags: Dave Eggers   McSweeneys   obituaries

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 5, 2010 8:09 AM

Pretty obvious but bears repeating: "How can a client blame you for a cab driver's mistake? How can a conference organizer hold you accountable for an airline's cancelled flight? They can do it because lateness is part of the order of things, and grownup professionals plan for it, just as they plan for budget shortfalls and extra rounds of revision. If you plan to arrive early, then you are covered when circumstances beyond your control conspire to make you late."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 5, 2010 7:14 AM

Image: dr-chuck / CC BY

Chuck Severance, clinical professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, recently published a new textbook in 11 days because he was able to remix an existing textbook. The book, Python for Informatics: Exploring Information, is currently being used in his winter semester Networked Computing course. The textbook is based on the openly licensed book Think Python: How to Think like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey. Students are able to take advantage of the University Library’s Espresso Book Machine to print on-demand copies for approximately $10. Python for Informatics is available under a CC BY-SA license.

Severance explains, “the book is a cool example of a situation where I’ve finally got to the ‘remixing’ bit of the Open promise.” The first 10 chapters are done and eight more are planned for completion by April 2010. Read more of Chuck’s thoughts about remixing an open book.

Creating this open textbook was a part of a larger effort by Chuck to support his course with openly licensed  content, and current versions of lecture slides and videos are published via the PythonLearn website.  In a past iteration of the course, Chuck went through the dScribe process developed by Open.Michigan to create an OER version of SI 502, available under a CC BY license.

Originally posted by Timothy Vollmer from Creative Commons » Commons News, on February 5, 2010 6:49 AM

Out on DVD is the bizarre Goodbye Gemini (Scorpion Releasing). Set in swinging London in the '70s, precocious twins Jacki (Judy Geeson) and Julien (Martin Potter) arrive at their father's flat and get rid of the meddling housekeeper by craftily placing their toy teddy bear on the stair landing. She takes a header and is carted off in an ambulance. They are then left to their own demented devices and head to a pub full of decadent swingers and a drag queen disrobing on the bar. There they meet a dissolute couple who unwisely attach themselves to the troubled twosome. The twins are weirdly incestuous and afterJulien is tricked into having a threesome with drag queens in a seedy hotel room the plot unravels into madness and murder. Jacki wanders aimlessly on the streets with a bloody sheet only to be rescued by a slumming politician (Michael Redgrave). Directed by Alan Gibson (The Satanic Rites Of Dracula) and with gorgeous cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001: A Space Odyssey/Cabaret) this was also known as Twinsanity on VHS. The DVD unleashes its true beauty and enjoyably nutty oddness.  

Originally posted by Dennis Dermody from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on February 5, 2010 6:29 AM

I enjoyed this look at the editorial making of a New Yorker cover starring the magazine’s art editor Françoise Mouly, and artists Dan Clowes, Zohar Lazar, and Mark Ulriksen.

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Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Dan Clowes, Francoise Mouly, Mark Ulriksen, New Yorker, Zohar Lazar

Originally posted by John Martz from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on February 5, 2010 5:45 AM

What if the Super Bowl was directed by Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino? You'd get something like this. The Werner Herzog bit at the end is great.

Tags: football   movies   Quentin Tarantino   sports   Super Bowl   video   Werner Herzog   Wes Anderson

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on February 5, 2010 5:12 AM