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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 likew
