Harry and Hermione...
...oh wait, maybe it's my son and his bride, Adriana!
« July 1, 2007 - July 7, 2007 | Main | July 15, 2007 - July 21, 2007 »
July 14, 2007
Lantern Festival
I love the “hot tags cloud” that appears above Flickr’s popular tags. A quick look this morning introduced me to the 9th Annual Lantern Festival that took place in Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery on Thursday night. People remembered their friends and family by inscribing greetings on lanterns that were lit at dusk and floated across Lake Hibiscus.
For more photos from the Lantern Festival check out recent photos tagged with “foresthillscemetery” and “lanternfestival.”
Photos from bamboovanpoo and paul+photos=moody.
Adobe's 14th Street Billboard: Interactive, But Recessed
To drum up interest in Creative Suite 3, Adobe put up a new interactive billboard on 14th Street outside the Virgin MegaStore this morning. From NY Times:
As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors will lock on to the person closest to the wall, who will then be able to control a projected slider button at the bottom of the wall. As the selected pedestrian continues walking and moves the slider along, the wall will start displaying colorful animation and playing music, effects that will grow or recede at the pace that the person advances or retreats. When each selected pedestrian reaches the end of the wall, his or her design will be in full blossom, above the campaign’s message: “Creative license: take as much as you want.”That sounds interesting. But does it work? We checked out the wall, which happens to in this recessed part of the building. Perhaps the wall needed to be in a recessed area so people could see the screen without glare and to be protected from the elements, but it's seems so recessed (about 12 feet from the main sidewalk) that general passersby wouldn't know it's anything interactive. When no one is nearby, it seems to be just a white screen with the Adobe logo and some black type (we could have missed an inactive state animation, though). Only when you're about 6 feet from the screen do people get to manipulate the wall.
So now you know what that wall is, when you're rushing to the subway entrance. We wonder if Adobe's ad agency selected the Union Square location because there are so many creative types in there - versus Times Square, which is more heavily trafficked but might have less people who use Adobe Products. But let us just say this: We wouldn't mind a Charmin toilet experience in Union Square.
July 13, 2007
iPhone On the Road
I had a chance yesterday, while traveling between the Bay Area and Portland, to try out how the iPhone behaved while away from urban areas. If you’ve ever been on I-5 in Northern California and Southern Oregon, you’ll know that it’s a long stretch of curvy, hilly road without a lot of population nearby. It’s challenging territory for cell phones.
For voice calls, the iPhone was no worse, nor any better than any other phone that I’ve used. Most of the time, I had decent signal, but any turn of the road can cut off the line of sight to a tower and kill a call. I had a few dropped calls yesterday and one patch of about 10 or 15 minutes of no service near Lake Shasta. The experience pretty much matched my experiences with other phones over the last five years or so. It wasn’t quite as good as my Moto RAZR was, but then that phone was also had the best voice quality of any phone I’ve owned in recent memory.
As far as data, it seems that AT&T’s EDGE network didn’t get the same kind of recent upgrade love out in the country as it did in urban areas. Things moved quite a bit slower as soon as got very far away from the Bay Area. And, in far Northern California and Southern Oregon, AT&T’s service is actually provided by Edge Wireless towers. Let’s just say that Edge’s EDGE speed was anything but stellar. Using Safari was pretty hopeless. There was, however, enough bandwidth for mail to make it in and out. I was able to read and dispatch a few emails without a problem.
The best experience was provided by some random open hotel WiFi network when we stopped for gas. The iPhone requested to connect, and boom! Life in the fast lane for a few minutes. The world needs more open WiFi access points. Maybe the iPhone will help encourage that along.
Whole Foods CEO May Be in (Bottled) Hot Water
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an informal investigation into the online postings of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.
And my favorite part: Eddy Elfenbein of Crossing Wall Street has posted Rahodeb's (Mackey's handle) greatest hits, including this one: "Oh yes, 'the John Mackey identity theory'. I've heard it a few times before on this Board. Believe it if you wish since it enhances the value of what I write."
iphone and exchange
So say you're one of the lucky
fewmany who use Exchange for their work (or even personal) email, and you buy a shiny new iPhone. And you go through the magic incantations to connect your iPhone to your Exchange account (mmmm, IMAP), and all is hunky dory. You're getting mail, you're reading mail, you're replying to mail, you're deleting mail.Except wait -- you're not really deleting mail, are you. Because even though you're deleting it on your iPhone (whoosh!), the next time you launch Outlook, the messages you deleted on your phone are still showing up in your inbox. "What gives?" you ask. "How the **** am I supposed to use this $600+ device to manage my inbox if it's not actually deleting messages?"
So here's what's actually happening, and here's how you can work around this current shortcoming.
First, what the iPhone is doing is marking the message for deletion, and not actually deleting the message. (For many Exchange types, this "marked for deletion" may be a new concept; I'd encourage those folks to read up on IMAP, but wow would that make for a boring weekend.)
Second, Outlook acting as an Exchange client has no knowledge of this flag that's set on those messages. So even though you've deleted them on your phone, and they're marked for deletion on the server, Outlook (again, acting as an Exchange client) just shows the messages still in your box. They're read, but not gone.
Here's the workaround, courtesy of bigmo2940 on the Apple discussion forums. It may bend your noodle a bit, but bear with me.
- Create a new IMAP account in Outlook that uses the same preferences as how you've configured your iPhone. Yes, this means that you'll now have two accounts in Outlook talking to the same mailstore: one via Exchange and one via IMAP. (Yes, this is awkward and inelegant.)
- Navigate to that inbox in Outlook and note how now you can see those messages that you've marked for deletion via your iPhone. Unless you've configured your message views otherwise, they should be gray and struck-through and
look something like this.- Go to Edit > Purge > Purge Marked items in Inbox. Or, alternatively, Edit > Purge > Purge Marked Items in "account name". This will permanently remove / delete those messages that you deleted from your iPhone.
You can then either manage your mail from that inbox, or navigate back to your primary Exchange inbox (which I recommend; after all, Outlook and Exchange were made for one another). Once you're back in your Exchange inbox you'll note that all the messages you've just purged have been deleted.
Yes, this is a total hack, but a clever one nonetheless (thanks again bigmo2940). But I'm hoping it's a temporary one and Apple indeed has licensed Over the Air ActiveSync for Exchange (where "mmmm, IMAP" becomes "mmmm, push email and contacts and calendaring") and ships it with an update at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Ichiro: five more years
Ichiro! has signed a five-year contract extension with the Mariners.
The Mariners are 50-36, two games behind the first-place Angels in the AL West.
Pidginholed
I’ve been holding off on updates about lolcats and related memes for a while because it’s easy to get burned out and probably as boring for you as it is for me. But there are still some interesting parts to it. As I alluded to in Inadvertent Lazymeme Clearinghouse Lamentations, once you’re known for something like writing a post about lolcats and grammar, you become the central place for both people looking for information about such things, as well as the go-to place for people to pitch their new ideas about the topic, whether they’re exciting or not.
As is usually the case, most people who are just trying to fill in the blanks with a lolwhatever site are not only unfunny, but tedious. I have what’s called a “Hippo Problem”, based on the problem of someone offhandedly mentions a fondness for hippos once, and is plagued the rest of their days with hippo-emblazoned kitsch for the rest of their days.
My hippos are captioned cats.
It’s a thankless burden — imagine if you were an expert on “I Kiss You!”, or the go-to guy for All Your Base. I’m just glad I didn’t write anything about that goddamn dancing baby.
The truth, of course, is that it’s not so bad, and I try to remember that there’s inevitably somebody out there who feels like they really understand this topic. They’re sitting in a cafe somewhere with a laptop, resentful and bitter that a hack like me got associated with lolcats in the first place. I’m sure the I Can Has Cheezeburger folks get hate mail from people who said they started a lolrus site exactly four days earlier and have thus been completely ripped off.
For every angry would-be lolcat expert, though, there are some perks to this kind of thing. “Cats Can Has Grammar” is (I think, I’m lousy at tracking stats) my most popular post in the nearly 8 years that I’ve been blogging, with something like half a million people having read it since it went up. I’ve gotten mentioned or quoted in stories all over the place, from the Chicago Tribune to a TV station in North Carolina to an Associated Press story that ran all over the place. I even talked to the Wall Street Journal, though I’m hoping some editor spiked the piece that was being researched, in a fit of good taste. Somewhere, Mahir’s talent agent is shaking his head sadly. “Enjoy it while it lasts, kid.”
The picture above shows that the Houston Chronicle actually ran a cover story about the lolcat phenomenon that referred to me as a “legendary blogger”. Look, mom, I still don’t have a college degree, but now I’m a lolcat legend!
And the final lesson is that we all create our own misery. If I complain that this one lighthearted and offhand piece gets more attention than all the writing I’ve carefully crafted over the years, then it’s of course only fair that I get my comeuppance. My favorite newsweekly, Time, published their own lolcats story today, and I was kind of disappointed to see that I’m not mentioned anywhere in it. Be careful what you ask for…
Yep, Naomi Watts Is Still Pregnant
Longest. Pregnancy. Ever. Naomi Watts is still pregnant... as you can see here in this photo of her, taken yesterday, in West Hollywood. When that baby finally makes it's debut, it's going to be a teenager. (If that's the case, hope she's having a c-section! Otherwise... ouch!)
Liev Schreiber's first bambino is set to arrive any day now. Though I've certainly said that before, so, for all I know, the kid's coming at Christmas.
How one working woman cooks family meals every night of the week
NYT: "For the past 10 years, I have starred in my own reality series: “Working Mom Cooks Weeknight Dinner.” Think of it as “Survivor” meets “Iron Chef” with a bit of “Deal or No Deal.” In the show’s long-running history there have been stretches in which the entire tribe was forced to subsist on scrambled eggs, tuna sandwiches and reheated Chinese food. But together we have overcome obstacles, gained wisdom and reached a point where my husband and I and our two boys eat balanced and even inventive home-cooked meals most nights."Cooking dinner every night is at once much, much harder than most people realize (especially if you're trying not to waste a thing—how can I use up this bunch of cilantro?) and, once you get into the habit, not nearly as hard as it seems like it will be. If you follow the meal plan she outlines here, you'll have something to eat every night of the week. (thanks, jjg!)
Regarding OS X-Based iPods
The reason some people are skeptical about Apple introducing OS X-based iPods this year is that the question about cannibalizing sales works both ways: an iPhone-ish OS X-based iPod would surely have some detrimental effect on iPhone sales. AT&T might care about that, but why would Apple?
bookmark this on del.icio.usThe Sea Between
One of my favorite poems by Leah Goldberg appears as the third poem in a five-poem cycle titled "Harchek meod" (Very Far Away) (included in her 1964 volume of poems 'Im ha layla ha-ze). Here's the poem in transliterated Hebrew:
Ze lo ha-yam
Ze lo ha-yam asher beyneynu,
Ze lo ha-tehom asher beyneyu,
Ze lo ha-zman asher beyneynu
Ze--anu sheynu asher beyneynu.Here's a literal translation:
It is not the sea
It is not the sea that (is) between us,
It is not the abyss that (is) between us,
It is not the time that (is) between us
It's--us the two of us that (are) between us.A few years ago, I attempted to translate this one section. As with many Goldberg poems, this one adheres to a specific formal structure; however, the rhyme pattern is not that challenging, since each line ends with the same phrase "between us." The problem is that "between us" falls considerably short of the mellifluous "beyneynu." The last line is also tricky. I suppose you could translate it more grammatically as "It's--us, the two of us, between us" but then the repetition of "us" becomes weighty (to my ear). You could argue that the weight of "us" works on a figurative level but then you lose entirely the relation "us" has to sea, abyss and time. The point is that "us" is fluid, immaterial, inconstant. Weight implies fixity, location, place. I knew that "us" had to go but I had no idea what else would work. I set aside the poem and waited.
I found the solution to my translation impasse in The Arcade Fire's "Ocean of Noise." I was listening to it the other day and just happened to be paying closer attention than usual to the lyrics. Here's the stanza that sparked my eureka moment:
No way of knowing
What any man will do
An ocean of violence
Between me and you.There it was: "between me and you." Now it seems so obvious. I realized that if I contracted "It is" and made a few other changes, I could keep the lines pretty compact (as they are in the original) and also preserve the wonderful fluidity and openness of the "oo" sound in "beyneynu." Here's the translation that resulted:
It's not the sea
It's not the sea between me and you
It's not the abyss between me and you
It's not time between me and you
It's--you and me between me and you.It's not quite there...I'd like to add a syllable in the third line but maybe I should just let this one go as is. I tackled the rest of the cycle but those parts still need a lot of tuning. Other English translations of this particular poem are out there but I try to block those out when I'm translating. This poem has long fascinated me and I felt that the only way I could understand it, or try to understand it, was by translating it. Also, I'm currently working on a dissertation chapter on Goldberg and her own translation practices and when I need a jolt of motivation, I find that translating poems of hers that I love sets me back on track.
Friday July 13th word of the day
Don't let this be you cuz if so, today will suck big-time!
MDA's Cookbook showing progress, Leopard-only
The Cookbook application out of last year's My Dream App is seeing progress, but it will be Leopard-only. We're impressed by the progress, but slightly put off by the Leopard-only nature of the application.
Congestion Pricing Rashomon
Something is happening with congestion pricing in Albany, but we're not exactly sure what. It's not put-a-fork-in-it dead yet, but it might be close to it. Or not! WCBS said the plan was "dealt [a] crippling blow", but Spitzer's staff is looking to create a commission that would give Albany the power to scale the plan back. The Daily News said that Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver won't bring his members back to vote on it on Monday, when the federal deadline on $537 million in potential funds will expire. However, Silver is open to bringing members back later in the week. NY1's "the Assembly is stalling on the plan" story has this Silver quote: "I believe the real solution is that everybody put their heads together, take everything that has been submitted and probably future statements, future testimony, future experts and put together a plan that deals with congestion, that deals with the environment." Mayor Bloomberg is planning on going to Albany on Monday to make a last appeal (half a billion in federal money is nothing to sneeze at), though some wonder why he's not in Albany right now.
We attended Community Board 7's Transportation Committee meeting last night, where Bruce Schaller, the Deputy Commissioner of Planning and Sustainability (a position created for him), gave a presentation about the congestion pricing component of PlaNYC. Certainly, the concerns of the residents who attended the meeting included questions about why the zone starts at 86th Street, in a residential neighborhood, and why would reverse-commuters be penalized. In fact, one woman gave a passionate speech, noting that her drive to Connecticut was miserable and hideous and she did not wish it upon anyone, but her office is miles from the train station leaving her no choice but to drive. There was also some skepticism about whether the revenue generated from congestion pricing would actually go to NYC mass transit improvements, versus state groups trying to take a cut of it. Schaller and other DOT representatives said that the congestion pricing revenue would go in a "lockbox" and that legislation would mandate that funding be used for NYC transit projects and road improvements. Schaller said that the goal is to have Legislature pass the concept of congestion pricing so the city can qualify for federal funding and that details, like the 86th Street border and possible exemptions for reverse commuters, could be worked out later. Which we hadn't quite realized before, because most of the attention has been on the plan as is. CB 7 members were vocal about the border moving to 60th Street, where the Central Business District begins; CB 7 covers the West Side between 60th and 110th Streets. As for timing of the project, Schaller said the hope is to get congestion pricing started in the first or second quarter of 2009, with the city and other agencies (like the MTA) would spend the time leading up to it to get ready.
Do British Candy Bars Taste Better? Serious Eats Investigates
Like many food lovers, I was enthralled by Kim Severson's story on British chocolate bars in the New York Times. Severson tries to explain why British chocolate bars have a different taste from their U.S. counterparts. She concludes that it is a combination of slightly different ingredients and processing techniques. You've heard of terroir, which is, according to Wikipedia, a "French term in wine and coffee used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon them." Let's call what Severson reported "factoir," or the special characteristics that factories bestow upon chocolate bars.
Even more interesting was the main story's taste-test sidebar, in which Severson concludes that "British chocolate bars do taste better." Not that we don't trust the esteemed writers at the Times, but I wanted to take those British candy bars out for my own test drive. So last evening I went down to Tea & Sympathy in New York City's Greenwich Village and bought two of every candy bar mentioned in the article—and a few others for good measure. I then bought some of their U.S. counterparts and brought them to the office for an official Serious Eaters Societysanctioned taste test.
I tried the two Kit Kat bars first. Although they were "differently bad," as Eric Asimov described them, one was not in the end more delicious than the other. The same was true for the Cadbury Milk and Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars and for every confection I compared.
Here's my conclusion: The romantic feelings for British candy bars that Severson discovered are the same kinds of romantic feelings anyone has about the snacks and soft drinks they grew up with. People in the South love Goo Goo Clusters and Cheerwine soda and swear up and down that they're really better than other candy bars and sodas. Ask the people of Detroit about Vernor's Ginger Ale, and they'll swear up and down it really is much better than other ginger ales. And maybe it is. But that's not the whole story.
Snacks and soft drinks are incredibly resonant lightning rods for people's affection for either their adopted or original hometown. As a New Yorker, I love Joyva Jellies and Marshmallow Twists, and Goldberger's Peanut Chews, the candy of my youth, and I will go to my deathbed proclaiming their inherent superiority and deliciousness. And if I did comparative taste tests for each of them, I would be able to come up with some seemingly objective, clearheaded observations about how and why they are better and different. I might very well come up with the same kinds of winelike descriptors Severson and Asimov came up with: "more pronounced dairy flavor," "smoother in the mouth," and "melting with more tongue-coating indulgence."
In the end, Asimov was right in saying they're "differently bad." But that's not really the point. When it comes down to it, eating an inexpensive chocolate bar or a locally produced soft drink is an incredibly satisfying cheap thrill made even more resonant by some kind of hometown provenance.
I have to go now. I'm craving a Joyva Marshmallow Twist. They really are better, twistier, and more complex.
July 12, 2007
The YouTube Aesthetic
It’s still too hard to locate online versions of recent television commercials. When McDonald’s, say, runs an ad that I want to talk about here, I don’t know of a particular place where I can go find a link for it. Sure, the more notable ones make it to YouTube, but sometimes it’s the mundane ones that don’t that are more interesting to discuss.
There are two that I have in mind: one, from McDonald’s, features two young, college-age guys, beatboxing some ridiculous rhyme about Big Macs or something. And there’s another for Oreo cookies that plays like a home movie in which two pre-adolescent girls sing the praises of Oreos. If I could find them to show you, I would, but maybe you’ve seen them already.
They’re both cute enough, but what struck me was how thoroughly they ape the ‘YouTube style.’ Which is to say, they are shot on digital video (though at a higher grade of quality than most of the source material at YouTube) in a cinematographically naïve manner; they feature pronouncedly offhand, amateur and somewhat embarrassing performances from purportedly ‘real’ actors; and they are ostensibly improvised — or at least they go through considerable effort to obscure the influence of any sort of director behind the camera.
The New Look
YouTube is a style now, an aesthetic of its own. It didn’t take very long, but it has lodged itself into our consumer psyche as a recognizable visual, aural and narrative convention. In that sense, it’s a huge and notable success deserving of at least a footnote in media history.
So hurray for democratic authorship, right? Except, as the lightning fast emergence of these television commercials suggest, it’s an aesthetic that has become almost instantaneously co-opted.
Which is to say that the YouTube phenomenon, as entertaining and paradigm-shifting as it might be, is at its core a marketing tool. That’s probably not a revelation to anyone who’s seen how much attention media companies have been paying to YouTube over the past two years. But I still think it’s worth noting that in the Web 2.0, crowdsourcing frontier we’re all so excited about, it takes virtually no effort and no time to turn genuinely exciting social phenomena into just another technique for businesses to sell stuff to us. It’s almost like we’re a research and development laboratory for our own bamboozlement.
Landis in Seattle
Floyd Landis is signing books tonight at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park @ 7 pm. I’m at a family picnic and can’t make it. If any of our readers are going, please leave comments.
UPDATE FROM ANDREW: My mom called me all excited today from the filming of KOMO TV Northwest Afternoon. It turns out Floyd stopped by the afternoon local variety show to explain his story and promote his book. They usually post their content on their site so I’ll link the clip once it’s up.
MORE UPDATES:
(Photo from ESPN.COM)
Holy cow - how did I miss this? It seems Floyd was cruising around Seattle yesterday with Jim Caple of ESPN.
Allez! Allez!
“DO NOT speak of TODAY’s TOUR DE FRANCE (I haven’t watched it yet.)”
That’s a sign that adorns the chair of the most recent member to join our team — Richard Crowley. He was willing to assist with image selection for this post as long as it didn’t become a spoiler for the 3 hours of Tour (apologies if this lodges the theme song for Gilligan’s Island in your noggin*) he’ll enjoy tonight.
You can see more photos of the Tour in 2007 Tour de France or view photos tagged with “tourdefrance2007.”
Photos from Will Rose, bowa, and stocksofwhitstable.
* That prompted Gino to croon “… The weather started getting rough, the Peloton was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the jersey would be lost.”
In other compiler news, Apple released the source code for
In other compiler news, Apple released the source code for their new C compiler called clang.
seidman!
Robert Seidman, who in Web 0.9 published the must read newsletter The Online Insider (and with whom I had the pleasure of working while he was at Schwab and I was at Quris) is back (sure, he never really went anywhere, but it's great to see him writing online again), with an insighful piece at allthingsd.com on the Nielsen/Net Ratings shift to include "time spent" in its ranking of top web properties.
Over time, these new measurements will help us better figure out how to value Web properties, but there are many things to beware of when it comes to “top 10” lists. Minutes aren’t the actual measure of value unless you can make money with those minutes, and even within this, one must be careful.
wiki mindmap
an online mindmap to browse & explore Wiki content. links to other wiki pages in individual topics are depicted by node-edge connections.(anyone already noticed how "information visualization" has been merged with "scientific visualization"?)
[link: wikimindmap.org]
succumbing
Yep, bought one. The headphone jack thing is very, very annoying. Other than that, I'm pleased as punch. Or at least I will be once my number finishes porting.
The Beckhams: America or Bust!
At this very moment, the Beckhams are on their way to America. Who cares, right? I sorta do and sorta don't. Sorta do because, let's face it, David Beckham is hot -- and it will be nice to have him running around a bit more (hopefully shirtless) on U.S. soil. Sorta don't because Posh Spice gets under my skin -- and I find myself wanting to bite off her lollipop head kinda like that owl in the Tootsie Pops commercials. Maybe I just need to have lunch.
Anywho, this photo of the fam in Heathrow Airport -- with their boys in matching red, white and blue polos -- is pretty cute. Hopefully those cute little lads will grow up to be more like Daddy than Mum.
How to eat oysters!
* For more of the Huitrerie Regis dinner click here!
'Top Chef': Teaming with a Lack of Controversy
This week's quickfire challenge was pairing an appetizer with a gin-based cocktail, thanks to YABS (yet another bizarre sponsor). One chef, Dale, jumped at the opportunity, since he'd recently had a consulting gig to pair food with hard alcohol. Most of the other chefs, however, seemed unenthusiastic about the challenge, and, in a nice twist, the winner, Texas girl Casey, had never tasted a gin rickey and was flying completely blind. So much for master mixology.
On the elimination challenge front, since 12 divides so nicely, the chefs were grouped into teams of three and asked to create a trio of dishes based on a single ingredient of their choice. After sorting themselves using scraps of paper and a bit of negotiation, the teams all took off to plot their strategies.
The episode, if anything, seemed to lack the kind of high drama that team competitions have brought out in the past. Nemeses Howie and Joey ended up on the same team (voluntarily!), and sparks did not fly. In fact, they spent a good amount of time bonding in solidarity against their other teammate, Casey, who found the burden of immunity hard to bear gracefully. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Team Shrimp took down the title, with Hung, Lia, and Brian all delivering well-received dishes. Not surprising based on Brian and Hung's specialties, but New York City's Lia, who had spent most of the competition glued to the middle of the pack, came out the big winner. She may have benefited from the contrast to her earlier work or perhaps just by holding her own with two previous winners. In any case, chalk one up for the affable 28-year-old who cooks at Jean-Georges. Hopefully, she'll be able to build on this performance and keep the judges happy in coming weeks.
On the losing side, two teams got dinged: the Tunas—Howie, Joey, and Casey—and the Pineapples—Dale, Camille, and Sara. After the judges' inquisition, it looked like either Howie or Joey was going to get the ax for Casey's lackluster tuna tartare, but in the end it was Camille who was asked to pack her knives and vamoose. It seemed like the judges were genuinely peeved at just about everyone, but it was Camille's inability to justify or explain her choices that led Colicchio and company to show her the door.
Visit the site for Lia's winning Poached Shrimp with Lime Syrup recipe (complete with swapped photo—check Brian's for the right look), or for Camille's valedictory speech, or for the notable silence from hostess Padma Lakshmi, who is going through a well-publicized spell of family issues.
The Collector-Driven Market
George Grosz
The Eclipse of the Sun
1926
Heckscher Museum of Art
via The Art Newspaper:
From Editorial and Commentary:
The problem with a collector-driven market
By Jane Kallir | Posted 12 July 2007For the past century or so, the art world has been supported by four principal pillars: artists, collectors, dealers and the art-historical establishment (critics, academics, and curators). From a wider historical perspective, the latter two entities are relative newcomers. The development of art history as an academic discipline, and of public museums, dates back only to the 19th century. Only in the 20th century did dealers evolve from passive shopkeepers to pro-active impresarios, promoting the often difficult efforts of the pioneering modernists with missionary zeal. Public resistance to modernism, coupled with the pressures of international capitalism, gave new importance to dealers and museums, both of which played key roles by superintending the distribution of new art and ratifying its seriousness. At varying points in the course of the past 100 years, the weight of the art world has shifted from one of the four pillars to another. Artists made the modernist revolution; dealers recognised and supported it before academia did; in the post-war period, critics became so dominant that Tom Wolfe lampooned their influence in his 1975 book The Painted Word. And now, it seems, collectors have taken charge.
Over the long term, art-historical value is determined by consensus among all four art-world pillars. When any one of the four entities assume disproportionate power, there is a danger that this entity’s personal preferences will cloud everyone’s short-term judgement. Put bluntly, the danger of a collector-driven art world is that money will trump knowledge. Great collectors should ideally become nearly as knowledgeable as the curators and dealers who help them build their collections. But not all of today’s collectors have the passion or the time necessary to develop this depth of knowledge. Collecting, once the pursuit of a relatively small number of driven individuals, has become far more common among far more people.
This expansion of the art market, made possible by the broader dissemination of concentrated pockets of wealth and by the globalisation of art and related information, has drawn in players who do not have the focused commitment of the traditional collector. The exponential growth of the market, and the genuine gains realised by those who got in early, inevitably fuel the tendency, justifiable or not, to view art as an asset class comparable to stocks or real estate.
Art has also become the greatest common denominator in the new global social order. Today’s rich are an international elite whose members can measure their cachet by the level of VIP services given them at Art Basel and Art Basel/Miami Beach. Anointed by the glamour that today attends the public display of great wealth, the art world has acquired the patina of trendiness that was formerly exclusive to the entertainment and fashion industries. The contemporary focus on trendiness and investment potential, each of which operates on a relatively short timeline, obscures the fact that lasting value in art accrues in the course of generations.
The corollary to a collector-driven art world is that the canon of ostensibly great artists is being largely determined by market forces. The huge prices that have been achieved lately at the top of the market are the result not only of new concentrations of wealth, but of the fact that many people are pursuing the same handful of artists and works of art. Therefore the drop-off from the peak can be steep, becalming the middle market and consigning lesser works and lesser artists to also-ran status.
This is a market with a voracious appetite for alleged masterpieces, and little patience for historical or developmental nuances. It encourages superficiality: rather than collecting a single artist or group of artists in depth, collectors now often prefer to amass scattered masterworks: here a Matisse, there a Picasso, and then perhaps a Schiele. In an overheated environment, the art-historical establishment often finds itself chasing rather than guiding the market. The press must keep up with the latest trends, and coverage of social events and record prices often takes precedence over quiet critical reflection. Museums need the support of trustees, but the most powerful collectors no longer need the imprimatur of an existing museum; they can simply open their own.
If it sometimes seems that the art-historical establishment is missing in action, this is in part because, while the market has been aggressively constructing a new canon, academia has been busy deconstructing the old one. For several decades now, scholars have generally agreed that the white, male, Eurocentric canon that traditionally dominated Western art evolved from historical biases that are no longer morally or intellectually justifiable. Although this change in orientation has literally opened up a whole new world of aesthetic possibilities, it has discouraged academics from making qualitative judgements. Scholarship in areas that are useful to the marketplace, such as provenance and authenticity, has flourished, but overall connoisseurship has declined. Similarly, market pressures push dealers to become generalists, showcasing a hodge-podge of high-ticket items instead of specialising as they formerly did. Auctioneers, operating within a timeframe that seldom extends much beyond the next sale date, focus most of their energies on the highest priced lots. Novice collectors, justifiably wary and insecure, engage consultants who often know far less than the dealers and auctioneers. At every level of the art world, deeper knowledge and principled guidance seem to be in short supply.
The writer is co-director of Galerie St Etienne in New York
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When internerds go abroad
Not staged, not a joke. From Israel travelmate Kent's Flickr.A captured moment from the motherland: We were stuck in a university parking lot, waiting for the rest of our group, and we could almost catch a wifi signal in the bus. Special memories abound.
Whole Foods Exec Makes Fake Posts on Yahoo Boards
The Wall Street Journal revealed last night that Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey had been using a pseudonym to rave about his company while sometimes blasting rival Wild Oats Market:
For about eight years until last August, the company confirms, Mr. Mackey posted numerous messages on Yahoo Finance stock forums as Rahodeb. It's an anagram of Deborah, Mr. Mackey's wife's name. Rahodeb cheered Whole Foods' financial results, trumpeted his gains on the stock and bashed Wild Oats. Rahodeb even defended Mr. Mackey's haircut when another user poked fun at a photo in the annual report. "I like Mackey's haircut," Rahodeb said. "I think he looks cute!"
purl2
It’s great to see that OCLC is going to work with Zepheira on a new version of the PURL service and that it’s going to live at Apache. Other than addressing scalability issues it sounds like Zepheira is going to build in support for resources that are outside of the information space of the web:
The new PURL software will also be updated to reflect the current understanding of Web architecture as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This new software will provide the ability to permanently identify networked information resources, such as Web documents, as well as non-networked resources such as people, organizations, concepts and scientific data. This capability will represent an important step forward in the adoption of a machine-processable “Web of data” enabled by the Semantic Web.Since Eric Miller helped start up Zepheira it’s not surprising that purl2 will take this on. As part of some experiments I’ve been doing with SKOS, and serving up Concepts over HTTP it has become clear that a minimal bit of work for managing these identifiers would be useful. I can definitely see the need for a general solution that helps manage identifiers for people, organizations, concepts, etc. which also fits into how HTTP should/could serve up the resources associated with them.
via Thom Hickey
July 11, 2007
red interactive agency has one of the best urls ever
red interactive agency has one of the best urls ever.they also happen to be the firm behind ethanhaaswasright
Providing Comfort...
From Patrick. I can't help but point out my mini bangs. That's the hair I lost from pregnancy finally growing back. Speaking of hair...Tesla got cute hair pins for her birthday. Just by pinning a tiny bit of hair, she looks so much older.
Arrogance Among Us
This afternoon I was chatting with a friend of mine about a graphic designer that we both know, and, maybe feeling a bit petty, we were remarking on how monumentally arrogant is this person. It got me thinking about how amazing it is to me when I encounter this kind of person — rude, disdainful and superior designers who can’t afford common courtesies to those below them in professional or social stature. When confronted with this type, what I invariably think in my head is, “Why are you so high on yourself? You’re just a designer.”
In no way am I trying to discount the social or material consequence of our profession; I’m as big a proponent of design’s singular, critical role in the world as anyone. At the same time, I try to remember that nothing that we do as designers is so important that it excuses us from being nice.
Aside from a very select few among us, we all earn our salaries in a service profession, after all. Which is to say that our job is to provide our labor — our design expertise — in service to others. By its very nature, that sort of arrangement demands a certain humbleness. With apologies to Yogi Berra: design is ninety percent talent and hard work; the other half is people skills.
And speaking of those select few: I’ve met a handful of the cream of the crop, those who practice design in a manner that might be described as ‘with impunity.’ To be sure, arrogance is well represented among them, but there are some stellar folks who happen to be extremely approachable, friendly and level-headed — and some of these folks happen at the very top of the industry. If these designers can bother to maintain humility even at those great heights, some of these lesser gods among us surely can too. I look up to the ones that can. Fuck the others.