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This link takes you to a photograph of the most secret baseball field in the world. My only question is when they play, is it aliens v. humans or are they allowed to mix it up?
After Wednesday's blow-up with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O'Donnell made today's show her last day on The View. Originally, O'Donnell's exit was planned for June 20, but it seems like she wanted out early. Here are some statements via ABC News:
Brian Frons, the president of Disney-ABC's Daytime Television Group, said, "We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but Rosie has informed us that she would like an early leave. Therefore, we part ways, thank her for her tremendous contribution to 'The View' and wish her well." Barbara Walters, the show's creator and co-executive producer, said, "I brought Rosie to the show. Rosie contributed to one of our most exciting and successful years at 'The View.' I am most appreciative. Our close and affectionate relationship will not change." In her statement, O'Donnell said, "I'm extremely grateful. It's been an amazing year and I love all three women."It's unclear if O'Donnell left because of the various fights or the firing of her head writer (fired because she defaced photographs of Elizabeth Hasselbeck).Surveys - Take Our Poll And just when you thought it couldn't get weirder/surreal, O'Donnell offers up a montage of images set to a Cyndi Lauper song on her blog today.
The Bush administration's decision to fire nine U.S. attorneys last year has created a new problem for the White House: The controversy appears to be discouraging applications for some of the 22 prosecutor posts that President Bush needs to fill.
Of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys, 22 are serving without Senate confirmation as interim or acting prosecutors. They represent districts in Alaska, Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, West Virginia and Washington.
Did you know Mac OS X 10.4 stores and maintains two distinct “access dates” for files? I didn’t until today.
In Mac OS 9, we just had
creation dateandmodification date(to use AppleScript’s terminology). When Mac OS X came on the scene, we gained the additional common unix attribute of “access date” (obtainable via thestat(2)system call).A problem with Unix access date is that it’s really volatile. For example, simply single-clicking on a file the Finder thinks it can preview (like a
.txtfile) will be enough for it to read that file, bumping its access date.For better or worse, 10.4 added an additional “access date” that’s maintained by Spotlight’s metadata subsystem (obtainable via
MDItemCopyAttribute(item, kMDItemLastUsedDate)call).*In a vain attempt to maintain sanity, I’ll dub the older
stat(2)-obtained access date “unix access date” and the newer Spotlight-obtained one “metadata access date”.Unlike
unix access date,metadata access dateisn’t modified merely by browsing in the Finder — you have to “open” the file. That makes it a lot less volatile. The downside is that shell tools likecator eventouchdon’t bump themetadata access date, even though they probably should.Perhaps a better name for
metadata access datewould begui access date, but I’m hesitant to use that label since I don’t know the intent of the attribute. For all I know this will be “fixed” in 10.5. However, I know I’m not wrong if I name it after the API (versus the intent).The backstory on this discovery is that I’m trying to automate archiving a few thousand files. I’d like to reduce a scary-deep tree (where I’m in danger of PATH_MAX blackholing) into a shallow flattened-by-year+weeknumber hierarchy.
Problem: AppleScript doesn’t offer a native way to obtain either the
unix access dateormetadata access date. Solution: write an access date AppleScript addition (source code).The heuristic I’m using is that I trust the
unix access dateunless it’s inside a minute of now. If it is, I assume that timestamp was blown away by a Finder preview and then fall back to themetadata access date. This seems to be a good compromise between honoring shell tools but not getting tripped up by mere previewing.* It gets a little more interesting: there’s also
kMDItemUsedDates, which houses an array of access dates. I don’t know how deep this array goes, but it’s a cool built-in auditing feature.
As Mayor Bloomberg continues his full court press to bring congestion pricing in some shape or form to the city, the folks at Quinnipiac University conducted a poll to see what New Yorkers think. And even though 90% of the respondents think that city traffic is a pain, 56% oppose congestion pricing (37% support it). But what's interesting is how the boroughs differ. From Quinnipiac:
Manhattan voters support congestion pricing 62 - 29 percent. Voters in other boroughs are opposed to the proposal: - 67 - 26 percent in The Bronx; - 63 - 29 percent in Brooklyn; - 61 - 32 percent in Queens; - 69 - 26 percent in Staten Island. By a 3 - 1 margin, 68 - 23 percent, New York City voters say they use mass transit, rather than a car, to travel into and out of Manhattan. Car drivers oppose congestion pricing 59 - 34 percent while mass transit users oppose it 53 - 40 percent.Hmm. We wish the data was also broken out by age - it'd be interesting to see if there were any generational trends. Streetsblog points out that the Campaign for New York's Future and the Partnership for New York City have some problems with the poll, because the poll doesn't fully explain the mayor's plan (for instance, a congestion fee would be lower if you've paid other tolls) and weren't aware of the benefits, like how the money would improve mass transit options. The question that Quinnipiac asks is "Do you support or oppose charging vehicle owners a fee to drive into Manhattan below 86th street on weekdays from 6 AM to 6 PM?" And the Empire Zone noted that how many people did think that taxi cabs and delivery trucks should be exempt from congestion pricing, though many believe personal cars and limos shouldn't be.
Leslie Burger in "Transforming Reference." American Libraries Mar. 2007 writes,
"No more reinventing reference. The people have reinvented it for us. It is as simple as us going to where the people are. What if instead of waiting for people to come to our library portals or virtual reference sites where they must "fit" into our world, we venture into their world and answer questions where they are? A scarier, uncataloged place for sure, but one where the gratification of helping someone in need is immediate. If every librarian in the world worked a two-hour shift on an answer portal and we really had experts answering 50 million questions each year, what an amazing world it would be. Think about it."
Last week we started offering IM reference at my library, and though we had very little activity (probably we needed better & more hours, and better advertising the service) the experience was great. It took about 5 minutes to set-up with Meebo Me and embed it into our site, and a little longer to decide procedure (who's going to log in and answer questions) and policy (how to do a reference interview over IM) questions. I can't wait until next semester, when we try it again, especially since we're also redesigning our Reference space as an Information Commons.
"Any discussion or description of can defects requires standard terminology relating to the can components (end, body, double seam). The terminology required to describe these components varies with style of construction thus, only the main construction types are discussed in this section."
This is loosely related to libraries, but it is related to FOSS [free and open source software] which many libraries are using or contemplating. One of the things that is consistently stressed as a benefit of open source stuff is that when you pay for people to work on your software, you are hiring talent, not paying for licenses at giant megacorporations. For some of us, this is an unqualified good thing. However, compared to megacorporation software projects, there are many fewer women working on open source projects.
Some of this has to do with the nature of the open source community, some of it has to do with technology generally. When my little video got a ton of views on YouTube, I sort of made a joke that I would know it was a success when the marriage proposals started trickling in. Other non-techies looked at me strangely when I said this, but sure enough when you look at the comments, you’ll see it. I find it all pretty amusing and not some sort of “evidence” of any sort of sexism, but I do think it points out that a woman with even a passing competency in this areana [and I’m techie but nothing like, say, Karen Coombs] is such an anomaly that people just stop and stare. I’d like more nerdy lady friends who do this sort of stuff, so I’ve been reading up on it. I found a few good things to read and I’d like to share them with you.
feminism, floss, FOSS, opensource, women
- An old HOWTO about HOWTO encourage women in Linux.
- Women in FLOSS - a presentation by Angela Byron. It’s a big pdf with 100 slides and it’s totally captivating and interesting.
- Susie’s blog talks about a few of these topics and linked to my video originally which is how I got started on this topic for today.
If you've ever wondered what the big deal is with fear-mongering over "big-box stores" and anonymous-looking architecture, The New York Sun directs your attention to Union Square. Once an aesthetically vibrant town point of commercial assembly, and it will probably always remain as such, the square is developing a severe style deficiency with all the warmth of a mall food court. James Gardner assesses the latest development around 14th Street:
The larger of the two, which is slightly less bad, is 8 Union Square South, which rises above what was once a four-story glass stair tower that Morris Lapidus designed for Crawford Clothes, a building whose survival was being debated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission even as the structure was undergoing demolition two years back. 8 Union Square South is an undistinguished box of a building that rises 13 stories, four of them in a setback, over the park. The structure seems uncertain whether to commit itself to the modernity of a dark curtain wall or to the historicist vernacular of a pale, limestone cladding. The result is a dreary non-description that is only slightly mitigated by a chamfered corner that orientates the base toward the park and adds some interest to one of the most important intersections in the city.Gardner's summation is that the new architecture around Union Square is becoming cheap- and shoddy-looking and completely uninspired and singles out these offenders: Zeckendorf Towers, 1 Union Square West (where the Virgin Megastore and weird art is), two NYU buildings (University Hall and Palladium Hall) and 4 Union Square South, where the Filene's, DSW, and Whole Foods is. Gardner, though, forgets that 4 USS is perfect for dance performances, in all its uniform glory. If one thinks that is equivalent with building for commercial use, we'll disagree by mentioning some much older buildings in Union Square. The former Bank of the Metropolis on Union Square West is still high-stylish with its Ionic columns. The Guardian Life Insurance Building on 17th St. makes mansard-roofed office buildings seem natural. Look at the southwest corner of 20th St. and Broadway––the original Lord & Taylor building is a landlocked commercial cruise ship in cast iron. All of these examples only make the box-storing of Union Square all the more appalling. Photograph by with_l0ve on Flickr
How ripe and spicy is that kimchi in a jar? The South Korean Ministry of Agriculture has proposed a scale for ranking kimchi spiciness???mild, slightly hot, moderately hot, very hot, and extremely hot. It also includes a three-level scale of "ripeness," depending on the degree of fermentation. Local manufacturers are encouraged to adopt the standards, which are aimed at promoting exports and may fall under regulation in the future.
For the record, I like my kimchi "very hot" and "fermented."
VeloNews | Riis confesses to having doped in winning Tour
The biggest wins of the mid-90s Telekom team were the back-to-back Tour de France wins by Bjarne Riis in 1996 and Jan Ullrich in 1997. With the admissions by much of that squad -- Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag, Udo Bolts, and others -- that they were using EPO and other banned substances throughout the period, it was harder and harder to believe the team leaders were riding clean.
Today, Bjarne Riis admitted he was doping when he won the 1996 Tour, and said he doesn't feel like a worthy Tour winner:"My jersey is at home in a cardboard box," he said. "They are welcome to come and get it. I have my memories for myself."Riis had long suffered the nickname “Mr. 60 Percent” on the internet, a reference to a hematocrit that reportedly once hit a superhuman 64 (source: Telekom soigneur Jef D'Hondt, on Panorama), where 50 is the current legal limit.
Riis said he was speaking out for his current team, CSC, where he is the team director, and where he said attention on his possible involvement in doping while racing was an ongoing distraction. The team, he claims, is completely behind him.
So, who's next?
Also:
Cyclocosm | I Have Doper Mind Control, Bruseghin wins Giro HTT
Endless Cycle | Riis admits to EPO use
Team CSC Press Release
I imagine Lemond is somewhere saying, “how ya like me now!” Portrayed as the bitter old champion, not given his due props, and the dude has been out saying all along that there were two speeds in the peloton: that he lost and left because he couldn’t keep up with the dopers. And this week, Zabel, Bolts admit doping. Today, Riis is expected to admit it — Musueew busted, who else? Don’t forget Lance’s contemporaries as well.
All this reminds me of the el dope penis graffiti you can catch a glimpse of during the mountain Stages of the Tour on OLN.
The sport is farcical now and it seems that bitter old man Lemond was right. He should be saying how ya like me now!
Update
Tour winner Riis admits to doping
Dick Costolo, the CEO of FeedBurner, was interviewed today on Wallstrip. The interview is an entertaining summary that explains what FeedBurner does, why it's important, and how it makes money.
Right before our first visit to Great Tea International on Wednesday, i read this:In The Book of Tea, his treatise on Japanese tea's relationship with the Western world, Okakura Kakuzo explains that the tearoom is an ephemeral structure based on poetic impulse — not intended for posterity. It should be no surprise, then, that on June 9, Charlotte Lin, owner of Great Tea International ... , is closing the space she consecrated almost five years ago as an escape from her accounting career. The sanctuary was immune to the vulgar hustle of busy streets and cafes, but apparently not Philadelphia's dreaded business privilege tax. ... —Sam Tremble
Bonesli and i really liked GTI. The space was cozy and the other customers seemed to be regulars. The selection of imported teas (mainly from Taiwan, it seemed) was quite large, and my $4 order of Oolong was enough for 3 cups worth. To eat, i chose the light lunch of 2 lotus leaf rolls and 1 bun, while Bonesli had pistachios and pumpkin seeds with green tea powder with her herbal tisane. (They were out of the tofu sandwich that day.) The lotus leaf roll was filled with sticky rice and a few kinds of mushrooms, very tasty and fragrant. The red bean bun was good as well. Bonesli couldn't crack open the pumpkin seeds very well, so i ended up opening the majority!
I adore pumpkin seeds. Wait, clarification: pumpkin seeds with the shells ON. The fun is cracking open each little seed with your teeth, tasting the salt on the shell, extracting a perfect seed to eat, and repeating until you develop two matching sore spots on your lips from the salt.
I bought a 1 lb bag of salted shell-on pumpkin seeds from Nuts to You, but any Chinese food store will have a few varieties. The dish at GTI was comprised of the very large seeds, roasted in green tea powder - a very different yet also addictive version.
In addition to the tea house, GTI also sells clay teapots, ceramic teacups, loose tea to go and tea accessories. It's so different from the 2nd generation tea houses who focus on mixed tea cosmos and tea lattes with fake flavors. So be sure to check out GTI before June 9th. It's on Sansom at 17th Street. They're still going to operate the online shop, but Philadelphia is sadly losing a great place next month.
For all the photos I take of food in my line of work, I've only gotten bemused looks from fellow restaurant patrons and sighs of exasperation from friends and loved ones.
I've never been deemed a threat to national security, though, like Tom Gogola from the Fairfield Weekly: "If I hear you talking about me like I might be a terrorist for taking a picture of french fries, I am going to interrupt and put some perspective on the matter." [via Nick]
Partial lyrics for New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down from LCD Soundsystem's latest album, Sound of Silver:
--
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, I love you but you're bringing me downLike a rat in a cage, pulling minimum wage
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, you're safer and you're wasting my time
Our records all show you are filthy but fine
But they shuttered your stores when you opened the doors
To the cops who were bored once they'd run out of crimeNew York, you're perfect don't, please, don't change a thing
Your mild billionaire mayor's now convinced he's a king
And so the boring collect, I mean all disrespect
In the neighborhood bars I'd once dreamt I would drinkNew York, I love you but you're freaking me out
There's a ton of the twist but we're fresh out of shout
Like a death in the hall that you hear through your wallNew York, I love you but you're freaking me out
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, I love you but you're bringing me downLike a death of the heart. Jesus, where do I start?
But you're still the one pool where I'd happily drown
--Meant to note this a few weeks ago, but the Baltimore post put it back in my mind.
You may be familiar with James Sanders' book Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, which celebrated New York City's role in movies and is a must for any fan of New York, architecture, or film. But even if you haven't, you get a chance to experience it in beyond the pages: Starting tomorrow, Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall will be the setting for a Celluloid Skyline exhibit. There will be huge "scenic backing" paintings from old films, film footage, artifacts, displays and more that will show NYC's role in production and as a "mythic city" of the movies. Here's a description:
[The exhibit] will also carry visitors into the dream city of the movies, through “immersive” elements that allow visitors to feel as if they are actually inhabiting the various environments of the filmic city – streets, skyscrapers, rooftops, theaters, waterfronts, interiors – allowing viewers to come away with a greater understanding not only of the moviemaking process, but of the urban character, texture and significance of the real city. Along the way, the show will celebrate some of the greatest New York films ever made – from 42nd Street, Rear Window and King Kong to Ghostbusters, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver and Do the Right Thing – and highlight the work of generations of movie New Yorkers on both sides of the camera: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, Woody Allen, Jimmy Cagney, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Robert De Niro.We're especially excited by the scenic backing paintings - one of the backdrops is the U.N. lobby (photograph) from North by Northwest! Turner Classic Movies is also launching a program of movies to go along with the exhibit starting June 1; films include Grand Central Murder, On the Town, Batman Returns, The Naked City and The Fountainhead (yes, North by Northwest is one of the films, too). And here's Sanders' Celluloid Skyline website.
How We Are is the new photographic show on at the Tate Britain (22 May to 2 September), a restrospective look at the history of photography in Britain.
In a first for the Tate, they're asking members of the public to contribute to the show with the How We Are Now section, in collaboration with our favourite photosharing site, Flickr.
You can upload up to four shots, as long as they're taken in UK, and under the general themes of Portrait, Still Life, Landscape, and Documentary. And the best will be chosen to have their own special place at the end of the show:
In the final weeks of the exhibition, 40 photographs — 10 from each of the four themes — will be chosen by Tate to form the final display in the gallery from 6 August — 2 September 2007. A panel of curators, artists, photographers and others will select the final 40 photographs. The final 40 images will also be archived on Tate Online as part of the exhibition's website.Read all about it on the Flickr blog here, join the Flickr group and upload shots here, and check out Alistair's contributions here.
Take a browse through the main pool of images on the slideshow setting - it's an engaging hotchpotch of stuff, all of it in some way giving a sense of what Britain feels like part way through the first decade of the 21st Century.
been playing with this, and am floored how well-done it is; also: the growing list of apps
"the founders of that Google-beating start-up ... are working right now at Google."
Not everything gets shared on delicious, and while I love reading my friends' automated daily link posts, when I turn them on here I always feel like they're a little bit spammy, not quite filtered enough. Nevertheless, I like links. And you like links. So here are some links.
- You're reading Tim Goodman, right? The guy's on fire. Two great wrapups this week -- of The Sopranos and Lost. (Oh, and SBJ had a great nugget on Lost as well.) It seems all I'm talking about over on Vox is television, but here's something that's bugging me. If you're a fan, and you're not watching the night of the episode, then don't bitch about spoilers. All over the office today "Shut up! Don't talk about Lost! I haven't watched it yet!" Come on, people -- if you're a fan, you watch.
- Fred Wilson on Wesabe: it's about social and tagging. I used to be a huge Quicken user (I even categorized the cash I spent -- to the dollar granularity), but am no longer. I keep meaning to try Wesabe, but I'm more than a little bit afraid of what I'll learn.
- The Hatch Design Blog featured a great pic of the Ring House outside Tokyo. It took my breath away.
- ReCAPTCHA looks cool...
- Kara Swisher on Facebook is worth a read...and she outs the plans for a Facebook TV show. The Kara v. Arrington spat is also great sport, but not worth the href.
- And speaking of warring factions I really wanted to watch the Civil War condensed down to four minutes, but the video seems to have been disappeared from YouTube.
If you didn't catch that, I just compared a silly spat between two journalists covering Web 2.0 to the most tragic war in our nation's history. Now that's blogging.
Typepad introduces "pages" thereby becoming a great website creation tool, why would an author or small business need anything else?
Scene seen
Originally uploaded by schickr.Cap'n A gets more inches than 70 in Iraq or 22 in Indonesia or even Libby-gate.
Jeff Hawkins brought us the indispensable Palm and Treo -- now he's turned his attention to the human brain, looking to our gray matter for clues to the next generation of powerful computers and software. To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the brain really works, Hawkins argues in this compelling talk -- because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications -- and it will happen sooner than you think ... (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:24) Read Jeff Hawkins's profile on TED.com
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Watch this talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
New sales numbers show that Apple's laptop sales growth was up nearly 100 percent as of April 2007, compared to April 2006. Analysts are predicting even more growth in the future.
The Morning News gave out its 2007 Awards for Online Excellence this morning. As I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled down the page, reading about cool site after cool site, I was pleasantly surprised to find Serious Eats on there. Waaaaaaay down there. Like, sixth from the bottom down-there. We were named Favorite Forks Poking into a Whole Lotta Food.
Thanks, Morning News!
And thanks to you all, our readers, without whom we wouldn't be poking into any food and with whom we've poked into lots of tasty territory so far. Your feedback, participation, and criticism on the site are mightily appreciated!
I saw an experiment many years ago on television where they had a little man-made robot arm, like those things on the fairgrounds, where the hand reaches in to a bunch of candies, picks them up, and then moves it over, and always manages to drop it before it gets to you. You know those things. And then it drops it, and then it reaches over again, picks up another one, and this was a machine that was on an assembly line that was doing this. And they said, "This is really clever, because we've managed to simulate the human hand, and it can pick it up and take it over there and drop it." But one thing that struck me was, when all the candies had gone, the hand didn't know...The hand kept going, picking up some air, and dropping it. And came back for some more air. Now we would know that. This dumb hand didn't. And more than that, my fingers, the sensors on the ends of my fingers, the thousands of little sensors, would be able to differentiate between a leaf and a tabletop, or a shirt, or a t-shirt and a pullover. That's how sophisticated we are. And we take it for granted! We go, "Yeah, well, it's the end of my fingers!" So you see what I'm saying. I have a sense of wonder...I have that sense of wonder about, "Wow, man, how could I dream a melody?...It's magical."
(Pitchfork, Interview: Sir Paul McCartney)
The problem is, these days, that my input queues are jammed up. I’m reading Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy and it’s very good, but it’s awfully big and thick and dense. And my time for reading is tight because, after all, I’m married with two children and also I’m trying to read the Internet, or at least that huge little piece of it where people care about the things I do. And on that subject, once again I just have to plug NetNewsWire. I’ve tried a ton of newsreaders on a ton of platforms. Google’s blog reader is pretty good, and so are a couple of the other clients, but NetNewsWire just shows you more stuff in less time with fewer keystrokes. Years ago I predicted that feed-reading would have been sucked into the browser by now, but I was wrong. So between that and Caesar, and day-to-day job work, and a grungy unexciting complicated fill-a-hole-in-the-ecosystem programming project, well, I have Wikinomics and Everything is Miscellaneous and RESTful Web Services and the Programming Erlang PDF staring accusingly at me from the shadows. Blame Julius Caesar and Brent Simmons.
On Faith: Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo: Bridging the Hitchens’ Gap. His latest essay, stretched into book length, proposes that “religion poisons everything.” This is a valid observation only if we add the tag appropriate to an essay: “everything FOR ME.” However, adding such a qualifier would grant equal status to the opinions of most of the human race, a premise that Hitchens’ arrogance does not entertain. Hitchens never quite grasps the profundity of the Chesterton’s observation to the effect that Christianity is not so much a religion tried and found wanting as a religion that is still wanting to be tried. In arguing that religious people have spread poison he avoids applying the same criteria to professed atheists like Robespierre, Nietzsche, Pol Pot, Stalin, Jeffery Dahmer, etc. Perhaps favoritism to one’s own (Hitchens says he is an atheist) is understandable, but objectivity is preferable in pursuit of truth.
On Faith: Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo: Bridging the Hitchens’ Gap.
His latest essay, stretched into book length, proposes that “religion poisons everything.” This is a valid observation only if we add the tag appropriate to an essay: “everything FOR ME.” However, adding such a qualifier would grant equal status to the opinions of most of the human race, a premise that Hitchens’ arrogance does not entertain. Hitchens never quite grasps the profundity of the Chesterton’s observation to the effect that Christianity is not so much a religion tried and found wanting as a religion that is still wanting to be tried. In arguing that religious people have spread poison he avoids applying the same criteria to professed atheists like Robespierre, Nietzsche, Pol Pot, Stalin, Jeffery Dahmer, etc. Perhaps favoritism to one’s own (Hitchens says he is an atheist) is understandable, but objectivity is preferable in pursuit of truth.
Developer Larry Silverstein is probably sleeping better: Yesterday, seven insurance companies agreed to pay $2 billion in payments, which brings the total insurance payout to $4.55 billion and allows all the constructions projects to move forward with what Governor Eliot Spitzer called "certainty." He also said, "It permits access to the capital markets, it resolves and eliminates one of the outstanding hurdles that had remained and it brings to closure years of litigation." Apparently the "largest single insurance settlement ever undertaken by the industry," the payout was $130 million less than a court ruled Silverstein was entitled too. Still, the Sun says the payout gives Silverstein both "options" and "security": He can work with fewer investors or banks, and he'll have an easier time as a leader in the rebuild. Silverstein must share some of the payout with the Port Authority, as part of the deal he made over a year ago to give the PA control over Freedom Tower while Silverstein builds three buildings along Church Street and a mall co-designed with the PA. And Silverstein pointed to the progress made at Ground Zero so far, noting how well-received 7 World Trade Center has been, and said about the payout, "I say from the bottom of my heart, a very, very deep thank you." Photograph of WTC developer Larry Silverstein in his office by Mark Lennihan/AP
Sasha Frere Jones has a problem...and NY Mag has a problem with how he's going about solving it. The New Yorker music critic's files, photos and memories have been imprisoned by the evil LaCie 1TB, and the bail is a hefty $5K. He explains on his blog:
Several years' worth of photos I took with my Canon PowerShot S400—every photo taken between October 2003 and December 2005—are trapped inside a LaCie 1 TB enclosure that has, like all my other LaCie drives, failed. A very friendly firm called DriveSavers is going to retrieve my photos. It is going to cost $5000. I don't have $5000. I know—fancypants New Yorker writer, what the fuck, etc.New York Mag drops their two cents in his collection jar:He offers a "disclaimer": I know—fancypants New Yorker writer, what the fuck, etc. Let us fill in the etc. for him! Isn't it a tiny bit unseemly for a writer in such a position of privilege to go hat in hand to his readers? We're especially fond of this note: (I will not send individual thank you notes but will post an honor roll when we've reached the finish line. Thank you, though, to those who have already pitched in.) So don't expect personal thanks, but if you're the kind of person who's excited to touch the hem of a New Yorker writer — and be publicly associated with him, right there on his own Web page! — by all means, contribute away.So, manners aside, does S/FJ have a right to ask his readers for money? Why not, it's on his personal blog, and it's not like he's asking readers to pay his salary. He also adds that if you don't donate, he "will love you all the same." And since we've been hearing a lot about these LaCie's acting up (and with such an expensive fee to fix the problem) - maybe someone can drop a tip as to a good alternative... Update: S/FJ has now gone on hiatus! Photo via author photo's flickr.
I don't know about you, but seeing a photo of Michael Jackson when I land on the Daily Blabber homepage doesn't exactly make my day. So... let's bump the plastic surgery lover down and replace him with two real men: Pirates of the Caribbean stars Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Plus: Who are your top 5? List your favorite stars in the iConnect Daily Blabber group.
Posted by Devesh Parekh, Software Engineer, Google Calendar team
We realize that more people in the world have mobile phones than have computers, and people take their cell phones with them everywhere. Since one of our main goals on the Calendar team is to make planning your events and maintaining your schedule as easy as possible, starting today, you can access your Google Calendar account from your cell phone!
Just visit calendar.google.com from your phone, and you'll see your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list.
Oh mai gad. This is ++good!
Non-profit group One Laptop Per Child has announced that it has organized a three day game jam from June 8-10 that will see hundreds of developers, educators, and artists collaborate to create open source educational games for its XO laptop currently being deployed in countries like Uruguay.
I don't know about you, but this sort of thing makes me sick with happiness.
I'm going to be in London until June 9th, so attending is out. Gutted.
(via Serious Games Source)
Every week, author Sarah Deming presents a profile of a god or monster. She gathers her information from a variety of sources, and it's fascinating to see how different cultures imagine these figures and how they have changed over time and place. Her first novel for young adults, Iris, Messenger was recently published by Harcourt. It tells the story of an imaginative girl named Iris Greenwold and her modern-day encounters with the forgotten Olympians.
In the spirit of Deming's "god or monster" feature, I'd like to present the naiad Minthe. Though I have been an avid reader of Greek mythology most of my life, I had never heard of her. A few months ago, I came across her story on the back of a teabag wrapper. I had mistaken the wrapper for chamomile. A serendipitous error! Back at home, I did a quick on line search for more information. This is what came up:
In the Greek mythology of the underworld, there lived a pretty naiad called Mintha. Her father was the king of the rivers, which wind their way below the earth. Fate had it that she should fall madly in love with Hades, king of death, married to Persephone. The wronged wife, furious at discovering them together in the throes of passion, threw Mintha to the ground and stomped her to pieces. Each piece changed into an aromatic herb which is stilled called "mintha" or mint, a little wild plant, fragile and defenseless, which humans trample underfoot like a weed. Like a moan, a delicious perfume is released when it is crushed.
(from the entry "Menta spicata," The Worldwide Gourmet)
According to Greek mythology, naiads were "water nymphs" often associated with particular bodies or sites of water. Minthe, for instance, was associated with Cocytus, the "river of wailing" located in the underworld. Those who could not pay for their passage into Hades were forced to wander the banks of Cocytus for a hundred years.
The Wikipedia entry on Minthe offers a different version of her metamorphosis:
She was dazzled by Hades' golden chariot and was about to be seduced by him had not Queen Persephone metamorphosed Minthe into the pungently sweet-smelling mint, which some call hedyosmus. The –nth– element in menthe is characteristic of a class of words borrowed from a pre-Greek language: compare acanthus, labyrinth, Corinth, etc.
Following the Wikipedia trail, I reached Strabo:
Near these temples, at the distance of 30 stadia, or a little more, above the sea-coast, is situated the Triphyliac, or Lepreatic, Pylus, which the poet calls Emathoeis, or Sandy, and transmits to us as the native country of Nestor, as may be collected from his poetry. It had the epithet Emathoeis either from the river, which flows by the city towards the north, and was formerly called Amathus, but now Mamaus, or Arcadicus; or because this river was called Pamisus, the same name as that of two rivers in Messenia, while with respect to the city, the epithet Emathoeis, or sandy, is of uncertain origin, since it is not the fact, it is said, that either the river or the country abounds with sand. [p. 17] Towards the east is a mountain near Pylus, named after Minthe, who, according to the fable, was the mistress of Hades, and being deluded by Proserpine, was transformed into the garden mint, which some call hedyosmus, or the sweet-smelling mint. There is also near the mountain an enclosure, sacred to Hades, held in great veneration by the Macistii; and a grove dedicated to Ceres, situated above the Pyliac plain. This plain is fertile, and situated close to the sea-coast; it extends along the interval between the Samicum and the river Neda. The sea-shore is sandy and narrow, so that no one could be censured for asserting that Pylus was called "sandy" from this tract.
(Strabo, Geography, viii.3.14)
But my favorite account comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the following passage, Orpheus sings of the death of Adonis, who was transformed into the anemone. The story of Minthe is part of Aphrodite's (Cytherea) lament to the gods, in which she claims that she is entitled to the same courtesy that the gods showed Persephone when they granted her the transformation of Minthe. In making this comparison, Aphrodite implies that her request is motivated by far more honorable or, at the very least, sympathetic reasons than Persephone's. The story of Minthe is a "metamorphosis within a metamorphosis" (a frame narrative technique) and it highlights one of the ways in which Ovid creates an interlocking narrative web of transformations in the Metamorphoses:
By chance, his dogs, following a well-marked trail, roused a wild boar from its lair, and as it prepared to rush from the trees, Cinyras’s grandson caught it a glancing blow. Immediately the fierce boar dislodged the blood-stained spear, with its crooked snout, and chased the youth, who was scared and running hard. It sank its tusk into his groin, and flung him, dying, on the yellow sand.
Cytherea, carried in her light chariot through the midst of the heavens, by her swans’ swiftness, had not yet reached Cyprus: she heard from afar the groans of the dying boy, and turned the white birds towards him. When, from the heights, she saw the lifeless body, lying in its own blood, she leapt down, tearing her clothes, and tearing at her hair, as well, and beat at her breasts with fierce hands, complaining to the fates. “And yet not everything is in your power” she said. “Adonis, there shall be an everlasting token of my grief, and every year an imitation of your death will complete a re-enactment of my mourning. But your blood will be changed into a flower. Persephone, you were allowed to alter a woman’s body, Menthe’s, to fragrant mint: shall the transformation of my hero, of the blood of Cinyras, be grudged to me?” So saying, she sprinkled the blood with odorous nectar: and, at the touch, it swelled up, as bubbles emerge in yellow mud. In less than an hour, a flower, of the colour of blood, was created such as pomegranates carry, that hide their seeds under a tough rind. But enjoyment of it is brief; for, lightly clinging, and too easily fallen, the winds deflower it, which are likewise responsible for its name, windflower: anemone.(Ovid, Metamorphoses, X: 708-739)
As we learned from Daily Candy yesterday, the new Brooklyn-based company Sweet Deliverance NYC wants to make it ridiculously easy for you to support your local CSA: It signs you up for a share, does all the produce pickups (plus any additional shopping, chopping, cooking, and baking), then delivers ready-to-eat organic and locally-farmed meals to your door. Kelly Geary, an alum of the temple of sustainable sustenance that is Blue Hill at Stone Barns, runs the show from her Bushwick kitchen; members select via e-mail the dishes they want, and those are delivered weekly or bimonthly from June through November. What's the price tag, you ask? A hefty weekly fee of $250. We'll stick to our weekly CSA pickups and our fun cooking projects for now, thanks, but we can see how the service would benefit busy parents and, um, wealthy ecophiles with kitchen phobias.
Produce, Produce, Produce [Daily Candy]
Homepage [Sweet Deliverance]
Photo: "Williamsburg CSA," by fujita.
The key to a good hamburger is to grind your own meat. Mark Bittman explains how you can control the quality of the meat this way, and its fat content, two critical factors in making a great burger. And of course he talks about the health concerns of buying ground beef as well. Makes me long for a grill!
comments are open
An outdoor news conference in perfect spring weather, with birds chirping loudly in the magnolia trees, is not without its hazards.
As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."
Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.
Deputy White House Press Secretary promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News, "It was his lucky day...everyone knows that's a sign of good luck."
Harold McGee will demonstrate the application of the scientific method to classical cooking techniques, ingredients and new technologies in a three-day class at the FCI. Drat! That sounds totally cool and right up my alley. Alas, the mid-July date is no good for me. And also it costs $1,200! I think I'll read McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen again instead.
comments are open
Videos of some of the presentations at this year's Taste3 are now available online. Two that I'd recommend watching are Moto Restaurant's 21-year-old Pastry Chef Ben Roche and Honey Bee expert Dennis van Engelsdorp.
Seattle's Pike Place Market is turning 100 this year, and the Seattle P.I. is running a series of articles on the market to celebrate. [via Girlhacker]
Oxford Collapse at Union Hall
Brooklyn dance rockers Oxford Collapse come to Union Hall. The three-piece indie group, formed in 2002, is comprised of Michael Pace, Adam Rizer, and Dan Fetherston. They released the full-length Remember The Night Parties last October, their first album on Sub Pop Records. They are joined by Centipede D'Est and Excellent.
$8. 21 and over. 8pm, 702 Union Street; (718) 638-4400.The Edgy Mother's Day Event
Brooklyn Reading Works presents an "edgy" group of mom (and one dad) fiction writers, journalists, poets, and bloggers. Susan Gregory Thomas, Amy Sohn, Louise Crawford, Sophia Romero, Tom Rayfiel, Mary Warren, Jennifer Block, Judy Lichtblau, Alison Lowenstein, and Michele Somerville Madigan read from their works on parenthood issues. Free cocktails.
$5. 8pm, Old Stone House, Fifth Ave. between Third and Fourth Sts; (718) 288-4290.
Jake's got some photos of the in-progress development of the High Line in Manhattan. Lots of concrete. Here's what the High Line looked like a few years ago when I was up there. (link)
Seriously, if you're behind in watching Lost, this is like the ultimate spoiler alert. So stop reading. Step away from the browser...
Okay, are we all cool?
That was a pretty brilliant episode last night, and brilliant in a way that is unique to Lost, as a television show at least. What made that ending so shocking was not just the information revealed, but the incredibly clever way in which the information reversed two fundamental expectations about the basic rules of the genre. First, they confounded all our temporal expectations by revealing that it was a flashforward, not flashback, which was itself a subtle nod to all the controversy about the prominence of flashbacks in the show. (When the episode started, my wife said to me, "No, not another flashback...") And then of course choosing to answer the ultimate question that has driven the narrative from the beginning: will they get off the island?
This sets up a marvelous symmetry for the remaining three seasons. The first three were built around a basic structure where you had a present tense story on the island, with multiple events in the past slowly revealed to you, and part of the intrigue of the show came from slowly filling in the blank spots that connect those past events with the present storyline. Now, for the final three seasons, we're potentially going to have future events doled out to us as well -- or at least the one big future event that we saw last night -- and the intrigue will come from figuring out all the chains that connect past, present, and future.
I can't wait.
BiPed spotted this new piece yesterday in South London. While it hasn't been confirmed, it has Banksy written all over it.
BiPed writes:
"The photo is quite misleading as the stencil is actually about 9ft high -you can just make out the top of a security fence on the left."
The vertical content layout quickly results in a cluttered, sluggish page.
an interactive network visualization that aims to reveal the intricate network structure within purchase pattern recommendations. users can explore related books or albums, see how similar items form clusters around common subjects, & discover how the clusters themselves are connected within the information space.it seems the visual information design & interactive features have been dramatically enhanced since their first google browser version about 2 years ago.
[link: touchgraph.com]
Here's some feel-good news, courtesy of the MTA. It's a set of peregrine falcon chicks at the Throgs Neck Bridge! A wildlife expert from the DEP, Chris Nadareski, examined and tagged the chicks, all of which are female. And while the baby falcons are super cute, they are getting ready to grow up:
The Throgs Neck chicks have been growing steadily, and eat about four or five times a day. Their diet consists of pigeons, starlings, blackbirds, blue jays and other small birds caught by their mother. Their talons are already nearly as big as a man’s hand. In another three weeks they will begin to practice flying atop the tower but will remain dependent on their parents for protection and food for another eight weeks. Nadareski said it is not unusual for falcons to choose bridges to build their nests since they historically live on high cliffs where they can watch for prey and have plenty of open space to hunt.Sweet! The DEP has this falcon FAQ and other information. Financial District building 55 Water Street has a falcon cam. We've included a picture of Nadareski and one of the falcon chicks after the jump so you can see how big the chicks are (they aren't the kind of bird you bring home and try to raise in a coop in your apartment just because). And did you know that the Throgs Neck Bridge is sort of named after the 17th century settler John Throckmorton? Photographs by MTA Bridges and Tunnels Maintainer Danny Castoria
Last year around this time, the Observer pitted Williamsburg hipsters and Park Slope yuppies against each other. This year, the Observer tackles the yearning some native New Yorkers have for when NYC was bad (sorta like Michael Jackson video Bad!). Summer of Sam, Needle Park, Ford telling the city to drop dead, all of it seems better than it is now. Here's what some people told the Observer:
- “I was flashed all the time—that’s how a true private all-girl kid learned about the male anatomy,” wrote Liz Alderman, 32, a television producer and former Brearley lass, in an e-mail. - "It seems kind of weird to say that one would be nostalgic for times when you were scared to get mugged going out at night and riding the subways was taking your life on your hands,” said Dalton Conley, 37, an Alphabet City kid turned New York University sociology professor, who memorialized his childhood in the book Honky. “Yet I think there is something that’s lost. - “The people who used to come to New York were freaks of nature,” said Ruby Lawrence, 34, a bar owner who was born on Manhattan’s West Side and lives in Brooklyn. “Before, looking different was the fun part of living here, whereas now it’s about looking the same.”And a 33-year-old woman "who grew up on the West Side and works in advertising" lays this smackdown: “Just because you have a Time Out subscription does not mean you’re a New Yorker." Ouch. It's unclear if people outside the Observer's demographic were interviewed (most seem to be from Manhattan and/or private school backgrounds), but then again, why bother? What would you prefer: A New York you can walk around in, albeit one with a shiny new bank, Duane Reade, and Starbucks on many corners, or a New York, well, like something out of The Warriors? And speaking of new New York, the Observer also point out that Wal-Mart has joined various NYC business organizations. Photograph of an old painted sign by abmarfia on Flickr
Gus Mueller: “At this point, I just want to make everyone (who didn’t already know) aware of a couple of features of VoodooPad that sometimes go unnoticed.”
(By the way—I’m a VoodooPad Pro user, and I use the “create plain text pages” option.)
vote lincoln
Originally uploaded by arimoore.
vote lincoln
Originally uploaded by arimoore.
The Line Rider version of the first level of Super Mario Bros...in case you need to know what having way too much time on your hands looks like. (link)
As reported on Rob Galbraith's website, shipment of 1D Mark III's to dealers started today. Hopefully mine will be on the way soon.
From Asia Times Online - China outscores foreigners in online games battle: China's online games producers are outgunning their previously dominant foreign rivals in the battle for market supremacy in the rapidly growing industry. China's revenue from online games reached US$817.5 million last year and is expected to be more than $1.28 billion in 2008.
According to US-based market research firm IDC, China's revenue from online games reached $817.5 million last year, up 73.5% from 2005.
Bryan Yuan, IDC's analyst responsible for digital entertainment market research, said China's home-grown online games performed so well that they have taken the lion's share in the market for the first time, defeating their European, US and South Korean rivals.Technorati Tags: china, game, growth, industry, market, online, revenue
Let's say you're interested in movies and New York City. Then you could do worse than check out the Celluloid Skyline exhibit being displayed in Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central from May 25 through June 22. The exhibit is based on the book of the same name by James Sanders, an exploration of how New York is portrayed in film. The exhibit includes "scenic backing" paintings made for movie sets in the 40s & 50s, film footage of films set in NYC, production stills and location shots, and other artifacts of NYC's intersection with film. Sanders was kind enough to send me a photo of one of the scenic backing paintings:
I left the tool chest in the foreground for scale...the paintings are three stories tall! I'm always down for a trip up to Grand Central so I'll definitely be checking this out.
I am going to be on a panel about Web 2.0 for Silverdocs, a documentary film festival in Washington D.C. I am putting a call out to folks about their thoughts on it. How many of you even know what it is? Web 2.0 hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web. Do you think this is true? What role does it all play in engaging new audiences? Instead of saying what I think our community is thinking, I'd love to hear it from you guys! Anyone who feels in a commenting mood, feel free to drop me a line.
with a $1.1m grant; I hope it's like Chicago Crime writ large
Thomas Friedman: "I think any foreign student who gets a Ph.D. in our country -- in any subject -- should be offered citizenship." Extend that to those who enrich our country in other areas (Bjork, Yao Ming, Rem Koolhaas) and I'm in. (The whole article is behind the Times' paywall -- I didn't even read it -- but I thought that one line was pretty interesting by itself.) (link)
If you'll humor me, I've got two more burger-related items for all my Meatheads out there today, and then I'll give the beef stuff a rest.
The first is a set of photos from Joshua "Meatwave" Bousel that shows that it really isn't that difficult to grind your own before grilling your own. Those are Bousel's pix above; click on them to view the rest of the series.
Because grilling burgers is so simple, the small steps make the difference. Start with the meat. Grinding beef at home (see TIP at lower right) can ensure good quality, and it's not difficult if you use a food processor, but chances are you'll want meat that's already ground. In that case, go to a reputable source where the beef is ground daily; avoid prepackaged, preformed patties that offer uncertain flavor and texture.
Ground beef usually comes from one of three cuts: chuck, round or sirloin. Chuck is my favorite; it's a little fattier than the others, but that translates into great flavor. Ground beef from the round or sirloin tends to be leaner, a good thing if you're counting calories but a bad thing if you want the juiciest, most dynamic burger possible. My favorite is 85 percent lean ground chuck.
Rosenfeld also advises using a kitchen scale to mete out the meat (so all the burgers are consistent), gives some good tips on grill temps (a more gentle flame beats a roaring blaze), and provides a recipe for homemade buns that I'm copying down to try at home.
It's time for 24 star Kim Raver to have another baby. According to People.com, the 40-year-old actress is pregnant and due this fall. That will be a few months prior to the January 2008 launch of her new series Lipstick Jungle, which will air on NBC.
Kim and her filmmaker husband, Manuel Boyer, already have a four-year-old son, Luke.
Here's hoping this one is girl. Cause if Mommy's show takes off, she'll have lots of lipstick and beauty supplies to share with baby one day.
Plus: Which other celebs are expecting? Check out iVillage's Celebrity Baby Tracker.
Are the USPS's "forever" stamps a good deal for the consumer? "Absolutely not." Stamp prices increase more slowly than the inflation rate so stamps are continually getting cheaper. (link)
Regarding my earlier post on how Heather Champ's jezebel.com came to be in Gakwer's hands, she sold it to them directly: "When the good folks at Gawker contacted me a couple of months ago, I realized that she would find a good home amongst their properties." (thx, meg) (link)
The New York Times has an interesting piece on an often neglected area of psychology that looks at the significance of the stories we use to explain our lives to ourselves and others.
A small but active area of research called 'narrative psychology' has been examining how we make and use stories about our experiences for some years now.
The NYT article picks up on some research findings from Dr Dan McAdams' research group that show some common themes in life stories and suggest they may be linked to particular psychological characteristics:
In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people's current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.
By contrast, so-called generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered.
The article also suggests that the narratives are heavily influenced by our social knowledge, so we apply cultural templates for stories of success, failure and redemption to best make sense of our experience.
Link to NYT article 'This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)'.
“We are sorry to announce that Webjay will be closing its doors at the end of June, 2007.”
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by revgeorge to webjay music via:hublicious sad unmediated - more about this bookmark...
PiperJaffray: new MacBook Pros, possibly new iMacs at WWDC. The iPhone will be released later in June.
Part one of Angelina Jolie's interview with Ann Curry aired earlier on Today. You can watch it right here. Part two airs tonight on Dateline. Ann got her to tear up when talking about her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand. Here's what she said:
"I'm in a strange, I suppose, place in my life," Angie told Ann. "I think that happens when you lose a parent, where you drop into a different kind of serious. And yet, at the same time, you want to laugh and enjoy as much as possible every day... I'm hanging on to my family really tight at this moment, and, because of that, trying to be as good a woman as I can be in my life." She cries. "Dammit," she said, "you got me crying... That's alright. It's part of life. ... I lost my mom. It's a natural thing for a child to lose a parent. I lost my mom too young, but it happened. And I'm happy she's out of pain, because I love her and she's my friend."
My grandma is gonna be so pissed. Porn star Paris Hilton was photographed earlier this week carrying a bible. She wants us all to assume she's been reading it, but we're wise to her -- the celebutard can't read!
Let us all take a moment to pray together... that this insufferable twit goes away and never comes back.
Donning a white smock and white paper hat as required by federal law, I followed [chef Adam Perry] Lang inside these hallowed halls of prime and choice beef. My friend Adam heads to the Bronx at 1:30 AM to visit Master Purveyors, a meat distributor at the Hunts Point Cooperative Market. A big burger fan, Adam wanted to see the beef being ground. I love his photos of the steaks being dry-aged. I only wish he talked more about Master Purveyors and what makes their steaks so good.
comments are open
From the Travel section of the NY Times this past weekend, 36 Hours in Baltimore:
Baltimore is sometimes the forgotten middle child among attention-getting Eastern cities like Washington and New York. But a civic revival, which began with the harbor's makeover 27 years ago, has given out-of-towners reason to visit. Yes, there are wonderful seafood restaurants, Colonial history, quaint waterfronts and other tourist-ready attractions. But Baltimore's renaissance has also cultivated cool restaurants with innovative cuisine, independent theaters that showcase emerging talent and galleries that specialize in contemporary art. In other words, Baltimore is all grown up, but it's still a big city with a small-town feel.
And from last week in the Baltimore Sun, 'Desperate' plan to slow crime:
Large swaths of Baltimore could be declared emergency areas subject to heightened police enforcement - including a lockdown of streets - under a city councilman's proposal that aims to slow the city's climbing homicide count.
The legislation - which met with a lukewarm response from Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration yesterday, and which others likened to martial law - would allow police to close liquor stores and bars, limit the number of people on city sidewalks and halt traffic in areas declared "public safety act zones." It comes as the number of homicides in Baltimore reached 108, up from 98 at the same time last year.
Architecture idea: a skyscraper with a single floor. See also the tower to be built in Dubai where every floor rotates. (link)
A new investor site has hit the web, but it won't let you watch your whole stock portfolio. This one is for Apple fans only.
Tim Redfern and I are performing our collaborative project, “SimpleTEXT” on June 5th during the Upgrade New York at Eyebeam. Please come early as seating is limited and remember to bring your phones and/or laptops to participate in the performance!
Have you seen this already? It's a list of note-taking software, arranged by type ("Quick Public Pages", "Basic Note Taking") with quick summaries of each. 50 Ways to Take Notes.
This NY Times op-ed about the dangers of raising your baby on a vegan diet was insightful: "Death by Veganism." I had never thought about the implications of keeping vegan when pregnant or raising a baby, and thus depriving it of certain proteins.The only fault I find in the article is the implication, in the second-to-last paragraph, that vegetarianism and veganism are just fashions, and that "food is more important than fashion." In fact there is are long traditions of vegetarianism, particularly in India, as the author notes earlier in the article.
My own ideals of vegetarianism are a reaction to factory farming, and if I had a baby, I'd happily feed it whatever it needs, so long as I could establish that the meat was responsibly raised.
May 22, 2007 -6:08 p.m. - Santa Monica, CA...
...don't sweat it I ain't mistaken this stage for a pulpit/ this is just the altar where I offer my ink and my words for the return of your memory--"Remember," Mayda del Valle
A few years ago, I had the chance to see a performance of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam On Broadway. The show fascinated me and provoked months of thinking about how one defines poetry, the relation between poetry and music, the nature of the poetic word, and, more than anything else, what we broadly term as "identity politics." Since then, I've been looking for ways to discuss the works I encountered on and since that day, but writing about slam poetry/spoken word without being able to convey the oral and visual aspects of its performance seemed pointless. Simply put, to "quote" a slam or spoken word performance requires sounds and images. This why it was tremendously odd for me to discover that a published collection of the Def Poetry Jam On Broadway poets did not include, at the very least, a CD. At the time, most of the poets that participated in the Def Poetry Jam On Broadway show had very rudimentary websites, if they had a website at all. Fortunately, this has changed in the past few years and part of the credit goes to sites like MySpace and YouTube that make it easier and affordable to share multi-media content.
Three Def Jam poets who take advantage of the content-sharing technologies available are Mayda del Valle, Ishle Park and Georgia Me. Mayda embedded a video of her performance of "In the Cocina," which she also performed on Broadway. She considers it the poem for which she is best known. It's a well-crafted poem and she performs it with wonderful energy but, personally, I dislike it immensely. I acknowledge that this is due to very personal reasons but ones that touch directly on the issues I have with the way "identity" is advanced in many slam/spoken performances. Someday I'll respond to Mayda's poem with my own version called "Mamá's in the kitchen huddled over CPA practice exams, a week's worth of frozen tuco is in the fridge." On a more positive note, I think her poem "Tongue Tactics" is brilliant and after months of searching high and low for a live version, I found one. Ishle has no videos up but her recording "Work is Love" is gorgeous. She has a crisp voice that moves from word to word with a touch of restraint, gripping a word just slightly before she lets it go. Georgia Me's MySpace page includes both YouTube videos and audio tracks, including a more musical version of her best known poem "Niggods." Unlike Mayda and Ishle, there's not much action on her MySpace blog. Staceyann Chin uses her MySpace blog to post events and updates but for poems and audios of her performances you'll need to visit her official website. MySpace is a good start but it can't handle a lot of media. On the other hand, the active communities that emerge around each poet's page encourage more, and more frequently updated, content. Staceyann's personal website, in contrast, is notably silent though it is better equipped to handle and organize a lot of media content. At any rate, poet websites have come a long way since 2002.
What the heck?
Originally uploaded by schickr.From Fiji? What's wrong with water from California?
How is it possible that her outfits are getting worse? What the hell is this thing she's wearing? Really. A bathing suit under a crazy dress, a fedora and a gold bag? CALL A STYLIST!
I've been staring at this photo for a good 5 minutes and I literally feel nauseous.
Hey, I saw a seal today! At least, I think it was a seal.
I had walked out to this island off Cramond in Edinburgh and was hanging out, enjoying the sunshine by myself.
Something looking like a big rock (about the size of a big person, and jet black, mottled with white splotches) was a few hundred yards out, near some buoys. It was quite blockish in shape, not much resembling an animal. I figured it was a big rock. At some point, though, I noticed its head moving, and thought, "rocks don't move their heads." Stared at it for the longest time trying to figure out what it could be. I thought of:
- A big piece of wood, broken, with one part floating separately from the other,
- A dog on a raft,
- A person (covert agent?) in a strange-animal suit,
- The Loch Ness monster.
Then twenty minutes or so after I noticed it was moving, it disappeared with a big splash! There was no rock left there, but there must have been one just under the water.
I watched the water, and a few minutes later, its head surfaced some ways away for about a minute (this is when it most convincingly looked like a man in a really lousy costume). Then disappeared again and I couldn't track it.
After looking at seal pictures on Wikipedia (e.g. fur seal, eared seal, and earless seal), I feel it was the right size and shape to be a seal, although none of those picture have the mottled black-and-white color of this thing.
A swell day!
Michelle Obama resigned Tuesday from the board of TreeHouse Foods Inc., a Wal-Mart vendor, eight days after husband and White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he would not shop at the anti-union store.
Obama has been a director of the suburban Westchester food maker since June 27, 2005. Board chairman Sam Reed received a resignation letter from Obama Tuesday. The company said she quit because of "increased demands" on her time. Obama was re-elected to the board April 19 for a term ending in 2010 -- during a period she was preparing to take on a larger role in the campaign.
For the rest of this story, click here.
After making my recent post, "Arrival: Gizmos and Love," I thought a lot about reworking it. I decided against it: part of the reason for blogging is spontaneity, to write and post at a series of different moments, not to wait and publish posthumously a fully-formed life.After the link got posted on a bunch of popular sites, I wondered again if I shouldn't edit the post. A wider-than-usual group of strangers was reading it, and would be less inclined to forgiveness than my habitual readers. I decided that this moment of exposure was not the time to update the post: I would have to be consistent toward these new readers, not to regret my words under the spotlight. Instead, I would simply have to engage the conversation, which is, after all, what I am always hoping to spark.
The post is somewhat mysogynistic, as a way of making a point. The two figures in the picture represent people in our society (real people who I've seen) who could be faulted for playing traditional gender roles, and they might be living emptier lives than they have their opportunity might allow—that's my own reading: tou can make another—and mine is pushing the facts pretty far, but it's a reading I want to make and one that I think the picture supports. Because the picture is, to me, partly about gender identity (I double-check: the man is slightly liberated, wearing a necklace; but the woman wears her uniform to a T—or to a tank-top; and the boy's toy is the center of the picture), I imputed some gender-essentialist characteristics to the characters. I worried about this: people would take it seriously, would understand that I think women want X and men want Y, unchangeably. I wanted to rewrite this, find a cleverer way of saying it, of getting at the gender dynamics (essential and performed); but it was too late, and I wasn't sharp enough anyway. Aside from the (minor) issue of what people think I believe, I was concerned about adding something to the historical record (as much as obscure blogs can be considered a historical record) that might lead someone to the wrong conclusions: that is, to bolster someone else's misogyny. But as it stands, with all the commentary, I feel that my own views have been clarified and lots of other people got their say, so the post doesn't stand as a monument to chauvinism—I hope not, anyway.
In the end I updated the post slightly, for personal reasons. I reordered the last couple of sentences, because I felt that in the first version they implied something incorrect about my personal life: that I've had lots of relationships involving girls cooking, ball games on TV, and gossip. In fact, all the girls I've dated have been much too sharp to indulge in gossip, I don't follow sports, and more often than not, I've done the cooking.
Of all the reactions, I was most pleased by Jason Kottke's, because he cut right to the heart of what I was trying to say, and overlooked the overstated sexism; he quoted the line, "a boy with a toy, and a girl with patience." That's the only thing I wanted to say, really.
I intend to write carefully, considering the consequences of my statements, but I also hope to write quickly, without taking forever to hone my message. That's the challenge; I'm posting today just to reaffirm those two imperatives.
feedback
The Feedback show at(Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial | Documento legal La Universidad Laboral s/n - 33394 Gijón [Asturias] - España) is one of the more interesting curatorial efforts at integrating New Media art into the art discourse. What I really like is that it also uses the advances in digital meda to highlight established artists such as Sol LeWitt or Robert Rauschenberg. Christiane Paul wrote a terrific essay for the catalog. I've reprinted it below. -gh
Mobile VOIP is and has been a hot topic for years. I have been playing with many of the solutions. I like Truphone, find Jajah OK, dislike Rebtel. What prompted this post was my new favourite Fring.
Fring is exactly what I need now, a client allowing me to do VOIP over 3G, which enable me as a consumer to make international calls. In the past months, I have not made international calls on my mobile, as they are just too expensive. I have used Skype, iChat as much as possible. I have even scheduled my day around calls, to ensure I am in a place where I can make calls free or cheaply. This has lowered productivity as my calls become monotask, like they were in the good old days before mobiles. What is different is that many are video calls.I had looked at Fring sometimes last year after my father (67) introduced it to me. He was hunting for free ways to call me, and he found Fring. What he did not understand was that it was only free if you had a data package and being a tech savvy senior citizen, when I explained to him that roaming in Spain using Fring is not free...we left Fring for some months, he was not happy.
I now loaded it on my N95 and it works very well, I use my Skype account on it and had several decent quality calls some good quality call and a couple of failed calls walking around inner London today. I got pinged, chatted and was surprised that the battery life was decent.
The thought that directly struck me, was that having presence in the list was such a big utility that I would happily skip the native Nokia phonebook. I think it is this feature that sets apart Truphone and Fring. Truphone uses the Nokia SIP framework so it integrates well into the UI, whereas Fring is a standalone client with own UI. The UI in Fring needs lots of work, but the utility it provides is so great that one will be flexible. I am very interested to see how Fring is planning to monetize, I am also really keen to find out how Fring can expand their scope, but for now they might become an essential service in my daily life.
What I would like to see, is Truphone evolve to leverage 3G as a bearer, I have my Web'n'Walk Max, which I like where I spend about 50GBP per month, I think this is a good deal for T-Mobile and a good deal for me. There is even some money that I put on the table for Skype.
I would like to leverage video in my Fring, would love to have headset connected and use the camera to show what I see!
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Product Marketing Manager
As you might have heard recently, in addition to search and advertising, we're focused on a third key area of innovation: powerful applications that run on the web and that let you collaborate and communicate in new ways. Not only do we offer email, calendaring, and document creation and collaboration services (and more!) for individuals, but with Google Apps, businesses, schools and other organizations can customize these tools and use them as their own internal systems.
More than 100,000 organizations large and small have started using Google Apps to deliver powerful services to employees, students and members, and since there's no hardware or software to install or maintain, getting up and running is a snap. We're we hearing great stories from users, and we're getting exciting feedback from journalists, analysts and other industry experts. And just this week, PC World named Google Apps Premier Edition #1 on their list of The 100 Best Products of 2007.
We're honored to be recognized by PC World this way -- and are more inspired than ever to expand what's possible for groups of people to do using the power of the web.
Sun just announced a Patent Non-assert Covenant on OpenID; chapter and verse and FAQ here. Simon Phipps has a useful write-up. But what really impresses me is the text of the covenant itself; four short paragraphs of simple, almost jargon-free, English. Why can’t we do this more often? I’m told that our own Eduardo Gutentag gets the credit. [Ed. note: I’ve been asked a couple of times now why don’t do one of these for Atom, too. Good idea, I should have been working on it and I’ve been procrastinating.]
Why was the Sandman a villain in Spiderman 3? "I do think the Sandman didn't open his mind to lot of options that became available to him when he got particle-ized. I understand that you do what you know, and he had conceptualized himself as a thief and a fugitive. Maybe those were his most lucrative options when he was a man, but as Sandman, I don't think he had to be an outlaw to make a ton of money. Considering his strength and versatility, I bet any construction firm would have hired him in a flash." (via mr) (link)
Asparagus is an excellent source of folic acid and vitamins, and is low in fat, calories and carbohydrates. Though this article from the BBC talks about the virtues of English asparagus, there's lots of information for those of us outside the UK. Includes some tasty recipes to prepare while this member of the lily family (yes!) is in season.
comments are open
"Being vegan to me means one thing: an attempt to reduce the intense suffering of non-human animals. To me, saying "I'm vegan" is synonymous with saying, "I have decided to live a lifestyle that does not support animal exploitation."
It's unusual that I'm writing so much about being vegan or vegetarian. I didn't realize I had so much to say on the topic. But I was thinking about what makes someone a vegan, and how I don't define it as completely eliminating animal products from my life, and then I found the above quote that sums it all up for me.
On a more personal note it's our last semester at NYU!
just shut up.
i'm moving soon, to an Artist-free zone. where that is, i don't yet know. but it will be nice.
For the eighth year in a row, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy will be hosting its Thursday night "Movies with a View" program along the waterfront between the bridges. Kicking off with the Princess Bride on July 5, the weekly series will include such flicks as Being John Malkovich and Hair. Each evening will start out with a DJ set for early birds at 6 o'clock; at sundown, there will be a short film by a local film maker followed by the feature presenation. Oh, and did we mention it's free? Brooklyn Record is a media sponsor of "Movies with a View" this year, so we'll be making sure you know what's on screen every week. In the meantime, we've got the entire schedule listed on the jump.
Calendar of Events [BrooklynBridgePark.org]
Photo by alba
When I won my three stars, I realized that I'd worked for something all my life that I'd never wanted. Marco Pierre White talks about why he left the kitchen, about the American food scene and molecular gastronomy, and what happens when chefs keep their name on the door but no longer work behind the stove.
Does the quality suffer?
It can't be the same, can it? ... I just think when you've got three stars, it's an issue of principle. Your name is above the door, you've got to be there. But that's me. We're all different.
I've never been a big Marco Pierre White fan but this interview was pretty interesting. I'm a sucker for tales of wisdom and experience and finding balance.
comments are open
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007 declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, George W. Bush can become what is best described as "a dictator": "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security”. The full text is below. A critical analysis on the directive can be found here. This is another step towards official martial law (see “US government fans homeland security fears”), which suggests that a new "catastrophic event" 9/11-type pretext could be in the pipeline.
When you're out and about in the city during the day, who are all these other people who seemingly have nothing to do all day but putter about town? "Many people I encountered reported variations on the 'in-between jobs' line, and it's not just a euphemism. Among the employed are those who will soon be without work, thanks to frictional unemployment, the inevitable periods of joblessness structured into even perfect economies."
Update: An episode of This American Life from 2000 tackled the same subject, with a focus on Manhattan. "All those people you see in the middle of the workday, in coffee shops and bookstores? Who are they? Why aren't they at work? Reporter George Gurley tackled these tough questions. On four separate days, he interviewed these loafers in New York." (thx, michael) (link)
Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of "elegant things," "distressing things," or even of "things not worth doing." One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of "things that quicken the heart." Not a bad criterion I realize when I'm filming; I bow to the economic miracle, but what I want to show you are the neighborhood celebrations.He wrote me: coming back through the Chiba coast I thought of Shonagon's list, of all those signs one has only to name to quicken the heart, just name. To us, a sun is not quite a sun unless it's radiant, and a spring not quite a spring unless it is limpid. Here to place adjectives would be so rude as leaving price tags on purchases. Japanese poetry never modifies. There is a way of saying boat, rock, mist, frog, crow, hail, heron, chrysanthemum, that includes them all. Newspapers have been filled recently with the story of a man from Nagoya. The woman he loved died last year and he drowned himself in work—Japanese style—like a madman. It seems he even made an important discovery in electronics. And then in the month of May he killed himself. They say he could not stand hearing the word "Spring."
Chris Marker, "Sans Soleil"
Once, in 1946, while still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.Birds must be eliminated.
Yves Klein, "The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto"
From Isa's livejournal post about Nina Planck's op-ed article: "But this op ed piece by Nina Planck really bugged me. I wrote a response to it elsewhere, but I'm posting it here for good measure.
For starters, Nina Planck, is not a doctor or even a nutritionist. She is a business woman whose business is selling meat and dairy to people, including her book about why meat and dairy are good for you.
There are plant sources for DHA yet she chooses to omit that fact. She does say that plant sources for essential amino acids are "inferior in quantity and quality" but offers no evidence of this. Probably because there is actually no evidence of this. Humans can synthesize enough DHA from eating plant sources rich in Omega-3s, like flax seeds. So if the mom is eating her omega-3s and breast feeding, DHA levels should be sufficient and free of mercury and other toxins that a fish-heavy diet would surely contain."
I love Isa. Her recipes are incredible and her writing is peaceful, inclusive and friendly. I buy her cookbooks and read her site because she sets a great example.
The thing is, how can anyone say with such certainty that vegan diets are impossible for infants, when so many healthy infants are raised on vegan diets? Whether or not soy formula and vegan breastmilk is "the best" is up for debate. I don't know the answer to "the best" question-- I'm not sure anyone does. But why bash vegans? There's no evidence that a well balanced vegan diet is detrimental. It can be. Sure. So can a meat-inclusive diet.
The Economist explains why consuming fructose, in particular high fructose corn syrup, can lead to weight gain:Fructose apparently tricks the brain into thinking you are hungrier than you actually are. Unlike carbohydrates made up of glucose, fructose does not stimulate the pancreas into producing insulin. Nor does it promote the production of leptin, a hormone made by fat cells. Under normal conditions, the amount of insulin and leptin in the body signal to the brain that you’ve had enough to eat. Meanwhile, fructose doesn’t seem to suppress the production of ghrelin, the hormone that triggers appetite, which normally declines after eating.
In tinkering with the body’s hormonal balance, fructose also causes the liver to spew more fat into the bloodstream than normal. Thus, consuming foods or drinks laced with HFCS is like eating a high-fat meal. In doing so, we not only gobble down more calories with every mouthful, but we also store more of those calories as fat. That can mean only one thing: a bigger waistline.
At some point today, be sure to visit The National Archives website and check out The Art of War, an online exhibition featuring the art and artists of Britain’s war efforts during World War II.
(link via Amid Amidi @ Cartoonbrew)
SoHo, Lower East Side, Nolita, and other residents and workers, you'll want to make sure you have your library card, because today at 3PM, the New York Public Library opens its 87th branch in SoHo. The Mulberry Street library, located at Mulberry and Jersey Streets just south of Houston Street, is 12,000 square feet of books, DVDs, computers, WiFi access and more.
We visited the branch last Friday when NYPL staffers were getting ready for today's grand opening festivities - the exterior was getting a power wash while chairs were being set up in the big reading room. The library's space, located in a former chocolate factory that has since been converted to retail and condos, is mostly below ground, but the ground-level entrance features new releases, magazines and newspapers, with banquette seating along the windows for reading. The architecture firm Rogers Marvel kept a lot of the old factory's elements, like original beams, columns and metal doors; an old beam from the factory is used as part of the table for the computers on the first floor. One floor underground is the children's section: There's an area for story time, as well as different nooks for various levels of readers, as well as computer stations. Rogers Marvel kept the windows on this level; even though the space beyond them is closed off on top, they've lit the windows from the outside (pictured left). One more floor below, the bottom floor, has books for adults and young adults. The adult area, which will have large tables for people to read, has an alcove with 12 computers and then a double-story reading room, which will feature local artists' artwork above the shelves. (The reading room is pictured below, just after the jump; chairs were being set up for today's opening ceremony, but the space will have tables and chairs.) The young-adult area is really great (top picture) - lounge chairs, computers, and a number of books, including graphic novels. There's also a community room, which the library will show movies in or make available for local non-profits to meet in.
The San Francisco Gate has an intriguing article by Chris Colin about “the mystery of the daytime idle“, i.e. “how come there are so many people out on the street all day, seemingly not working?“.
A sort of quick survey on these people showed a typology of tourists, retired people, street workers, people with disabilities, “in-between jobs” persons, sick-and-not-so-sick individuals, night workers, scribblers, freelance workers (writers? web-designers? students?)
Some excerpts:
“look out your window. Who are these people? At any given hour on any given workday, well, it turns out it’s not a workday at all.
(…)
A funny thing about these swarms of daytime layabouts: They are quietly self-reflective swarms. Almost all of them admitted to me that they often wonder about their fellow malingerers. The funny thing is, everyone has an answer for themselves but is baffled by everyone else. Possibly this is like life itself.
(…)
“They can’t all be writing the Great American Novel,” said Joshua, 45, nodding in the direction of everyone else. Joshua recently left a large law firm to work on his own, hence his mid-afternoon workout
downtown. “I used to wonder who all these people were. Now I’m one of them.”
(…)
Aren’t we the country that other countries make fun of for working too much? (…) Our workaholism has spawned entire walls of self-help books. And yet this parallel universe exists right alongside the work-
obsessed one. It looks nice, too, as parallel universes go.“Why do I blog this? I also wondered about that when I was a kid and partly became part of that parallel universe (partly working at the office and from whatever place that suit current needs such as wifi or a good architecture to meet people).
What is intriguing in that “parallel universe” is the semantic and the rhetoric that is adopted: “face time”, “outside daytime job” and probably the best quote: “I don’t know how I ever had time for a job“.
I think this morning, what really happened is I felt extremely defensive and angry when I read Nina Planck's op-ed article. Calling it "Death by Veganism" and suggesting that the child's death was a direct consequence of having vegan parents (as opposed to irresponsible parents who willfully starved their child and did not respond as soon at their child's health started failing) sort of suggested to me that she was calling vegans "baby killers."
The thing is, I think lots of vegans would agree with many of her beliefs, in general. Many of us love green markets, think raw, unprocessed food is better and think free-range and organic is the way to go. Some vegans believe it's ethical to eat eggs & milk from farms where animals are treated humanely-- it's the unethical (I know this is a giant discussion) treatment of animals they protest. I certainly agree that high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar and hydrogenated oils are not healthy. Refined sugar isn't even usually vegan.
I don't agree with her, that people need to eat animal products to live, and there's a ton of research supporting vegetarian/ veganism. Sure, there' research against it, also. Some doctors are pro- and some are against. There are many vegan breast-feeding mothers who raise healthy kids (I know a few!) and many babies raised on soy formula who grow up healthy (I am one!) So, why the hate?
For someone who's pretty extreme herself (raw milk!) I think calling vegans baby killers is just plain mean. It seems hateful and unnecessary, especially from a fringe eater herself (again-- lard?).
And, even a few hours later, and re-reading the op-ed piece a few times, I still think it's irresponsible. She's calling out an entire group of people, most of whom made their nutritional choices based on sound decisions, often with the advice of doctors and much consideration and research. She has a loud voice in the world (NY Times certainly has lots of readers), she shouldn't be using her voice for stereotyping vegans as unfit parents. That just creates more hate in a world that needs more tolerance and peace.
A bus headed from Chicago to NYC's Chinatown crashed early Sunday morning in Pennsylvania. Thirty-six people were on board as the bus was going eastbound on I-80 near Clearfield, Pennsylvania; the AP reports the bus "ran off the right side of the two-lane highway before veering left across the roadway, running up an embankment and flipping onto its side in a grassy area." Because many of the passengers did not speak English, the AP said it was initially difficult for investigators to piece together what had happened. The bus crash took place around 3:30AM, and most passengers were sleeping; an interpreter said, "The thing they remember, they woke up by the screaming. The next thing they knew, they were on the ground." Two people were killed in the crash, while 32 others were injured. Additional details about the victims were not released. The bus was owned and operated by OK Travel Bus, which has 1 bus daily to various locations from its Allen Street ticket office. The NY Times reports that federal motor carrier safety records say that the bus line has not had crashes in the past two years and received a "satisfactory" rating from inspectors earlier this month. Last September, a Fung Wah bus rolled off a Massachusetts exit ramp, apparently traveling too fast, injuring 33 people. Senator Charles Schumer had called for more regulation on Chinatown buses after an accident in 2005. And here's a Washington Post article on what you need to know about Chinatown buses.
Religions ranked by number of adherents. 1. Christianity 2. Islam 3. Nonreligious. (link)
I think our Serious Eatin' overlord, Ed Levine, may be too embarrassed to post this, so I will.
Last Friday, just as we were packing up and about to leave the office for the weekend, a messenger arrived with a delivery for Ed.
Prominently bearing the Sullivan Street Bakery logo, it was loaded with bread, a handful of Band-Aid strips, and a note: "Hope your thumb feels better," proving that its sender, Jim Lahey, is not only a whiz with bread but also has a good sense of humor.
"I don't believe in that whole superstar celebrity chef thing. I've worked in too many kitchens where the egos got in the way of the food. I appreciate the honor; it's amazing, but it's also surreal and absurd. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the Truman Show. I always considered myself one of the worst cooks in any kitchen I ever worked at."
"I think our stuff is overrated. And now I sort of feel like a hypocrite because I'm doing less and less cooking and more business. I never intended this to happen. People say, 'Oh, he's a genius, he's so talented,' but it's all hype. Who cares about that fluff?"
"My last good idea was my worst idea; every time my ego comes into it, it hinders the restaurant. Turns out the people in this neighborhood want real food, not fast food. We just want to make great food at an affordable price. And we don't copy. I've got the Emersonian take on that: Imitation is suicide."
— David Chang, in the New York Times last Friday
All right, already. I get it. David Chang, recipient of this year's James Beard Rising Star award award for best new chef and co-proprietor of New York's Momofuku and Ssäm, doesn't want to be a rock star chef.
Like Greta Garbo, he just wants to be left alone to "make great food at an affordable price." He's told us this on Eater, in the New York Times last Friday, in New York magazine, in Food & Wine, and Gourmet. Chang tells us this in alluring, telegenic, compulsively self-deprecating fashion.
Wait a minute. Maybe, just maybe, Chang has figured out something dastardly clever here. If he is constantly telling us he just wants to be left alone, that he is just one member of a tight-knit team of talented chefs that have so much great food they want and need to cook for all of us, maybe that's his way of finding out for himself what he does want and how he can get it.
Maybe David Chang wants to take over the world one noodle bar at a time. And if the price he has to pay for every joint he opens is one more round of press interviews where he tells us he doesn't want or need our attention, than so be it. It's a small price to pay for world noodle bar domination. Nobody wrings his hands in public quite like David Chang. Maybe the gentleman doth protest too much. Or maybe Chang is geniunely conflicted about the arc of his chosen career.
And for us serious eaters if all we have to do to eat more of Chang & Co.'s delicious food is listen to the most articulate and reluctant chef superstar among us ruminate in one media vehicle or another, than so be it. It's a small price to pay for a great bowl of noodles, a fabulous bowl of soup, a pork shoulder (bo saam) good enough to reduce famous chefs I've brought in to dinner to tears, and the only brussels sprouts I've ever truly loved (it's a seasonal dish, dude, it's off the menu now).
Jezebel is a new Gakwer Media blog about...well, that's not important. Anyway, the site is hosted at jezebel.com, which was the former personal domain of Heather Champ and the original home of The Mirror Project (timeline). Heather put the domain up for sale in January 2004...I guess Nick bought it?
Update: Never fear, vintage Jezebel merchandise is still available. (link)
A few months ago, we were contacted by Tate Britain, who'd been talking amongst themselves about a new exhibition about the history of photography in Britain - How We Are Now: Photographing Britain. I was tickled pink that they considered Flickr to be a part of that history, and had already considered how Flickr and our members could contribute to the first major photography exhibition at the gallery.
It just so happened I was heading to London for something else, so I planned to meet John Stack and discuss this potential collaboration over a cup of tea at the Tate Modern. The plan was relatively straightforward: announce the exhibition, start a Flickr group to invite contributions (on the themes of portrait, landscape, still life & documentary), nurture the group, display submitted photos in the gallery itself, have some clever curators pick 10 photos from each category to be hung in the exhibition itself, and then be archived by Tate Britain as part of the exhibition.
Heather, Tara, Maya and I worked with John and his team at the Tate to ensure that contributors' rights were being looked after, and that the rules of submission were as clear as possible. I mean, it's not every day one has the opportunity to submit work for consideration by a major international gallery!
Anyhoo, the in-gallery part of the project has just gone live, so people who visit the gallery can now see photos from the group pool on big plasma screens. There is also an online component at Tate Online, where you can see submissions for the project in slideshows separated into the 4 themes.
There are some wonderful photos already, and the pool will remain open for submissions until the 25th of July, 2007. (Here are the submission guidelines.) The exhibition itself will run from today until the 2nd of September.
Hooray! I love it when a plan comes together!
Photos by Rockoctopus, nick board, tidathemonk, bobby stokes, me & TateGallery.
Why are so many web entrepreneurs so young? Because the beginner's mind is an advantage that the young have and the old can't easily reclaim. "The principal asset a young tech entrepreneur has is that they don't know a lot of things. In almost every other circumstance, this would be a disadvantage, but not here, and not now. The reason this is so (and the reason smart old people can't fake their way into this asset) has everything to do with our innate ability to cement past experience into knowledge." Wisdom is a bitch. (link)
Is human breast-milk vegan? I'm having a tough time swallowing this argument being made by some over at Serious Eats, since humans are animals, after all.
comments are open
story links: joanne interviews andrew rasiej, craig newmark, and thomas friedman at the personal democracy forum | extended interview footage
joanne
Ed's Atala - DetailAdmirers of Taliah Lempert’s artwork usually fall into a specific category. Take, for instance, the opening of her latest show, “Paintings of Taliah Lempert” at City Reliquary. A portion of the sidewalk outside the gallery had been delegated for bike valet service. There were more cleats than heels, and messenger bags outnumbered tiny purses. “Breaking Away,” the classic cycling movie, was projected on to the wall inside, and bits of overheard conversation drifted from the new season at the velodrome to who’s riding with which bike club. Lempert’s life revolves around bikes. She owns twelve. She rides everyday. Her friends ride everyday. And it’s the subject that her artwork revisits over and over again.
Ed Felten distills the impact of computers on cultural production and the ensuing debate to its essence:
[W]hether IT is primarily a copying machine, or a creative toolThe answer to most reading this Creative Commons blog will be obvious, but Felten lays it out in great detail in a talk called Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media, which he apparently reprised last weekend. Audio, video and transcript from an earlier version are available under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.
Thanks to today's crossword puzzle featuring the following clue 38 Across: Eurasian duck we now know about the smew! And aren't we better for it?! I'm not sure.
The Smew breeds in May and lays 6-9 creme-colored eggs. It nests in tree holes, such as old woodpecker nests. It is a shy bird and flushes easily when disturbed.
Ubuntu offers a lot of fonts, in addition to the defaults installed, and the MicroSoft msttcorefonts package, in its repositories. All these fonts mentioned here are provided as packages, which can easily installed using command line tools like apt-get or using Synaptic. These fonts will come in handy for designing flyers, or for designing headers and graphics for the web using the Gimp. Also, some of these fonts are pretty commonly used to render pages, like Lucida.
I will save the packages with the biggest collection of fonts for the end here. Since I have included screenshots of most of the fonts, and this article is sorta long, please read on by clicking the “More” link below.
This story isn't just about me. But for a long, bad while it was, as described in Part 1 of the lore of Google Reader's birth. This is Part 2, however, where smarter people help limit my ability to totally destroy a good idea...Watching TV.
I placed some code on the Google intranet that was originally a feed parser in Javascript but that had mutated into an unholy ur-product. I wasn't concerned about code quality - it wouldn't ever be a real thing.
Besides, I knew that preparing for constructive iterative feedback on the not-really-a-parser project would take time and a lot of careful design and preperation and reflection.
"Lemme tell you why your thing sucks," Aaron Boodman helpfully offered before I'd barely begun.
Aaron and I sat near each other in Google, feet apart actually, and after seeing some early development he wanted to talk about the design I'd thrown together.
He let me know (I'm paraphrasing) that I was missing the big picture and that a reading tool would be more useful if its model started with the item (not the source) as a building block and allowed items to be interleaved and maybe even ranked and recommended to other people. Our conversation meandered into comparing certain views to television as channels were important but, to viewers, not as important as the shows.
Aaron's a good coach. Not only did I buy into this model, I found his advocacy infectious. I added a feed reader as my 20% project later that day.A speeding car without brakes.
With code quality reminiscent of Ariane 5, I strung together a prototype using Apache, MySQL, and PHP. (aka LAMP) Except I didn't use Linux. I had a Mac running Panther. So, technically it was PAMP.
Shellen and I met to review my progress. After seeing the something instead of a parser he swept us into a conference room and sketched user models and personas and lightspeed business analysis. "We'll need to get onto the release calendar," he remarked. "How's next Friday?"
I knew he was kidding. Especially funny was an appointment that floated onto my calendar to meet a team that was making a sort of homepage for Google. The agenda noted plans for actually launching the thingamajig.
At home the joke deflated. The appointment remained scheduled.The Hudsucker Moxie.
All of the following is true. I can understand if you don't believe it.
The prototype wasn't well-defined, though it clearly had potential. Desperate for definition I decided to try something I'd half-remembered about the actor Jim Carrey. Something about getting out of L.A. and going to Las Vegas, searching deep within himself, and finding his first principles - whatever he was destined to express.
Ok, except I couldn't actually go to Vegas. I used the nearby conference room as a Vegas proxy and sketched madly on whiteboards, thinking deeply about feeds for days.
I arrived at a meeting with a simple pitch - a first principle for a feed reader. On a whiteboard I drew a circle, you know, like that Coen brothers movie. Beneath it I wrote the following:Clumsily articulated, that phrase nevertheless became my focus. If true, it would follow that a feed reader's interface might have to be athletically flexible to match a wide variety of reading styles. I then drew spokes along the circle's edge to highlight various related but differing uses that Shellen and I had outlined over a series of intense discussions.
Feed reading is inherently polymorphic.
I heard the team's response as another Coen brothers reference. Simply: "Ok, then."A ninja bowl filled with ninja sauce.
When bad software is made, ninja coders can hear it moving even while they're sleeping.
Steve Goldberg was working on the Google homepage and offered to help with finding ninja-level engineers. I asked how I should help. "Show 'em", he said. This meant the prototype resembled an abused puppy and that an innate sense of duty would compel expert coders to rescue it from its cruel master.
In Google when ninja-coding apprentices need to go to ninja school and ask a question that stymies the ninja instructors ... the board of supervisory ninjas will, when they need ultimate wisdom, ask the advice of Ben Darnell, Laurence Gonsalves, and Mihai Parparita. So I was shocked they expressed an interest in the project. I then discovered that Laurence had already begun a project that dealt with feeds and ranking items, like the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down feature in TiVo, I thought, "yikes, I just have a Atom parser in pancake clown makeup, what will he say about the prototype..."When I showed them code for the prototype, I observed the same response. Each of them sagged in pain as if millions of variables cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I will be forever grateful they believed the puppy could be saved. Serious plans appeared and real work could start, so with steely resolve ...
I fled the country.
End Part 2.
I got back from Railsconf yesterday and at some point picked up the latest Time magazine. It has Al Gore on the cover. There’s a picture of Mr. Gore working in his office. Did you notice the rig he’s working on? The GoreRig™. What struck me was the number of displays turned on. And the power they must consume. I like Mr. Gore. I was moved when I saw “An Inconvenient Truth”. I have biked more, taken the bus a few times, etc. because of the message of the film. But there’s something ironic about that picture.
Doing some back of the envelope calculations, I figure Mr. Gore is spending nearly $988 per year to power his three 30 inch HD Cinema displays, Power Mac, and the 32” inch (guess) LCD television (he’s not watching). I don’t have a television in my office. Just a 15 inch MacBook Pro, and a 20 inch Cinema Display. My rig costs $196 per year to power. Assuming each set up is on all the time, etc. etc. Like I said, back of the envelope. But that’s nearly an $800 per year difference. Seems significant. Especially if we all worked with the GoreRig™.
Here’s how I calculated:
I live in California where power is expensive. We pay roughly $0.15 per kW hour.
GoreRig™
- Computer: Mac Pro 170W, ~5.9 hours (to consume a kW), $223 year. Source.
- Displays (3): 30 inch HD Cinema Display 150W, ~6.6 hours, $598 year. Source.
- TV: (guess) 32 inch Panasonic LCD 126W, ~7.9 hours, $167 year. Source.
Total: $988 year.Young Rig
- Laptop: MacBook Pro 85W (when plugged in), ~11.8 hours, $111 year. Source.
- Display: 20 inch Cinema Display 65W, ~15.4 hours, $85 year. Source.
Total: $196 year.
Mac|Life has benchmarked the newly upgraded MacBook against the previous models. What could cause models with the same processor speed to perform differently? L2 cache.
While bumping around on the internet last night, I stumbled upon Alex Reisner's site. Worth checking out are his US roadtrip photos and NYC adventures, which include an account and photographs of a man jumping from the Williamsburg Bridge.
But the real gold here is Reisner's research on baseball...a must-see for baseball and infographics nerds alike. Regarding the home run discussion on the post about Ken Griffey Jr. a few weeks ago, Reisner offers this graph of career home runs by age for a number of big-time sluggers. You can see the trajectory that Griffey was on before he turned 32/33 and how A-Rod, if he stays healthy, is poised to break any record set by Bonds. His article on Baseball Geography and Transportation details how low-cost cross-country travel made it possible for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to move to California. The same article also riffs on how stadiums have changed from those that fit into urban environments (like Fenway Park) to more symmetric ballfields built in suburbs and other open areas accessible by car.
And then there's the pennant race graphs for each year since 1900...you can compare the dominance of the 1927 Yankees with the 1998 Yankees. And if you've gotten through all that, prepare to spend several hours sifting through all sorts of MLB statistics, represented in a way you may not have seen before:
The goal here is not to duplicate excellent resources like Total Baseball or The Baseball Encyclopedia, but to take the same data and present it in a way that shows different relationships, yields new insights, and raises new questions. The focus is on putting single season stats in a historical context and identifying the truly outstanding player seasons, not just those with big raw numbers.
Reisner's primary method of comparing players over different eras is the z-score, a measure of how a player compares to their contemporaries, (e.g. the fantastic seasons of Babe Ruth in 1920 and Barry Bonds in 2001):
In short, z-score is a measure of a player's dominance in a given league and season. It allows us to compare players in different eras by quantifying how good they were compared to their competition. It it a useful measure but a relative one, and does not allow us to draw any absolute conclusions like "Babe Ruth was a better home run hitter than Barry Bonds." All we can say is that Ruth was more dominant in his time.
I'm more of a basketball fan than of baseball, so I immediately thought of applying the same technique to NBA players, to shed some light on the perennial Jordan vs. Chamberlain vs. Oscar Robertson vs. whoever arguments. Until recently, the NBA hasn't collected statistics as tenaciously as MLB has so the z-score technique is not as useful, but some work has been done in that area.
Anyway, great stuff all the way around.
Helen Jane is blogging on the theme of warm weather entertaining this month. I hosted a party for some friends this weekend and my spread included her cherry tomatoes, basil, tiny mozzarella balls and croutons skewers and a couple pitchers of her lemon fizzy lifting drink. These were both as described: super easy to prepare crowd pleasers.
Thanks, Helen Jane! I'm already planning my next get-together around your white sangria recipe.
Photo of Helen Jane's skewers by Helen Jane
Nina Planck on the recent death by starvation of a baby fed a vegan diet by his parents: "I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants." (link)
No, this is so not what our garden looks like although i sure wish it was! It's the lettuce & greens bed from the Rice house in Northern VA. We had the opportunity to eat some of their homegrown romaine, red and butterhead lettuce recently - and i realized how flavorful, crisp and fresh lettuce truly could be. I mean, come on, lettuce is lettuce right? Well hell no kids! After eating some fresh picked greens grown with care i can never justify paying $6.99/lb for organic baby greens that suspiciously all taste the same, or $1.99/ea for waterlogged, flavorless fluffy lettuce filler. The Rice lettuce was leafy, hearty yet tender and very flavorful. It even stood up to multiple washings to get the little bugs off. It undoubtedly is the best lettuce i've ever had!
Now be is really upset that we didn't dedicate an entire box to lettuce!
In the NY Times Nina Planck writes "Death by Veganism", which is so under-researched, I don't even think it's status as an op-ed piece is an excuse for a blatant lack of information literacy/ media literacy/ research.
She suggests that the parents who are currently jailed for feeding their infant apple juice and soy milk (who died of malnutrition) where jailed for feeding their baby a vegan diet, and strongly suggests that a vegan diet will almost certainly kill your child. She's got sentences like, "A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals."
So, I'm wondering how much the meat/ dairy industry paid her to write this. I'm wondering whether she's ever heard of soy formula?
I was a soy-formula baby, and not because my parents were vegan, or even vegetarian, or had any moral/ ethical reasons for feeding me soy formula. It's because I could have suffered from malnutrition if my parents kept feeding their lactose intolerant baby cow's milk. That kid died because he was malnurished, not because he was vegan. There are also malnurished non vegan babies out there. There are healthy vegan toddlers, and all breast-fed babies are vegetarian (imagine a parent grinding up a meat-smoothy because they felt so strongly against having a vegetarian baby).
In a world where so many children have diabetes, where so many Americans are overweight, have high cholesterol, and many other ailments associated with high-fat intake, this article is irresponsible.
The problem is pitting vegan vs. carnivore. No matter what, you're not going to convince me that a milkshake, greasy burger or most slices of pizza are healthy. At the same time, I'm not arguing you can replace this diet with a garden burger, soy-cheese pizza and soy-shake and call that healthy. Both vegans and carnivores are perfectly capable of eating crappy foods. And both are capable of eating high quality, balanced diets.
The problem with this article is that it suggests a meat-based diet is the only option for health and uses that baby's death as evidence. That case is not evidence. A meat-based diet is not the only option, and eating meat absolutely does not ensure that a diet is healthy.
so much else to blog about and so little, well, no time. here’s a little slideshow. starting next month i’ll be out in the world a couple days a week, doing more consulting and such, so perhaps i’ll post more then. cheers. … curious, it’s not working. will troubleshoot.
Blabber Girl Alert!
My girl Suzy will be gracing your television screens today, as she hits the iVillage Live studios in sunny Florida. Suze will be dishing on the hotties in Hollywood who just happen to have hit the big 4-0 mark. Yum!
There are so many! My love George Clooney is the sexiest silver-haired fox breathing. And really, 40 is so the new 25.
Don't miss Suzy today on your tube at 12 noon ET, or watch her on demand at ivillagelive.com
A very relevant map that shows the diversity of location-sensing technologies.
“Each box’s horizontal span shows the range of accuracies the technology covers; the bottom boundary represents current deployment, while the top boundary shows predicted deployment over the next several years“
Taken from Hazas, M., Scott, J., and Krumm, J. Location-aware computing comes of age. IEEE Computer 37, 2 (2004), 95–97
Why do I blog this? some good material for a paper I am writing about location-awareness.
You don't have to be a vegan-basher to applaud Nina Planck's clear-eyed, sobering piece about the explicit, deadly dangers of feeding an infant a vegan diet. Planck notes that three times in recent years (most recently in Atlanta) vegan parents have been convicted of murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty charges. These parents misguidedly fed their infants a vegan diet with tragic results.
I have been on panels with Nina Planck and found her to be forceful, compelling figure whose views can often be polarizing. But on this particular issue there can be no doubt about the legitimacy and truthfulness of her point of view.
The last two paragraphs of the piece tell the whole story:
Historically, diet honored tradition: we ate the foods that our mothers, and their mothers, ate. Now, your neighbor or sibling may be a meat-eater or vegetarian, may ferment his foods or eat them raw. This fragmentation of the American menu reflects admirable diversity and tolerance, but food is more important than fashion. Though it's not politically correct to say so, all diets are not created equal.
An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.
Game image of some top secret unshareable sort. Square Botero.
"The idea of behavior generated by rationally rejecting rational behavior is a hard one to formalize. But in it lies the step that will have to be taken in the future to solve the paradoxes of rationality that plague game theory and are codified in Traveler's Dilemma."
I can not wait for this show. It is from the creator of Wonderfalls, which I was late to love and now it is long gone. (He is also the creator of a little show called Heroes but I don't watch that one.) and stars cutie Lee Pace. I am so excited!
99.34 PERCENT SAY CHENEY SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. WHAT SAY YOU? Please note that we are not asking people in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll whether people think he will be impeached, we are asking if he SHOULD be impeached.
Direct connection from Flash to MySQL, very cool though susceptible to a wide variety of abuses.
"1. It's a visual explanation that helps you more easily understand, find or do something. 2. It's visual, and when necessary, integrates words and pictures in a fluid, dynamic way. 3. It stands alone and is completely self-explanatory. 4. It reveals information that was formerly hidden or submerged. 5. It makes possible faster, more consistent understanding. 6. It's universally understandable."
Today I got mail from a young, impressionable lad that read thusly:Hey Will,
I've been reading your blog for about a year now, and I thought you would be the best person to answer this question.
I'm coming to the point in my life when I need to decide what it is I want to do (I'm 16). I've been programming for 4 years on mac and for 6 years in general, and I'm looking into computer science as a major, but I just don't know what it is! I've read the pamphlets, course outlines, etc, but they don't just answer it, what the fuck is computer science? Is it math, physics, programming? I honestly can't get a straight answer.
I've seen people parade their knowledge of O(N*log(2)) or whatever, but I just don't see how its relevant to programming. Everywhere I go I get mixed signals about what I will actually be learning during Comp Sci (for instance, my high school 'computer science' course consisted of Microsoft BASIC, and boolean logic, the fuck?).
I guess what I'm trying to ask is what you learned during you comp sci days, and what you actually gained out of it and continue to apply to this day (if anything).
Well, young lad, I think this is an excellent question, mainly because you asked it of me, and that means I get to go blah blah blah some more, which is my nigh-favorite activity.
--
First off, high school computer classes are, in my experience, a joke. In my day I literally got an 'A' for showing up -- the teacher knew I could program circles around him so he didn't even bother assigning me problems, I would just go to class (sometimes) and do whatever I wanted for an hour, and every quarter I'd get an 'A'. I'm disappointed with this teacher for not trying to challenge me more, but, hey, free period, so I didn't complain. (Now that I think back on it, a lot of my high school teachers gave up on me this way -- "Here, have a free 'A', in return you must not bug me for the rest of the quarter.")
--
There are myriad reasons why nobody can answer what kind of science is "computer science" -- prominent amongst them is that it is its own science, so it's not math or physics or programming, per se. Also, most people don't know, since unlike math or physics, computer science is not something most people experience every day in their normal lives. You drop an apple, you see physics in action. Tip a waiter, you're doing math. But what the hell is computer science? (To be fair, I think most people think majoring in math would mean, "like, learning 2+2 and shit.")
Another reason is that "computer science" programs vary INCREDIBLY from school to school. At a Real University(TM) you're going to be studying actual science and engineering principles in the context of designing and programming systems; at one of those technical institutes you see advertised on late-night TV you're going to be taking a class in "Advanced Java Programming" where you learn how to print "hello" over and over.
--
I went to the University of Washington, which was, at the time, ranked one of the top schools in the nation by some ranking organization. I honestly have no idea who does those ranking, or what kind of criteria they use. There were distinct advantages and disadvantages to going to a big school.
Let me first say some good things: I got to study under some amazing professors at the UW. Dr. Jean-Loup Baer was our department chair (which is a catchy rhyme if you sing it) and taught a course on machine language that I still remember. (I wrote a "Connect-Four" program in VAX assembly that won... some of the time.) I did my honors thesis for Dr. Hank Levy, who literally wrote the book on assembly that we used for Dr. Baer's class. Dr. Ed Lazowska was pretty famous in the community and taught a bitching course on operating systems which explained the fundamental functions of and problems faced by any operating system, in the context of real operating systems (mostly UNIX) -- we wrote a fully-functioning OS for that class, with demand-paging and protected memory, and it was cool as hell. My student advisor was Dr. Tony DeRose, who now is a Pixar bigwig and was and is a hell of a nice guy (but unfortunately I took my graphics class from the OTHER graphics professor in our department, who was, well, a big jerk-head). It's pretty cool to go to the movies and see my old advisor's name in the credits.
I got to take classes from Dr. Alan Borning (who was part of XEROX Parc in the really cool old days) and got to think about what programming languages could be instead of what they are.
And, yes, I learned O(n) and O(log(n)), and they are extremely valuable to everyone who writes code. I learned the then-current approaches to simulations and to artificial intelligence (which was mostly, "uh, maybe one day") and to operating system design and graphics libraries and all kinds of things that I have used over and over, because it turns out that none of this knowledge ever goes out of style -- optimizations will ALWAYS be about finding ways to do less work instead of finding ways to do the current work faster, and there will ALWAYS be bottlenecks in the system that require thinking about; whether they are giant mag tapes or hard drives or nvram or holo-memory doesn't make a difference.
--
But this points to the problem of the school I attended, and my strongest advice for anyone considering colleges and universities: at state-funded Universities, professors live or die by the papers they publish in coordination with grad students. Their performance in the classroom counts for almost nothing, and most of them wouldn't teach at all except that they are required to by the state. Their funding comes from research projects (that the grad students do), and the more successful and widely-praised their projects are, the more money the professors get. Period.
For instance I had the extreme privilege of learning compilers from a professor who was famous in the industry and who was one of the best teachers I have ever met -- he actually taught using the socratic method, letting you figure out the answer by asking you exactly the right questions. Every year students rated him the best professor on their evaluation forms. However, he left while I was there -- he didn't get tenure at the UW, because he hadn't done enough research for them -- he spent all his time teaching undergrads, which is verbotten at the UW.
This system also means the grad students are in a lofty class above you, the lowly undergrad -- to an extent that I believe puts most other departments to shame. I'm not even going to try to guess at the millions of dollars flowing into the UW over the years from DEC, Intel, Microsoft... but it's a LOT. The computer industry has money, and loves research, because turning a research project into a real product takes years in our industry, not decades. Microsoft backed a dumptruck full of money up to the UW shortly after I left, and I'm not sorry I missed that.
So, at the UW, the grad CS students all hang out in locked labs with personal desks, and hang out with the professors in their offices, go to picnics and BBQs at professors' houses... whereas undergrads worked in public labs, had no access to the 'better' equipment, and were only allowed to talk to their professors during very restrictive "office hours" that were, like, from 7am to 8am every other Tuesday. There was no learning by osmisis for undergrads. The idea of an undergrad going to a party at a professor's house was anathema! We weren't even invited to the TGIFs that were held in the very same building.
Now, in contrast, my sister, who was a year older, attended Reed, a small, liberal college, and majored in medicine or drugs or some this. She constantly told me how she'd have dinner parties with her favorite professors, get high with them, etc, etc... mind you, this was Reed, but, still, I really felt like there was some happy medium I was missing. I wanted more from my college years. I wanted some professor to takes me under his wing and teach me there is joy and subversion in poetry, and then he's fired for it, but not before one of my classmates kills himself because he wants to act, or something.
--
I'll give you a story from my undergrad years that still sticks in my craw, to this day:
- As head of the student chapter of the UW ACM, I walked into a professor's office (not one of the ones mentioned above) to ask for something for undergrads. I wait and wait while he shoots the breeze with two graduate students, who are lounging around his office with their legs over the sides of the chairs, talking about some scandal or BBQ party or some damn thing. Finally, he looks up at me, and I present my case: could one of the many, many laser printers that are scattered around the building in locked closets (so that only the graduate students could get at them) be opened up to undergrads, so we could use laser-printing on occasion, instead of only having access to a line-printer on a public second-floor lab?
This professor asked me some question in response -- I don't remember what it was, or what my response was -- this was 20 years ago. But I do remember what he said after that: "Why are you wasting my time?"
I looked at the two grad students still flopped down in the chairs in his office -- his office, which I had never been inside, before; even now, I was just hovering at the doorway -- and I left. I never spoke to him again.
--
But let's not end this on a bitter note. There are many nice postscripts to my college career.
Years later, when I was at Omni, we were asked by Apple to meet with some representatives from Pixar, who were considering using Cocoa technology, and wanted to talk to some outside experts, and, you know... we were just so damn bitching at the time. So we're at WWDC, and we're sitting at a table with some Apple homies, and a certain Pixar fellow sits down, and we start talking about how great Cocoa is and what all Pixar could do with it, and then he stops and turns to me, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" and I say, "Yes, Dr. DeRose, you were my student advisor fifteen years ago. And you were awesome, thank you." I can't tell you how happy I felt to be able to tell him that.
(I should mention at this point that normally I wouldn't blog about a meeting like this from WWDC, since it would be assumed to be NDA, but pretty much every NDA says you're allowed to talk about events that have been announced through other channels, and it's well-known now that Pixar uses Cocoa -- in fact Wave gives talks about the amazing things he does with it fairly often.)
Plus, Dr. Lazowska saw my name in the paper a few years ago and wrote me, as well, and I was pretty touched that he remembered me and that I was his student. I don't know if he remembered what a snot-nosed brat I was -- hopefully not.
It's got to be a neat thing, to see your students go on to success, to know you were a part of it -- I really do owe a lot to Dr. Lazowska and the other professors. I realize that more and more as I try to teach people myself -- I find that I'm using their lessons to teach a new generation, just much less formally.
--
So, those are my tales of college CS. Is it worth it to go through a CS program? Yes, if it's a good one. I would certainly recommend a smaller college or university if you're an undergrad, but even large ones are going to teach you a lot, you just can't expect that you're going to have drinks and dinner with your professors. Unless you are a hot co-ed, and the professor is my dad. (Just kidding, dad, I know you stopped dating your students after you married one... Oh, SNAP!)
Are you going to use the lessons you learned in CS in 'real-world' programming? Yes. Not all of them, but the ones you do use are going to make a HUGE difference. The delta between programmers who know when to use a hash table and those who don't is enormous. The delta between programmers who understand the O(n) stuff and those who don't is also huge. Too many programs are written by programmers who, frankly, suck at theory, and they write slow, crappy programs as a result. Get a solid basis in the science before you become a programmer.
