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.