randomwalks/dj

For the 1st time today she refused to be spoon fed. Wanted finger food only. OK! And yes, she has bits on her forehead!

Originally posted by Mie from Kokochi, on May 19, 2007 11:59 PM

After hearing Rebecca Walker on NPR, I wanted to say a little something. There was a controversy about her statement in her new book, Baby Love. I do not own the book so I cannot quote it directly. Basically she says that though she would do anything within reason for her adopted child (that she co-parents – a new term that sounds a little cold if you ask me – with Meshell Ndegeocello!!!), she would do absolutely anything for her biological child. (This is a pretty accurate paraphrase.) Though it seems like semantics, Walker does admit, in interviews, that what she is getting at is the fact that the love she feels for her biological child is a greater love than the love she feels for her adopted child.

The thing I have always liked about Rebecca Walker is that she does not back peddle. If she says something, she says it even if it is not popular or mainstream. She is her mother's daughter whether she sees it or likes it.

That said … WHAT?!?!?!

I find this a strange comment, an alienating comment, especially to her adopted child. This is on my mind, mainly because I just read Black, White and Jewish and was impressed by how well written and engaging it was. Memoirs are such strange things because you feel like you spent some quality time with a person when, well, you didn’t.

As I read reviews about Walker’s new book, Baby Love, I just wanted to sit her down and say, “Why would you make a comment like this when you were raised in an environment of such separation and alienation?” It seems like Walker is just perpetuating this. How is her adopted son going to feel when he is old enough to read this? She says she will explain it to him but what will she say?

My other moment was reading a review of Leonard Nimoy’s photography exhibit and upcoming book, The Full Body Project. It features several full figured women naked and proud. I knew Nimoy was a photographer but I had no idea how good he was.

I was excited by the article’s existence and it’s ability to shed light on these amazing photographs – right until the end.

And what of his own attitude toward fat women? “I do think they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’re full-bodied, full-blooded human beings.” He doesn’t necessarily find them sexually attractive. “But I do think they’re beautiful.”

I was irked by this comment and after a week of thinking about it, I figured out why. When are we as a society going to stop fetishizing plus sized women and treat them (us – I know there is a part of me that is feeling this personally whether that is legitimate or not) like real, live, breathing, sexy women? It just irks me. Honestly, I am not sure that was the subtext under Nimoy's comment but that is what I heard when I read it.

Addendum: L. Britt, I had an answer for your question and then I saw a strand of comments on Big Fat Blog and have changed my tune a bit about the whole thing. I will explain where I was and where I am at.

I was not suggesting that Nimoy has a fetish. I actually felt as if the writer asking the question about whether or not he found them sexually attractive was her way of implying that he had to have some strange fetish in order to want to take these pictures. Many other people felt this same way and talked about it. The writer of the article saw this and responded and now I understand a bit better what she meant. The web amazes me sometimes. Instant gratification!

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on May 19, 2007 8:35 PM

Today was Transportation Alternatives' Battle for the Fastest Commute! where a bike rider, subway rider, and cab rider are pitted against each other to see who can get to a destination fastest. This year, the race started at 8:25AM at Fix Cafe on North 11th Street and Bedford in Williamsburg and ended at Bellevue Hospital at East 26th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan. And results? Lucie Olewinski, the bicyclist, was the fastest, making it to Bellevue in 15 minutes. Subway rider Philip Pond made it there in 19 minutes while it took cab rider James Vincente 23 minutes. Olewinski's win is not surprising, but we're stunned that Pond was able to get to the finish line so fast - he must have caught a flier at the Bedford L. Interestingly, Hopstop says it would take 27 minutes by subway and walking while Google Maps says it would take 14 minutes by car. Olewinski, a nurse practitioner who commutes to her night shifts at Bellevue by bike, told TA her "victory proves to would-be bike commuters that getting to work by bike is fast and easy" and also encourages others to "take advantage of the good summer weather and give bike commuting a spin." There are currently over 120,000 people who commute by bike - here are some maps for cycling in the city. It's Bike Month in NYC - there are tons of events still! And here are results from Transportation Alternatives' commuter races in 2006 and 2005.

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 19, 2007 4:36 PM

With incredible weather and over thirty commute stations providing free snacks and schwag, Seattleites had every reason to take full advantage of Bike To Work Day. Powered by Cascade and caffeinated by Starbucks, the annual event saw nearly four thousand more bikes than last year, coming in at over 19,000 cyclists.

More interesting numbers:

• The station with the highest count was the Fremont Bridge station with 1370 cyclists.
• We estimate that 266,616 miles logged by bicycle today (using the average commute length of 14 miles from the Group Health Commute Challenge).
• That’s 133 tons of CO2 that was not produced by BTWD participants.
• With 8.8million calories burned today, riders have earned 44,000 delicious tall Starbucks lattes.

Congratulations Seattle, way to kick off another terrific summer of cycling! Keep logging those commute challenge miles and enjoying our long summer days.

Originally posted by Kelli Currie from Bike Hugger, on May 19, 2007 3:28 PM

---

Thanks to ArtCal for the nice advance listing on the "Blog" opening tonight. I will be there and plan to do some "live posting." As explained in this earlier thread on the methodology of the piece:

I see this performance as a lot like the cubicle group show I was in, where I sat in the cube and worked at the computer in my business casual attire: on the opening night, but also during "office hours"--in other words, every day the space was open I came in and worked. The unrented office where that show was held had no net connection and I was channeling "my working conditions circa '95" so I posted about it during non office hours. For BLOG I will also be working during gallery hours, but from home--the posting will be the work, not about the work. (Or both, if I'm feeling "meta.")

[...]

I'm going to be performing with changing content, graphics, etc. Not really any different from what I normally do but with an awareness of a specific, physical audience, what will work on the gallery's screen, how to explain to a reader not physically in the gallery what I'm doing and why.

Also I will post any documentation the gallery sends me of how the blog screen appeared on a given day, whether or not anyone looked at it, etc. The gallery will also save each day's posts as documentation.

As for the "how do you sell this?" question:

[T]his'll be structured as a "classic" economic exchange. An agreed amount of funds for an editioned disc with the data for the show (html files for each day's posts plus associated files--images, etc.) and a certificate authenticating the work and the size of the edition.

Also, besides the edition, the "terminal" (pedestal/keyboard stand, gear) will be offered as a stand alone work, with the month's posts and associated files burned on a dedicated hard drive.

As for the press release's statement, "For the first time a blog is shown in a gallery space," commenters in the thread mentioned some possible precedents but no serious documentation was put forward of a previous, month long performance work called "Blog." As stated in the thread, I'm open to having a "beef" with anyone on this issue. On some level mine is a protest piece: that blogging has made no serious inroads into the rigid gallery/museum/art mag system of evaluating art and must be physically present in a gallery to have "cred." But it is also the second generation of "net art"--a much more casual and un-self conscious use of available technology as a content delivery system. It may seem paradoxical to say a blog bearing the artist's name is un-self conscious but the scope of this blog has always been bigger than talking about my cat (if I had one). Commenters keep the place lively and interesting, for me and I think others.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on May 19, 2007 10:39 AM

Martin:

Slightly annoying billboard at my station. Visa, the credit card company hooks up with a major department store, IOIO (Marui) and this is the best they can do? It is wrong on so many levels. She has Tokyo tower on her panties, and Fuji. And a Hawaii top. Who is it for...

Originally posted by Martin from Metroblogging Tokyo, on May 19, 2007 5:32 AM

You Might Be A Teacher If...: Tomorrow’s world needs today’s teachers, and that pool is growing smaller. Every one of our children has had a weak teacher along the way, one who sends home messages that are either grammatically incorrect, or hostile in tone. If you cringe at the thought of your child spending a year in a weak teacher’s classroom, you just might be a teacher.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 19, 2007 5:28 AM

Examiner column for May 21. 

    School districts are dealing with the teacher shortage projected to reach crisis levels in the next decade. Baby boomers are retiring and will continue to retire in the next fifteen years. Subsequent generations of adults are a bit more interested in the pocketbook than we were. If you doubt the truth of that statement, ask any group of college students how many of them plan to teach.

     I rest my case.

    That doesn’t mean those college students and their parents are any less altruistic, but they simply are not willing to settle for a career with few opportunities for salary advancement. I don’t feel underpaid as a teacher, but if I had taken my Ph.D. into a different career and spent the more than twenty-five years there, rarely missing a meeting or a day of work, I would certainly be earning more than I do right now.

    On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been able to stay home on snow days with my children.

    That kind of thinking is why I became a teacher, and why that career has been exactly right for me. The ability to see two sides of an issue, and to come down, finally, on the side of children, means you just might be a teacher.

    Jeff Foxworthy’s humorous one-liner formula for identifying rednecks can be a useful tool in identifying potential candidates for a teaching career. Consider:

    I travel by air several times a year to teacher conferences and there are always families boarding the airplane early with their car seats, strollers, and juice drinks. You might be a teacher if the crying child in the front of airplane makes you feel sad instead of mad.

    You are all familiar with the lengths to which teenagers stretch logic in their desperate attempts to convince parents they need extensions on their curfews or a car or a new CD or three. “Everybody’s got it” is so out of style. Now students marshal legal briefs to further their requests. “If such and such had been the case, then of course I would have been able to do without this item or favor. But that has not been the case, and therefore it is mine by right.” They rest their case.

    If the self-serving, logically flawed arguments of teenagers make you smile (or wish you could) instead of frown, you just might be a teacher.

    And let’s not forget the critical part our own histories play in a decision to devote our lives to youth and citizens of tomorrow. You might be a teacher if you can think of one teacher who helped you turn life’s corner.

    Tomorrow’s world needs today’s teachers, and that pool is growing smaller. Every one of our children has had a weak teacher along the way, one who sends home messages that are either grammatically incorrect, or hostile in tone. If you cringe at the thought of your child spending a year in a weak teacher’s classroom, you just might be a teacher.

    If you nodded your head a couple of times reading this, we need you in the teaching profession. Think about it.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on May 19, 2007 5:06 AM

Some interesting women from the May 7, 2007 New Yorker cover, "Style Sheet," by Ivan Brunetti:

Originally posted by ezra from Letters to an Unknown Audience, on May 19, 2007 4:25 AM

Tsukushi, 300 East 41st Street, New York; (212) 599-8888.

As a Japanese friend explained to me, "After a night of drink, drink, drink in Japan you need something salty and greasy to eat." Enter ramen. Enter Tsukushi, a hidden joint in midtown Manhattan. I'm a huge fan of Tsukushi, a restaurant with a big black door without a sign that serves katei ryori, homestyle cooking. There's no menu here, the chef chooses a course of raw and cooked dishes from seasonal ingredients. It's one of the most authentically Japanese places in New York. My last dinner there included flowering rape shoots -- a symbol of spring -- and motsuni, a down-home, soy-sauce and ginger flavored pork intestine stew.

But I never knew, until a chef friend casually mentioned it recently, that Tsukushi also has a second menu, one that starts after 10pm and lasts until two in the morning. A menu to complement a night of drink, drink, drink.

My girlfriend and I didn't go drink, drink, drink this eve but we did jones some serious ramen. So we headed to Tsukushi late night, which was already packed with businessmen, ties loosened and talking baseball. We ordered the ramen -- they serve only one kind, a soy sauce-flavored chicken and bonito stock with toothsome noodles, tender roast pork and half a hard boiled egg. Sublime and delicious. We ate it the Tokyo way, along with edamame and a tall bottle of Asahi.

Around midnight, chefs from other Japanese restaurants started filtering in, just off from work. I met Akaboshi-san from Sushi of Gari (another great restaurant, fyi), who once cooked for the Japanese embassy in Beirut and loves Middle Eastern cuisine (He once served me tuna sashimi with tahini, a perfect combination if you think about it). He and his friends were ready to cut loose this Friday eve -- no lunch service on Saturday, no need to wake up early.

Originally posted by harrissalat from "He ate well", on May 18, 2007 9:53 PM

The Tubemap Wallet is one of those ideas that sounds really neat -- even practical -- in theory: a special wallet that folds out to reveal a map of either the London Underground or the New York subway. The...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on May 18, 2007 6:53 PM

Sonic Youth are performing their 1988 album "Daydream Nation" in its entirety this summer at McCarren Park Pool. Don't want to spend $34 + fees for a ticket? Don't worry, we have you covered. The show is part of the All Tomorrow’s Parties “Don’t Look Back” concert series and takes place on July 28th. To get the pair of tix, email GothamistContest (a) gmail dot com, and answer us this: the lyrics to lead track "Teenage Riot" are supposedly about a fantasy world where which musician is running the country? Other "Don't Look Back" shows include Slint playing "Spiderland" for two shows at Webster Hall (July 17th and 18th, tickets here) and Girls Against Boys playing their "Venus Luxure No 1 Baby" at Bowery Ballroom (July 20th, tickets here). Photo of Sonic Youth playing Homerpalooza on The Simpsons.

Originally posted by arts_jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 18, 2007 6:47 PM

Code by Kevin: "One year as an indie Mac developer: What I've learned"

"End users don't care about your choice of technology; they care if your program solves their problem. The religious battles fought between developers over frameworks, programming languages, and so on, mean little to the average end user. What's most important, instead, is paying attention to user expectations in terms of application functionality, look-and-feel, and so on. Careful attention to the Apple HIG is possible in any language and toolkit."

I think my two year indieversary passed a couple of days ago. Indie-ness is still awesome.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Gus's blog, adventures in Flying Meat., on May 18, 2007 2:13 PM

BPM Magazine iTunes Promo! BPM and iTunes have teamed up to Tunecore to set you up with 25 free tracks. No strings attached! (tags: Music Apple BPM Magazine Culture Artists) For Sale: Designer House Please, please, please lottery gods, hear...

Originally posted by souris from hustler of culture, on May 18, 2007 12:19 PM

We are launching our video podcasts with an article that Beth and I wrote about SXSW. Check it out. We shot, directed and edited all of the pieces. I also composed the music! I decided I wanted to learn Garage Band and used this article as an opportunity. So fun! Hope you like it!

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on May 18, 2007 11:30 AM

Though I posted it to this site’s Elsewhere section, I want to take a moment to point out Rick Poynor’s recent article for Print Magazine, “Easy Writer.” Since its publication, this piece has stirred up a little bit of controversy because it can be fairly easily read as an indictment of design blogs and their allegedly low standards for serious writing and criticism about the practice and art of design. Right or wrong, it’s an important essay that bears a closer look. At the same time, it’s worthwhile to take at least a passing glance at the response to Poynor’s article by D. Mark Kingsley at the design blog Speak Up, too.

Hatin’ on Design Blogs

Poynor essentially contends that the informal, loosely researched and often emotional quality of most of the writing about design seen on the Interweb shortchanges truly revealing discourse. In essence, he’s arguing against the very form of weblogs and their unsupervised nature:

“The biggest single problem with blogs as a medium for writing is the very thing that bloggers tend to love them for: the lack of editors. It’s naïve to imagine that you can just sit down at the keyboard, shoot from the hip, and hit the target unaided every time.”

I happen to think that Poynor, one of the most prolific and in my opinion one of the most valuable design thinkers working, is both right and wrong in this. But it’s difficult to see the nuances of his reasoning when he concludes his article with this fairly damning assertion:

“In the meantime, for range of commentary, depth of research, and quality of thought, printed publications are still the best source.”

Ouch. You wouldn’t blame a design blogger if she read that reasoning as old media jealously calling out new media’s pretensions. And in some respect, it’s very true that this is a case of the prior regime lashing out at the new regime. In a response to Kingsley’s response, Poynor explains why, though he was a founding editor at the blog Design Obsever, he ultimately gave it up:

“Despite everything I have said above, I have nothing against blogs in general and if they paid, I would probably continue blogging.”

Great Expectations

Before I get to why I think Poynor is right, I want to point out why he’s wrong. It’s unfair to expect design weblogs to routinely produce the sort of lengthy, highly articulate and well-researched writing that Poynor produces as a matter of course. That’s just not what the medium is about, and to complain that it does not live up to the standards of, say, the thoughtful Eye Magazine (which Poynor edited for several years during a stellar run) is unrealistic. It’s a bit like complaining that YouTube has yet to produce an equivalent to “8½.” Which is to say, so what?

Here’s where he’s right. YouTube and art cinema can co-exist, at least for now. But if you want to talk about new media eating old media’s lunch, then the danger posed to Hollywood entertainment creators by the internet is like a far-off tectonic shift of no particular urgency compared to the immediate, pressing and under-appreciated danger posed by design blogs to serious outlets for design criticism.

The Danger Is Free

In the article, Poynor offers his impression that “there is less serious critical design writing happening in any medium [today].” He?s right. The market for design criticism of the sort he’s so effectively produced has always been vanishingly small, and it’s shrinking every day. I’d wager that more people will be exposed to design ideas via the comparatively shallow framework of blogging in the next five years than have ever read printed design journals in the past fifty.

Unfortunately blogs just don’t pay enough for a design writer to make a living from blogging exclusively, and yet the number of bloggers writing about design is only growing. As the market gets saturated with more and more design writing being done for the low, low cost of free, the financial incentive to produce Poynor’s relatively expensive brand of design writing will inevitably shrink.

You can argue whether that’s a good or bad, but in my opinion it’s an unhappy side effect that, as someone who is generally pro-blogging, I reluctantly accept. As is true for the bylines on the majority articles in the traditional, printed design press, design blogs are written by design practitioners, those who earn a living through design work.

By contrast, Poynor is one of only a very small handful of professional design journalists. That is, he does not make his living by earning design commissions from clients nor in the employ of a major enterprise. He puts food on his table by writing about design, and in doing so he also fulfills a crucial role that the design profession can only benefit from: that of a serious, dedicated critic who is uncompromised by his own practice of the craft. Fine art has a healthy contingent of these professionals, as do architecture and technology. Design has always lagged behind, and in the economic equation that design blogs put before us, it seems unfortunately true that that situation is not likely to improve.

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on May 18, 2007 11:24 AM

IT DOESN'T much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department. That is why Mr. Bush's response to questions about the program yesterday was so inadequate.

Originally posted by jsinton from Most Huffed News, on May 18, 2007 11:20 AM

Jane magazine's guest blog consists of reader-submitted photos and descriptions of their breasts. The results are both unerotic and fascinating. Because of the portrayal of women and men as near-perfect sexual objects in the media, movies, and porn, it's easy to forget the extent of diversity of people's bodies. "I used to think they were horrible compared to all we see in fashion mags...but now I LOVE my body and my BOOBS!!!" NSFW, I guess. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 18, 2007 11:17 AM

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on May 18, 2007 11:15 AM

It’s no secret around our office that I have an innate and unflinching affinity for anything sugar. But in all of my years as a cultivated candy connoisseur, I’ve never considered the mayhem that can be bred from a seemingly innocent mix of gelatin and water placed to process in bear-shaped molds. But the evidence is everywhere, as unearthed by brave and diligent Flickr reporters:

   

In retrospect, we should have seen this coming. Think about it: How many times have you torn off one of their heads and glued them back together –- sometimes on their kin?

   

Since we don't know how many gummy bears have actually been released into the world, there’s just one immediate solution: Eat them –- as many and as fast as humanly possible. It’s not too late.

Photos from furiousgeorge81, Latente ? "Oggi immanentizzo l' Eschaton", visio0815, and de jäck Mamsäll.

Originally posted by Maya Baratz from FlickrBlog, on May 18, 2007 11:01 AM

OMG OMG OMG! I found the recipe for Oysters Guggenheim Bilbao and this amazing photo (and also they have tons of other sci-fi cooking recipes too!). "What preparation does it undergo? It is simply warmed on the grill with a seasoning of juniper, and later dressed with four small cubes of lemon peel. It is placed over a gel made with the oyster itself, along with cockles, vegetables, and water, then gelatinized with aloe vera and lastly, to give it some color, the silver/titanium alloy is applied: a delicious gel that envelops the mollusk." Alas, it's way complicated and not something I'm likely to make at home.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 18, 2007 11:01 AM

London, to be precise. Look at their brilliant promo picture:

You know, the Queen and the Emperor have been looking a bit similar recently.
Compare and contrast:

It's at ExCel, which is a bit tedious and corporate. Ally Pally would have been better, or Hyde Park.

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on May 18, 2007 10:59 AM

There are those who loved the dog (apparently only George and me) and those who didn't (that would be the rest of you). This qualified pooch removal as the 4th or 5th most requested Flickr "feature." In the interests of continued progress, you'll notice upon logging in to your Flickr account that our canine doorman is no longer. *Sniff*

Originally posted by Heather Champ from FlickrBlog, on May 18, 2007 10:55 AM

Barely cooked but warm, the oyster was coated in a smooth juniper jelly that exaggerated its bulges and curves, made shiny by edible titanium and dubbed “Oysters Guggenheim Bilbao”. Gourmet contributing editor Francis Lam reflects on eating an oyster by the chef Quique Dacosta, and on some amazing meals ingested under the theme of "molecular gastronomy." I randomly stumbled upon this FT article today that turned out to be the source of the quote I posted yesterday. And so you may be aware Lam doesn't care for the term molecular gastronomy.

So I’ve just been calling it sci-fi cooking. I don’t know why I called it that at first, it just kind of sounded fun. But writing this, a thought occurred to me: science fiction, at its heart, does not aim to show us what might be made possible by technology, but what we might make technologically possible by our values.

The truly exciting thing about this cuisine is not what the techniques and the technology can do. It’s that it shows us what the mind can do, what new rules we can make, what new logic, what new possibilities.

I kinda like that, sci-fi cooking. Perhaps I will use that from now on as I continue to write and explore this new frontier of cooking. And it goes without saying, I would very much like to eat Oysters Guggenheim Bilbao!

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 18, 2007 10:08 AM

Quick Post

"Lean back ever so slightly. This is a non-threatening stance, making it clear you are not about to attack."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUdWApwbudQ

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on May 18, 2007 9:58 AM

Ben, Jason and David discuss JavaOne, Rails on Netbeans 6, Jason’s scale talk at Railsconf (time, people, power, bandwidth), DTrace.

ps pipe grep.

I’m serving the podcast from my Bingo disk.

Here’s a direct link to the mp3.

Here’s a non-iTunes RSS feed.

This week’s music: couple more tracks from the Van Hunt album On the Jungle Floor.

Originally posted by David Young from Joyeur, on May 18, 2007 9:38 AM

The lovingly illustrated food blog Lobstersquad's list of tips for preparing and storing pesto inspired me to hunt down a few pesto recipes.

Gourmet's recipe is pretty typical and easy to make, but if you have more time and patience it is probably worth following Heidi's suggestion and making pesto like an Italian grandma -- chop chop chop and chop some more!

We like Tom Colicchio's straight-forward approach to green things, and have adapted his recipe below. This one's all about the basil.

Pesto
- makes 1 cup -

Ingredients
Leaves from 1 large bunch basil

3 cloves garlic

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated

Salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Fresh lemon juice

Pine nuts, toasted or sautéed (optional)

Procedure
1. Place abut 4 cups ice cubes in large bowl; 2 quarts cold water. Put a large colander in bowl so it fills with ice water.

2. In a saucepan, boil 3 quarts water. Add garlic to water; cook for 30 seconds. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon. Add the basil; cook 15 seconds. Remove basil with a skimmer; place in ice water, and cool about 1 minute. Drain well, and squeeze excess water out of basil leaves.

3. Add basil and garlic to a food processor; chop. Transfer to a blender; blend on high while adding olive oil in a thin stream while the machine is blending. Add the Parmigiano; process until blended. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, processing briefly to mix.

4. Add pine nuts, whole, to whatever dish you're using the pesto with.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 18, 2007 9:36 AM

May 15, 2007 -- British rock band Electrelane performs at Irving Plaza in New York, NY.

My first time seeing them, and I was duly impressed. Only after I got home and looked them up did I realize that Mia, the guitarist, was an ex-Pitchforker.

The funky colors at Irving Plaza always make for an odd editing process, where I have to deal with people who are all purple or green, but I have to say that the lighting effects are quite fun.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kathryn yu dot com, on May 18, 2007 9:32 AM

From our friends at Radar Online: Crying wolf: Helping lead a country into a disastrous war under false pretenses got Paul Wolfowitz a cushy job atop the World Bank. Paying his girlfriend a ton of money gets him fired.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 18, 2007 8:52 AM

From our friends at Radar Online:

Crying wolf: Helping lead a country into a disastrous war under false pretenses got Paul Wolfowitz a cushy job atop the World Bank. Paying his girlfriend a ton of money gets him fired.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 18, 2007 8:52 AM

Photo from The Land & Livestock Post

Chef David Burke spent a quarter-million dollars for a prize black Angus bull to produce offspring that become his restaurant's steaks. His goal is to produce consistent high-quality steaks. But (and here perhaps I'm showing my animal husbandry ignorance) the bull is only offering 50% of his genes. Doesn't the cow have to be high quality as well? In Thoroughbred racing, just siring by a big winner doesn't produce a new winner. So does this really produce great steaks every time? Maybe good steaks for eating aren't as hard to breed as good horses for racing. Anyone who actual does know about bull breeding care to enlighten me? [via Serious Eats]

comments are open

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 18, 2007 8:43 AM

We receive word today that the Harvard Crimson is suffering from an infestation--of editors! In an article in the Crimson, ombudsman Michael Kolber relates just how extensively top-heavy the paper's staff is: "The Crimson currently claims that about 800 undergraduates are Crimson 'editors.'" Of those, only "250 to 275" are regular contributors. But, "only 96 appear on the paper's masthead, the people who hold management positions." Good grief! It makes you wonder if the Crimson staff will ever be free of conflicts of interest! "The staff will never be free of conflicts of interest," says Kolber, and at great length, he describes how nearly every article has the potential to be decorated with disclosure statements: "[On] April 27, the paper quoted a Crimson news editor in a news article about a Chinese etiquette event she attended. The April 30 paper reported that a Crimson editor, who is also a goalie on the women's water polo team, was "overpowered" by the Hartwick College team in a game that ended glumly, 16-1, Hartwick. A sports article the same day quoted an editorial editor, who is also a coxswain on the men's lightweight crew team. (The paper may not be showing its staffers that much favor. The coxswain was misquoted; a correction ran in the next issue.) The May 2 Arts section had a Q&A; with a news editor who was playing Juliet that weekend in a production of "Romeo and Juliet." The next day, the editorial page praised a Web site designed by an editorial editor, who also happened to have won the editorial page's endorsement last year in an unsuccessful bid to be Undergraduate Council president. I could go on." No, no. We get it. Apparently, the plethora of "editors" stems from the practice of bequeathing that title to just about anyone who's made a minimum standard contribution to the paper: writing "a certain number of stories," or providing photography or page layout, and attending some seminars. The Crimson recognizes the insanity, and is apparently hard at work "reclassifying" some of the persons who no longer fit the definition. What shall these folks be called? Why, "inactive editors," naturally! Kolber states: "As it is, by identifying so many students as editors, readers are left with the impression that Crimson reporting is driven more by reporters' and editors' outside interests than their principled news judgment." Actually, we are left with an altogether different impression: that the Harvard Crimson exists mainly as a means to pad resumes. Caveat emptor, employers! RELATED: Ombudsman: Crimson Should Strengthen Conflict-of-Interest Policy [Harvard Crimson]

Originally posted by Rachel Sklar from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 18, 2007 8:40 AM

Microsoft buys aQuantive for $6 billion.  And chiming in with the best instant analysis is Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt (via Reuters):

"It lowers the probability that Microsoft is buying Yahoo, at least in the near-term. Microsoft may be more interested in piecemealing together the highest-quality franchises that replicate what Yahoo already has."

What I love about this is the ANDness of it.  The recognition that growth for MSFT in online advertising will need to come both from their own online properties (MSN, LIve, etc.) and from sites out of their control.  And yes, Google's recognized this for a while...

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on May 18, 2007 8:19 AM

They Said She Was Different...


Here's a piece I did in today's Chron on the great Betty Davis. (MP3s included at the link!) Hers is an amazing and still mysterious story.

There's more here, here and here, plus here is an interview with my non-alter ego O-Dub, whose brilliant liner notes by rights ought to win him an ASCAP award. Of course, if you haven't seen the latest Wax Poetics, with its cover story by John Ballon, it's great stuff.

Bay Area music producer Greg Errico knows something about artist buzz. He used to drum for a band called Sly and the Family Stone. But he can't believe the hum he's hearing now about an artist he produced decades ago: the mysterious funk queen and rocker Betty Mabry Davis.

"She never had big commercial success. We did this 35 years ago. And she's been a recluse for large parts of that," he says. But at a recent National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences function, he adds, veteran musicians were buzzing about her as if she were a brand-new sensation.

"I've got a half-dozen interview requests," he says. "We've got the Sly and the Family Stone reissues that just came out. But there's about a notch more interest in Betty."

This month, the Afroed beauty, circa '73, graces the cover of hipster music journal Wax Poetics magazine, and today, indie label Light in the Attic Records re-releases lovingly packaged versions of her first two albums, "Betty Davis" and "They Say I'm Different," both cut in San Francisco in the early '70s.

The woman once known mainly for being the former Mrs. Miles Davis is belatedly being acknowledged as one of the most influential artists of the funk era. Carlos Santana, Joi, Talib Kweli and Ice Cube have declared their fandom. Her sway over Macy Gray, Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse is clear.

On the cover of her 1973 debut, she tilts coquettishly and flashes a million-dollar smile. Her thigh-high silver space boots seem to go on forever. But when her music begins -- written and arranged by her during a time when few black women were given such artistic license -- she shreds any idea that she is just another pretty face.

In the course of a single verse, she teases, pouts, snarls, taunts and rages. "It's like she's here in the room with you right now and she's basically caressing you and slapping you," says Chris Estey of Light in the Attic. "She is really confronting you with her womanhood, with her desires, with her complications, with ideas."

"All you lady haters don't be cruel to me," she sings on the opener, "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up." "Oh, don't you crush my velvet, don't you ruffle my feathers neither! Said I'm crazy, I'm wild. I said I'm nasty." ...

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on May 18, 2007 8:02 AM

I've been getting a steady stream of emails from fam this past week over this new song by KRS and Marley Marl called "I Was There" in which he knocks "so-called objective rap historians". They're concerned KRS-One is dissing me.

Nah, don't worry! If he was, I got a strong ego to try to step on anyway.

I really do think that the event at Stanford that gathered hip-hop scholars, journalists, and at least one agitated rapper last year has something to do with him doing this track. (I wasn't there. Had a niece's first birthday to go to back home.)

The beef that opened up there has been squashed so there is no need to go over that again. But apparently Kris is still mad about the ways rap history is being written. Note that he didn't say "hip-hop history" or "hip-hop generation history".

Anyway, given that history, it's amazing that he's teamed up with his former nemesis Marley Marl, and although I don't think "I Was There" is that great, I think "Hip-Hop Lives" could be the best work both have done in years.

Honestly, I'm a little jealous of this video. It's just really well done, and might save you the work of having to read 800+ pages (even though it shouldn't!)

So no fam, it's all love out here in the Yay...

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on May 18, 2007 8:01 AM

Time Time continues to embrace change, and is adding some "top Washington writers" to its stable. Harry Jaffe, in the Washingtonian, provides the essential rundown on the mag's newest content providers, without shying away from questioning Time's "leaky roof." His overall analysis: "Taken together, Time's changes seem to be tending toward the Economist's style of essays and columns rather than hard news reporting." That'll be cold comfort for Eric Alterman. (Side note: Being asked to contemplate the metaphoric "marriage of Ana Marie Cox and Mark Halperin" fills us with so much existential inquietude, that we'll be talking it over all weekend with some vodka.) This week's issue of the magazine features a lengthy cover story on Al Gore and his potential as a Presidential candidate. At one point, Gore nicely quips: "I'm working harder than I ever have in my life. The other day a friend said, 'Why don't you just take a break, Al, and run for President?'" Central to answering that question is, of course, whether Gore feels he's working better than he ever has in his life. When he describes politicians as "paralyzed" and says "our democracy hasn't been working very well," he seems to provide an answer. Elsewhere, Joe Klein weighs in on this week's debate and declares Rudy the winner--like we said, zippy comebacks at third-tier candidate Ron Paul's expense are apparently what passes for leadership. Michael Kinsley wades into the confusing nuances of Rudy and Mitt's abortion positions. And in the aftermath of Jerry Falwell's death, "a rising generation of Christian leaders...looking to bring people together" is found. As a side note, our choice for a model, post-apocalyptic society would not be to follow Kevin Costner's neo-Pony Express. Rather, we would prefer a society built upon the Life and Great Works of Don Cheadle Heart, wit, class, and that divine, ineffable coolness are the traits of his worthy of emulation. Time gives him the ten question treatment. We also enjoyed the feature that proposed Fountains of Wayne as the white-collar drone's Bruce Springsteen (though, skip their latest record and get yourself legal copies of Utopia Parkway and "Welcome, Interstate Managers" instead.

Originally posted by Rachel Sklar from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 18, 2007 8:00 AM

I'm at the Personal Democracy Forum here in New York City today, and considering how many technology-related events I go to, I'm surprised that this one already seems to have piqued my interest. If you're at the event, drop me a line, and stop by the panel I'm speaking on in the afternoon.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on May 18, 2007 7:53 AM

Posted by Hunter Middleton, Product Manager

From the beginning, we envisioned making Google Apps available to any organization that might want to offer this innovative set of services to its employees, customers, students, members, or any other associates of the organization. Today, we're excited to take another step in that direction by releasing a version of Google Apps specifically designed for ISPs, portals, and other service providers, whether you have a few thousand subscribers or over a million. This new version, which we're calling the Partner Edition, makes it easy for large and small service providers to offer your subscribers the latest versions of powerful tools, like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, without having to worry about hosting, updating, or maintaining any of the services yourself. All you have to do is point and click in the easy admin control panel and figure out what branding you'd like to layer on top of the products in order to create a customized look and feel. You can quit spending your resources and time on applications like webmail -- and leave the work to our busy bees at the Googleplex.

Originally posted by Molly Graham from Official Google Blog, on May 18, 2007 7:42 AM

For the four or five of you that haven't yet read Moneyball, the entire thing is available online, courtesy of a Russina site presumably out of the reach of the American legal system. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 18, 2007 7:40 AM

Many thanks to the good people of The Flirble Organisation.

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on May 18, 2007 7:34 AM

For Bike to Work today from KHS Bicycles.

Bike Hugger Photostream

Originally posted by mobilhomme from Bike Hugger, on May 18, 2007 6:59 AM

After much experimentation, I have perfected Wylie Dufresne's, allegedly patented yoghurt noodles. You can make them too if you purchase some transglutaminase online. And then you can have the fun of squeezing noodles into hot broth and watching them form. This would be like the best birthday party dinner for a bunch of kids, wouldn't it? You know, assuming they enjoy eating "a ginger and spring onion broth, with a tian of spring greens, crab, and a chorizo foam." In Manhattan they very well might! [thanks Jason.]

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 18, 2007 6:52 AM

Urban nightmare come true: A woman fell 10-12 feet through sidewalk grating outside 150 West 51st Street. And she fell into an electrical transformer vault! Luckily, she was not electrocuted (according to NY1, Con Ed said she was "never in danger of being electrocuted"), but the power was shut off as a precaution. One person told WCBS 2, “I was walking in front of her and all of a sudden I heard somebody yelling, somebody fell, and I turned around and there was a hole in the ground. That’s when I ran over, saw it and ran to my job and called 911.” It took 20 minutes for the FDNY to rescue the woman, who is at a hospital in stable condition. Naturally, this has scared the bejesus out of, well, anyone who walks on a sidewalk. It seems that the hinges might have given way, but Con Ed is investigating. Many women avoid walking on sidewalk grates because their shoes' heels get caught. And this is OSHA's bulletin Hazard of Potential Sidewalk Grate System Failure.

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 18, 2007 6:45 AM

How to Make an Herb Spiral.

The herb spiral is a permaculture gardening method that uses nature to its full potential. Gravity allows the water to seep through the levels meaning that the plants at the top get full drainage while the ones at the bottom may reside in a simple bog. It also gives your herbs shady spots with varying degrees. The herbs that need full-sun can be grown in those positions while more shade loving plants can be located on the opposite side.

What a great idea—and pretty. If I had a backyard, I'd definitely consider building one of these. (via gw)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 18, 2007 6:44 AM

no clue whether it's useful but watching this space, obviously

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by stamen to twitter - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by stamen from del.icio.us/stamen, on May 18, 2007 5:31 AM

From Wonkette: "This is a draft-dodging half-human war criminal with a pregnant lesbian daughter who tells senators to fuck themselves and shoots his own friends in the face. Ordering an outcall hooker is positively innocent compared to the well-known things Cheney does every day."

Originally posted by djacobs from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 18, 2007 12:05 AM

I’ll interrupt our normal bike blogging for stunning testimony today from Greg Lemond at the Landis arbitration hearing. Lemond told the courtroom that Landis implicitly admitted to him that he doped, that Landis’ business manger intimidated him before his testimony (and was fired on the spot in the courtroom), and that he was sexually abused as a child.

News Reports

• AP LeMond Accuses Landis’s Camp of Trying to Silence His Testimony
• VeloNews
• CyclingNews

Blogs

• The Dark Side Of American Cycling Is On Display Now
• Lemond’s Bizarro Bomb
• Cycling: Landis (Kangaroo?) Trial in Full Swing

(from the Dark Side of American Cycling) “A bitter and jealous old champion who has never received the adulation he feels he deserves, a dominant personality with a carefully protected image who is fighting to keep his name out of the mud that the rest of the cycling world is stained with, an Olympic champion who appears to have been a total fraud and an ornery Mennonite who’s business manager is pitifully trying to blackmail the bitter old champion with his childhood trauma.”

And my post from last year on not believing anything anymore.

Originally posted by Byron from Bike Hugger, on May 17, 2007 7:13 PM

$

50

Title: War Hovers Over Us Again Site: Kehoe Shop

When I saw Andy Kehoe on Tiny Showcase a few days ago I was blown away, apparently so was everybody else since his print is now sold out. Thankfully he has several others available on his personal website. While you're there, stop in and check out his paintings, I am SO IN LOVE with THIS. This is pretty fantastic too.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from we[heart]prints, on May 17, 2007 6:13 PM

So WPP buys 24/7 Real Media, and the best quote of the day is in the New York Times...

“Martin Sorrell has said that he views Google as a ‘frienemy,’ ” said Dave Morgan, chairman of Tacoda, an online ad network, and former chief executive at a company that became part of 24/7 Real Media. “He wants Google to view him as a frienemy, too. He has now given his response, which is that he’s not going to just sit and wait and see what happens. He’s going to take an aggressive position against a world where Google and Yahoo will dominate.”

Now there's lots of juicy strategic analysis to be made here about vertical integration, coopetition and all those other fun things that I spent so many hours caring about in grad school.  But instead I'm flashing back to high school, when there was this guy who had this massive crush on this girl and he really wanted him to like her back but she didn't (she was hot hot hot and could have any guy she wanted, and chose the captain of the soccer team) so to get back at her he asks this other girl to the prom.

(And no, that's not me in the pic.  That's actually Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar, who put his junior prom photo on Flickr.  Brilliant.)

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on May 17, 2007 4:28 PM

This story of Google Reader's birth isn't just about me. But for a long, bad while it is. So here's how it started...

It's Kottke's Fault.

Sometime around early 2001, while not working at work, I was reading a post on Jason Kottke's blog where he mentioned a company named Moreover. Moreover had a pitch about putting free headlines on your site. At the time, Moreover's pitch sounded like tin-toned boilerplate barkery with a voice about as authentic as a "sale" at Guitar Center. But I trust Jason, and, besides, could I write marketing copy any better? (Answer: no.)

I followed the instructions and put headlines on my site. It was easily accomplished.

I realized that instead of this neat solution, someone should replace it with something tedious and lame and less re-usable. I was clearly that someone.

All the choices of a Model T.

I decided I wanted a site with headlines from many different sites. In the irrational exuberance days, these were sometimes referred to as "web directories" or "web portals" if they were customizable.

I made a poorly-written, open-sourced Java library to get headlines based on Moreover's "webfeeds." Then I made a mini-portal. It got the "mini" qualification because the customization was narrow since users could only choose headlines from sites I liked because I was too lazy to build the customization engine. Naturally, I included my own weblog, so my hand would have been raised high in a "raise your hand if you're a jerk" contest.

I finished and sent a link to friends. The site was alive and browsers could see it, so I was satisfied. Except CNN didn't have a feed, so I modified the code to scrape the lead story and some other links. Later that year, on September 11th, that would turn out to be a surreal snapshot on a bandwidth-choked day as the cache contained information from sites that remained inaccessible.

There are many copies.

The mini-portal puttered along on a server in my apartment throughout the next couple of years as my professional life was significantly changed by joining Google. I remain grateful for this, I am exceedingly lucky this occurred.

I was working on Blogger, for whom syndication was an important and contentious topic. I'll elide over the technical details and specific history of the evolution of feeds and instead give you my bird's-eye first impression as a developer wading into the food fight over standards and implementation. My first impression?

Blogger had Moreover's webfeeds, except they were calling them just "feeds." And other people before Moreover had originally called them RDF for a while but simplified them to RSS. Except then they called them Echo. Which stopped after a while and they called them Atom though they planned several versions. Except there was still RSS. Also with several versions. And everyone hated each other. Weird, huh?

(If you're mad about the preceding paragraph, please know I think you are a beautiful person. And sexy. You are loved, it is presumed.)

The mini-portal kept breaking and friends kept telling me they relied on it, so I kept updating it. I was surprised anyone relied on it, especially as it wasn't very powerful. They seemed addicted.

Parser.

At Google one day, like every day, I was really busy.

Turns out that with Jason Shellen that wasn't really much of a deterrent. "Why don't you make an Atom parser in Javascript?", he asked.

Which, for the non-geeks, is his asking me to make something that turns something into something else which could be used to represent data that was basically about cat photos. Generally the people who appreciate this kind of thing have been given a Lego-based Millenium Falcon as a birthday present.

So, okay. That sounded fun (kinda). And I was only doing several thousand things at the time, so it seemed a reasonable request.

Normalization.

After writing an Atom parser and getting a way to run unit tests automatically for a group of Atom feeds I went back to the thousands of things I was supposed to be doing and rested with some contentment.

"You suck," mentioned Steve Jenson.

"Having a normalizer could fit every kind of feed content into your model," he continued while watching me review the unit tests in shame. "Then you would suck less. And I could write that in ten minutes. Nine, if I don't take time to blink."

Steve whipped together a Python-based normalizer based on the Universal Feed Parser and made me watch. He agreed to let me use it if I danced a jig which I performed mio gusto as requested. I'd already abandoned my dignity earlier in life so the joke was on him.

A moment of clarity.

Normally, programmers are supposed to minimize duplication of effort so I wasn't thinking about making a feed reader, there were plenty of those - I was just making a web page that tested the parser. I narrowed the parser effort to just one bug that concerned me, and one night I finally discovered a workaround, posted about it, and ran the tests again to review the content.

Oh. Well, would you look at that.

See, that night a little wheel reinvention occurred ... as a square. The parser became a reader by accident.

It's difficult to describe my excitement at that moment.

For the non-geeks, I mostly work on the stuff you can actually see when you use software: the layout, forms, graphics, the logic behind what happens when you click on something.

Each time I'd want to do something useful that was also complex, I'd have to create a layer which described data in a way that I could easily transform. It almost never came out from a database that way.

But in this moment, I reviewed the tests and was reminded that a layer had been bypassed. Feeds were already describing data in a way that I could easily transform. This was more convenient than any other confluence of data and language than I'd seen. I could work less and take naps and just be lazier and that's all I'd really wanted anyways.

An anecdote for the geeks: I'd also realized it could be neat to attach events processing to individual items in a feed. I hoped that could be useful. (As Mihai has shown all of us in abundance: it has been. More on that later.)

The pages looked reasonably pretty.

I put it on the Google intranet to show Steve even though the reading interface had lots of bugs. Code quality seemed unimportant since, I thought, this is just a little thing. It's not like it's going to be something real.

End Part 1.

Originally posted by Chris Wetherell from massless, on May 17, 2007 1:30 PM

A recent patent filing from Apple introduces techniques that will allow the creation of lighter, thinner notebooks. Goodbye, screws and rivets!

Read More...

Originally posted by grover.saunders@gmail.com (Grover Saunders) from Infinite Loop, on May 17, 2007 12:12 PM

"'Molecular gastronomy' seems more like a theory than a practice. No one is breaking out the microscopes and cooking molecule by molecule." - Francis Lam on Molecular Gastronomy

There are more great quotes over at Josh's newish Food Section Quotables.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 17, 2007 10:55 AM

Here's a heads up on sunny summertime shows. Sure, after the first week we'll be complaining about the heat, the smell of the city as it melts, and the lack of shade...but it's always nice to have some music to look forward to. So stock up on the SPF for the following shows: Celebrate Brooklyn picks (full schedule here, always the most diverse lineup) • June 16th Joan Osborne, The Jazz Passengers: The Supremes Project • August 9th The Hold Steady, The Big Sleep, The Teenage Prayers • August 10th Music & Movies Series, Bollywood In Brooklyn: Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin with Dj Rekha's Bollywood Disco Listen: Killer Parties.mp3 - The Hold Steady (remix) McCarren Park Pool picks (free pool parties schedule here - as of now they haven't updated site for 2007 shows.) Bonus: dodgeball and slip n' slide! • Date TBA The Thermals (free) • Date TBA Ghostland Observatory (free) • August 3rd Erasure (not free) Listen: Test Pattern.mp3 - The Thermals Seaport Music Festival and River to River Festival picks (full schedule here and here) Bonus: water view at the Seaport. • June 1st Animal Collective with special guests Danielson • July 13th Menomena with Beat the Devil • August 31st Battles (special guest TBA) Listen: E Is Stable.mp3 - Menomena

Originally posted by arts_jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 17, 2007 10:52 AM

After a not unpleasant hike that involved a walk in the hazy heat from Rego Park to Flushing and a 20-minute bus ride to College Point, Gothamist arrived at Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries the other day. As expected, the dreaded mantra of the D.C.-based burgermeisters hung above the counter in the cheery red-and-white dining room. It read: "We Cook All Our Meat WELL-DONE." When asked why on earth anyone would cook a hamburger, much less any meat in such a fashion, the cashier replied, "Don't worry, it's still juicy." Given the dozens of rave reviews lining the walls, Gothamist decided to keep an open mind. It should be noted that a "hamburger" at Five Guys consists of two 3.3-ounce patties. (If for some ungodly reason you wish to eat less well-done beef, you must order a "Little Hamburger.") Our hamburger was topped with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, ketchup and raw onions and sided with a regular order of fries. The Guys present all orders in brown paper bags, whether they're to go or not. Perhaps there was a tray shortage in the D.C. area when they first opened. Tearing open the bag provides a serviceable tray much like butcher paper acts as a plate at any good Texas barbecue joint. As you can see, the patties themselves remained quite juicy, and had a wonderful crispy, crunchy char on top that would make Louis-Camille Maillard beam with pride. Combined with the squishy sesame bun and the other ingredients it was truly delicious. It was certainly the best well-done burger that ever passed our lips. And just why were these well-done burgers done so well? The answer's simple: every morning the staff churns out anywhere from 600 to 800 hand-formed beef patties. The hand-cut fries were also fabulous. As a sign on the wall pointed out, that day's fries hailed from Rigby, Idaho. If you want to avoid the trek to College Point, just wait until July when the Guys plan to open a Manhattan location. Can't wait that long? They're a opening a store in Brooklyn Heights next month. Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries is located at 132-01 14 Avenue (at 132 Street) in College Point, Queens. 718-767-6500.

Originally posted by nyc_distefano from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 17, 2007 10:52 AM

Quick Post

Mmmm, Talking Heads

http://www.fluxblog.org/2007/05/miss-me-when-im-gone.html

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on May 17, 2007 10:35 AM

The iPhone has received emissions approval from the FCC, meaning that it is now technically allowed to be sold in the US. We still won't see any interesting details until June, though.

Read More...

Originally posted by justin.berka@gmail.com (Justin Berka) from Infinite Loop, on May 17, 2007 10:31 AM

CBS offers a "blogger's toolkit" for fall previews, which doesn't work.

CBS has picked up "Kid's Nation," a reality show about a bunch of kids trying to start a civil society in an abandoned town. Thoughtfully, they've created a website dedicated to all their new shows.

At the top of the page is a link to a "blogger's toolkit" which purports to offer embeddable video previews of their shows, and the ability to link directly to these previews. Great idea!

Only one problem: It doesn't work.

I found the preview clip for Kid Nation, and grabbed the link (http://www.cbs.com/innertube/?src=ext&vid=139183), so I could add it to my bookmarking site. I pasted the link to my browser, only to learn (after a long loading delay) that it doesn't link to the video at all! It links to a generic front page on InnerTube, CBS's video site. I gave it a few more tries to make sure it wasn't my error, and I regardless of how I approached it, I could not link directly to the video.

After a couple more tries, I gave up, wrote this complaint, and moved on. If anyone can get this to work, let me know. If not, send this one back to the labs, CBS.

At least the embeddable stuff works:

Oh, nevermind, I guess that doesn't work either.

Originally posted by adm from Thousand Robots: End Effector, on May 17, 2007 9:36 AM

Using CSS to consistently style forms buttons across IE, Firefox, and Safari. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 17, 2007 9:34 AM

May 15, 2007 -- Khaela Maricich of The Blow performs at Irving Plaza in New York, NY.

Even though "The Blow" is two people, live, it's Khaela, singing and bantering alongside a recorded track, while doing robotic dance moves. It sounds horriblly gimmicky e on paper, but is awfully endearing as she confesses that all of her songs are about "chasing after someone who doesn't want you" and boys who don't call her back. More here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kathryn yu dot com, on May 17, 2007 9:14 AM

Well, hey, tomorrow is Bike to Work Day! That came up fast and I missed the related cycling needn’t be life-threatening editorial in the Seattle PI with it’s now standard cyclists suck/motorist suck comment thread.

I’ll join Pam during her commute on Bettie and will see you out there at the commute stations.

Originally posted by Byron from Bike Hugger, on May 17, 2007 8:53 AM

Posted by Adam Mathes, Product Manager, Book Search

Google Book Search allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digitized books, but we thought that wasn't quite enough. Now when you search you'll get both digitized book results as well as records for millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world.

When you view these new added book records, you can often read reviews, a summary, or see what other people had to say about the book around the web. Since these books haven't been digitally indexed yet, you can't preview the text online, but if you've discovered something great, we offer links to buy the book or find it in a library near you.

We're doing this because we want to offer users the most comprehensive book search in the world - whether it's a book you can read online now, preview samples, see a few snippets, or just read what others have written about the book. We're still very busy digitizing millions more books, but want to make as much discoverable as possible today.

To find out more, check out our post on Inside Google Book Search.

Originally posted by Molly Graham from Official Google Blog, on May 17, 2007 8:00 AM

When we first moved here, my husband and I found a review that described "San Francisco's only Istrian restaurant". We've spent the intervening time asking ourselves, repeatedly, "Where the heck is Istria?" After years of waiting, today the answer is revealed. (thanks, jjg)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 17, 2007 7:58 AM

This is perhaps the ugliest dress I've ever seen.

Just sayin'.

Originally posted by sbyrne from Daily Blabber, on May 17, 2007 7:14 AM

I am pleased to announce Joyent will be open sourcing our Connector team collaboration suite under the GPL v2. We hope to have the code and a community platform ready for public consumption by the end of June, 2007. Luke Crawford, of Joyent, will be the Project Director and Joyent’s other developers will continue to further develop Connector along with, it is our hope, a community of Rails developers who want to build the best web suite possible on the net.

Why?

Joyent is taking this step for three reasons. First, we believe that in the software-as-a-service business, the business is service not software. The electrical company makes significant money delivering an open source commodity that I can make by simply putting on some wool socks and shuffling across the carpet. The fact is, if you write a web application, most of your important code, the user experience code, the CSS, Javascript, can be seen by developers. It’s already open and they can copy it.

The second reason we’re doing this: Connector is at a point where community involvement makes sense. Had we done this one year ago, the result would have been a mess. It’s important to us that the community take part. Let’s not play catch-up to the closed source web collaboration suites on the web today. There’s a certain perceived irony on our part that Web 2.0 has meant more open APIs but more closed source stacks. Connector changes this.

Third, we want to continue to give back to the Rails and Ruby communities. Our Slingshot product was the first major push in “giving back”. Joyent Connector is the next one. There will be more. The vibrancy of the Rails ecosystem relies on more than the framework. It also relies on the number and quality of free and open sourced applications available in the ecosystem. I believe this has been one of the strengths of PHP.

Joyent’s Continued Investment in Connector.

Joyent will continue to invest heavily in further development of Connector. We have a full product roadmap for our developers. Today we will be shipping “Lists” a web-based outliner that supports OPML. (More later.) That’s significant investment. We’re working on “Web” that will be a unique take on group web service management (blogs, wikis, svn, etc.) We will be doing “Chat” later this summer, and have plans to do a web-based “White Board” in the coming months. Joyent Connector is a fully integrated suite that recently was named the “Best Office 2.0 Suite” at the 2006 Office 2.0 conference. It has received lot’s of praise for its user-experience design. If you know how to use one Joyent application, you know how to use every Joyent application. We’ll work with the community to ensure this continues to be the case.

Other Notable Items.

We will be open sourcing the Rails code for Joyent Connector but not the configurations and system architecture that allow us to run large-scale IMAP, MySQL, Jabber, WebDAV and LDAP services for the hundreds of thousands of users we support today (with more to come through our partnership with Corel). We will provide details and HOWTOs on how to get the entire Connector stack running. Joyent Connector will continue to be offered to customers in a software-as-a-service model and we will have commercial licenses available for those that would like service and support creating their own Joyent Connector-based online offerings. There is no intention at this time to offer a community and “pro” version of Connector. The version of Connector that runs on joyent.net will be the same open source version available under the GPL.

Join Us in the Suite.

I hope you will join us to make Connector the best suite on the web. If you’re at Railsconf in Portland, come by the presidential suite at the Doubletree Hotel at 1000 NE Multnomah (room 1555) from 3:30-5:30PM every day for a happy hour we’re throwing. We’d love to show you Connector. Let’s connect.

Originally posted by David Young from Joyeur, on May 17, 2007 7:12 AM

· Sam Talbot's next project "a lot bigger than a restaurant" [NYP]
· PETA FedExes a ton of horseshit to Ramsay's flagship [NYP]
&#183 DOH diagnoses Harlem junk food epidemic [NYP]
· Perilla becoming Top Chef alum hangout [The RG]
· Getting mega-meta: is McNally's sexism accusation sexist? [Gawker]
· David Burke in a monogamous relationship with a bull [Serious Eats]

Originally posted by jkessler from Eater, on May 17, 2007 6:19 AM

"Bibimbap is basically rice mixed with vegetables, usually some type of meat, and gochujang. But that’s the simple of it. Each one of the ingredients is something special in itself. It’s like a bunch of little salads and meats individually and carefully prepared placed on shiny rice in a bowl." ZenKimchi explains the traditional Korean dish, bibimbap, and its many seasonal variations.

Photograph from jetalone on Flickr

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 17, 2007 6:08 AM

The baby carrot is a product of frugality and an abhorrence of waste. "Baby carrots are not young carrots, but rather small pieces of carrots that are chopped and whittled down to look like small carrots." A farmer came up with the idea after having to feed large amounts his crop to livestock because their shape wasn't uniform enough for supermarket sale. I prefer carrots from the greenmarket, but you can't beat baby carrots for their convenience. [via Dethroner]

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 17, 2007 5:41 AM

It's so annoying that the justice system just can't get it together enough to send Paris to jail for 45 whole days.

Paris' sentence has been shortened because of "good behavior", officials said yesterday. The heiress will now serve a measly 23 days in a "special needs" unit of a facility. An L.A. County sheriff's spokesman said that she'll be staying in a two-person cell reserved for "high-profile" inmates, and that she'll have at least an hour a day to shower, watch TV, play outside, or talk on the phone.

What?

Good behavior? Talk on the phone?

When Marcia Brady got punished she wasn't even allowed to play in the potato sack race in her backyard?

Blasphemy.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on May 17, 2007 5:25 AM

A new screensaver lets you keep track of what's going on with Twitter and Flickr by displaying the Twittervision and Flickrvision sites when your computer is idle.

Read More...

Originally posted by justin.berka@gmail.com (Justin Berka) from Infinite Loop, on May 17, 2007 5:23 AM

Smith Mag is currently putting out another online graphic novel (after last year’s astounding Shooting War) called A.D., dealing with the survivors of Katrina and its aftermath. It’s a must-read, and Ana from Pulp Secret went down to talk to everyone involved — here’s the video.

Originally posted by tim from shey.net reboot, on May 17, 2007 4:11 AM

Has the world gone meatball crazy? I believe it has. No matter what kind of restaurant I walk into, I find at least one kind of meatball on the menu. And that, my friends, is a good thing. Great meatballs, light and savory and slightly toothsome, are to my way of thinking one of life's great edible pleasures. So I have decided to compile, with the help of the Serious Eats community, a master list of great meatballs around the country and the world for that matter, that we can put all our go-to meatball places on a Google Map. And if you feel like sharing a terrific meatball recipe, by all means post it as a comment here.

Call it Meatball Radar. Or Google Meatballs.

Consider just some of the delicious meatballs I have had recently in NYC:

The duck meatballs with cherry moustarda at A Voce in the Flatiron district in New York. I'm sure chef-owner Andrew Carmellini is sick of making them and talking about them, but they are damned fine.

The tuna meatballs at Esca. Dave Pasternack's tuna meatballs are so meaty you'd swear they were made out of red meat.

Jody Williams' Sicilian-style meatballs at Morandi. These cloud-like beauties are studded with raisins and pine nuts.

And this doesn't even include Mike Psilakis' incredible Greek meatballs at Kefi, the great plate of meatballs and potatoes I had at Pepolini, or Frankie's Spuntino's incomparable meatball sandwich. Someone e-mailed me about the delicious giant meatball served in the Tavern at Gramercy Tavern. What's on your Five Favorite Meatball list?

A Voce
41 Madison Avenue (at 26th St.)
New York, NY 10010
Ph:212-545-8555

Esca
402 W. 43rd Street (at Ninth Avenue)
New York, NY 10036
Ph: 212-564-7272

Morandi
211 Waverly Place (bet. 7th Ave. and Charles)
New York, NY 10014
Ph: 212-564-7272

Where do you get great meatballs? Serious Eaters want to know.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 17, 2007 3:41 AM

a new mobile application that allows joggers to socialize & motivate each other while jogging in geographically distant locations through the use of spatially distributed audio. while each partner jogs, speed data is collected & used to spatially position the audio of the conversation in a 2D sound environment. as one jogger speaks, their partner hears the localized audio & is able to detect whether the other person is going faster, same pace, or slower, & thus is in front, to the side, or behind, respectively.

similar to a collocated setting, the audio cues runners when to speed up or slow down in order to “stay” with their partner. the joggers can discuss running routes, motivate each other to keep pace, or simply listen to the environment noises of the other location. technically, the prototype consists of 2 identical systems, each with a miniature computer, a Bluetooth GPS device, a wireless modem, a mobile phone & a headset.

[link: exertioninterfaces.com (movie available) & exertioninterfaces.com (PDF)|via abc.net.au]

see also hug shirt.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on May 16, 2007 8:31 PM

Mocketing: making fun of your product or brand in order to sell the product and build the brand. Found out about mocketing from this Book Design Review post on a book called Unmarketable. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 16, 2007 5:33 PM

Though it’s only been open for a little more than a week, Thai Tony’s on Fort Hamilton Parkway at the edge of Kensington, Brooklyn, is already building a strong neighborhood following. During repeat visits, Gothamist watched the owners and staff bustle around the dining room of the self-described “home-style bistro,” greeting returning customers by name. That’s right, they already know most of their customers by name. Thai Tony’s first came to our attention via our friends over at the Kensington blog, who followed its development from the construction phase, to last week’s grand opening. With around 20 seats including a couple of sidewalk tables, Thai Tony’s is definitely filling a niche: there are very few sit-down restaurants in the area, let alone relax. The restaurant does the standard delivery thing, and puts a strong focus on the earnest Lunch Special. The twelve choices ($4.95) include a fried spring roll and side of white rice ($1 extra for a side salad or a huge bowl of soup, like chicken with rice noodles). Try the Paad Gaprow -- sauteed chicken and chili, onions, and Holy Basil sauce. Also good is the Hoy Jor ($3.95), dense ground shrimp and crab wrapped in soy paper and fried, served with plum sauce. While the menu doesn’t really stack up against region-hopping largesse of Sripraphai, for example, the flavors at Thai Tony’s are clean and fresh. Also, like much of Kensington, it’s hype free. You can easily pre-negotiate the spiciness level of your entrees with your server, or ask for a little more sugar for your excellent ginger iced tea ($2). Thai Tony’s is currently cash-only and BYOB; nicely, the Exxon “on the go” minimart down the street, right across from the Greenwood Cemetery border, carries a wide selection of decent beer, including Magic Hat, Dos Equis, and Yuengling. Thai Tony’s 3019 Fort Hamilton Parkway (near East 2nd Street) Brooklyn (718) 436-6932 photos: Thai Tony's dining room; chicken with ginger sauce lunch special

Originally posted by goth_hugh from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 16, 2007 4:19 PM

One of my favourite FlickrBlog moments was posted by Stewart entitled "Sometimes We Suck" a couple of years ago after a few weeks of hardware debacles that left Flickr rather wanting. Why is that one a favourite? Transparency and honesty are something that I've always valued as a cornerstone of what makes Flickr, well Flickr.

To that end, this post is titled "Sometimes We Make Mistakes" given an error of judgment that was made by the team yesterday that resulted in the removal of a photograph from one of our member's photostream.

Stewart has responded to the various concerns raised by the community in the Forum with a lengthy post:

"...I have to be a little quicker than I'd like because I'm writing this on a Treo in a car in the desert, coming back from a vacation (I'm not driving - no worries). I've gotten the whole back story from the team and have read the forums, various Flickr groups topics and blog posts on this topic (as of a few hours ago), so I have a pretty good idea that we screwed up -- and for that I take full responsibility (actually, several team members are fighting to take responsibility).

There are several policies which will be changing as a direct result of this incident and the goal is that nothing like this ever happens again. Any errors from now on should be on the side of caution..."

You can read the full official response here.

Originally posted by Heather Champ from FlickrBlog, on May 16, 2007 3:28 PM

As I type this, I've got the Serious Eats copy of Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen propped open on the book stand on my desk, and I'm looking at a beautiful photo of his braised carrots. And I guess you are, too (right). I thought it was interesting that Richard left his braised carrots whole and created a little stash of faux carrot greens out of mâche. This elevation of the humble carrot spoke to me, and I thought it might speak to you as well, so it's today's Cook the Book recipe (after the jump).

Richard recently won a 2007 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef for his work at Michel Richard Citronelle in Washington, D.C. Happy in the Kitchen, which you can enter to win here, was itself nominated for Cookbook of the Year. The book is full of other showstopping food treatments, and even if you never cook from it, the photos make for some first-rate food porn.

Serious Eats's contest policy »

Braised Carrots with Carrot-Top Sauce
- serves 4 as a first course or side -

Ingredients
1 orange

8 carrots about 9 inches long and 3/4 inch in diameter (about 12 ounces), with their greens

4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter

1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Fine sea salt

Pinch of ground coriander

1/2 cup chicken stock

Finely ground black pepper

For the salad
1 cup mâche

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Pinch of granulated sugar

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Procedure
1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil. With a vegetable peeler, peel the zest in strips from the orange, avoiding the white pith. Finely chop the zest, place in a small strainer, and dip into the boiling water to blanch for a minute. Rinse zest under cold water; drain on a paper towel.

2. Spread zest on a plate; allow to dry at room temperature for 24 hours, or dry in the microwave for 3 to 4 minutes. Set aside.

3. Squeeze 1/2 cup juice from the orange. Set aside. Cut off carrot greens and reserve. Peel and trim carrots.

4. In a sauté pan large enough to hold the carrots in a single layer, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion; sauté for 30 seconds. Add the orange juice, sugar, a pinch of salt, the coriander, and carrots. Bring to a simmer, cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 5 minutes.

5. Add the chicken stock; simmer for 15 minutes or until the carrots are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife. Meanwhile, bring a medium pot of water to a boil, and fill a medium bowl with ice water. Pick the leaves from the carrot greens and discard the stems. Break leaves into 1- to 2-inch pieces. There should be about 1 cup of loosely packed greens. Blanch greens in the boiling water for about 15 seconds. Drain in a strainer, and immediately plunge strainer into ice water to stop the cooking. When the greens are cold, lift strainer, drain well, and dry greens on paper towels.

6. When the carrots are tender, transfer them to a plate; cover loosely to keep warm. If there is more than 1/2 cup liquid remaining in pan, return pan to burner and simmer to reduce to 1/2 cup. Combine the cooking liquid and the remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a blender, add carrot greens, and blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (There will be about 1/2 cup sauce.)

7. Gently toss the mâche with the oil, vinegar, sugar, and salt; add pepper to taste. Serve the carrots family-style on a platter, arranged in a bunch with the mâche at the top and the sauce poured along one side, or serve 2 carrots per plate with a small mound of mâche and the sauce spooned onto the side. Sprinkle the carrots with the orange zest.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 16, 2007 3:15 PM

It's not yet Memorial Day, but the summer reading lists are starting to appear.

For adults:

• The Faith in Literature Summer 2007 Reading List
• The Environmental Defense Fund Staff Picks for Summer Reading

For children:

• A compendium of lists of the Best Kid's Books
• The Houston Area Independent Schools Library Network 2007 Recommended Reading Lists from Preschool to Grade 12
• Mrs. Mitchell's Summer Reading List Suggestions for kids
• ATN Reading Lists (with extensive categorization) and Reading Wiki
• The International Reading Association's Children's Choices, Teacher's Choices, and Young Adult's Choices Reading lists. Chosen each year from 1998 to 2006 by children, teachers, and young adults, respectively.

For everyone:
Marylaine Block's Books too good to put down.

If you don't already have one, now is a great time to get a library card. If you have one, now is a great time to put it in your wallet.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 16, 2007 2:28 PM

Two chat bots, Alice and Jabberwacky, converse with each other. "J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke? / A: Sure, tell me about it. / J: Why don't blind people skydive? / A: Perhaps it is impossible. / J: I think you lie a lot." (thx, nick) (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 16, 2007 1:55 PM

Once-confidential documents prepared as the NYPD readied for the convention cautioned the group was "forged as a mockery of the current presidency and political policies," and they noted that "preliminary intelligence indicates that this group is raising funds for expansion and support of anti-RNC organizations."

A federal judge ordered the documents unsealed amid protracted litigation challenging the legitimacy of many of the more than 1,800 arrests made at the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where President Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term in office.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post News Team from Most Huffed News, on May 16, 2007 1:40 PM

Bono is apparently in a fighting mood. At least according to the photo of him above an article in today's Guardian describing his anger that the G-8 countries, and particularly Italy and Russia have not come close to meeting the pledges for increased aid to Africa made at the Gleneagles Summit two years ago. Bono has laudably been pushing for increased aid and debt reduction for Africa for years. His devotion to the issue has led him to sit with some pretty strange bedfellows, including former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and current -- and hopefully soon to be outgoing -- president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. Whatever it took to get the big powers to reconsider their aid and debt policies to the world's most impoverished and long-suffering continent. Even if it meant putting on another international concert, Live 8, to raise awareness of the issue in the public consciousness. The centerpiece of Bono's efforts was the Live 8 concert held on July 2, 2005 in ten cities around the world, 3 days before a major G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scottland where unprecedented aid and debt reduction packages to Africa were announced. Along with Live Aid impresario Bob Geldoff, and friends such as Geroge Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie, Bono hoped to use their star power and those of the other performers to get people off their asses -- simple as that -- and put pressure on our leaders to do something about the continent's myriad problems, both at the Summit and more important, once the cameras and media attention turned away to other issues. Of course, Live 8 failed in its goal of keeping the pressure on and convincing the wealthy nations not just to reduce debt (never a difficult proposition when, like a credit card company, you can start the debt process over again as soon as the existing debt has been canceled). but to increase development aid by billions of dollars and, most challenging, convince wealthy countries to stop subsidizing their farmers and dooming African agriculture in the process (not only can't African farmers compete against subsidized US exports in the international market, the subsidized American and European produce is often cheaper than locally produced goods, which is what really dooms local farmers). Already last year Bob Geldoff reported that the G-8 was not on target with its promised increase in development aid and in fact "stepped backwards" when it came to changing trade policies. Now it appears that the upcoming G-8 Summit in Germany will see Russia and Italy renege on their commitments and pressure other countries to do likewise. This has Bono and friends peeved, leading him to declare that there was a clear risk of a return to the violent street protests of Genoa and Seattle: "It's not just the credibility of the G8 that's at stake... It's the credibility of the largest non-violent protest in 30 years. Nobody wants to go back to what we saw in Genoa, but I do sense a real sense of jeopardy." I've loved Bono and U2 since I saw them on one of their first US tours as a music-obsessed preteen. I remember watching him climb the giant PA speakers of the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ and belt out the lyrics to "New Years Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," while the band dug so deeper into the grooves I was literally shaken off of my seat, which like everyone else I was standing on holding up a lighter and screaming along with the songs as loudly as I could. That performance and those songs helped me understand how powerfully political great art good be. Today, it's hard not to celebrate Bono's claim that his efforts have saved thousands of lives, if not tens of thousands, by getting increased aid or AIDS drugs to Africa's poorest people from the world's most powerful political and business leaders. But Bono's description of the violence in Genoa and Seattle reflects a troubling trend in big time rock and movie star philanthropy -- instead of leading the rebellion against a corrupt and in the case of Africa murderous world system, Bono, Geldoff and friends seem to think that their star power and an occasional letter or protest from the rest of us will actually do what 200 years and dozens of bloody wars and revolutions have failed to do: change the very nature of capitalism so that it stops requiring the impoverishment and death of millions of people of the Global South to ensure the maintenance and even rise in the living standards of the North. And so rather than challenging the dominant narratives of those in power, in this case about the causes of violence at anti-corporate globalization protests, Bono is reinforcing the lies even as he tries to inject a proper sense of urgency about the lack of progress by world leaders towards meeting the goals he helped design. As anyone who was in Seattle or Genoa knows, the violence there was not initiated by protesters. In Seattle even anarchists who were very strategic in using vandalism against select corporate targets, and not against people or local businesses. It was in fact precisely the overwhelmingly non-violent nature of the mass protests that made them so powerful, and therefore so threatening, to which the police responded with tear gas and other forms of (at this point still limited) violence. By the time the anti-IMF protests occurred in Prague in September of 2000, which I personally witnessed, the Czech secret police stormed into the dorms housing sleeping activists and beat and arrested them, and then tore into protesters on the streets in an extremely violent way. As Czech activists explained, Vaclav Havel might have been the symbol of the new Czech Republic, but the Interior Ministry was still in the hands of the thugs who ran it under communist rule. Ten months later, at the Genoa protests of July 2001, the Italian state made a conscious decision to use whatever means necessary to ensure it defeated a movement that was on its way to becoming the "second superpower" described by the NY Times in 2003 as the only legitimate alternative to neoliberal globalization and Bush's dreams of endless imperial war. It was increasingly harsh police repression at subsequent summit protests that led a small faction within the movement -- the hardcore anarchists and (some thought not all) members of the Black Bloc -- to move from strategic violence against property to fighting with police forces who themselves were using far greater violence against demonstrators. But even in Genoa, the overwhelming number of protesters were peaceful; in fact, it was Italian groups like Rete Lilliput and Tute Bianchi that pioneered the use of militant non-violent resistance against police forces. It was precisely the fear that they might succeed in stopping the Summit through coordinated non-violence that led the semi-fascist Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to order his police forces, who have a long history of violent crackdowns against peaceful protesters, to use the violence that led to the death of one protester during the protests. And then the violence itself was perversely used as an excuse to move subsequent meetings to "secure" locations far removed from public view or scrutiny. Along with his historical problem, Bono gives far to much credit to events like Live 8 to empower Africans in their struggles for survival against the neoliberal global system, On the homepage of the Live 8 website Bono argues that Live 8 gave "the poorest of the poor real political muscle for the first time." Would that this were so! The reality, as his fighting stance in the Guardian article makes clear, is far different and more depressing. The reality is that those that benefit from the current global system have no incentive to change it. They are not good Christians and will not be swayed by Bono's religiously grounded arguments. They are not good environmentalists and will not be swayed by Al Gore's arguments at Live Earth (which, ironically, Bob Geldoff is already criticizing for the same reasons that I criticized Live 8 when it was held: a lack of concrete measures that leaders would have incentive to actually carry out). They will do whatever is necessary -- lie, cheat, steal, oppress, exploit, murder and wage war -- to maintain control of a world economy that sees half the world living on $2 per day or less while inequality and poverty increase and they reap their huge salaries and bonuses. If Bono and Gore and their famous friends really want to change the world, they need to be willing to put their bodies on the line, or at least their careers, the way John Lennon did with the Vietnam War. That means they will need to connect the dots, and use their incredible artistic talents to help the rest of us understand that the war in Iraq is intimately related to the problems facing Africa, and the ozone layer as well; that today the same system and interests are behind global war, poverty and environmental degradation. And that we -- Bono, Gore, and all of us fortunate enough to be living in the advanced industrialized countries -- are the main beneficiaries of this system. Only if people see them really risking something to fight a battle that most people fear is impossible to win, will they get off their ass and join the fight. It's time for Bono to get off the stage and hit the barricades, and for the rest of us to follow him.

Originally posted by Mark Levine from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 1:00 PM

I'm very lucky. Let's start with that.

Partly I'm lucky because I get to share thoughts and work with developers all over the world thanks to my day job. My co-workers can be shy, though, so this year's Google Developer Day seems like a great opportunity for like minds to figuratively cross the dance floor and do the Hora.

I love sharing stories with developers I meet. We should share stories more often. Matt Cutts mentioned something similar a while back. The meet and greet at Google on May 31st is all about our serious stuff - APIs, debugging, templating, project hosting - which is also showcased at Google Code. But what about our silly stuff? What about our lore?

A lot of interesting developments on the web don't have a folklore.org. Do the following have collected stories/wisdom? Metafilter, Blogger, Flickr, Etsy, YouTube, Gmail, Wordpress, Winamp, MSIE? If they don't they should.

Recently I've been inspired to contribute a little lore over the next few posts about the birth of Google Reader, a project I inadvertently started though I'm not sure I should be considered its mother or godfather or even town elder. Saying I'm responsible for Reader would be like saying the hardening of the earth's crust is responsible for directing Raging Bull. One event gave way to the other but I think the credit of creative genius should read "Martin Scorsese" and not "ball of ferrous material."

The excellent parts of Reader are due to a team of people much smarter than myself. They're the Scorseses. In any Reader lore, I'd prefer to be considered more of a ferrous ball.

Tech lore can also be useful and informative, particularly for other developers, though I'm hoping I can also relate something my non-tech friends and family can appreciate. I'm also hoping I can at least be a little funny, especially since Justin and I recently discussed how it would be challenging to make a story about an Atom parser interesting.

Now about that Atom parser...

(First anecdote: I made this image for the login screen a mere day before the launch of the redesign for Reader. Wanted it to suggest a folded newspaper. Funny, it doesn't come close.)

Originally posted by Chris Wetherell from massless, on May 16, 2007 12:30 PM

“Really, this should be a FAQ for all social media, to be read by all journalists and commentators: Listening in on random strangers’ conversations is more likely to be boring than not”

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by revgeorge to socialsoftware unmediated - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by revgeorge from del.icio.us/subscriptions/djacobs, on May 16, 2007 12:29 PM

Unless you're a child, a planespotter or a keen purchaser of Duty Free silk ties, airports can be crushingly dull. Not any more. Delta Airlines has teamed up with Nintendo to offer Wi-Fi demo pods at several US airports....

Originally posted by Keith Stuart from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on May 16, 2007 12:13 PM

After Meg put out the call for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, she received a whooping 26 different recipe submissions. I feared for Meg's health and mental well-being as I imagined her toiling away in her hot kitchen testing all these recipes, but I should have known better. "So like any good geek, I averaged the recipes for make the best cookie recipe ever, or what I call a Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie."

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Posts and Comments by Alaina Browne, on May 16, 2007 11:48 AM

Last night, former mayor Rudy Giuliani got a huge round of applause after tearing another candidate a new one about September 11. The Republican presidential candidates were participating in a Fox News Channel-sponsored debate in South Carolina, and the moment came when Representative Ron Paul of Texas discussed September 11. The video is above (the pertinent part comes at about 1:40 in) and here's how the NY Times described it:

At one point, one of Mr. Giuliani’s lesser-known opponents, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, gave what turned out to be a big platform to Mr. Giuliani when he appeared to suggest that the United States invited the attacks of Sept. 11 by having originally invaded Iraq. “May I comment on that?” Mr. Giuliani said, looking grim. “That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.” Mr. Giuliani was interrupted by cheers and applause. “And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that,” he said.

The Post's account is a little more melodramatic -"Giuliani unloaded both barrels at Texas Rep. Ron Paul..." - but it's definitely a dramatic moment, regardless of whom you believe. Given the wariness of conservatives toward Giuliani's more-liberal views on other issues, like abortion, it certainly sounds like Paul gave Giuliani the best gift ever. The Politico says Giuliani came out on top while the Daily News' Michael Goodwin notes how Giuliani succeeded in bringing back the talk to terror. Here's a transcript of the debate. Don't miss former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's crack about Congressional spending and John Edwards's hair.

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 16, 2007 11:29 AM

Yahoo moved its maps to a new platform today, IDG News Service reports: "[W]ith the new platform, developed in-house, Yahoo Maps will perform better, offer more precise results and make backend upgrades easier to implement, Yahoo said. ... The...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on May 16, 2007 11:14 AM

Amazing video from Talking Points Memo, of former Deputy AG James Comey's testimony. It reminds me of the brutal scene from the Godfather. It also brings my level of respect for Comey, Ashcroft, and Mueller up a ton. Go Schumer!

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on May 16, 2007 11:13 AM

My wife Meg makes A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie. That is to say, she asked her readers for their best chocolate chip cookie recipes, averaged the ingredient amounts, baking times, chilling times, butter consistencies, and other various techniques and baked according to the resulting recipe (which she includes so you can bake up your own batch). Some of the ingredients: "2.04 cups all-purpose flour; 0.79 tsp. salt; 0.79 tsp. baking soda; 0.805 stick unsalted butter, softened to room temperature; 0.2737 stick unsalted butter, cold; 0.5313 stick unsalted butter, melted." Reminds me a bit of The Most Wanted Paintings project by Komar & Melamid, who averaged aesthetic preferences and taste in painting to produce works of art that appealed to everyone (to hilarious effect). (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 16, 2007 11:03 AM

Clinton's foundation has created an arrangement among four energy service companies and five global banking institutions that will result in major environmental upgrades in the cities, which include New York, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. "If all buildings were as efficient as they could be, we'd be saving an enormous amount of energy and significantly reducing carbon emissions. Also, we'd be saving a ton of money," Clinton said.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 11:00 AM

from independentcritics.com We'll make him an offer he can't refuse, mostly because he won't be conscious: Wow. Crazy story about the hospital room John Ashcroft showdown. Is it us, or does it sound eerily reminiscent of that scene in The Godfather where Michael shows up at the hospital and there's no one guarding his father so he and Enzo the baker have to move his father to a different room and then stand outside making it look like they're packing heat? Yeah, we thought so, too. [War Room/NYT] Sounds like Angelina made Brad an offer he couldn't refuse: But we already knew that, just as we could already count backwards from when baby Shiloh was born. So, what exactly is Janice Min's Us Magazine going on about this time? And where will the Angelina-hatred end? Who knows, but when it happens, Doree Shafrir will be there, because she's got Min's number. [Gawker] Every time I try to get out, they keep pulling me back in: No matter how many times Mayor Bloomberg denies that he's running for President, there's another article speculating on whether or not he might. Still, if everyone else is writing about it then it must be a story! [Public Eye] Is The Daily Show Bad For America, Part 783: Oy. All of you people out there talking about how it sugarcoats the news, is the frosting on the cake or the dessert on the meal, enough! It's not 60 Minutes and it's not The Economist and it's not The New York Times, but it's also not wrong. It's the news — not its own investigative reporting, but reporting the news all the same, often reporting stuff that other outlets miss (i.e. James Sensenbrenner's abuse of process) or making connections and calling out inconsistencies way before the rest of the MSM. Yes. Before. See, the people who watch The Daily Show already know what's going on — they wouldn't be able to laugh at the jokes in the same way if not. That's why so many people who are smart and up-to-date continue to watch the Daily Show — because it's not dumbed down. But nice try sneaking that past me, Matthew Felling. I'm on to you. [Public Eye, redux] Dirty Sexy Dan Rather: The veteran newsman gets to be a different sort of prime-time player, and why the hell not? Have fun, Dan! [AP] Since then I have grasped/The meaning of true power/Without it, you are eaten/With it, you devour. Rupert Murdoch: The Musical; Ben Greenman: Still brilliant. [Gawker]

Originally posted by Rachel Sklar from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 11:00 AM

The New York Observer When it comes to seeking out succulent morsels, not everyone is going to have the opportunity to stop by Jesse Wegman's kitchen. Most of us will make out just fine with the New York Observer's weekly offerings. THIS WEEK: Spiegelman gets banned in Russia, Joe Conason is the latest county to be heard from w/r/t Rupert, Katie Couric receives the unkindest comparison of all, and Rudy Giuliani is still working through his hot-button issues. Rudy's First Trimester Giuliani gets whacked right from jump street in this piece when his slow response to regaining his bearing on the abortion issue nets him a comparison with--*gulp*--John Kerry. But it's not just the turgid response that smacks of Kerry criticism--it's the way his whole position strives for a grandiloquent avoidance: "He's a lawyer, and he thinks that the average voter is going to find the nuance--they're not." There's that dirty word, nuance, again. The Curse of the Free Agent "Saving a franchise is not an easy thing for one person to do." Sure, okay. But if Katie Couric is the Alex Rodriguez of the evening news, does that mean Dan Rather is the Roger Clemens? (Answer: No.) Sold! To the Man In the Green Visor The New York Times auctions off everything but the load-bearing joists from their old West 43rd Street digs. Items included a quilt "of unknown provenance but obvious beauty," you know--just like the average Jayson Blair article. The $70 Magazine! Boutique Glossies Rampant in Soho The Observer profiles crazy-expensive magazines tailored for people who have don't have the good sense God gave a handful of tulip bulbs when it comes to spending their money. "I bought one called SOON, in Chinese, French and in English--$70 cover price!...You can tell that those boutique magazines are done for the people within the industry...a celebration of our inner circle. Most of them you can find in New York, but the minute you reach Des Moines, they're gone!" Well, allow us to extend our most heartfelt congratulations to the people of Des Moines. ABC: America's Song-and-Dance Network Jimmy Kimmel was seen at the upfronts clowning in self-deprecating fashion about his network's woes. And as long as we don't insinuate that he was wasted, he can't get mad at us. (But he probably was!) They Stoop for Quarters "Its price goes up and down like a whore's drawers on the West Side Highway." Really. There's no need to go any further. Beware the Promises of Murdoch Joe Conason joins the choir of people making loud noises about Rupert Murdoch's attempt to acquire the Dow. We've sat here ever since this saga began, wondering why all these Murdoch critics, who surely knew of Murdoch's media-strongarm shenanigans decades ago, picked the Wall Street Journal as the place where they would draw their lines in the sand. Conason, at last, attempts to explain "Why the WSJ, why now?": What makes The Wall Street Journal so valuable to its readers and to American culture is the excellence of its news columns--and their unpredictability. Unlike the Murdoch empire, The Journal's news bureaus are strictly separated from the editorial section, whose medieval outlook is nearly identical to that of the would-be owner. Very often, straight reporting in the news section briskly disproves the fantasies of the editorial pages, notably during the latter's long obsession with the supposed scandals of Whitewater. What Do Ian Spiegelman and Vladimir Nabokov Have in Common? HINT: It's not a predilection for kissing young children on the stomach! (That was a good guess, though!)

Originally posted by Eat The Press from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 10:20 AM

Technology Review asked several designers to name their favorite technology products. Worth a look for the photos of pristine Sony Walkmans, Ataris, and Polaroid cameras. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 16, 2007 10:03 AM

I had no idea who Lily Allen was before but now I want to be her MySpace friend. This is what Celebrity 2.0 should look like. Next step: popstars raising armies of fans to do battle with rival popstar fanarmies.

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by yatta to lilyallen popculture fandom celebrity2.0 - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by yatta from del.icio.us/yatta, on May 16, 2007 10:02 AM

Over on Ask Metafilter someone asks: How to cook delicious beans? Lots of good advice, including a Rancho Gordo heirloom beans shout-out.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 16, 2007 9:55 AM

After my best chocolate chip cookie search post yielded 26 recipes in 24 hours, I knew I had too many cookie recipes to bake each and every one. So like any good geek, I averaged the recipes for make the best cookie recipe ever, or what I call a Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie. Get it? Mean? Ha ha ha.

To begin, I compared all the recipes, removing any duplicates. You'd be amazed how similar chocolate chip cookie recipes are. Then I further whittled down the list by removing those that called for non-traditional ingredients (New Hope Mills buckwheat pancake mix, almond butter) or appeared in books that I didn't own (The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, Union Square Cafe Second Helpings). That left me with twelve distinct recipes, which I entered in an Excel spreadsheet (download the spreadsheet).

This experiment called for scientific precision.

Here's where it got hard and I had to use math. I converted all the measurements to base 10 so I could enter decimals into my spreadsheet, e.g. 6 tablespoons of butter equals .75 sticks of butter. But it wasn't enough to just average ingredients. I also needed to account for differences in the directions. Some recipes called for cold butter, others for melted. So I averaged technique as well, taking into account various oven temperatures and recommended dough chilling times.

If you've ever baked, you know how precise baking needs to be. The idea of averaging a recipe struck me as both amusing and insane, and I was pretty sure the resulting cookies would be terrible. After all my calculations, I baked a batch. I had to make a few tweaks, e.g. my oven didn't have a setting for 354.17°F so I used 355°F. But I stayed true to the math as much as possible. I didn't check on how the cookies were doing, but simply baked them for 13.04 minutes. (I got that .04 by hesitating just a moment before opening the door after my timer went off!) And what do you know?

Clockwise from top left: 1.33 eggs plus .33 egg yolk, mixing, cookie upskirt photo, dough ready to bake

These cookies were pretty damn good! I'd expected the worst. I'd expected they'd be inedible, or burnt, or floury and gooey at the same time. I had a hint they might not be too bad when I tasted the dough. But when I pulled them from the oven, I was amazed. The first bite revealed a cookie crispy around the rim, warm and chewy on the inside. A few hours later, they were firmer, but still tasty. The best chocolate chip cookies ever? I'm not sure, but I baked A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie. And that's enough for me.

A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie

INGREDIENTS
2.04 cups all-purpose flour
0.79 tsp. salt
0.79 tsp. baking soda

0.805 stick unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
0.2737 stick unsalted butter, cold
0.5313 stick unsalted butter, melted
(1 US stick = 8 tablespoons = 1/4 lb.)

0.84 cups light brown sugar
0.10 cups dark brown sugar
0.54 cups white sugar

1.33 eggs
0.33 egg yolk
1.46 tsp. vanilla extract
0.17 tbsp. water
0.25 tbsp. milk

1.53 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
Pre-heat oven to 354.17°F, or as close as you can get.

Sift flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl. Set aside.

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream butter and sugars until incorporated and smooth. Add vanilla, water, milk and eggs. Mix until all ingredients are combined. Add flour, salt, and baking soda and blend until fully incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips.

Cover and chill dough in the refrigerator for 25 minutes.

Place parchment paper on one-third of cookie sheet, drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto sheet. Some cookies will be on parchment, others off. Cook for 13.04 minutes.

comments are open

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 16, 2007 9:33 AM

There was once a time when a major percentage of people who had anything to do with computers were in more ways than one Electrical Engineers by training. In fact I have seen many popular books on Computer science and electronics which are authored by people who have a background in Electrical engineering.

Then with change in times and fast technological progress, the electronics and computer

Originally posted by Ravi from All about Linux, on May 16, 2007 9:01 AM

Yesterday I attended a free, day long Adobe seminar/sales pitch. They are a really efficient way to get up to speed on the new software, get tips,get tech support, bitch directly at the reps about bugs and features, and maybe win something. I missed CS2 while I was in school, so I have some major catching up to do. Actually, everyone has some major catching up to do, with CS3. You’ve probably already heard all the buzz about it being the biggest upgrade ever, bla bla bla. Well, this time the buzz is true. Now that they’ve added in Dreamweaver and Flash and a billion other things, and made Photoshop the grand central station of them all, the world just ain’t the same. I predict our industry (I mean anything graphically creative) is about to undergo a huge jump in look, feel, efficiency, and impact because of this. I’m not here to plug Adobe, so that’s all I’m going to say, not that opinions matter since we have few alternatives to Adobe any more. Personally, I was just pleased to see Illustrator pen tool capability in Flash.

I will mention though that I get a little big-picture worried about the digital divide, now that the software is getting so expensive and complicated that only full-time users will be able to keep up.

Now for some fun: Adobe began this colour-swatch exchange thing a while ago, called Kuler. For those who love mixing paint and choosing colours, it’s addictive. You can dynamically download colour schemes from the site from within CS and apply them to your work in progress. I only wish they had made the site background colour a neutral grey, to see the colours more accurately.

Originally posted by jaleen from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on May 16, 2007 8:17 AM

Pearl Fryar just wanted to win Yard of the Month back in 1984. Today his Bishopville, SC garden may be the most original example of outsider art in Southeastern America, and a tourist destination in it's own right.

Originally posted by 1f2frfbf from MetaFilter posts tagged with garden, on May 16, 2007 7:29 AM

The University of Cambridge has put online almost 5000 letters to and from Charles Darwin. (via bbc news) (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 16, 2007 6:42 AM

A 1,323 pound wheel of Dutch cheese is on view at Grand Central today in New York. It's the world's biggest wheel of cheese! How can you not see that? There will also be cooking demos and other cheese activities.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 16, 2007 6:14 AM

If you're a Mac user who knows UNIX, you may be interested in this updated classic Mac OS X tips for UNIX geeks article, or you can dive right in and have a look at Apple's UNIX/Linux porting information.

Read More...

Originally posted by iljitsch@gmail.com (Iljitsch van Beijnum) from Infinite Loop, on May 16, 2007 5:35 AM

In the last issue of Escapist, there is a good piece about LEGO and games. It basically describes the different evolution and extension to the LEGO bricks. That part is interesting if you don’t know what’s up there but more relevant is the conclusion:

“To an extent, LEGO has always mirrored society. In the 1950s, the blocks were identical and interchangeable; in the ’70s, you could buy mechanized kits to repurpose those blocks for many functions. Starting in the ’90s, you could buy customized sets; now, there are online LEGO networks. We can imagine more innovation ahead, such as smart, networked, globally aware LEGOs with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tracking tags.
(…)
Inevitably, responding to the current zeitgeist, plastic building blocks will go open-source. The field of 3-D printers - “fabs” - is barreling along. In 10 years, maybe less, you’ll have one on your desk, using Ldraw-based software to spit out LEGO-like knockoffs of your own design - thousands of them, for no more than the cost of the plastic.

Yet somehow The LEGO Group, given its high-tech savvy, will probably still make a fortune in brick-design licensing fees. Because LEGO has always mirrored society. Maybe once all those Mindstorms-trained robotics engineers grow up and get loose, it’ll be the other way around.“

Why do I blog this? the mirroring of the society is not very surprising (I guess marketing department take care of this) but it’s intriguing to see how social and cultural changes are implemented in products such as toys. Besides, the 3d printing future seems curious and very well in line with LEGO’s strategy.

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on May 16, 2007 5:13 AM

1) Robert Sietsema may have sideshow dining as his beat, but when he does veer into the mainstream, we're listening. This week, he sends shockwaves through the pizza set, putting the classic best-pie debate back in play (Una Pizza Napoletana, generally speaking, had held the title with heavies like Ed Levine in its corner). Sietsema's nomination is Il Brigante, a somewhat new joint on Front Street:

At its heart, Il Brigante is a pizzeria, and a damn good one. The rear wall is dominated by a flickering wood-burning hearth inside a limestone proscenium, where a sweating and grunting pizzaiolo is the star of his own small repertory theater. In the style of southern Italy, the 10-inch pies are intended for individual consumption. In fact, the margherita ($10) is the city's most perfect evocation of the true Naples style (even surpassing top spots like Una Pizza Napoletana and La Pizza Fresca). Starting with an irregular round of glove-soft dough with no yeasty taste, the margherita is dampened with plain tomato sauce and excellent cheese, bravely wearing a pair of fragrant basil leaves on its bosom. Eat it with a knife and fork—this is no New York pie.

You have about a 90-minute window before the place is packed for the next two years. [VV]

2) Next up, the Bada Bing, Bada Bruni is at Anthos, where he drops off two stars for Donatela Arpaia and Michael Psilakis. It could have been a three bagger if the critic hadn't fallen asleep mid-meal:

...the ratio of hits to misses is better at Anthos than at Dona, where the menu’s sprawl worked against it. If the setting were cheerier and the kitchen’s efforts just a little more selective and straightforward, Mr. Psilakis and Ms. Arpaia would have a restaurant that represented not just the blossom but the full flower of his dream. The quest continues, or at least I hope it does.

Said quest, of course, is Arpaia's for a three star restaurant. With three consecutive two-baggers under her belt, the wait for a three-star effort is becoming a bit conspicuous. [NYT]

Originally posted by bleventhal from Eater, on May 16, 2007 5:09 AM

Has he really died of typhoid? robert fox weighs the claim and its implications Osama bin Laden, charismatic founder of al-Qaeda, died of typhoid earlier this month in Pakistan, according to a highly classified intelligence brief given to the King of Saudi Arabia and President Chirac this week, and leaked to the French newspaper L'Est Republicain. The chief of the terror group was known to have been suffering from acute typhoid and seeking treatment in Pakistan in mid-August. This was

Originally posted by MysticInd from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 4:49 AM

Prince Harry will not be sent to Iraq, the head of the British Army has said. The Prince had previously stated that he wanted to be involved in active service with his unit.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post News Team from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 16, 2007 4:00 AM

"My greatest competition is, well, me . . . I'm the Ali of today. I'm the Marvin Gaye of today. I'm the Bob Marley of today. I'm the Martin Luther King, or all the other greats that have come before us. And a lot of people are starting to realize that now."

-- the most delusional man on Earth, R. Kelly, in the new issue of Hip-Hop Soul

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on May 16, 2007 3:12 AM

New CMS. Built by the Lawrence Journal-World using Python and Django. "Ellington is an online publishing system designed from the ground up for news and entertainment sites."

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on May 15, 2007 8:38 PM

The Perl 6 Design Team met on 16 May 2007 by phone. Larry, Damian, Allison, Patrick, Jesse, Nicholas, and chromatic attended. These are the minutes.

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by chromatic (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on May 15, 2007 7:55 PM

digg labs seems to have added yet another visualization technique of their digg data. stories arrange themselves around circles as users digg them. larger circles have more diggs.

in the meantime, I just discovered that the call for entries has closed for the digg API contest, which was seeking novel online applications & visualizations that show "effective display of data, usefulness, & creativity". looking forward to the results next week...

[link: digg.com]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on May 15, 2007 4:11 PM

A flyer I designed appears on the front page of today’s edition of the Ma’ariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel.

Here’s a close up:

The flyer is for a campaign by Alliance for Justice in the Middle East, a student group at Harvard University.

The text calls attention to the enrollment of former Israeli general Dan Halutz in the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. Halutz oversaw the bombing of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. See his dossier here.

And he’s not the first war criminal enrolled by Harvard. See a short list of bios on the AJME site. The AJME is campaigning to establisha set of practices to screen for war criminals and serious human rights abusers as part of its admissions and hiring policies.

The campaign was relatively modest to achieve such front page coverage. The group set up a free web site on blogspot. The printed up the flyer and handed it out on campus. They sent out a press release about the campaign.

Here’s the full article in Hebrew on the Ma’ariv web site and AJME’s English translation of it.

Click below for a larger version of the flyer:

For kicks, see another iteration below. I think it’s a little more evocative, but misses the point a bit.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on May 15, 2007 3:46 PM

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a presidential candidate who has called for a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in stock options from North America's largest independent oil refiner. Richardson, a Democrat, received the stock options from Valero Energy Corp. for serving on the company's board of directors from March 2001 to June 2002, according to a financial disclosure report he filed Tuesday.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 15, 2007 3:40 PM

How could I resist this invitation (right), which gave no hint of what was to come yesterday around lunchtime?

Mario Batali serving roast pig, which, from a previous appearance at his house in northern Michigan, I knew I would enjoy immensely. Dave Pasternack from New York City's Esca roasting and grilling octopus, which I knew from co-writing his about-to-come-out cookbook, was just about the most delicious tentacled morsel of food you could eat. And the hospitality of Batali partner Joe Bastianich, who apparently lives large on a few acres of prime real estate in suburban Connecticut.

The first mistake I made was emailing Mario to see if he was really leaving Del Posto at 10 in the morning to go to the party. I had previously e-mailed him asking if I could get a ride to the event.

Continue reading »

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 15, 2007 2:15 PM

President Bush stepped in after top officials threatened to resign over the N.S.A.’s domestic spying program, according to testimony.

Originally posted by DAVID JOHNSTON from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 15, 2007 2:00 PM

Last year, when I wrote Draw the Map, Draw the World about the New York City subway map and Massimo Vignelli, one of the signature designers in the map's history, I was surprised how many people were interested in the topic.

There's been some great writing on Vignelli's map:

• Visual Complexity's look at the map, which I linked to last year, is wonderful.
• Design Observer offers Mr. Vignelli's Map, which was published a few years ago in observance of the subway's centennial.

But perhaps one of the coolest recent bits of media about Massimo Vignelli and his work on the subway map is this outtake footage from the documentary film Helvetica. It's well worth a look for those enchanted with the fellow who said, The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on May 15, 2007 1:50 PM

Top Chef heartthrob and eventual winner Harold Dieterle's restaurant Perilla opened recently in New York City's West Village, and Season Two hottie Sam Talbot was supposed to follow suit on the Lower East Side in the middle of June with a gastropub called Spitzer's Corner. But according to Eater, he and his business partners have called it quits—they're still opening the restaurant, but he's no longer involved with the operation. Too bad, the place sounds great, and I was really looking forward to checking him, er, it, out.

(Dieterle is still the only contestant with a restaurant in Manhattan, but Season Two's Josie Malave opened her own place, Island Cafe Bar and Lounge, in Queens back in March.)

Related: Top Chef 3: Miami Vice

Originally posted by Lia Bulaong from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 15, 2007 1:15 PM

Thanks to the wonders of Tivo, I never see commercials,
so perhaps this is old news. But it is awesome.

Pay attention to the background.

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on May 15, 2007 1:15 PM

The second annual C4 event is now open to registration. Mac developers, get your names in for this star-studded indie developer panel and stick around for the pizza and Iron Coder Live.

Read More...

Originally posted by jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) from Infinite Loop, on May 15, 2007 1:04 PM

No free cones in Midtown! Riese Snubs Midtown on Haagen Dazs Free Flavor Day Apparently Riese Restaurants owns three of the four midtown HG locations, and they're not honoring free cone day. So check the link before you make the trip. [via Eater]

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 15, 2007 12:41 PM

May 14, 2007 - The White House was hit by two sudden resignations late Monday, when Paul McNulty, a top Justice Department official, and Lanny Davis, the only Democratic member of the president’s civil liberties watchdog board, announced they were stepping down. Both resignations are likely to fuel allegations of White House political meddling in law-enforcement and national-security issues.

Originally posted by naughtYmike from Most Huffed News, on May 15, 2007 12:34 PM

May 14, 2007 - The White House was hit by two sudden resignations late Monday, when Paul McNulty, a top Justice Department official, and Lanny Davis, the only Democratic member of the president’s civil liberties watchdog board, announced they were stepping down. Both resignations are likely to fuel allegations of White House political meddling in law-enforcement and national-security issues.

Originally posted by naughtYmike from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 15, 2007 12:34 PM

well, it's supposed to work -- online, full-text of Transportation Research Record going back to '96. holy cow

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by fruminator to trb transport transit research papers - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by fruminator from del.icio.us/fruminator, on May 15, 2007 12:12 PM

One day after the Pentagon banned US military personnel worldwide from accessing the wildly popular YouTube Web site via DoD computers and networks, the weekly electronic newsletter of the US-led Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) today makes a banner appeal for US forces and others to watch MNF-I's new YouTube channel. Oops.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post News Team from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 15, 2007 12:00 PM

Samurai Quotes from Ghost Dog.

From the Vault: Ghost Dog review(s) and license plate screen shots. (Some serious link rot rectified!)

Completely off topic, but essential: the last 10 or so seconds of every episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, assembled by Paul Slocum (Caution: Wesley Crusher in oversized natural fabric (?) top)

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on May 15, 2007 11:20 AM

President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday. In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post News Team from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 15, 2007 10:20 AM

Matt Haughey's seven tips on how to run a successful community, based on his experiences with MetaFilter. "It takes great care and patience to create a space others will share and you have to nurture it and reward your best contributors. It's a decidedly human endeavor with few, if any, technical shortcuts." (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 15, 2007 9:47 AM

Chicago food blog, Drive-Thru, got its hands on some Alphonso mangoes from Patel Bros. [2542 W. Devon Avenue, Chicago, IL]. They're being sold by the case ($35) and moving quickly.

Has anyone else spotted Indian mangoes? Let us know where in the comments!

Photograph from cinnachick on Flickr

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 15, 2007 9:31 AM

There’s a profile of the British graffiti artist, Banksy, in the New Yorker this week. It’s a very engaging piece about a guy who stencils rats on buildings one day and sells his art at Sotheby’s for half a million dollars the next.

A few choice quotes from the article:

“He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.” - A rep at Sotheby’s

“I think there’s some wit in Banksy’s work, some cleverness—and a massive bucket of hot steaming hype.” - The Guardian

“I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.” - Banksy

[Link]

Originally posted by Matt from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on May 15, 2007 7:35 AM

an hilarious article courtesy of our friends at the bbc all about the effect the smoking ban will have on jazz clubs.

Originally posted by dr tibbles from lady upgrade project, on May 15, 2007 7:24 AM

My friend Chris is in Paris now and he's compiled a Google map of places to eat mainly carbs, some meat, and even some vegetarian. Looks like he's going to be busy while he's there! And that map will be useful for anyone else looking for some tasty spots to eat.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 15, 2007 4:41 AM

Stewart posted a photo:

In this pose it looks very much like the flying Semite caricature creature in the Star Wars prequels.

Originally posted by Stewart from Sylloge, on May 15, 2007 1:30 AM

erased out of existence by the company they started [via] 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on May 14, 2007 10:08 PM

Architecture students build 'hub' for disaster relief. “The prototype, called a ‘clean hub,’ is made from an old, 20-foot-long storage container and houses a bathroom complete with a composting toilet and a solar shower, a 4,400-gallon water tank, a foot pump-powered sink, and water collection and filtration systems. Running on two solar panels and a 1500-watt battery, the hub also provides sufficient electricity to power itself, with enough left over to run a small appliance, such as a laptop.

‘It’s completely off-grid.... If you look at the cost of a FEMA trailer, it’s ridiculously expensive and has a very short lifetime.... This is something that can provide a lot of the things a FEMA trailer doesn’t, like power and self-contained sanitation, and be substantially cheaper.’”

For more about the project see articles on Minnesota Public Radio, Shelter Architecture, and the Activist Architect blog. (Thanks, ravenmn!)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on May 14, 2007 5:49 PM

A recently discovered star appears to be 13.2 billion years old, just 500 million years younger than the Big Bang. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on May 14, 2007 2:37 PM

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell the U.S. Forces Korea commander. The Associated Press reports.

"The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

"This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said.

... Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall. The Army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.

But the new rules mean many military personnel won't be able to watch those achievements — at least not on military computers."

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on May 14, 2007 2:34 PM

New York Magazine casts an eye on the unofficial First Couple of NYC, the Giulianis, with a cover story on all that's known about Judi. Lloyd Grove's article explains about this much:

• Their meeting: Neither Rudy nor Judi will talk about exactly what happend, but apparently they met at a cigar bar on the Upper East Side and later went to a movie and dinner at Peter Luger's.
• Rudy really loves her
• She may or may not be a climber. Judi did fall for Rudy pre-September 11, but one of her ex's friends gives a pretty withering description: "She was a real opportunist, a real Becky Sharp character...I think she really desired to be sort of the Junior League type. She basically struck me as having an inflated, self-important view of herself.”
• There's some question about how much Judi Giuliani did post-September 11; while Giuliani claimed she "coordinated the efforts at the Family Assistance Center on Pier 94," former Giuliani-era OEM director Jerry Hauer tells New York he organized it.
• Rudy's presidential campaign staffers aren't too fond of her, but one longtime Giuliani aide was allegedly fired after saying, “Let me guess—you’re waiting for Princess, too.”
• One of Judi's friends says Judi is upset that she might be a liability (and how her past as a medical supplies executive who stapled live dogs' stomachs during demos keeps percolating up) and the friend suggests, "I think Rudy’s the one that’s sabotaging her. He’s out of control. There’s too much hand-holding and kissing on the lips, behaving like a couple of 18-year-olds in their first love affair. She doesn’t have the political smarts, and I don’t think she expected any of this."

Naturally, a lot of the speculation about Judi is in the context of her as potential First Lady. Which is good copy now, but come on, how likely do you think it is for the Giulianis to move into the White House?

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 14, 2007 1:57 PM

Cork’d has been acquired by a newly formed company with Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV at the helm. You may have played around with Cork'd, the wine social networking site that I love but never spent enough time on. Glad to hear it's found a new home and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 14, 2007 1:03 PM

Researchers discovered that children who drank farm milk were much less likely to suffer from hayfever and asthma. ""The results of this study indicate that all children drinking farm milk have a lower chance of developing asthma and hayfever. However raw milk may contain pathogens such as salmonella or enterohaemorrhagic E coli and its consumption may have serious health risks. We need to develop a deeper understanding of why farm milk offers children this higher level or protection and investigate ways of making the product safer, while retaining these protective qualities."

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 14, 2007 12:27 PM

I've posted all of my photographs from this intense, hot, sweaty, cramped, and insane show. Read the Pitchfork story.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kathryn yu dot com, on May 14, 2007 9:51 AM

---

The Sunday NY Times had a report about a musician who quit his job and posted a song a day on his blog. One minute journalists are hissing and spitting about "people in their bathrobes" presuming to usurp them and the next they're glorifying the new lifestyle mythos. Didn't read past the first page but it sounded like it was about an individual trying to cope not just with creativity but the stresses of fan adoration, frequent commenters, people music-animating and -remixing his work--in other words, being a one man band of self promotion. Yawn. Not too interested in the problems of someone replicating how the record industry promotes an artist: that is, via behind the scenes stories and a cult of personality. Every musician his own Tigerbeat. As artists using blogs we want transparency but on some level our projects should still be difficult for journalists, not spoonfeeding them stories in terms they already understand. To adapt a favorite quote about art from AbEx painter Adolf Gottlieb: "I'd like more status than I have now, but not at the cost of closing the gap between blogging and the public. I'd like to widen it!"

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on May 14, 2007 8:45 AM

A list of New York's Top Lady Chefs shows there are many accomplished women working in the kitchens of this city. But it also confirms the point I made last week regarding the types of kitchens women helm in NY: these aren't the places that garner a lot of stars from the critics, no matter how delicious they are. The list is a good start towards raising awareness of the issue, and I'm glad it exists. It's just that, me being a real capital F Feminist, I'd rather they didn't say "Lady Chefs" and really, chefettes? Chefettes?! I know, I have no sense of humor. [via Eater]

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 14, 2007 8:38 AM

First, what's not in the papers: For years I've been pointing out that the NYT is a national paper in...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on May 14, 2007 8:28 AM

As the original Mott Street outpost of mini-Asian empire Rice prepares to shutter, the eatery has been prepping for the opening of a replacement home in the neighborhood at 292 Elizabeth Street (between Houston/Bleecker). Besides asking for help with the liquor license, the restaurant has accelerated construction work on the new space. A tipster reports, "I peeked into construction on Elizabeth Street today and inquired about the space upon seeing a bar frame. The foreman confirmed that RICE will be moving to this space. Looks much larger. Is located next to Parisi Bakery."

Eater operatives dropped by to case the exterior, and also got a peek inside.

Originally posted by lockhart from Eater, on May 14, 2007 8:27 AM

"Get ready for the summer of Shatner! An exhibition and publication of artwork depicting William Shatner, featuring the work of over seventy artists of diverse illustrative styles from Canada and the US. The caliber of participating artists is outstanding

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by emilyg to shatner startrek eyebeam-reblog - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by emilyg from del.icio.us/subscriptions/djacobs, on May 14, 2007 7:05 AM

In a piece in Saturday's New York Times about Stonyfield Farms' founder Gary Hirschberg being dispatched to Paris to introduce and market an organic yogurt brand, he said something quite thought-provoking: "If organic is going to be relying on being better for the environment or saving farmers, then I don't believe it's going to be successful in Europe. It has to be about better taste."

Does organic yogurt taste better? Does an organically grown tomato taste any better than a conventionally grown one? My experience in trying to answer this question in general has not been kind to the organic movement. In taste tests Jeffrey Steingarten and I did on our regional cable television show a few years ago, organic milk and organic butter did not fare very well at all. They were both among the lowest rated products we tried in each category.

But I'm going to start conducting blind taste tests in multiple product categories, and perhaps some Serious Eaters want to join me and play along at home and online. Let's start with full-fat yogurt. It would be great if we could find a brand of yogurt that puts out both an organic and nonorganic product, because at least we would be comparing apples to apples. But I'll see what I find, and all of you do the same, and let's report back by the end of the week.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats: Features, Videos and Required Eating, on May 14, 2007 6:00 AM

A national network of no-fishing zones could help us avoid the disappearance of popular commercial fish from our plates. "In precolonial Hawaii, a district headman could declare portions of fishing grounds off limits by means of a rule called a kapu." Paul Greenberg calls for kapus off the U.S. coast to save our fisheries.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on May 14, 2007 5:40 AM

Greg Palast has some of Rove's emails concerning the US attorney firings. It's much worse than previously believed. In fact, a lot of people might be going to jail for denial of civil rights. RNC mistakenly sends the emails to the wrong people.

Originally posted by jsinton from Most Huffed News, on May 14, 2007 5:36 AM

Throughout his comedic journey—from guest-hosting for Johnny Carson to directing episodes of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm—David Steinberg has tried just about anything for a laugh. He continues to win the crowd over as he publishes his memoir, The Book of David, this month. Here, the holy man of humor jokes about Moses, Nixon, and Frank Sinatra's, um, penis.

Originally posted by Proust Questionnaire from The Latest From VanityFair.com, on May 13, 2007 8:00 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from random($foo), on May 13, 2007 4:55 PM

"The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns," said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

Records show that the city was aware of the danger in the ground zero dust from the start. In a federal court deposition, Kelly R. McKinney, associate commissioner at the city's health department in 2001, said the agency issued an advisory on the night of Sept. 11 stating that asbestos in the air made the site hazardous and that everyone should wear masks.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post from Most Huffed News, on May 13, 2007 2:20 PM

Tiffin Wallah

Originally posted by jkessler from Eater, on May 13, 2007 11:25 AM

Read full story for latest details.

Originally posted by anonymous from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 13, 2007 7:40 AM

I've been going down the rabbit hole of baseball stats, scorekeeping and sports on-line. Erik Berg's summary of SportsML, and his ongoing project to record all MLB Box Scores in XML is worth your attention. Major League Baseball has their own undocumented but pitch-by-pitch complete xml feed of gameday news. I was hoping today's Mets/Brewers game would have projected lineups, but it's not up yet. Take a look at what they have for yesterday's game, Scorepad offers a free trial of their scoresheet software for the Palm. I want to try this, but it looks like a little bit of a pain. Chris Nandor's Game::Baseball::Scorecard is a free perl interface to Chris Swingle's PDF Scorecards. Chris's scorecards are the nicest I've found on-line, which may have something to do with the triangulation of his other hobbies: bookbinding, baking bread, and woodoworking. (Thank you Alan Mitchell)

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 13, 2007 7:16 AM

I've been going down the rabbit hole of baseball stats, scorekeeping and sports on-line.

Erik Berg's summary of SportsML, and his ongoing project to record all MLB Box Scores in XML is worth your attention.

Major League Baseball has their own undocumented but pitch-by-pitch complete xml feed of gameday news. I was hoping today's Mets/Brewers game would have projected lineups, but it's not up yet. Take a look at what they have for yesterday's game,

Scorepad offers a free trial of their scoresheet software for the Palm. I want to try this, but it looks like a little bit of a pain.

Chris Nandor's Game::Baseball::Scorecard is a free perl interface to Chris Swingle's PDF Scorecards. Chris's scorecards are the nicest I've found on-line, which may have something to do with the triangulation of his other hobbies: bookbinding, baking bread, and woodoworking.

(Thank you Alan Mitchell)

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 13, 2007 7:16 AM

    Examiner column for May 14.

    It’s the time of year when thousands of graduates are thinking about the future. I attended my daughter’s Masters of Fine Arts graduation this past weekend, and the art critic and novelist Bruce Sterling’s commencement address paid homage to Steve Jobs: “Real artists ship.” The future of art is on the global stage, Sterling claimed, and that may apply to graduates in other disciplines as well.

    When I got my degrees, graduates thought locally. I was “finding myself.” I worried about balancing family and career, teaching near my home and unconcerned with anything outside my own community. Those days are gone.

    My daughter and her contemporaries are wired into a much larger world. Her final project involved creating a website reflecting her artistic spin on issues that affect local and global communities equally. She began her project with “happenings” near her school, but most of her artistic expression appeared online. A website as a masters’ thesis? The world has changed since I hammered out mine on a Selectric typewriter.

    The world is both bigger and smaller now. The son of a friend graduated from business school and immediately landed his first job in Zurich. His sister’s first job after law school was with a firm that sent her to London for her initial two years.   My son designs interactive web pages from a loft in Manhattan, but his clients and collaborators are limited only by the Internet’s reach. And he competes for jobs with programmers in India.

    The world awaits college and university graduates. Not only do real artists ship, real graduates ship. Knowledge has to be practical. It’s not enough to “find yourself” in academic coursework, you must find a way to help others find themselves. (Check out the number of self-help books in your nearby bookstore.) It’s not enough to graduate culinary school and cook for others, you must write a cookbook or, better yet, create a food blog or star in your own television cooking show. And you need to specialize in fusion cuisine.

    Fields of study that once had little to do with peddling wares are now interwoven with marketing and sales, often linked to related industries worldwide. Being good at what you do is not enough; you must be recognized. And that requires some advertising, or at least some peddling of yourself as spokesperson for what you do.

    Graduates may enter a different world, but graduation hasn’t altered in every way. Proud parents and friends still whoop and holler, large groups toast the graduate in restaurants following the ceremony, and each degree becomes a personal milestone. But the milestone is not entirely personal anymore. What does that degree do? How is it perceived by your employer? How is your role within your workplace perceived by others? How do you affect others’ perception of the work you produce? Who buys what you sell---from ideas to objects? In today’s world you need to put yourself out there, literally and technologically.

    Real artists ship, real cooks ship, real bankers ship, real lawyers ship, real writers ship. Your craft is as your craft does. Education has to prepare you to ship globally.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on May 13, 2007 4:25 AM

On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich. The letter he dispatched to the city Conflicts of Interest Board that day asked permission to begin forming a consulting firm with three members of his outgoing administration. The company, Giuliani said, would provide "management consulting service to governments and business" and would seek out partners for a "wide-range of possible business, management and financial services" projects.

Originally posted by The Huffington Post from David Jacobs' Huffs, on May 13, 2007 2:20 AM