randomwalks/dj

The front page of tomorrow’s New York Times will feature the first installment in a series called “Choking on Growth,” an in-depth examination of “the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China’s epic pollution crisis.” It’s a major piece of reporting, and as usual you can find it at NYTimes.com alongside similarly excellent, complementary video, multimedia and interactive infographics.

There’s a little more value add this time, though, in the form of a special section on the site devoted to “Choking on Growth.” It’s essentially a micro-site that showcases the entire series — traditional journalism as well as Web-only content — as a coherent package, and it will be updated and added to over the coming days and weeks as the series continues. It’s also the result of a tremendous and not-as-frequent-as-I’d-like instance of our designers collaborating with editors from both the print and Web side, and with our multimedia, video and information graphics teams.

Designing the News

In the grand scheme of design innovation, I’ll admit that what you see under the rubric “Choking on Growth” is not groundbreaking. But for our design group it represents a definitive step forward in designing the news online.

It’s rare that we have the time and opportunity to develop something unique for the site that responds to specific journalistic endeavors (we’ve done it in limited ways before, specifically last September 11th and on Election Day 2006). For even a relatively small online presentation like this, there’s usually so much effort involved in gathering requirements, planning and then actually implementing that it rarely makes sense to undertake such a project for stories that will run even for a few weeks. We’re more typically focused on developing the platform of NYTimes.com, overhauling the user experience and adding new features, while the multimedia journalists focus on providing Web-specific content to complement the written journalism.

Right: Our special section for “Choking on Growth” showcases, from top to bottom, our lead article, an audio slide show, a video report, and an information graphic. Note the whip-smart series icon designed by the talented Christoph Niemann

But this time, thanks to extra foresight on the part of our editors, we were able to set aside the time to cook up what you see at NYTimes.com/China, and I’m extremely proud of what was accomplished. I should clarify: we were able to set aside time beforehand and start discussing what could be done. But even with a major series like this, the lion’s share of meaningful work happens in the last few days leading up to publication when the final journalistic decisions are made — that’s the way the news industry works. And to be sure, everyone put in their share of extra hours to get this done.

Right: “Choking on Growth” as it was promoted on our home page this afternoon.

It’s not perfect — it should surprise no one experienced with the limitations of content management systems that ours isn’t ideally suited to this level of improvisational design, and so there were nontrivial technical challenges to clear — but it’s a good start, I think, to a more robust presentation of our content on the Web. And here’s where you come in: I’m hoping you and everyone you know traffics the hell out of it and generates some big number, so I can justify to my higher ups why we should be doing a lot more of this kind of thing in the future.

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on August 25, 2007 7:14 PM

I've been playing with the additions to the regex engine in 5.9.5, mostly as a last minute article on named captures for The Perl Review . A lot of this is really cool stuff, as in "Why wasn't it always this way?!" and "How did I ever live without this?!". Check out perldelta for 5.9.5. I've now also run into Yves Orton's (demerphq's) Perl 5.10 Advanced Regular Expressions slides, first dated from the 2006 London Perl Workshop. Not only does he show the new features, but he goes into some of the motivations and internals for them. And, after talking to Randal for a few minutes about this, we realized that a lot of this should be in Learning Perl, and that a lot of the stuff in perlfaq6 might get a lot easier. I'll have to practice these recursive regexes to update those answers.

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by brian_d_foy (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on August 25, 2007 6:02 PM

Watched this with Fusho, Isis (8) and J (10) last weekend in Shrewsbury.

Judged within it’s own terms – lowish budget movies about kids with superhero powers – this film is way better than the really dire Sky High. However, I may well be in the minority with my mild appraisal of this one. Judging from the extreme emotion on display over at the IMDB comment boards (including “recycled, regurgitated crap from uninspired filmmakers”, “WHY DOES PETER HEWITT GET WORK, why??” “I took an 11 year old to see this movie, and he was actually sore at me”), many internet commentators have far higher expectations of Peter Hewitt than I do. All I ask is that there are no more tiny people freaking me out.

The kids that I watched this with loved it. They were jumping up and down in their seats with excitement (and no, we don’t lock them in the cellar and just let them out to watch movies). Why would any sane adult watch with them?

1. You can play spot the movie references. Much of the script is cobbled together from scraps of other scripts found by the writer in a dumpster. However, you need to have watched a ton of similar movies to get the references – the writers went for very literal parallels, for example Courtney Cox’s brainy but accident prone scientist has been snaffled wholesale from Dr Allison Reed, Julianne Moore’s brainy but accident prone scientist in Evolution

2. You can see whether there are 3 or 5 occasions when the boom mike is visible. Seriously! At a period in history that the cinema going public are gorged on CGI by control freak directors like they were digital pate producing geese, this movie is almost avent guard in its disregard for continuity.

3. You remember what Paul Verhoeven did with Starship Troopers? A parody of Fascist Imperialism that sinisterly morphed in to a full blown Neo-Con celebration of the exact same thing by the closing scenes? This film treads the same bitter path, albeit in a default kind of way, because the lazy ass script writers wouldn’t manage to sustain a critique of the wholesale slaughter of people with the letter C in their name for more than half a minute. Potentially containing some kind of message about how no good will come of a military willing to expose kids to enormous doses of radiation to exploit their superpowers, it’s reassuringly all ok by the end of the movie. 

Originally posted by Josie from A Girl & A Gun, on August 25, 2007 3:58 PM

Stephanie DiMarco, CEO of Advent Software (and my old boss) tells the story of starting, leaving and coming back to the company in the Sunday Times.

Not only was I young, I looked young. It was a challenge to be taken seriously. I was at a trade show when I overheard a competitor talking about Advent. He said, "It’s that little company in California run by that little girl." I wasn’t going to let it get me down. I turned it into an advantage. As the public face of the business, one that people didn’t expect, I was able to surprise a lot of customers. That competitor is no longer in business.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from (un)filtered, on August 25, 2007 2:42 PM

Sands of Sorrow. Via YouTube, a 28 minute black-and-white documentary from 1950. “On the plight of Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war. Dorothy Thompson speaks on the refugee problem. Refugees live in tents in the Gaza Strip, are given blankets and food by Egyptian soldiers, and receive flour from UNICEF. A Lebanese priest conducts services. Refugees work as plumbers, carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers in the city of Jerusalem. Doctors vaccinate refugees against disease. Shows the squalid living conditions in refugee camps, starving children, and emphasizes the hopeless condition of the refugees. Producer: Council for the Relief of Palestine Arab Refugees”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on August 25, 2007 2:19 PM

It has come to my attention that people are refering to the MacOS busy-cursor as "The Beachball". This is incorrect. It is called "The Hypno-Wheel". Thank you for your cooperation. (Previously.)

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on August 25, 2007 12:06 PM

We were talking about how to publish something or other, and Lauren said “Well, if there’s a Facebook app for that, there’ll be a WordPress plug-in, too”. Sounds about right.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ongoing, on August 25, 2007 12:00 PM

"Wielding a dizzying array of shadow, bunraku and hand puppets, plus a veritable smorgasbord of gripping musical numbers, we bring you the epic tale of New York cop John McClane as he blows stuff up, befriends a local cop with a weakness for snack cakes,

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by yatta to theater musical diehard funny - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by yatta from del.icio.us/yatta, on August 25, 2007 10:59 AM

Jill is talkin to someone. I won't comment on who I think it is.

I like what the song is saying but I'm not sure I actually like the song. Let's put it this way. I don't need it on my nano. But I'm optomistic about the next tune off her new CD. What do you guys think?

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on August 25, 2007 10:07 AM

I might be having deja vu here, but I could swear something similar (or the same?) did the rounds a year ago. However, I post, because moxie sent it in and she makes amazing things, and because the drawing of the king is so superb, and because the music almost made my ears bleed. It's midi brilliance.

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on August 24, 2007 8:00 PM

Andre Torrez has done a brilliant job of adapting the (un)filtered design to notes.torrez.org. Excellent!

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from (un)filtered, on August 24, 2007 4:33 PM

I promise this will be the last teaser. Some people have been, well, practically begging for more screenshots of MarsEdit 2, so I thought I would oblige.

In addition to some killer new features such as Flickr browsing, ability to add categories and edit slugs, advanced text editor macros, etc., MarsEdit 2.0 also sports a modernized look and feel that I honestly believe will improve your productivity. It’s just super slick. The UI feels even cleaner and more streamlined than the original MarsEdit. Because it is even cleaner! I also thought carefully about (mostly) invisible things, like organization of the menu bar items, and added a healthy dose of contextual menu functionality. In general, the usability of the application is greatly improved, over what was already a pretty darned usable app.

Oh, and it also looks amazing.

The anchors of the updated look are Bryan Bell’s brilliant new toolbar icons. Bryan also did the MarsEdit 1 icons, and to be honest I would have never guessed that they could be so improved upon. The new icons are sharper, more vibrant, and in general present a cleaner metaphor for what their actions are.

Of course, I already showed off the post editor a month ago, but it’s come a good deal further since then. Again, just look at the icons!

What I can’t really express with a picture is how much fun it is to just show and hide the options side-panel. I love the tactile feeling of the animation as the text scrunches up or expands to fill the space. I could just open and close the options pane all day. Except of course, then I’d never ship this thing.

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on August 24, 2007 12:37 PM

Great post by James Duncan Davidson on Wikipedia’s lousy attribution credits for photographers. The credits are there, but they’re hidden several pages away, leading people like Fake Steve author Daniel Lyons to re-use them without any attribution at all.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 24, 2007 12:00 PM

Q: What's the coolest thing in the world?

A: Sharpening knives in the old skool manner!

I must admit my poor knife collection was suffering from a severe bout of dullness. Some even had nicks from cutting who knows what, amongst the usual soft edges that mushed tomatoes instead of slicing them.

The knife sharpening tool i purchased years ago was a hand-held bar with two ceramic rods held at the correct angles to run knife blades across. This thing didn't work that well but it was better than nothing, plus my knives weren't in that bad a condition yet. But after years of chopping and slicing, my chef's knife was useless and the smaller knives had lost their original edges. I thought back to my mother's old sharpening stone and how i used to watch her as a kid, sharpening her knives on the stone with a little water. I had a few discussions with assorted people about sharpening stones and finally, just recently, bought a $2 stone from Chinatown.

This afternoon i spent a good amount of time sharpening all my kitchen knives. It took a few tries to get the angles correct, but overall it was a super-satisfying activity. I loved drawing the blades over the stone, the noise it made, the visual difference it gave the knives. When i tested them, they certainly stuck into my thumbnail instead of sliding off; not bad for a first attempt! I felt like i was in a 1980s knife commercial, slicing paper, tomatoes and canned goods with the utmost ease.

I'm encouraging everyone to get a real sharpening stone and get those baddies back to their usual selves!

Originally posted by beXn from beXnlog, on August 24, 2007 11:59 AM

Are you Amy Winehouse? BoingBoing helps answer this question and others with links to a number of really great pointless flowcharts.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on August 24, 2007 11:19 AM

One more quip regarding Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s weblog entry touting their stock ticker symbol change to “JAVA”:

[…] every major PC manufacturer bundles Java upon shipment, as does every mobile phone manufacturer, and tens of millions of developers touch it every day in the world’s IT shops.

Yeah, sure couldn’t build a good mobile device without Java installed.

It’s just the stock symbol, but it strikes me as so wrong, almost defeatist, to make any sort of branding statement that suggests that you believe one of your products is bigger than the company itself. It’d be like if Apple had changed it’s symbol to “MAC” or “IPOD”. Foolish.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 24, 2007 10:46 AM

From a cook’s point of view, these may be two of the best episodes one could possibly partake in! Not only did the cheftestants get the honor of cooking for the appropriately chosen, very talented, and well-renowned chef/restaurateur Daniel Boulud but also the very knowledgeable and successful chef Geoffrey Zakarian. They were given the opportunity to express themselves through their food by creating their very own burger and also to showcase their skills in the Mise en Place Relay Race.

Not to mention that in these episodes they were also bestowed the very challenging undertaking of designing and executing their teams' very own restaurants, from front to back in both a soft and hard opening. These challenges are a very good test of what it takes to be a chef and have given us a bird’s eye view of who has it and who doesn’t. I might as well add that the only...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from BravoTV.com Blogs: Marcel Vigneron's Blog, on August 24, 2007 10:38 AM

On last week's episode of Top Chef, Andrea Strong (The Strong Buzz) was brought in to give the contestants a taste of what they could expect online in the form of criticism from food bloggers. Viewers reacted strongly to her appearance in the comments on Padma Lakshi's Top Chef blog.

I just noticed that this week, Strong had a chance to respond to them.

I really feel very harshly judged by the viewers. I had to stop reading the comments. I have been in this business for many years, and have not only worked in restaurants but I have opened them, and I have been a food journalist for almost a decade with my work appearing in the New York Times (where an article I wrote was named in the "Best Food Writing of 2003"), New York Magazine, and in the New York Post, among other magazines and newspapers. I fully stand by my critique of the restaurants from last week, and I invite dialogue and difference of opinions, but I think the sort of negativity and nastiness on the Bravo blog and elsewhere is unfortunate, and I really do wish people did a bit of research about who I am and how I am qualified, before they lashed out at me. Just a thought.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Main, on August 24, 2007 9:45 AM

1) Wear a summer hat
2) Hold your sister's hand
3) Have a lightness in your step
4) Nonchalantly carry a 7-11 bag
5) Be an adorable, little Japanese girl

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on August 24, 2007 8:30 AM

Betty Matas passed away in Arizona Monday after battling kidney and heart problems. She was 75 years old. Matas and her husband Bob captured the interest of many New Yorkers back in April, when the couple decided to make their move from Forest Hills, Queens to Sedona, Arizona in a taxi. Their driver was Douglas Guldeniz, a taxi driver from Turkey they met a few weeks earlier when returning from Manhattan to their home in Queens. As they made that first trip, Guldeniz asked them all sorts of questions about their impending move and they asked him if he wanted to come. They were looking for an alternative way of getting from New York to Arizona because the Matases were worried about flying with their two cats, Cleopatra and Pretty Face. Guldeniz agreed to drive the Matases to Arizona for $3,000, plus gas, food, and lodging during their journey, and another $5,000 for the return trip. A reporter for the Daily News went along for the ride as well, and wrote that other motorists were often surprised to see a yellow New York cab so far from city. The carload of people and cats completed the 2,500 mile journey in six days. The Daily News described Bob Matas as stunned this week at the loss of his wife. He thought they would have a few years together to enjoy the warm Arizona climate, but he said that his wife Betty was very happy that they had made the trip.

A frail woman who walked slowly, Betty Matas nevertheless displayed the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl about her trek through 10 states. A one-time executive secretary for an advertising firm, she chatted with everyone from truck drivers in Virginia to a teen waitress in a tiny Texas town. "I always was adventuresome," she said along the way.

The New York Times also has a story on the Matases and their journey, reporting that Bob Matas says both Cleopatra and Pretty Face are doing well. (Photo by Tina Fineberg/AP)

Originally posted by nyc_daveh from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on August 24, 2007 8:15 AM

Apparently they couldn’t find a four-character symbol that stood for “shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic”. (SDCT?)

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 24, 2007 8:14 AM

Here's some great advice to set the tone for your upcoming weekend.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on August 24, 2007 4:30 AM

The first real must have game of the year is released today. Bioshock - released on 360 and PC - is a first person adventure set in an under water city full of art deco architecture and 1940's music.

Originally posted by Greg Howson from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on August 24, 2007 4:04 AM

I just love all of the Bourne films. I do!

I've had a hard week. Work has been busy and I haven't been feeling so well. I am coming around but I've been grumpy. That's really the only word ... grumpy. I'm trying to see the beauty in things but really, it needs to get a bit warmer outside for just another day or so.

I left work today and decided that I wanted a sure thing. I knew The Bourne Ultimatum would be right up alley and it was. I feel a lot less grumpy.
-----------------
Random additional pop culture references:
Prison Break is back and I've missed my Wenty. Catch the first 17 mins of the season premiere on Fox's website. So excited to watch the full episode.

Oh, and I love Mad Men. I was not into it at first and it is sort of remarkably undiverse. Still it is so well acted and I find the slow pace of it to be sort of meditative.

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on August 23, 2007 8:00 PM

Worth a re-link: Jon Ronson’s 2004 story for The Guardian on the archive of material Stanley Kubrick left behind at his estate:

“It’s Futura Extra Bold,” explains Tony. “It was Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant.”

“Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?” I ask.

“God, yes,” says Tony. “Sometimes late into the night. I was always trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his sans serifs.”

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 23, 2007 7:57 PM

Ian Austen reporting for The New York Times:

The new Nikon D3 is the first camera from the company with a full-size sensor. Well, almost full-size. One side of the frame is 0.1 millimeter short. The sensor has 12.7 megapixels, which is not exceptional. Its light sensitivity, however, is another matter. The camera’s maximum ISO setting is 25,600, about 64 times what was commonly regarded as high-speed film.

ISO 25,600? Holy crap.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 23, 2007 7:10 PM

Mitch Wagner has a provocative, comprehensive, and entertaining look at the recent conversations about Apple and the enterprise over at InformationWeek entitled "Does Apple Have A Moral Obligation To Serve The Enterprise Market?" Though some part of the conversation is pegged to my recent posts about the topic, I should clarify that, despite my strident tone, I don't think Apple has a moral obligation to create products that meet the requirements of enterprises. I think they have a social obligation to bring their tradition of great user experience to more of the business world if they want to really want to have the biggest possible cultural impact.

Part of my premise here is that Apple, with its focus on aesthetics and user experience, clearly cares about its intangible impacts on culture. I am fortunate enough to get to talk about these sorts of things as part of my day job, and the the people i work with who do all the smart thinking about it spend time designing for both the best experience and the widest adoption. i tried to capture that a bit in my comment on Mitch's post:

There are two parties responsible for much of the failures in enterprise IT. Certainly, there are IT departments that choose their own convenience or the imperative of manageability and homogeneity over the end-user experience of their coworkers they were supposed to be serving. I have worked in IT and understand all too well the temptation to make those awful tradeoffs.

My posts were directed much more at the other responsible parties: Vendors who aren't ambitious or imaginative enough to consider that something can be both enterprise-grade and usable.

I also enjoyed some additional thoughts over at The Mac Observer:

The primary focus was Mr. Dash's argument that his company, Movable Type [sic], achieves the desired goal, and he wrote: "You can meet all the (reasonable) requirements of an Enterprise while still creating a product that delights and inspires the people who make up that organization."

Thus, if corporations force users to use crappy tools and subjugate them, corporate users should revolt and demand more from the IT managers who are supposed to serve them, according to some. In order to assist in that process, the implication is that Apple has a moral obligation to do the same: make great enterprise products that employees love and still checks all the corporate IT boxes.

I'm not sure John Martellaro is completely accurate in his encapsulation of my viewpoint, but I found it remarkable that he managed to make this, too, a Microsoft-versus-Apple story. Hint: It's not. It's about user experience, and I'd point again to the example of Research in Motion and the Blackberry. It's a phone that, from a feature perspective, does even more than the iPhone, albeit less elegantly for any task that doesn't involve entering text. However, RIM has made a product that users are passionate about, even addicted to, while still meeting all the needs of the enterprise and insinuating themselves deep into corporate (and political) culture. Succinctly, they've changed the way people do their jobs, and in doing so, changed the way people live their lives. The iPhone is forced to be "my other phone" for a lot of people whose phones are business tools, and no matter how pretty she is, a sexy mistress is nowhere near as meaningful as a committed marriage.

All of that aside, Martellaro nails one point in his essay: "ultimately the resolution requires a cultural change". That's the part where everyone who wants to make technology for both work and play can have a hand in making things better.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on August 23, 2007 5:59 PM

a tea or coffee cup printed with a color matching guide to help people add just the right amount of cream by matching the color of the liquid mixture. "MyCuppa" is conceptually similar to the "128 Pantone Mugs" project of coffee-colored, Pantone-color matching coffee cups.

[links: suck.uk.com & designmuseum.org|thnkx boingboing.net]

see also pantone colors in real life & pantone color cue device.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on August 23, 2007 5:14 PM

Lindsay Lohan has just issued this statement to TMZ:

"It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs.

Recently, I relapsed and did things for which I am ashamed. I broke the law, and today I took responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges in my case. No matter what I said when I was under the influence on the day I was arrested, I am not blaming anyone else for my conduct other than myself. I thank God I did not injure others. I easily could have.

I very much want to be healthy and gain control of my life and career and have asked for medical help in doing so. I am taking these steps to improve my life. Luckily, I am not alone in my daily struggle and I know that people like me have succeeded. Maybe with time it will become easier. I hope so."

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on August 23, 2007 3:20 PM

Four days, shmore shays. Lucky Lindsay Lohan has copped a plea and will serve one measly day in jail. Lindsay struck a deal by pleading no contest to two counts of DUI, for which she will serve one day in the slammer plus ten days community service.

Lindsay also pleaded guilty to two counts of being under the influence of a controlled substance, which are both misdemeanors, and pleaded no contest to reckless driving. Linds will be on probation for 36 months and must attend an alcohol education program for 18 months. Lindsay was ordered not to use controlled substances, required to enroll in a drug program, and is required to stay for an unspecified amount of time at the Utah facility where she's currently in rehab. Finally, the judge ordered her "not to associate with people with controlled substances."

So, there's a lot of stipulations to this plea but, all in all, Lindsay got off soooo easy.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on August 23, 2007 3:02 PM

When I was a kid growing up in Berkeley, I often visited the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum in San Francisco that's so much more than that. I best remember two excursions...

Originally posted by Julia from ReadyMade Blog, on August 23, 2007 3:01 PM

“Transform a $3 pen into a $200 pen in just seconds.”

Paul Kafasis pointed me to this at C4 two weeks ago. Just tried it out. I’m not sure the Mont Blanc “fine” point is fine enough for my tastes, but it is a damn smooth pen. The heavier Mont Blanc ink cartridge gives the pen a nice heft, too.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 23, 2007 1:26 PM

At last night's Screamfest. A great moment in hip-hop? I love the smile on 50's face. As much as he always talks like it's all about the money, and as much as I might loathe half the stuff he puts out, you can't tell me 50 Cent doesn't love hip-hop. I wish he felt more comfortable with expressing that and showing it in his work. [OOPS! meant to put this in a different blog. guess I'll just leave it now that it's here.]

Originally posted by jay smooth from tuberaider video, on August 23, 2007 1:06 PM

Was this Michelle Obama speech a subliminal aimed at Hillary, or are people misreading it? Either way, Michelle Obama's got the oratory game on lock.

Originally posted by jay smooth from tuberaider video, on August 23, 2007 1:03 PM

Barack Obama sits down with Jon Stewart at the Daily Show desk. Obama announces plans to invade Grenada.

Originally posted by jay smooth from tuberaider video, on August 23, 2007 12:59 PM

What William Gibson is doing with Spook Country and Pattern Recognition before it feels like what DeLillo was doing with The Names and his other books around that time (pre Libra): presenting the world that's invisible to us but we sense exists alongside ours.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from (un)filtered, on August 23, 2007 12:31 PM

USA Today is reporting that a toxicology team have developed a method for drug testing a city's water supply, indicating the level at which certain drugs are being used by the population.

The study was reportedly led by environmental toxicologist Prof Jennifer Field and was presented at the 2006 American Chemical Society conference.

The technique apparently involves taking a sample of water from the city's sewer plant, and so doesn't identify individuals, but can estimate the proportions of different drugs in the water to give a guide to which drugs are being used in what quantities.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug — legal and illicit — that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

"Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete," Field said.

In the study presented Tuesday, one teaspoon of untreated sewage water from each of the cities was tested for 15 different drugs. Field said researchers can't calculate how many people in a town are using drugs.

She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.

Field said her study suggests that a key tool currently used by drug abuse researchers — self-reported drug questionnaires — underestimates drug use.

"We have so few indicators of current use," said Jane Maxwell of the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas, who wasn't part of the study. "This could be a very interesting new indicator."

Unfortunately, it seems the American Chemical Society charge for access to the summaries of their conference presentations, but Scientific American has a little more detail on the procedure.

The news is reminiscent of a 2004 Environmental Agency study that found Prozac in UK sewage (incorrectly reported as the 'Prozac found in drinking water' story).

Link to USA Today article (via AADT).
Link to SciAm write-up.

Originally posted by vaughan from Mind Hacks, on August 23, 2007 12:00 PM

Betty Crocker's Classics: 55 Recipe Cards is a collection of the best-loved recipes from the original 1950 edition of the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book. Think of it as comfort food in a box.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Main, on August 23, 2007 11:45 AM

SOHH.com reports that Universal's release of a legal mixtape by DJ Bear (who?) have only sold 5,800 units at cut-out prices since being released a month ago.

Drama responded, "How ironic. I guess they've realized just how important mixtapes are.""

The legal mixtape thing, of course, is hardly new. But there's good reporting in this piece...

+ A UME exec admits they don't have any, uh, clue...and

+ Retailers are like, whatever, next.

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on August 23, 2007 11:41 AM

Many sports fans know that a short season leads to unfairness and chaos. The shorter the season of their favorite sport, the more likely it is that a comparatively weak team will ascend up the ladder -- merely by luckily winning a few key games. So a couple of physicists recently decided to calculate precisely how long the major-league baseball seasons would need to last to be genuinely fair. They began with this assumption: To truly control for random outcomes -- for the slim chance that, in any given game, the lesser team will accidentally beat the better one -- you'd need to play a total of games equal to the cube of the teams involved. With 16 National League teams, that's 4096 games, and 2744 for the 14-team American League. Of course, there ain't no way anyone's going to sit through that much baseball. So they decided to scale back the pursuit of perfection, and calculate how many games would result in a situation that was not perfect, but way more fair than the current system. Their number? A full 256 games -- much more than the 162 each team plays in the current National League season. As they put it in a press release: By adding a preliminary round to the season, and eliminating the weakest teams before regular league play begins, the physicists showed that the best team in the National League would be virtually guaranteed to be among the top two or three teams with the best records, even with a significantly reduced number of games. Although the very best team may not always end up in the lead, a preliminary round or two would at least ensure that the top teams aren't eliminated from the playoffs through simple bad luck. I confess I know so little about pro sports that I cannot even begin to figure out whether their assumptions hold water, but it seemed like a pretty fun little finding to me.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from collision detection, on August 23, 2007 11:20 AM

For many people, search.cpan.org is CPAN. It is very easy to take it for granted. It's always there and it just works. It allows us to find modules, read their documentation, track version histories and even just plain read the source - with ease. Through links to other sites in the perl.org stable, it also allows us to easily check test results for a distribution, report and review bugs and patches, share ratings and reviews, annotate the documentation and all the other things I've forgotten. I was reminded of the awesome coolness of search.cpan.org as I was wading through RubyForge for a project I'm currently working on. The contrast was stark. And it's not that RubyForge is terrible, in fact it does a reasonable job. But it's not awesomely cool. Thanks Graham and everyone else involved

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by grantm (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on August 23, 2007 11:13 AM

I don’t know what to say

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on August 23, 2007 11:12 AM

I don’t know what to say

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on August 23, 2007 11:12 AM

Wow.

Save Africa hipsterism reached a new low this summer with this UNICEF campaign by ad company Jung von Matt/Alster presenting German children in blackface.

You can see them beginning here. More analysis here.

Even the taglines, meant to call attention to Africa's educaitonal crisis, sound nuts. Here's one: ""In Africa, kids don't come to school late, but not at all."

Lost in translation maybe? Nein!

After protests, there was this reply from a UNICEF official:

The idea behind is that children from Germany demonstrate their solidarity with children in Africa by showing up with a coloured make up. Their message is: "Children may look different but are equal - we all want to go to school." Absolutely no connotation of black children as "dirty children" was intended.

Before publishing the ad, we had carefully discussed possible misinterpretations and the agency had also tested public reaction in a survey in Germany, without receiving negative comments. Neither did we receive any negative reaction from the German public after publication.

The ad was published in a few high-quality print media like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Stern, free-of-charge. These media had never volunteered to publish the ad if they would have expected a negative connotation. Obviously, the perception of the ad varies by country...

We apologize if you feel irritated by the make up of the children.

Onward...to cultural understanding, oh UNICEF soldiers!

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on August 23, 2007 9:45 AM