« September 9, 2007 - September 15, 2007 | Main | September 23, 2007 - September 29, 2007 »
The Municipal Art Society of New York and the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance will present a series of free public screenings of their new documentary, City of Water, throughout the five boroughs between September 19, 2007 and November 16, 2007. The...
17 Bubble Kids, originally uploaded by Chinkerfly.via Jackie Tran
Leopard brings a lot of changes for Mac programmers. If you haven't been tuned in, here's a cheat sheet of some things you'll want to be aware of in the coming months and years...
The release of our iPhone plugin for Movable Type is a tough act to follow. It has been very well received and has been the tipping point for many to switch to Movable Type from other platforms.
But a lot has happened since we released iMT. For those of you not closely following our regular flow of betas, we released Movable Type 4.01 - a release we recommend all Movable Type users to upgrade to. It contains a number of key fixes, updates and a security enhancement. Most notably however is a fix that provides a remarkable boost to Movable Type's performance and responsiveness. Users have reported seeing a dramatic decrease in the time it takes to publish their web sites as well as an increase in the responsiveness of the application.
Of course Movable Type 4.01 also contained a number of key fixes to support the release of our first pack or "solution": the Movable Type Enterprise Solution. I will refer those interested in that specific product to our corporate Movable Type website. However I would like to highlight several key resources that we created for our customers that operate at an enterprise scale, but that we think have a general relevance to anyone aspiring to build a blog and web site as large as Boing Boing, Seed Magazine, Huffington Post, the Gothamist network of blogs and many others. Specifically:
- Scalable Publishing Models - a guide to asynchronous and background publishing in Movable Type 4.
- Movable Type System Architecture Guide - a document describing the various ways one could architect Movable Type in a multi-server environment.
Then in this week's Weekly Six Apart Hackathon engineers built several plugins that user have been asking for:
- Template Hammer - in response to many novice users' concerns about the complexity of Movable Type's default templates, Brad Choate created Template Hammer, a plugin that will flatten your templates eliminating all the various includes and creating a simple and consolidated set of templates that are larger in size, but for some much easier to understand.
- Ghostwriter - Beau Smith, the interface engineer behind MT4, and now a burgeoning plugin developer, created a plugin in direct response to what members of ProNet had been inquiring about: the ability to change the author of a page or entry from the compose screen.
With our first and last planned maintenance release behind us, almost all of Movable Type's most popular plugins updated to work with MT4 there has never been a better time to upgrade to Movable Type or try out Movable Type for the first time!
Raul Gutierrez tells a great NYC story about his late night adventure with a bunch of strangers.
(link)After a few minutes a very tall girl with long brown hair who I would later learn was a Parsons design student, broke social convention, turned to her fellow benchmates, and said, "My God, wasn't today beautiful." At first she just got a few quiet affirmations,"yeah, gorgeous", "best day yet" etc, but then a young woman in a business suit again broke social convention and revealed personal information: "It was so nice, when I woke up I decided I didn't want to feel miserable about anything, and broke up with my boyfriend. I ditched him at 7:30 in the morning. He didn't know what hit him."
Chuck Close in a New York Magazine interview: "I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work." (Via Mike.)
I've been wanting a portable magazine reader device for ages (everyone focuses on ebooks, but my attention span is too short) so I have to point out Texterity's magazines for the iPhone, especially because so many magazines that I like are already being published this way, including ReadyMade, Vibe, Make, Craft, Baseline, and others.
A couple of caveats worth noting: I have a pretty simple policy about blogging things that I originally receive as an email pitch from a PR company -- I don't do it. I'm making an exception here because this seems useful, and I'd have linked to it if I found it through any other means. Also, I'm a little troubled by the idea of building web experiences for a single user agent (Safari Mobile) on a single device, even though the geek in me loves such things, and even though I use these services myself. Isn't this what the mobile CSS profile was supposed to be for?
Via blogger Jason Kottke, a snip from the first restaurant review in the New York Times:
Very well," replied the editor-in-chief. "Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, -- from the Astor House Restaurant to the smallest description of dining saloon in the City, in order that you may furnish an account of all these places. The cashier will pay your expenses."
It dates to New Year's Day 1859, and was unearthed by the blogger shortly after the Times opened up access to the site for free. Here's the full PDF.
Eugene de Salignac was the official photographer for the NYC Department of Bridges from 1906 to 1934. His collection of photographs was recently uncovered and, as it turns out, de Salignac was a great photographer and his photographs charted the progress of New York growing into a big city. The New Yorker has a slideshow of some of his photos and there's an exhibit of his work at the Museum of the City of New York until Oct 28. (thx, stacy)
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While delivering his big speech today before the National Rifle Association, Rudy was interrupted by a cell phone call from his wife, Judith Nathan. An apparently surprised Rudy told the crowd, "it's my wife," spoke to her for a moment, and closed the call with a touching, I'm-happily-married moment, saying, "I love you" to her in front of a crowd of gun rights types.
Is it possible that the man forgot to turn off his cell -- or at least stick the thing on vibrate -- while giving a major speech that could be critical to the outcome of his candidacy? Or is it possible that Judi didn't know about the speech?
On the other hand, it turns out that this isn't the first time this has happened to Rudy, whose past failed marriages could turn out to be a liability among conservative voters. A rival campaign has sent us some video of Rudy receiving a very similar "surprise" call from Judy at the podium during an event last June. And he did the "I love you" thing then, too.
Take a look:
Hometracked uncovered some musical history tidbits from the archive of the NY Times, including first descriptions of Edison's phonograph and Marconi's radio.
(link)
My main problem with most wine critics like Robert Parker Jr., and magazines like Wine Spectator is that they have specific tastes that don’t always correspond to my own. Another problem I have, even as a wine professional, is remembering all the wines I’ve tasted, what they tasted like, and whether I liked them.
Two new relatively new websites, Snooth and Cork'd solve these problems and do a bit more. On these sites, you can create a profile, which allows you to record your tasting notes and review and rate wines, find wine ratings from other users, see what your drinking buddies think, and receive recommendations and buy wines from a retailer. They also both act as online communities that unite oenophiles across the world.
After tooling around on them for a morning I found them to be quite similar to one another, and your choice should be based on personal preference. However each does have strengths and weaknesses:
Snooth has a considerably larger database
- Search for Sangiovese, for instance, and you get thousands of results on Snooth and 364 on Cork'd
- Type in the producer Billecart-Salmon (one of my absolute favorites), you get 94 results on Snooth and two on Cork'd
- Enter "Bulgaria," and you get hundreds of results on Snooth but only four on Cork'd
For many, the ratings for Cork'd are easier to understand
Snooth’s recommendations are based on your own, and it rates wines on a 1- to 5-glass range. Recommendations from Cork'd are based on the much more commonly used 100-point system.Snooth generates recommendations automatically
On Snooth, recommendations are made based on how you’ve rated other wines and on Cork'd they come directly from other members.It's much easier to purchase wines on Cork'd
With Snooth, I found the Purchase These Wines option impossible to use. However, Cork'd had a venerable list of wine stores, with current pricing, and made purchasing intuitive.No matter what your choice, the most useful aspect of these sites is the ability to store your personal tasting notes because, after a few glasses, even the sharpest of us can get a little forgetful.
Here's another intriguing quote from Rudy's speech before the NRA today, this one addressing the MoveOn ad criticizing General Petraeus:
"Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or you don't; whether you agree with the surge or you don't; Democrats even came back from Iraq and said that he's having more success than anybody had thought."So to attack the man's integrity, and honesty, and decency, is in my view indecent. It passed a line that we should not allow American political organizations to pass."
"We should not allow" -- that's very suggestive. Does Rudy favor legal measures prohibiting criticism of military leaders? Does he favor legal curbs on ad hominem political speech in general? It's a question that one might put directly to the Giuliani campaign.
More soon.
When a single, intangible concept suspiciously manifests itself systematically in things living and inanimate, I take a mental this-must-mean-something note. Sometimes I get goosebumps. Ok, now I’ve said too much.
I’ve been obsessed with phi (aka The Golden Ratio) for a few years now. One garden-variety, rainy-day bookstore visit left me with this ink drop in my brain. Even after I’ve turned off my radar to the uber-referenced rose or nautilus shell, I still find myself cornered with those brief, unassuming moments when math seems to jump out of the woodwork and say “gotcha!”
Photos from Froots, leslie stroope, D.mental, brennheit bakst, and inkyfingerz.
Rudy has now responded to the ruckus over the claim yesterday by one of his advisers, GOP Rep. Pete King, that there are "too many mosques" in America.
King yesterday clarified by saying that he'd meant that there are "too many mosques" where radical Islam is practiced. Now Rudy has weighed in in his defense, arguing that King didn't say what he actually said, and anyone who says otherwise is "seeking to misinterpret" his remarks:
“Peter explained it quite adequately ,” Giuliani said at the news conference in Reston, Virginia after returning from London. “For me, he didn’t have to explain it. I understood exactly what he meant. I’m glad he explained it for everyone that might seek to misinterpret."Here's what King said:
“Unfortunately we have too many mosques in this country, there's too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam."
As reported in May, a tragic fire burned down Washington's historic Eastern Market hall, leaving Mr. Bowers, the cheese man; Jose Canales, the butcher; and the entire vendor gang homeless by day. Alternatives were limited since meat-slicing and dairy-refrigerating didn't translate well on folding tables outside. Plus, the sadness of it all was too overwhelming for many to bounce back.
But it's been five months since that horrible 2:30 a.m. wake-up call, when neighbors watched their second home go down in flames. Since then, the community and entire city has fund-raised enough to open a temporary hall across the street, which opened a month ago and is starting to feel more and more Eastern Markety inside.
The fishy smell from Southern Maryland Seafood is permeating the hallway again. Union Meat is busy grilling half-smokes. Blue Iris Flowers has deep autumn reds and oranges in bouquets of mums and chrysanthemums. And, as of last Saturday, Tom Glasgow, the familiar face behind Market Lunch, the dineresque spot for grubby breakfast and lunch, finally reopened (the last vendor to move back). His brand-new chalkboard menus had all the old favorites: "blue-bucks" (blueberry and buckwheat pancakes) and the brick sandwich (egg, potato, meat, and cheese). Even Market Lunch's long communal table was back, which Glasgow himself salvaged from the aftermath.
Inside, facilities are generally cleaner and fresher, but with less aged brick and moldy charm. The mood feels chipper—especially with a recent delivery of pumpkin and cider. But memories of the fire haven't disappeared. Thank-you letters to supporters are posted on Union Meat's glass beef case, signed by owner Bill Glasgow. Market Poultry dons a framed photo of Mayor Adrian Fenty at the temporary hall's opening day last month. Across the street, construction is clearly underway at the historic hall, which might take a couple years.
Sure feels good to say welcome back, EM. We missed ya. Any Capitol Hill neighbors out there reading? Perhaps Shannon and Jason of our previous post?
About the author: Erin Zimmer, Serious Eats's Washington, D.C., correspondent, is a just-graduated Georgetown gal following her nose about town as Washingtonian magazine's Dining intern and Best Bites blogger. She got her start as the Hoya campus paper's food columnist, and since entering "real person-hood" has ached for her dining hall's omelet station.
Adobe's PDF is a well-established format for transferring pixel-perfect documents. It's not nearly as malleable as plain text, but several CPAN modules make creating, manipulating, and reusing PDFs much easier. Detlef Groth demonstrates how to use PDF::Reuse.
Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, said the editor to the writer at the New York Times in 1859. And thus began the tradition at that paper that continues with Frank Bruni today. A fascinating look not only at the way people used to dine, but also how they used to write. I'm glad the New York Times finally opened up their archives.
comments are open
We haven't heard much about the rumored ultrathin notebook from Apple lately, but the machine has resurfaced in the grapevine with a lot of new details. The new (possible) MacBooks are said to be black or silver aluminum, super thin, and aggressively priced.
Ed Levine: Are Healthy and Delicious Mutually Exclusive?. Bad french fries are wasted calories. Half an order of great french fries aren't.
According to an account from one iPhone owner, Apple is refusing to honor warranty claims for hacked iPhones. We don't know if this is widespread, but it's important to note.
Here's a great new blog, Food Karma Alert, by a food scientist/chemist who started out working at a major flavor and fragrance company, then left to focus on the policy governing food safety and quality. His formula is simple: identify food policy issues, explain why you should care, and then list a set of action steps you can take to affect that issue. Highly recommended. (via usfp)
Neurophilosophy discusses a recent study that suggests that the inclusion of large amounts of starchy foods into our diet helped fuel the evolution of the brain.
It's interesting because it's not the first study to suggest that specific changes in diet improved nutrition and brain development:
According to one theory, increased consumption of meat by our ancestors provided the additional energy needed for brain expansion. (Cooking would have further increased the amount of calories obtained from meat.) Another holds that a switch to a seafood-rich diet would have provided polyunsaturated fatty acids which, when incorporated into nerve cell membranes, would have made the brain function more efficiently.
And now, a study published in Nature Genetics adds starchy tubers to the smorgasbord of foodstuffs that may have contributed to the expansion of the human brain.
These theories tend to be quite controversial and tend to cause numerous back and forth arguments in the literature, partly because they're quite hard to test, largely owing to the fact that the brain has the consistency of toothpaste and so doesn't leave much of a fossil record.
The study picked up by Neurophilosophy is interesting because it tracks a gene that codes starch enzyme, needed to break down this sort of food into glucose.
It's a relatively new approach to an old problem, although as the article mentions, the link to brain evolution is still circumstantial.
However, it's an interesting areas and the Neurophilosophy article is a great brief guide to some of the thinking behind these theories.
Link to Neurophilosophy on 'Diet and brain evolution'.
From the fundamental element of images in motion to more complex figurative, durational, and narrative properties, the conventions of film have bled into many other media over the last century. For 12 days 'Almost Cinema 07' at the Vooruit Arts Centre, in Ghent, celebrates the variety of contemporary art that can rightfully be called cinema-esque--if not cinematic. The second annual festival runs from October 9 to 20 and features a lineup of installations, performances, concerts, readings, and of course, screenings, among other projects that owe a debt to film. The festival begins with a traditional screening of a literal film, 'Sand and Sorrow,' Paul Freedman's documentary on the crisis in Darfur. It is paired with a performance by Sudanese singer Rasha, but from there the program veers into more far-flung interpretations of the cinematic. In the focal point of the festival, a group of media artists has created a maze of interconnected installations throughout the exhibition spaces. Each borrows something form the languages of film to transform real-world experiences. Peter William Holden makes a literal reference to Hollywood in his digitally controlled array of spinning umbrellas, while Julia Willms and Els Van Riel both use the technology of the projector to intervene in physical space. Other artists, including the duo Semiconductor and Gebhard Sengmüller, stitch together unexpected narratives through radical and frequently elaborate editing processes perpetrated on found footage. This year's edition of the festival will also include two conferences, titled 'Immersion: The Art of True Illusion' and 'The Cinematic Experience,' that promise to sketch the historical and conceptual conditions under which all these cinema-style interventions take place. - William Hanley
Ranjit has made his robots play Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", and in the comments reveals that apparently he can just throw any MIDI file at them and have it rendered in this unique theremin-and-clanking-noises arrangement. Delightful.
No, I won't be giving you a daily Sex and the City: The Movie update, but I had to share these photos of Kristin Davis and Chris Noth filming the flick today on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. As you can clearly see, Charlotte has a bun in the oven... or she's wearing the stunt belly Katie Holmes wore when she pretended to be pregnant with little Suri Cruise. Not sure why she's in a scene with Big, but I'm going to guess that he's no longer with Carrie and bumps into Charlotte on the street. Total guess.
Any storyline ideas?
Again, the movie will be in theaters on May 30.
I think it's time for Britney Spears to shave that head again! I told you I'm not big on fashion. Well, I'm not big on high-maintenance hair 'dos either. But for the love of Ken Paves, somebody needs to get their hands on that girl's head and do something with it!
I've seen homeless people with better hair. Bruce Willis has better hair. (Wink, wink.) Amy Winehouse's beehive looks like an A-plus next to that. Good lord!
More: For what to do, check out some Celebrity Fall Hair Tricks.
We’ve been scouring catalogs and online resources for wine packaging that matches our clean, modern aesthetic, and we haven’t found much except for a few items here and there that are mostly made of plain kraft paper. Any time wine is involved, designers seem to slap illustrations of grapevines or piles of corks onto the boxes, go crazy with crushed velvet, or embellish what might otherwise be a decent surface with gold embossed insignias. (more…)
Yes, you read correctly.
Nerve.com’s latest “Sex Advice From ___” column features yours truly among its questionably-qualified contributors.
If Robyn were writing this, I believe her first word would be, "CHOMP!" Graham Holliday aka Noodlepie has declared this banh mi thit nuong from a stall on Nguyen Trai street in Saigon the best sandwich in the world and by the looks of it, I am inclined to agree.
In my ongoing efforts to surround myself almost exclusively with brainy, good lookin’ game women, i have managed to convince Jane Pinckard to give us a hand with gamma256. Jane is gonna be helping us out with all the playin’ and curatin’ that is sure to be going on around November 1st. Her sharp journalistic skills will be a nice addition to THE CURATORS.
The Curators:
Heather Kelley, Design Enthusiast/Badass MC
Cindy Poremba, Academia Extraordinaire
Damien Di Fede, First Science Officer
Phil Fish, Ability to smell fear
Jane Pinckard, Doctor of Journalism
Curators, ASSEMBLE!!!
An interesting section from neuropsychiatrist Michael Kopelman's 2002 review article on the neuropsychology of memory disorders where he tackles transient global amnesia - a form of brief, severe, but mysterious amnesia that resolves in a few hours. No-one really knows what causes the majority of cases.
Transient global amnesia (TGA) most commonly occurs in the middle-aged or elderly, more frequently in men, and results in a period of amnesia lasting several hours. As is well known, it is characterized by repetitive questioning, and there may be some confusion, but patients do not report any loss of personal identity.
It is sometimes preceded by headache or nausea, a stressful life event, a medical procedure, intense emotion or vigorous exercise. Hodges and Ward (1989) found that the mean duration of amnesia was 4h and the maximum 12h. In 25% of their sample, there was a past history of migraine, which was considered to have a possible aetiological role.
In a further 7%, the patients subsequently developed unequivocal features of epilepsy in the absence of any previous history of seizures. There was no association with either a past history of or risk factors for vascular disease, nor with clinical signs indicating a vascular pathology. In particular, there was no association with transient ischaemic attacks.
In 60-70% of the sample, the underlying aetiology was unclear.
Link to full-text of paper 'Disorders of memory'.
David Recordon, who's back (in force) at Six Apart blogs about one of the things we're contributing to at Six Apart: opening the social graph. It's long but worth the read (and the time for the screencasts); David does a great job of putting all of the work that's happening around the web on OpenID, hCard, XFN and FOAF into a user-centered context. The goal is making it easy to discover and connect with people across networks. "An open social graph is just as important as an open identity."
My friend Ben Lerer and his buddies run a city-based email newsletter for guys. Kind of like an edgier, meaner version of Daily Candy. It’s daily and finds cool nuggets about your city.
Their San Francisco Edition just launched last week!
While poking around in the newly opened archives of the New York Times yesterday, I stumbled upon an article called How We Dine (full text in PDF) from January 1, 1859. I'm not well versed in the history of food criticism, but I believe this is perhaps the first restaurant review to appear in the Times and that the unnamed gentleman who wrote it (the byline is "by the Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times") is the progenitor of the paper's later reviewers like Ruth Reichl, Mimi Sheraton, and Frank Bruni.
The article starts off with a directive from the editor-in-chief to "go and dine":
"Very well," replied the editor-in-chief. "Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, -- from the Astor House Restaurant to the smallest description of dining saloon in the City, in order that you may furnish an account of all these places. The cashier will pay your expenses."
Before starting on his quest, the reporter differentiates eating from dining -- noting that many believe "whereas all people know how to eat, it is only the French who know how to dine" -- and defines what he means by an American dinner (as opposed to a French one). Here's his list of the types of American dinner to be found in New York, from most comfortable to least:
1. The Family dinner at home.
2. The Stetsonian dinner.
3. The Delmonican, or French dinner.
4. The Minor dinner of the Stetsonian principle.
5. The Eating-house dinner, so called.
6. The Second-class Eating-house dinner.
7. The Third-class Eating-house feed.The remainder of the article is devoted to descriptions of what a diner might find at each of these types of establishments. Among the places he dined was Delmonico's, where dining in America is said to have originated:
Once let Delmonico have your order, and you are safe. You may repose in peace up to the very moment when you sit down with your guests. No nobleman of England -- no Marquis of the ancienne nobless -- was ever better served or waited on in greater style that you will be in a private room at Delmonico's. The lights will be brilliant, the waiters will be curled and perfumed and gloved, the dishes will be strictly en règle and the wines will come with precision of clock-work that has been duly wound up. If you "pay your money like a gentleman," you will be fed like a gentleman, and no mistake... The cookery, however, will be superb, and the attendance will be good. If you make the ordinary mistakes of a untraveled man, and call for dishes in unusual progression, the waiter will perhaps sneet almost imperceptibly, but he will go no further, if you don't try his feelings too harshly, or put your knife into your mouth.
According to a series of articles by Joe O'Connell, Delmonico's was the first restaurant in the US when it opened in 1830 and invented Eggs Benedict, Oysters Rockefeller, Baked Alaska, Lobster Newberg, and the term "86'd", used when the popular Delmonico Steak (#86 on menu) was sold out, or so the story goes. O'Connell's history of Delmonico's provides us with some context for the How We Dine piece:
The restaurant was a novelty in New York. There were new foods, a courteous staff, and cooking that was unknown at the homes of even the wealthiest New Yorkers. The restaurant was open for lunch and dinner.
The restaurant featured a bill of fare, which was itself new. Those who dined at inns were fed on a set meal for a set price. As a result, everyone was fed the same meal and were charged the same price, whether they ate little or much. In Paris, however, restaurants offered their patrons a "bill of fare", a carte, which listed separate dishes with individual prices. Each patron could choose a combination of dishes which was different from the other patrons. Each dish was priced separately. Thus, the restaurant was able to accommodate the tastes and hunger of each individual. The various dishes and their prices were listed on a carte or (the English translation) "bill of fare". Today, we call it a menu.
And from Delmonico's developed many different types of dining establishments, which the Strong-Minded Reporter set out to document thirty years later. Contrast his visit to Delmonico's with the experience in the "sandwich-room" at Browne's Auction Hotel, an eating-house:
The habitués of the place are rarely questioned at all. The man who has eaten a sandwich every day for the past ten years at the Auction Hotel no sooner takes his seat than a sandwich is set before him. The man who has for the same period indulged daily in pie or hard boiled eggs (there are some men with amazing digestion) is similarly treated. The occassional visitor, however, is briefly questioned by the attendant before whom he takes his place. "Sandwich?" or "Pie?" If he say "Sandwich," in reply, the little man laconically inquires, "Mustard?" The customer nods, and is served. If his mission be pie, instead, a little square morsel of cheese is invariably presented to him. Why such a custom should prevail at these places, no amount of research has yet enabled me to ascertain.Nothing can be more inconguous to pie thant chesse, which, according to rule and common sense, is only admissible after pie, as a digester. But the guests at the Auction Hotel invariably take them together, a with a strict fairness -- a bite at the pie, and a bite at the chesse, again the pie, and again the cheese, and so on until both are finished.
The experience of being a regular has barely changed in 150 years. And finally, our intrepid reporter visits an unnamed third class eating-house:
The noise in the dining hall is terrific. A guest has no sooner seated himself than a plate is literally flung at him by an irritated and perspiring waiter, loosely habited in an unbuttoned shirt whereof the varying color is, I am given to understand, white on Sunday, and daily darkening until Saturday, when it is mixed white and black -- black predominating. The jerking of the plate is closely followed up by a similar performance with a knife and a steel fork, and immediately succeeding these harmless missles come a fearful shout from the waiter demanding in hasty ters, "What do you want now?" Having mildy stated what you desire to be served with, the wiater echoes your words in a voice of thunder, goes through the same ceremony with the next man and the next, through an infinite series, and rushes frantically from your presence. Presently returning, he appears with a column of dishes whereof the base is in one hand and the extreme edge of the capital is artfully secured under his chin. He passes down the aisle of guests, and, as he goes, deals out the dishes as he would cards, until the last is served, when he commences again Da Capo. The disgusting manner in which the individuals who dine at this place, thrust their food into their mouths with the blades of their knives, makes you tremble with apprehensions of suicide...
The entire article is well worth the read...one of the most interesting things I've found online in awhile.
NY Times columnist Paul Krugman writes, in the introduction to his new blog:
The story of modern America is, in large part, the story of the fall and rise of inequality.
Note that he says "fall" and then "rise", not the other way around. A graph in the post illustrates his point nicely.
(link)
for a brief moment, the Canadian dollar was worth more [via]
Hoax or art? Or both? Artist Xu Zhen climbed Mt. Everest and shaved off almost 2 meters of the top of the mountain, the literal peak of Everest, and is displaying it as art.
Audiences may not believe that this is real, which is similar to how people rarely question whether the height of Everest truly is 8848 meters. This relationship between belief and doubt has to deal with questions of standard, height, reality, and borders.
(via daily awesome)
(link)
Very late last night I found myself in the City Hall subway stop with 8 other stragglers waiting for a non-existent R train. We were all spread out across the platform, all standing, but after half an hour everyone had migrated to the benches and we were all sitting in a row. Nobody had anything to read, cellphone service wasn't working, and most unusually, no one was attached to an ipod.
After a few minutes a very tall girl with long brown hair who I would later learn was a Parsons design student, broke social convention, turned to her fellow benchmates, and said, "My God, wasn't today beautiful." At first she just got a few quiet affirmations,"yeah, gorgeous", "best day yet" etc, but then a young woman in a business suit again broke social convention and revealed personal information: "It was so nice, when I woke up I decided I didn't want to feel miserable about anything, and broke up with my boyfriend. I ditched him at 7:30 in the morning. He didn't know what hit him." This revelation shattered the dam of silence and soon the entire group: a couple from Denmark, the Parsons student, the businesswoman, a somewhat scruffy writer named Mike, a lady carrying a violin, and a young tough-looking couple from Coney Island were all chatting. In short order we covered breakups, design books, Facebook, muggings (The Danish couple were surprised to learn none of us had been violently mugged...), and Thai food in Brooklyn. Another half hour passed. Finally Mike, said, "screw the train, let's walk, my car is on the other side and I can take some of you home." We immediately lost the Coney Island couple ("That's foolish man. Foolish.") but everyone else was on board. The violin woman slipped out of her heels into white tennis shoes and we headed out into the night.
Midnight walks across the Brooklyn Bridge are always beautiful, but last night, particularly so: a half moon hung low in the sky, the lower deck of the bridge was covered in little red flares which gave everything an otherworldly light, and the air was velvety cool. Perfect walking weather. Except for Mike who apparently walks the bridge regularly, and myself, for most of our group this was a new experience. "The only time I've ever walked across was going home on 9/11", said the businesswoman, "It was my first week on the job, my first week in New York."
The Parsons girl who had not known the bridge was walkable looked out over the water towards the city, "I was 13 on 9/11. Afterwards my weird reaction was that I wanted to move to New York. From then on, I knew I would end up here." Mike, who had been deep in conversation with the Parsons girl beforehand was startled. "You were 13? My God." He crossed himself.
At the second tower we lost the Danish tourists. They had been headed to the Fulton Ferry Landing and decided the view from down below couldn't be better than the view from the bridge itself. They said no goodbyes, and as we walked away they practically lunged for each other and began making out. "Name the kid Brooklyn," Mike called out after them. The conversation turned to PDAs. Mike felt they were unavoidable. The Parsons girl pled guilty. The businesswoman said, "I've never been with anyone that made me want to kiss them outside," and the violin lady just giggled.
On the other side of the bridge we all headed up Henry Street in silence into Brooklyn Heights where we found Mike's car am old Volvo. "I can walk," I said, I'm pretty close." "Me too," said the businesswoman. Mike insisted. "
It's more fun if everybody goes," said the violin woman who had hadn't said much since leaving Manhattan. We bundled into the car and rolled down the windows. "Such a pefect night," said the businesswoman sticking her hand outside. " A few minutes later we dropped her off. "Thanks," she said, "that was fun."
"You make me feel like we were on a date," Mike answered.
"Hey, I'm available now," she smiled, "and you know where I live."
We drove off leaving her waving on the curb. "I don't think she's over her boyfriend yet," noted the Parsons girl.
"No way," said Mike, she's much too happy. Can't be real."
"Nope," chimed in the violin woman.I was the next to be dropped off. "We'll look you up on the web," everyone said. "Just google raul", I replied. We waved goodbye and I wondered what observations would be made about me when I was out of earshot. I smiled and watched the Volvo headed down Henry towards Cobble Hill marveling at how little takes to transform a group of tired grumpy New Yorkers into friends if only for the span of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Filed under: daily life
Tags: brooklyn bridge, night, r train, subway stories
SI.com | Landis must forfeit title after losing doping appeal
Floyd Landis, who won the 2006 Tour de France with a stunning Stage 17 solo victory, has lost his appeal of a positive doping finding.
Immediately after last year's Tour, Landis was accused of cheating when a urine test suggested Landis had an elevated ratio of epitestosterone-to-testosterone, which should normally be approximately equal. Landis has fought the charge, and still has the option of appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The three-man panel found that the Chatenay-Malabry lab near Paris mishandled Landis's sample, but 2 of 3 panelists felt that a follow-up test with a mass spectrometer was convincing evidence that Landis had used synthetic testosterone.
Two years after asking various companies to bid to bring cellphone service to the subways, the MTA has finally picked a vendor to wire all stations. Here are the details:
The NY Times explains that "all areas of the stations, including entryways, mezzanines, platforms and transfer passages, will be wired" and that the system will be "designed to allow a seamless connection between the train and street level." We like what Transit Wireless is thinking, but we imagine it'll take about six years to work out those kinks. Transit Wireless's total bid of $46 million beat out other bids, including one that was as low as $6.2 million. One unattractive part of the deal was that the vendors would foot all the bills for construction and installation, not the MTA. Big investment aside, the hope is that other cellular providers will pay big bucks to access to the system. A Transit Wireless partner, Gary Simpson, tells the Daily News, "There's need and a demand by riders and customers to use their cell phones down in the stations. Once customers are demanding it, the carriers will have to respond to that demand."
- Transit Wireless will pay the MTA at least $4.6 million each year over 10 years; Transit Wireless is made up of four communications and constructions companies.
- Subway stations will be wired for cellular and wireless service. Subway tunnels will not be wired, which means cellphone use on subways will be limited to trying out ring tones very loudly.
- All 277 stations will eventually be wired over six years.
- This year, six subway stations will be wired during a two-year pilot program: 23rd Street and 14th Street on the Eighth Avenue line, 14th Street on the Seventh Avenue line, 14th Street on the Sixth Avenue line, and Eighth Avenue and Sixth Avenue on the L line.
- Transit Wireless will charge wireless carriers to use the lines - in other words, if your carrier isn't signed up, you won't be able to make calls from the underground.
Free Polls - Take Our Poll And Representative Anthony Weiner cracked to the Sun, "It took Alexander Graham Bell less time to invent the telephone than it takes to install service in the subway system...What they've decided to do is provide the Cadillac of service on six stations — my quibble is that we would should have had more stations getting emergency service quicker." Photograph by Urch on Flickr
After last week's airport challenge, the remaining five chefs—Brian, Hung, Dale, Sara M., and Casey—spend a morning strolling around Manhattan, soaking up the atmosphere, and eating a few kabobs from a street vendor. The stage is set for four of them to graduate to the Season Three finale in Apsen, while one unlucky cook will wash out a single episode short.
The lead-in to the Quickfire Challenge offers some truly inspiring shots of Le Cirque's facade and dining room. Here we are introduced to the legendary restaurant's owner, Sirio Maccioni, who presents the chefs with a special dish—a fillet of halibut wrapped in a thin layer of potato on a bed of leeks and mushrooms. We're told this is a staple dish of the restaurant, but not on the menu, only for VIP diners. As the contestants are finishing their meal, they're told that their challenge is to duplicate this dish in 25 minutes in the Le Cirque kitchen. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.]
Hung is up first. Despite the glares of the actual Le Cirque cooks, who were clearly instructed to take a "tough love" approach to the interlopers in their kitchen, he successfully duplicates the dish, meeting with a genuine "Bravo!" from Maccioni. Since this challenge is being run one chef at a time, Hung gets to return to the waiting area and trumpet his success to the other contestants. Dale, naturally, tries to get Hung to share the secrets, since he believes that they're all one big happy Top Chef team. Hung, to no one's surprise, politely declines to delineate his techniques. Each chef, in turn, takes their time in the Le Cirque kitchen and presents Maccioni and Padma with the fruits of their labor. Despite some rough patches ("How do you work a mandolin again?"), most of the chefs manage to tame this very difficult Quickfire. All except Sara, who meekly neglects to ask for a saute pan until it's much too late to complete her dish. Her great accomplishment, in my book, was to avoid bursting into tears as she served the owner of Le Cirque a hunk of semi-cooked sea bass.
Needless to say, Sara got the nod as the Quickfire failure. Then Maccioni tells Casey he wanted her to win because she's attractive, but he ultimately gives the prize to Hung. Sure, it was sexist, but in a cute way. Older Italian men are so charming, especially if they're wearing expensive suits.
On to the Elimination challenge, where Hung will have an extra half hour of cooking time, as a reward for winning the Le Cirque competition. This time, the competitors are brought to the kitchens of the French Culinary Institute—"New York's finest cooking school"—and told that they next to create a sublime dish using whole chicken, russet potatoes, and yellow onion.
Hung uses his extra half hour to slow-cook the chicken, sous vide, in a vacuum-sealed bag. He also creates a fried chip of chicken skin and a puffed up side dish of potatoes dauphinoise. Not sure where the onions ended up, but maybe it was in the salad the rounded out the plate.
Dale decided to go "balls out" because he's a "big, gay chef" who will "outcook your ass." He certainly is the master of the sound-bite if not the food-bite, and he chooses to get all fancy and present a "duet" of chicken dishes.
Most of the other chefs decide to keep it simple. Casey makes a two-hour version of coq au vin. Sara whips up some Jamaican chicken fricasee. Brian goes for a shepherd's pie sort of deal, using some sausage he picked up at the famers' market in Union Square. It's a bold choice, considering that the pie is topped with a bilious green layer of whipped potatoes and leeks. Despite the odd presentation, Brian is certain that his "bright, light, extreme, heavy, peasant expensive gourmet meal" will meet with the judges' approval. Whereas Hung describes the dish as "a pile of mess." I guess they'll have to agree to disagree.
After Tom Colicchio takes his inquisitor's stroll through the kitchen, he introduces the chefs to the diners they'll be serving—the deans of the Institute. It's a murderer's row of classic cuisine, including Andre Soltner, Jacques Torres, Cesare Casella, Nils Noren, Alain Sailhac, and Dorothy Hamilton, the founder of the school.
The meal goes well, with each chef introducing their creation to the assembled panel. The major hiccups were Dale forgetting to sauce his chicken duet, which fell on less than appreciative palettes, and Sara misjudging the doneness of her chicken, alternatively criticized for being both over- and under-done. Oops.
Not a single word of critique fell on Brian's "pile of mess" pie. In fact, Colicchio, one of Brian's staunchest skeptics singled that dish out for high praise. Hung's potatoes didn't go over as a perfect example of the classic recipe, but that criticism seemed like the judges were trying to find a crack in the diminutive chef's armor. And in that same vein, Colicchio and Soltner spent a decent amount of lip service to the idea that Casey's dish couldn't be called coq au vin, due mostly to the time involved and the age of the bird. It seemed a niggling detail about a dish that everyone thoroughly enjoyed.
In the end, it was Casey and Hung, neck and neck at the finish line, a situation that will undoubted continue into the finale. Those two are clearly the chefs to beat, yet it would be hard to handicap a favorite between the pair. In this exercise, Hung won out and got the win. Was it that extra half hour? Was it Casey's short-handed description of her dish as coq au vin? We may never know. In any case, Hung seems to have found his groove at just the right time. His results are finally in sync with his swagger and it's hard to argue with the choices he's making and the technique that he wields in the kitchen.
As for the walk of shame, the decision came down to Dale and Sara. All the judges agreed that Dale's dish suffered from a surplus of ambition, while Sara's was simply executed badly. The deliberations seemed to center on which was the greater sin—overreaching or underperforming.
To Dale's credit, he admitted that his duet was a flawed concept. On the flip side, Sara refused to believe that she'd served unevenly cooked chicken, insisting that she'd personally inspected every dish. Her exact words, back in the kitchen: "That chicken was not " bleeping "raw!"
At the end of the day, it was decided that undercooked chicken is the unforgivable offense, and Sara was bid farwell. Here's hoping that she someday she gets a shot at redemption, preferably on a reality show about cheesemaking. Top Cheese, anyone?
“Copier coller” in french means “Copy paste”.
Digital actions that spilled over the material world, seen in Lyon at lunchtime.
You know how I know I have good ideas? Because the few I've thought through seriously have been implemented several months later by people and companies in much better positions than I am in to do so. Case in point:
I've always said this would be a good idea anywhere there are lots of wealthy people. I'm certain that wealthy people in New York would prefer to dish out more money to guarantee a nicer movie going experience. While it may be sad for a minute to squash a democratic vestige - movie theaters - people will get over it in a quicker minute. And us plebeians can overcompensate by repeatedly mentioning how great Loews theaters are.
From the letters to the editor in the Sept 24 issue of the New Yorker, a letter from John Yohalem, New York City:
I enjoyed reading Tim Page's essay on living with Asperger's syndrome: the insomnia, the social puzzlement, the obsession with various subjects to the exclusion of more common ones -- all are very familiar to me. ("Parallel Play," August 20th). Then came this description: "In the late nineteen-seventies, I saw a ragged, haunted man who spent urgent hours dodging the New York transit police to trace the dates and lineage of the Hapsburg nobility on the walls of the subway stations." I was the gentleman in question; although I didn't care about clothes, I don't think I was that ragged. I want to assure Mr. Page that I was homeless or institutionalized (as he guessed), and I got only one ticket. Mr. Page and I had other things in common; like him, I was at the première of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" at Town Hall. Unlike Mr. Page, I did not find this particular music's structure all-engrossing; I preferred to dance to it. At one performance of Reich's music at the U.S. Custom House, I danced alone around and around the central musicians. For someone as acutely self-conscious as I had been, this seemed a moment of glorious emergence, of living my own life in everyone else's world.
Here's Tim Page's piece on what it was like growing up with Asperger's syndrome.
So preoccupied are we with our inner imperatives that the outer world may overwhelm and confuse. What anguished pity I used to feel for pinatas at birthday parties, those papier-mache donkeys with their amiable smiles about to be shattered by little brutes with bats. On at least one occasion, I begged for a stay of execution and eventually had to be taken home, weeping, convinced that I had just witnessed the braining of a new and sympathetic acquaintance.
Of course Yohalem has a blog -- the 21st century equivalent to scribbling Hapsburg lineages on subway walls -- which has a more complete version of the above posted there.
benjaminlclark posted a photo:
Bad news for NYC football fans. How often do NFL teams rebound from 0-2 starts?: The conclusion: There are 10 winless teams now, the odds are that only one will make the post season... Coaches in sports are fond of saying it's not time to panic. But here at Stat Attack, we say the time to panic is now. I love stats. Of course, if the Jets and Giants have a 90% chance each of losing on paper, then the Mets have a 90% chance of winning, which we all know is not the case. Sports posts will dominate hello, typepad well through the World Series, and probably through an indictment of Barry Bonds coming this winter.
Hillary Clinton isn't holding back on how she feels about Dick Cheney. "Vice President Cheney came up to see the Republicans yesterday," she said at a fundraiser last night. "You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges."
This seems like a good plan to ease any left-wing unease about her: Unite everybody around their shared hatred of the Bush/Cheney White House.
With both local teams winless after two weeks, it's a question on the mind of many football fans. (Jets followers seem to be more optimistic than Giants watchers.) USA Today took a close look at this a few days...
"I'm so glad to meet you! I've been following your career! I love your work! I've been reading your blog for years!"
"Great to meet you too."
"Are you still running Six Apart?"
“I have negotiated several business deals recently without even using a telephone.”
The Executive Computer; A Web of Networks, an Abundance of Services - New York Times, February 1993 (via kottke)
Back when we had commies to worry about, someone came up with the concept of "engage and contain": eg, rather than avoid them as we'd been doing, we should trade and talk and travel there, and by doing so be able to contain their evil.
Similar ideas exist today on China and Iran (And, honestly, people -- do we really worry about being attacked by Iran? Really? Is this even on our RADAR?) Google is infamous recently for installing government-censored Google in China, with what I think were the purest of intentions -- the idea that more knowledge naturally makes the country more democratic.
But even Google executives have recently said they think they've made a mistake, because by getting too close to the Chinese government, they've had to make compromise after compromise, until finally Google finds themselves an accomplice to evil instead of an adversary to it.
--
So it is with iTunes. Apple has engaged two of the most cock-thirsty and money-grubbing conglomerates in the United States -- the movie and record industries -- in what we all wanted to believe was an attempt to engage and contain them. And, initially, we all agreed Apple was doing good: they had, for the first time, made legal downloads more compelling than stealing music. For a single data point, I've personally bought 915 songs from the iTunes music store, and hundreds of TV episodes and dozens of movies. I own six iPods and have bought 18 iPhones to give away.
And we all took heart when Steve published that letter saying how much he hated DRM, and how he'd drop it if the labels would, and even if the rumors are correct and EMI was already planning to drop DRM and Steve just rushed in and took credit, it was still a bold stance for him to take; a challenge to the rest of the industry. And I immediately upgraded all the tunes I could to iTunes Plus, and bought a bunch more albums. And it was good.
--
But recently, well... the generous view would be that Apple's screwing up, and the non-generous view would be that they are just plain getting greedy.
No, I'm not talking about the iPhone price reduction. Honestly, I was happy to see the price go down, even though I could have personally saved $3,000 if I'd waited to buy the 15 phone I bought before the reduction. I mean, c'est la vie, it's technology, baby.
But why is the iPhone locked to a single carrier, so I can't travel internationally with it? There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal. Which meant, we get screwed so Apple can make more money. It's that simple.
And the iPhone is a closed system, like the iPods before it, so third parties can only develop software for it if they are EXTREMELY close to Apple. This is an incredibly frightening trend. As Apple gets more and more of its revenue from non-Mac devices, they are also getting more and more of their revenue from devices that simply exclude third parties.
I know Steve Jobs; he's actually amazingly like my old business partner Mike Matas. They both love closed systems, for a simple reason -- they both know they're smarter than anyone else on the planet, and they don't need anyone else mucking up their systems. Steve would rather have no third parties for Mac OS X if he could get away with it -- Apple, of course, would do a much better job on anything, but since customers insist on Photoshop and Office and other apps, he puts up with them. (Well, except, now Apple has their own office suite.) Steve knows that on a computer, having a broad spectrum of apps is more important that having them all be Apple-perfect.
But on iPods, Airports, Apple TVs, and now iPhones, Apple wants every app perfect. Which is nice, in theory. In practice, it means innovation only happens at Apple's pace. The marketplace of ideas is much smaller, and the devices are much poorer because of it. (Example: Why can't I stream music from my iPhone or iPod touch to my Airport Express?)
There are some third parties making money from the iPod -- hardware accessory makers. But even then, Apple is trying to charge them a "Made for iPod" sticker tax... for adding no value. And since Apple controls the stores in which iPods are sold, they have a pretty effective stick to use against those who don't comply - you won't be where the players are. But with the latest iPods Apple's gone a step further, and disabled some docking stations that don't have a special chip in them provided by Apple; forcing customers to use only Apple-approved accessories. Apple's emulating the most pernicious qualities of Nintendo and the Microsoft XBox -- you pay us a tax or you don't work with our systems.
But Apple's "approval" just comes from Apple getting a cut. It's a measure of greed, not quality. We're not talking about THX-certification here, we're talking about extortion. This kind of lock-in seems very appealing for the company doing the locking early on, but it always, ALWAYS ends up biting the company in the butt. Ask IBM with their ubiquitous 970 servers and their extortionist service contracts. Oh, wait, those don't exist any more.
Consumers suffer from this. We suffer from increased prices and decreased competition and innovation. We suffer so Apple can make a few more bucks, when Apple is clearly not hurting for money. The core of Apple users has supported Apple for years -- we were there when Apple was hurting, we stuck with it, we nursed her back to health. It's our money she has now, and she's turning on us now that she's rich off it.
Then we come to ringtones. Every phone I've owned in the last ten years has allowed to make my own ringtones. I could upload MP3s all I wanted. Many had little tune editors built into the phone.
But since Apple is so close to the record companies, and they are already so grumpy with Apple, Apple did a deal that benefits record companies and Apple. Not artists, certainly not consumers. In order to use a 15-second snippet of some random song, I now must buy it not once, but TWICE. The amazing thing is that I must buy it THREE times if I own the song on CD -- I have to buy a DRM'ed version from the Apple Store, then buy the the ringtone, on TOP of the CD I already bought.
Oh, but wait, most artists haven't given permission for their songs to be used as ringtones. The vast majority of my collection simply can't be put on my iPhone as a ringtone. I could, if I wanted, manually press play on those songs whenever I see a friend calling, but that single "if" statement it'd require for the phone to do it -- well, that's simply Not Allowed.
Not that, uh, we have to pay attention to what the record companies think is Not Allowed, because we have already licensed the song for playback on any device if we bought a CD -- we are allowed to play it on our iPhone already. Just not in response to someone calling us. The record companies have MADE UP some new, retroactive copyright and Apple is enforcing it for them. The result is, a million customers don't get to do something cool with their iPhones.
Because of greed.
Honestly, I can see Apple saying, "Well, you see, the record companies would have been upset with us if we hadn't charged anything for ringtones." Yah, well, that's the price you get for engaging. The price for owning the distribution of the content and the hardware and the software is that you end up making compromises in the hardware and software in order to protect the content.
These are EXACTLY the compromises Sony has been making for years -- and because Sony's music and movie arms have been telling the Sony hardware arm to never do anything new or interesting without building in a ton of customer-unfriendly restrictions, Sony is now completely in the toilet. They have gone from an incredibly respected brand to a complete joke. Every time they introduce some new, crippled standard the industry kind of looks away in embarrassment, like Sony is the oafish guy at the party who is parked in front of the meatballs tray eating directly from the dish.
Now we see that iPod owners who upgrade to a newer iPod must re-buy the games they've already bought, because the new iPods are incompatible with the old. No credit given for having already bought an identical game. Imagine upgrading to a new computer, and having to buy a brand new copy of Windows Vista for it... Oh, wait, Microsoft does that, don't they? MICROSOFT does.
--
What should Steve do? Well, for starters, give up on trying to control everything. It's only going to keep hurting Apple, more and more, to control content and hardware and software. It's going to make them into the kind of mega-monopoly that we always, ALWAYS end up hating. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 100% of the time.
Apple should license FairPlay, or allow iPods to play PlaysForSure (ha! I love that doublespeak) music. Either one. Basically, Apple should allow other music stores to sell DRM'ed music that works on iPods and iPhones.
Why? It's simple -- then Apple could tell record companies "go fug yourself" if they don't like Apple's terms, but Apple would still have a full range of music to play on its iPods. Remember, Apple makes all its money selling the hardware, not the songs. All Apple needs to do is to make sure there is a broad range of content available for iPods, it doesn't have to sell all that content itself.
And, in fact, it hurts Apple to sell all the content itself, because it makes Apple a focus for battles between the record industry and consumers. If there were a range of stores selling iPod-compatible music, with a range of different DRM rights, then the market could decide what terms it liked best.
The iTunes store could be the white knight -- it would only sign deals with record companies willing to "give" consumers the same rights they've had for years with CDs; eg, we can do whatever we want with our music as long as we don't broadcast it or give it to others. Other music stores could sell restrictive DRM'ed music, and, well, if the record companies are right, people would go to those other stores, and we consumers would all get what we deserve.
But if I'm right, then those other stores would be soundly ignored, and the record companies would come crawling back to Apple with their tails between their collective legs (where their balls should be, but aren't) and agree to reasonable terms.
Sure, we've seen some of this with Apple's negotiations with NBC, but unfortunately this one is all-or-nothing for Apple, because there's no alternate method for NBC's content to get onto iPods. Apple needs to be able to say, "Look, NBC, you want to be dumb-asses and try to sell people crap they don't want, fine -- we're still going to sell iPods that'll play your programs, we just won't sell your programs on the nicest internet store in the world. Your loss, suckers, call us when you change your mind."
Second, Apple should announce that it's going to write frameworks so third parties can write applications for iPods and iPhones. No, it won't be easy. But, seriously, there's no excuse. I mean, with the iPhone they could hide behind AT&T wanting assurances people won't use their phones off-network, or behind consumers wanting their iPhones to never crash. Which are both reasonable points, I admit. And, for the record, I've never written a line of code for the iPhone, although one of my employees has (in his spare time). I don't like to screw with undocumented APIs, life's too short.
But with the iPod Touch, what's Apple's excuse for locking up the platform? Why can't I write programs for this device? Who might it hurt? Why is Steve announcing that he's playing cat-and-mouse with developers who intend to do so? Is Apple so far removed from its customers that even when the latter overwhelming votes for extending a device (by downloading iPhone programs in the hundreds of thousands), Apple's response is, "No, you can't do that. We know what you want, you don't. You want AJAX apps, you just don't know it yet."
That sure reminds me of the old, crappy Apple. The one that almost went bankrupt because of its hubris.
I don't write programs for Apple because I worship Apple. I write programs for them because they have the best development environment. But I've always said that I will move from the platform the day Apple starts acting like a monopoly -- trying to make money by using its marketing position to extort money from users, instead of innovating so quickly that users willing throw money at Apple.
Sure, Apple's still doing a ton of innovating. I love Leopard. I love iPhone (x19). I love my iPods (x6). And I love the engineers at Apple and all my friends throughout the company.
But Apple has to always remember that simply making money CANNOT be its point of existence. The point of any company should be to make customers want to give it money, NOT to get money from customers. It's a subtle distinction that is the difference between good and evil.
Alice Waters brings her own capers (puff piece for her new book).
Austinist Takes A Look At What Bill Clinton's Been Reading: Clinton may be an Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar, political genius, former president and potential first First Gentleman, but he still likes to occasionally read cheap paperback thrillers you'd find at an airport news stand like the rest of us. Austinist editors were in a bookstore last week when Bill Clinton did a book signing and took notes on Clinton's book recommendations, browsing habits, and what he finally purchased.
A photo album created by an SS officer stationed at Auschwitz has been donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The unique album shows the life and activities of officers at the camp. Compare the SS officer photographs with photographs from an album showing prisoners arriving at the camp. (via nytimes)
(link)
The Russian bathhouse on East 10th Street gets a very bad rap from a former employee who claims all sorts of nonsense was going on there. Susan Shellogg, a massage therapist/aesthetician/reflexologist, filed a lawsuit against the Russian and Turkish Baths; the Sun reports Shellogg says she was fired "because of her gender and her refusal to consent to clients' sexual demands, and in retaliation for complaints about sexual harassment and a hostile work environment she made to the bathhouse's owners." Eep. And the Post has some of the crazy details:
Her court papers say that when she complained to the bosses "that male employees openly fondled male customers during treatments in open common areas," they told her it was "good for business" and "the gays were bringing in all the money." Only men were allowed on Sunday mornings, which was referred to as "Gay Day" or "Sausage Fest," the suit says, with male employees and clients being "urged and encouraged to engage in homosexual activity." Co-workers felt free to sexually harass clients, and would often "accidentally" barge in when Shellogg was "performing professional and private treatment on unclothed young women" and "stare, laugh and behave in a sexually aggressive, suggestive, inappropriate and uncomfortable manner," the suit says.Shellogg is looking for a cool $100 million in damages. The Russian and Turkish Baths have been around since 1892 - there's even a restaurant. Bathhouse co-owner Jack Shapiro, who Shellogg accuses of watching pornography "on a laptop computer in an open common area at the front desk," denied the charges to the Post, calling her, "nuts, completely nuts." He says Shellogg quit of her own accord when her jobs were eliminated. Photograph by wallyg on Flickr
I met Michael Dupuis as a side-effect of buying MacXword (now Black Ink) from Stephan Cleaves, who was Michael’s former business partner at Advenio. He’s a really nice guy and also an independent Mac developer, living just north of me up in Maine.
Michael just released a new version of his amazingly excellent cooking/recipes application, MacGourmet. This application inspires me to cook more, and Michael keeps making it better. While I haven’t gotten into the habit of using for everything, I really love how other MacGourmet users are able to send me a batch of recipes and I can just import them right into the application. That way I can try their recipes and tweak them to suit my tastes. I sent out a plea a few months that I didn’t have any good ice cream recipes, and a couple batches of peoples’ favorites came rolling in via email.
Version 2.2 adds some modest improvements, but mainly seems to be aimed at opening up the application to future extensions via plugin. As part of a 1-2 punch, Michael is releasing a Nutrition add-on that turns MacGourmet into a dieter’s friend by providing standardized nutritional information based on the recipe’s ingredients.
If you like to cook at all and you have a Mac, I don’t think there’s a better choice for managing your recipes than MacGourmet.
Excellent design portfolio for UK fashion/music clients.
Now that the NY Times has discontinued their Times Select subscription program and made much more of their 150+ years of content available for anyone to read and link to, let's take a look at some of the more notable items that the non-subscriber has been missing.
- Access to the last two years-worth of columns from the NY Times' noted Op-Ed columnists, including Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Paul Krugman.
- The first mention of the World Wide Web in the Times in February 1993. According to the article, the purpose of the web is "[to make] available physicists' research from many locations". Also notable are this John Markoff article on the internet being overwhelmed by heavy traffic and growth...in 1993, and a piece, also by Markoff, on the Mosaic web browser.
- Early report of Lincoln's assassination..."The President Still Alive at Last Accounts".
- A report on Custer's Last Stand a couple of weeks after the occurance (I couldn't find anything sooner). The coverage of Native Americans is notable for the racism, both thinly veiled and overt, displayed in the writing, e.g. a story from September 1872 titled The Hostile Savages.
- From the first year of publication, a listing of the principle events of 1851.
- An article about the confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravity by a 1919 expedition led by Arthur Eddington to measure the bending of starlight by the sun during an eclipse.
- A front page report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, including a seismograph of the quake which the Times labeled "EARTHQUAKE'S AUTOGRAPH AS IT WROTE IT 3,000 MILES AWAY".
- The first mention of television (as a concept) in the Times, from February 1907. "The new 'telephotograph' invention of Dr. Arthur Korn, Professor of Physics in Munich University, is a distinct step nearer the realization of all this, and he assures us that 'television,' or seeing by telegraph, is merely a question of a year or two with certain improvements in apparatus."
- First mention of Harry Potter. Before it became a phenomenon, it was just another children's book on the fiction best-seller list.
- Some of the output by prolific Times reporter R.W. Apple is available (after 1981, pre-1981).
- A report during the First World War of the Germans using mustard gas. Lots more reporting about WWI is available in the Times archive.
- Not a lot is available from the WWII era, which is a shame. For instance, I wish this article about the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima was available in the Times archive. Nothing about the moon landing, Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, etc. etc. either. :(
- On The Table, Michael Pollan's blog from last summer about food soon after the publication of The Omnivore's Dilemma.
- Urban Planet, a blog about cities from Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map.
- Oddly, The Principles of Uncertainty, an illustrated blog by Maira Kalman isn't available anymore. Update: Kalman's blog is probably unavailable because it's due to be published in book form in October. (thx, rafia)
- Several other previously unavailable blogs are listed here and here.
- It looks like most of the links to old NY Times articles I (and countless other early bloggers) posted in the late 90s and early 00s now work. Tens of thousands of broken links fixed in one pass. Huzzah!
I'll also note that this move by the Times puts them in a much better position to win the Long Bet between Dave Winer and the Times' Martin Nisenholtz at the end of this year.
In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.
As of the end of 2005, the Times was not faring very well against blogs.
Update: One more: a report on the sinking of the Titanic. A small mention of the sinking was published in the paper the previous day.
"The sheer scale of these holes reminds you of just how tiny you are."
The October Vanity Fair has an excerpt from Schulz and Peanuts: a Biography, by David Michaelis. So far it’s only available in the magazine; look for the issue with
Captain SteubingNicole Kidman on the cover.Here’s a link to the site promoting the book. Michaelis also wrote a biography of the Wyeth family, which I highly recommend.
An examination and celebration of the Leica by Anthony Lane in this week's New Yorker.
Asked how he thought of the Leica, Cartier-Bresson said that it felt like "a big warm kiss, like a shot from a revolver, and like the psychoanalyst's couch." At this point, five thousand dollars begins to look like a bargain.
Exploring the Leica web site after reading the article, I was intrigued to learn of Leica's á la carte program for customizing an MP or M7. Tempted... There's also a limited edition titanium M7 that retailed for ~10,000 euros.
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We've just received a statement from Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition in which he addresses his comment from earlier today. Jackson had reportedly blasted Barack Obama for "acting white." Here's Jackson's statement:
I reaffirm my commitment to vote for Sen. Barack Obama. He has remarkably transcended race, however the impact of Katrina and Jena makes America's unresolved moral dilemma of race unavoidable. I think Jena is another defining moment of the issue of race and the criminal justice system. This issue requires direct and bold leadership. I commend Sen. Obama for speaking out and demanding fairness on this defining issue. Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed.Doesn't say whether he made the remark, but does forcefully reaffirm his support for Obama in unequivocal terms. Meanwhile, the last line is interesting. Who's trying to dilute Jackson's support for Obama with his comments? Drudge, who's leading with the story? A rival campaign that might be pushing it? Who is Jackson referring to here?
It’s fascinating how different the markets are in different regions of the world. Microsoft and RIM are huge in the U.S., but mere also-rans everywhere else. Linux is huge in Asia, but barely registers in Europe or North America. And Symbian dominates the entire world except for North America, where it’s behind even Apple, which only entered the market three months ago.
From the "with friends like these" files...comes this report in The State, a South Carolina newspaper:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Tuesday on Democrats seeking the 2008 nomination for president to give S.C. voters “something to vote for” when they go to the polls in January...Jackson sharply criticized presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for “acting like he’s white” in what Jackson said has been a tepid response to six black juveniles’ arrest on attempted-murder charges in Jena, La....
“If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena,” Jackson said after an hour-long speech at Columbia’s historically black Benedict College.
“Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment,” said the iconic civil rights figure, who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 Selma civil rights movement and was with King at his 1968 assassination.
Jackson, incidentally, endorsed Obama last spring. But today you can almost hear the high-fiving over at Hillary headquarters -- because this is big news today, having been linked on Drudge, etc., etc.
Jackson later said he didn't recall making the "acting like he's white" comment. But he also said that Obama needs to be “bolder” in his political positions if he is to catch up with frontrunner Hillary. No word from Camp Obama on this yet.
Both Katz's deli and Shake Shack have had "Z" malfunctions on their signs. Something in the NYC water?
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If you live in or will be visiting New York City on October 6, there's what looks like an awesome culinary tour—the 7 Train Eating Tour.
It's $75 and lasts five hours and is given as part of the Institute of Culinary Education's "Recreational Division." Full description after the jump. [via curdnerds.com]
The No. 7 subway (aka The International Express) winds its elevated way through the ethnic richness of Queens. Most of the world’s cuisines are represented along the way in dense cultural microcosms. Join gustatory Sherpa (and Saveur Food Editor) Todd Coleman on a “Runaway Train” tour where you’ll shop for Thai and Filipino groceries, sip powerful Panaderia Colombian hot chocolate, munch on Mumbai-style street food, burn your lips on Turkish kebabs, and discover a hidden bi-level Chinese food court, among other stops on his secret succulent subway map. The class meets at 10 AM under the clock in the center of Grand Central Terminal at the kiosk. Bring an unlimited MetroCard. Tours run rain or shine. Registration for the walking tours is limited to those age 18.
I read it in the decade of Dylan and the Beatles, and in its boozy, self-conscious, priapic posturing it seemed a boy’s book, as it does to this day. Its central conceit, Sal’s adoration of Dean, means that if you don’t dig Dean, the book is lost on you, and, frankly, Dean is very hard to dig if you’re a woman. — Marianne Wiggins
Some people remember being blown away by “On the Road” when they were young but then find that it doesn’t stand up to mature scrutiny. My experience has been completely different. It gets better and better—the heartbreak more pronounced—with every rereading. — Geoff Dyer
The LA Times asked thirty writers about the significance of On the Road: The ‘Road’ much traveled.
Dear Lazyweb. Please produce a detailed comparison (with screenshots, please!) of Mint and Wesabe. It's about time I channel my (former) inner-Quicken-user to the web, and I don't have the time / patience to try both of them. (Well, actually, I did have time to attempt Mint yesterday afternoon, but their Yodlee connector must have been overwhelmed with new users because connections to my external accounts timed out and they told me to try again later.)
(See also: Fred Wilson on Who Owns Your Financial Data.)
The third paragraph from a New Yorker profile of Donatella Versace (not online):
The trouble began when, between appointments, Donatella repaired to an outdoor terrace to smoke. Seated at a wrought-iron table, she thumbed open a pack of "special DV Marlboro Reds" (so called because her staff in Milan is instructed to cover the customary "Smoking Kills" label on every pack with a sticker bearing a DV monogram in medieval script).
...and that's as far as I read before deciding that reading yet another article about someone wealthy enough to have a staff helping them opt out of reality is a waste of my time, no matter how well written the article.
The parting of the Gray Lady’s payveils reveals a bunch of articles about Jack Kerouac. Here are some of my favorites.
A recent essay on a 1964 “great American pilgrimage on Kerouac’s ‘holy road’.”
What I quickly learned was that buses were the way poor people traveled long distance, people who couldn’t afford planes, trains or cars. Many of my fellow passengers, and more and more the farther south I went, were African-American.
In all probability, his journey began at the elevated train station at Liberty Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard in Ozone Park. There, according to Joe Cunningham, a subway historian, he would have boarded a train consisting of six old wooden cars and taken it to Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn.
Ozone Park has largely forgotten Kerouac.
“I never heard of him, but I went to school in Ecuador,” said Adriana Loga, 24, who then dialed her boss and handed over the phone. “You’re wasting your time,” the boss said. “No one there even understands what you’re talking about.”
On Kerouac’s dénouement in Northport, Long Island, from 1958—1964:
We used to wonder how he’d get so drunk on just a couple of bar drinks, until we found out he was taking swigs of his own bottle in the bathroom. Well, we ended that.
$49 theft-notification software for Mac OS X notebooks; if your machine is stolen, it sends you things like current screenshots, network settings, and, if there’s a built-in iSight, photos from the camera. (Via Jason Santa Maria.)
The Dana Foundation have collected a list of widely praised books on the mind and brain that cover everything from academic texts to compelling fiction. Every book on the list is accompanied by a brief write-up.
It's an extensive list with a number of great books on the list. My only reservation is that David Marr's Vision (ISBN 0716715678) is missing.
I'll get round to writing more about Marr in the future, as he is probably one of the most influential figures in 20th century neuroscience.
An amazing feet considering his book was written while he was dying from leukaemia, to which he eventually succumbed at the age of 35.
Vision was published after his death and has had a massive impact on vision science, neuropsychology and computational neuroscience - the latter of which was largely inspired by his work.
It's also the only academic neuroscience book I've ever read which starts with the line: "This book is meant to be enjoyed".
I read about the Dana guide on the excellent My Mind on Books - a site dedicated to mind, brain and cognitive science books - which also comes highly recommended.
Link to 'Important Books on the Brain' from the Dana Foundation.
Link to My Mind on Books.
Before I’d say On the Road is the most overrated American novel ever, I’d have to reconsider The Recognitions, which is something I’m not gonna do, though I’m confident Gaddis’ prose isn’t nearly as sloppy.
Late Faulkner, late Hemingway, late Toni Morrison (so far), and 86% of Don DeLillo are at least as bad as Kerouac was on his best day. True, there are stretches of Moby Dick twice as long as On the Road but not half as good, which is saying something.
--James McManus
All right, all you city slickers. It's time to stop jabbering about local and sustainable food. After reading the New York Times story about urban chicken raising (I don't think raising three chickens on a fire escape qualifies as farming), it's time for all of us to put our money where our mouths are by eating eggs and even chicken we've raised in our apartments.
How do we go about this seemingly insane task?
Don't worry. We're not going to go it alone like Manny Howard seemed to have done in New York magazine. Plus, he's got a backyard. I have a back window with no ledge.
We're going to get help from many sources.
First things first. Find out if it's legal to raise chickens in your city. Amazingly enough, chickens are allowed in New York City, Oakland, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. Apparently it is legal in most cities to raise hens but not roosters. Something about the infernal racket of roosters crowing. Could that be louder than the garbage trucks that come by my apartment twice a week? I don't think so. Bostonians are out of luck. Keeping chickens is banned there. Aren't the Red Sox themselves laying an egg lately? But I digress.
First I'm going to buy a book, Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces
, by Barbara Kilarski.
Then I am going to get a subscription to Backyard Poultry magazine. It has regular stories with titles like "Chickens in the City."
Finally, the good ol' internet comes to our rescue. Great info on The City Chicken and Backyard Chickens should prove inordinately helpful.
I just thought of something. I don't have a terrace, a fire escape, or even a balcony, and I don't think my wife will want me raising chickens in my tiny home office. I have two choices. I can call my friends with a penthouse apartment and see if they'll let me raise my chickens up there. In the past they've let me brine my Thanksgiving turkeys at their place, so I know they're poultry-friendly.
Or I can do what city dwellers turned would-be chicken farmers have done for time immemorial: call my building's superintendent. He fixed my television last week, so he must know how to raise chickens, too.
My Flickr image set of Bodies in Urban Spaces a parkours influenced series of interventions in the streets of the 13th arrondissement of Paris cheoreographed by Willi Dorner and performed by a troupe of 20 dance students.
Pervasive gaming IMO or how a game can pervade the environment: two basic sudoku boards in your plane mealbox:
When you live with a dog for five years, as I have with Mister President, you get to know him pretty well. They’re a beautiful, complex species, but really, they have some fairly simple, predictable behaviors: eat, sleep, play, eat some more. That’s part of what makes them so lovable.
Over the years, I’ve marveled at how straightforward and consistent Mister President’s behaviors are. I often joked with my ex-girlfriend how easy it would be to plot out most of his operating logic in flowchart form; heck, his decision-making flow is so simple I could describe it to most folks in a few words and they’d get it.
A Picture with Words Is Worth a Thousand Words
Still, for an interaction designer, what fun would it be to just describe it when I could make a diagram out of it? Which is just what I’ve done this evening, finally completing a flowchart that I’ve scribbled numerous times and recounted in conversation even more often over the years. It’s not a comprehensive topography of his logic, to be sure, but it does chart the most crucial routine of all: eating.
Gawd, I hope more people find it funny that I did this than they do sad.
The story in Billboard :: Kanye Crushes 50 Cent In Huge Album Sales Week.
It was a dark and stormy night....No wait, that's not the right beginning. Okay, it was my big day--yesterday--when I had two (count 'em) articles in the DC Examiner in one day. My Education column always runs on Mondays and my debut as a reporter was coming to fruition in the Power Profile of the week. I made what I hoped was a clever call in writing my column about writing the profile, but that caused an interesting snafu backstage at Examiner.com.
The Mote profile and the column on the Mote profile both had the same photograph of Dan Mote accompanying them, which didn't cause a problem for the first couple of hours yesterday morning. I sent both links to the UMd's President's office and the Office of Communications. The trouble was, by the time they tried to access the links, only my column existed. The "Power Profile" had completely disappeared off the website and there was only a blank page at the other end of the link.
What had happened was that there had been a few complaints that the website was showing two identical articles on its homepage. After all, there were two identical pictures and both articles were by Erica Jacobs. So the website manager deleted one of them without checking first that they were indeed the same article.
Of course, they weren't. And so the website manager had to spend a couple of hours reconstructing the Profile from scratch; the tips for success were added later after I retyped them based on my print copy of the paper! Then a different photograph was found for the Profile so it would look like they were not identical pieces.
Despite my panic at being "vaporized" mid-morning (to use Orwell's term from 1984) I have to admit it was a high to be published twice in the same day. I could get used to reporting---although I will never get used to having to drive around the Beltway for an interview. That was the worst!
An incredible archive of all the televised reviews of Siskel and Ebert (and Roeper). Here, for example, is Siskel and Ebert's review of Die Hard from 1998. (thx, martin)
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Okay, we don’t recommend buying wine at Bristol Farms as a rule, since they charge almost restaurant prices for many items. However, we did notice that an item we carry and charge $9.99 for, the Gaujal Picpoul de Pinet, is on sale this week at the BF for a mere $7.99. That’s basically a dollar or a buck fitty per bottle above their wholesale cost. Perfectly reasonable. Damn them for undercutting us. But go buy this and reward Bristol Farms for offering a good product at a reasonable price. Just don’t make BF your BFF…we need you at d547!
Upcoming Wii game lets you use the controller as a lightsaber. As if demand for Wiis weren’t high enough already.
Related: John Huck's Breakfast is a series of portraits of people and their breakfast.
Barack Obama unveiled his tax plan today, combining his proposal to roll back some of President Bush's tax cuts on the top earners with tax cuts for middle and lower-income workers. The tax cuts would cost up to $85 billion per year. Obama would also raise the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, and close the carried interest loophole. The overall effect would be to increase the progressiveness of the tax code.
One interesting proposal is to simplify tax preparation by creating the option of the IRS sending people pre-completed forms for them to verify, based on data already given to the government by employers and banks. On the one hand it could save up to 200 million work hours in tax preparation. But on the other hand, would people trust the government to do their taxes for them?
Alice Waters responded today to those of us who felt her assessment of the food at Farm Aid was overly harsh. (I blogged about it here last week.) Basically, she says her comments were misconstrued, that she truly appreciated the effort the Farm Aid folks made to get so much local and sustainably grown and raised food served at the site, and that her absolutist, uncompromising, visionary tendencies got the best of her.
In her own words:
I love seeing all the conversation surrounding the issues discussed on Kim Severson’s blog. I wish I had been clearer with Kim, and I’m afraid that the spirit of my comments may have been misunderstood. I was, in fact, deeply impressed with the food sourcing at Farm Aid.
I know that the logistics of feeding 40,000 people are enormously difficult, and the fact that more than half the food came from local producers is astounding.
To have been able to eat a truly fresh, locally grown peach or a Patchwork Family Farms pork chop was amazing. My critiques described an ideal, a version of an edible utopia in which all food would be (as the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini, says) Good, Clean, and Fair.
But this is a utopia that we must work together to reach, and Farm Aid’s effort was an important step forward. It was an honor to have been part of it.
Of course, who wouldn't want all the food on our planet to be good, clean, and fair? I suppose the question worth asking here is whether Waters's idealogical purity compromises her effectiveness as a leader of the sustainable agriculture, slow-food movement. I would posit that both Waters and Slow Food founder Carlos Petrini would be able to accomplish so much more if they were less judgmental and more tactically oriented. What do you think?
If Monument Valley isn’t on your life list of places to photograph, then it should be. Really! The austere beauty of Southern Utah/Northern Arizona is truly a sight to behold.
Photo from Tampen. See more photos in his Red rocks set.
Earlier this month it was reported that Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams called it quits, and the big question was: will their Boerum Hill home be on the market soon? A resident of that area took the above photo this morning, apparently the house on the corner of Dean and Hoyt Streets is the home of the New Victorian royalty. We wonder if they just Googled "celebrities moving" and that's what came up. Photo via 801a.info in Brooklyn.
Sour Death Balls is a short film that shows people's reactions to those megasour jawbreaker candies. It looks like this video has been around for a while, but the first I've seen of it was on Derrick Schneider's Obsession with Food blog just yesterday. I thought some of you who missed it might like it as well.
"By opting to go chairless, I increased my productivity and improved my relationships with my staff."
ewagoner's (User #1387) blog Kestrel's Nest is infrequently updated these days, but it's worth spending at least the three minutes there that it would take to watch his delicious video on making North Georgia Beef Stroganoff. The video is a demo for The Next Food Network Star, and I really hope he gets onto the show. He manages to be both engaging about local food, and informative enough that I could imagine making the recipe.
He's back!
The Idaho Senator, who is apparently still trying to retract his "wide stance" guilty plea, gets spotted in the Senate. Apparently a reporter saw him slipping into a Senate bathroom stall.
...okay, not really. He was seen slipping into a Senator's private dining room.
Oh wait, that's me! How did Andrea Harner finagle that, you ask??!! Answer is I was fortunate enough to be asked to join the photo shoot (wearing my favorite color!) so now you know what the mystery event was! Unfortunately not all the articles are online - off to the newsstand!
Here's the response from Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer to the Edwards email from Joe Trippi we reported on below that blasts Hillary as a "corporate insider":
Increasingly negative attacks against other Democrats aren't going to end the war, deliver universal health care or turn John Edwards' flagging campaign around.Ben Smith theorizes that there may be a method to Trippi's aggression: "Maybe there's a bigger constituency among Iowa Democrats for this sort of intramural conflict than conventional wisdom assumes."
Anthony Lane in The New Yorker:
The Leica is lumpless, with a flat top built from a single piece of brass. It has no prism, because it focusses with a range finder—situated above the lens. And it has no mirror inside, and therefore no clunk as the mirror swings. When you take a picture with an S.L.R., there is a distinctive sound, somewhere between a clatter and a thump; I worship my beat-up Nikon FE, but there is no denying that every snap reminds me of a cow kicking over a milk pail. With a Leica, all you hear is the shutter, which is the quietest on the market. The result — and this may be the most seductive reason for the Leica cult — is that a photograph sounds like a kiss.
We attended a glassware seminar yesterday, hosted by Georg Riedel of the Riedel glassware dynasty (he’s 10th generation, which makes his son referenced in the linked article here 11th). We were going to write up our thoughts on how the different bowl sizes and shapes affected our perception of the wines tasted. But then, as luck would have it, there’s an article about the exact same seminar, in this morning’s New York Times (thanks for the heads-up, Ivy Pinkerton!).
Rather than reinvent the wheel (though ours would be a slightly less round, under-edited version) we’re just going to provide you with a link to the article which basically sums up a facsimile of our experience. (more…)
Anthony Bourdain's menu of overrated, trendy items. (via eater)
(link)When the water sommelier comes over, I reach for my gun.
A few days ago the New York Times contacted me and asked me to write an Op Ed about Prime Minister Abe. I pondered a bit about it, but wiser minds advised me to do it. I wrote: In Japan, Stagnation Wins Again which is running in today’s paper.
Thanks to Toby of the New York Times for thinking of me for this, to Jun for getting me started, to Toshi for helping make sure it makes sense in a Japanese context and to Gen and Mimi for the final review.
Also, good news for CC. The new contract that the New York Time gives us joint ownership and allows me to share the article under a CC license 30 days after they run it.
UPDATE: Here’s a link to a version of the skit on YouTube with English subtitles for “Sonnano Kankeinei” referred to in the article. It’s sort of crappy quality. Interestingly, the subtitles translate it to “So Fuckin’ Waht?” I suppose that’s the spirit, but I’m not sure what part of “Sonnano Kankeinei” mean’s “fuckin’”. ;-P
UPDATE 2: Here’s video of a small child doing “Sonnano Kankeinei”. I THINK this is a Spanish guy doing it. And a sports mascot doing it on TV.
Comment - TrackBack
Everyone is always yapping about frozen custard. St. Louis residents and expats swear by Ted Drewes (the inspiration at least for Danny Meyer's Shake Shack in New York. Milwaukeeans sing the praises of Leon's and Kopp's, and their neighbors to the north in Madison love their Michael's. Indianians go crazy over Culver's, and New Yorkers wait in line at Shake Shack for an hour for their burgers and custard (custard freaks like us know to hit the always short B-line at Shake Shack, which is for drinks and custard only).
So in this era of Fed-Exed everything, we decided to gather as many of the above-mentioned frozen custards and do the ultimate frozen custard taste test.
A couple of weeks ago we had ten pints of Kopp's, six pints of Ted Drewes, and six pints of Michael's delivered to Serious Eats world headquarters. We sent intern-turned-vice-poobah Robyn Lee to Shake Shack to fetch three pints of its frozen custard (we sprung for a cab for her return trip so it wouldn't melt.)
So, need I say we had a whole lot of frozen custard in the house, as you can see from this photo. SE managing editor Adam Kuban took one for the team and volunteered to administer the completely and utterly blind taste test. Assembled were two of Robyn's friends, three people from our technology partner, Apperceptive, Robyn, and our designer, Raphael.
We were looking for the best vanilla and the best chocolate, and each of the contestants had sent a couple of pints of each of those flavors. We were looking for frozen custard that was creamy, eggy, not too sweet, and light. We wanted the vanilla custard of our dreams to taste like vanilla, and we wanted the chocolate to taste like chocolate and not just cocoa.
The two clearly superior vanilla custards came from Shake Shack and Kopp's. Shake Shack was the winner because you could clearly taste the egg yolks and the real vanilla. Kopp's was also damn good, though, and we can't discount the fact that Kopp's had frozen their custard and Fed-Exed it overnight, and Shake Shack's was as fresh as frozen custard could be. Michael's was a fairly distant third, and (if you're from St. Louis, stop reading) Ted Drewes trailed the pack. It practically disappeared the moment it hit our palates. It had very little flavor.
Kopp's edged out Shake Shack in the chocolate category. Kopp's chocolate was chocolatey and creamy and smashingly good. Shake Shack was also damned fine, but we liked Kopp's better. Again Michael's was a fairly distant third and Ted Drewes trailed the field.
In analyzing the results I looked at the ingredient lists for each of the four vanillas:
Michael's: Whole milk, cream, milk solids non-fat, cane sugar, corn syrup, egg yolk, vanilla extract, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, carrageenan.
Ted Drewes: Milkfat and non-fat milk, sugar, eggs, honey, guar gun, carrageenan, dextrose, vanilla, and salt.
Kopp's: Cream, milk, skim milk, sugar, corn syrup, egg yolk, mono digylceride, locust bean gum, guar gum, cellulose gum, trisodium phosphate, careegeenan, vanilla extract, massey's vanilla extract, cocoa.
Shake Shack: milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, non-fat milk, whey protein, salt.
What did we learn from our exercise in frozen custard excess? Ingredients really matter, even in a populist food like custard. Shake Shack uses better ingredients than anyone else, and its custard is truly terrific, with or without the hype. Kopp's uses Massey's vanilla extract, which is pretty good stuff. The other factor that comes into play is knowing what delicious is. The folks at Kopp's use most of the same ingredients as Ted Drewes and Michael's, and yet their custard is markedly superior to the others we tried. And can anyone doubt that the folks at the Union Square Hospitality group who worked on the Shake Shack recipes know a lot more about food in general and what delicious is than most other frozen custard makers in this country?
Next time, we are just going to find someone with a private jet and hop from one frozen custard bastion to the next. That way the playing field will be completely even and nobody will have any excuses related to how far the custard traveled.
Until then, we wish you godspeed in finding the frozen custard of your dreams.
It made me smile to launch the new presentation builder at Google Docs and see the all-too-familiar instruction Click to add title.
Posted by Attila Bodis, Software Engineer
In April we announced that we were working to bring presentations to Google Docs. (Astute readers may recall learning about this even earlier, which caused a bit of excitement around here.) And today we're unveiling the new Google Docs presentations feature and invite you to try it at documents.google.com. Maybe more than any other type of document, presentations are created to be shared. But assembling slide decks by emailing them around is as frustrating as it is time-consuming. The new presentations feature of Google Docs helps you to easily organize, share, present, and collaborate on presentations, using only a web browser.
Starting today, presentations -- whether imported from existing files or created using the new slide editor -- are listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs document list. They can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it's time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they're watching. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, we've made the presentation feature available in 25 languages; Google Apps customers can also access it as part of Google Docs.
We hope the millions of people who already create and share documents and spreadsheets will find presentations a welcome addition to the Google Docs family, and we can't wait to add even more features and enhancements.
If you're new to Google Docs, watch this video to learn more about creating and collaborating on documents (and now presentations!).
The Emmy's were a complete disaster. Sure, the Sopranos won the big one, but the wrong James picked up best actor, and Sally Field? Are you serious? Good for 30 Rock ("dozens and dozens of viewers" was a nice touch) and for Stewart and Colbert having Carrell accept the award he didn't win. Basically, +1 to Tim Goodman's liveblogging commentary which we were reading in kind of this weird asynchronous way while we skimmed the awards on Tivo.
But. But but but. The award to current.tv was the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while. Twitter is extremely useful for bookmarking moments (and look, now that moment has a permanent URL), and last night was a perfectly bookmarkable moment:
Guy from NBC's heroes on a mac talking to myspace tom presenting an Emmy to al gore. Dissertation fodder.
At some point in time somewhere some doctoral candidate in media studies will dissect all of the multilayered richness of those 30-40 seconds of video. My head is still spinning.
With the buzz about the 248 McKibbin Street MySpace page organizing comments about its bedbug infestation, we thought it would be a good time to visit the Bedbug City Map. The map relies on reported bedbug incidents, which are mapped by the intensity of the infestation as well - and 248 McKibbin is at the red "Help!" level. Bedbugs are hell, no question about it. Ridding an apartment of bedbugs requires multiple fumigations and inspections by exterminators as well as patience and thousands of dollars of laundry/dry cleaning/new clothing, towels and furniture on the part of the tenant or homeowner. Last October, the NY Times published an article "Everything You Need to Know About Bedbugs But Were Afraid to Ask" with helpful information:
- Landlords are required to get rid of bedbugs within 30 days of an inspection from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (call 311) - Co-op and condo owners are on their own, but "building could be responsible if, for example, bedbugs have affected multiple apartments and their source is not readily traceable"; if a unit owner is found responsible, he/she needs to immediately take action - Bedbugs don't necessarily mean the apartment is dirty - it just means the bedbugs happened to like your warmth and CO2: "they pierce the skin and withdraw blood for about 5 minutes before retreating to a hiding place" - "Exterminators look for tiny tar-black speckles — fecal droppings made up mostly of digested blood" - "People searching for bedbugs do not know to look along the seams of mattresses, under box springs, behind headboards and picture frames, and even inside alarm clocks and telephones"Renters should try to see if they can get negotiate for lower rents during infestations - it's worked for some. Here is the city's fact sheet on bedbugs. Another good resource is The Bedbug Registry, a database of bedbug reports in different cities as well as maps (here is the one for NYC), as is This Old House's gallery about bedbugs. Also, watch out for used mattresses and used furniture and who knew there were gummi bedbugs out there? If you have any hints about detecting, dealing with, or worrying about bedbugs, please tell us in the comments.
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle included the annual Bargain Bites feature. After 10 years of a $10 maximum price of dinner entrees, this year it increased to a $12 max. The San Francisco neighborhoods with the most bargain bites are not surprisingly: Mission District, The Tenderloin, Sunset District, Richmond District. Browse all the restaurants on the Bargain Bites Google map.
Analysts predict a record quarter for Mac sales, meanwhile a featured article in the NY Times says Apple could do better.
Apple's press event in London is only about 12 hours away, and there's some evidence that iPhones may in stock and ready to sell right after the announcement.
Holy crap! The Britney Spears/Kevin Federline divorce case has taken quite the interesting turn. Check this shocker out, courtesy of Entertainment Tonight:
"ET has several reliable sources that the FBI and LAPD are investigating legitimate leads on a contract hit on KEVIN FEDERLINE's life.Multiple sources tell ET that the FBI made attempts to contact Federline to inform him of the potential danger.
Sources within the FBI tell ET that this is the bureau's standard operating procedure when someone's life is threatened.
ET has been working this story for the past two months. When contacted, the FBI told us that the bureau cannot confirm or deny an investigation."
Isn't that nuts? The FBI should look into that crazy, crying Britney fan. Or could it be Britney herself that put this hit out -- she does hate him. What do you guys think?
UPDATE: TMZ.com has learned that, though there was an LAPD investigation into the reports of a plot to kill Kevin, the FBI was never involved, and the case was closed almost two months ago due to insufficient evidence.
Which means K-Fed lives on.
It seems Bill Richardson has no shortage of gaffes. Addressing SEIU today, Richardson thanked them for their applause: "Thank you, AFSCME!"
That's right, Richardson named the wrong union. And it gets worse. SEIU, unfortunately, is an organizational rival to AFSCME in many states, and SEIU's audience responded to Richardson's opening line by shouting, "S-E-I-U!"
Good work.
Jen Bekman has launched 20x200. Jen is one of the web's original pioneers; she and I did a stint together as community managers of Netscape.com in like 1997. Since then she's escaped the 'net and built a wonderful art business in New York. It's great to see her combine two of her (many) passions -- art and the web -- into this new venture.
We introduce two new pieces a week: one photo and one work on paper. Each image is available in three sizes. The smallest size is reprinted in the largest batch – an edition of 200 – and sold at the lowest price – $20. Hence the name 20x200. (200x20 just didn't sound as good.)
Jen has a great eye, and the work that's already up is fantastic. If you've never bought art before, maybe this is the way for you to get into collecting.
So that aforelinked quote on the music business from Hunter S. Thompson? Ends up it’s a widely-cited misquote. The actual quote is about the TV industry:
“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
That it’s equally true for the music industry is why the misquote resonates. (Thanks to Ramanan Sivaranjan for the link to David Emery’s investigation on the quote.)
Reusable Water Bottles You'll Actually Want To Use. Laura Moser's testers gave the highest marks to my two favorites: the Sigg and the Platypus.
Billionaire captain of industry Mark Cuban — who really does capitalize and punctuate his writing as you see below — got frustrated with Windows, bought a MacBook, and loves it:
First is that when I close my MacBook without turning it off, it doesn’t lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.
The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.
Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).
Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook
There’s a whole class of recent switchers who define “Apple fanboy” as “anyone who’s been an enthusiastic Mac user since before I switched to the Mac”.
A new poll from SurveyUSA, conducted for a local Virginia ABC affiliate, finds former Governor Mark Warner (D-VA) with massive leads over his potential Republican opponents in the race for the open Senate seat. Warner leads Congressman Tom Davis by 35 points, and beats former Governor Jim Gilmore by 28 points.
The actual numbers have not been given yet, only the margins. The full results will come out later today.
Good words to keep in mind regarding the ringtone racket, from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson:
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
O2 has apparently won the UK iPhone contract according to somereports, but the company may have agreed to some very Apple-friendly terms in order to secure the deal.
* Elizabeth & Grand.
Barack Obama has already released this statement in response to Hillary Clinton's upcoming health-care plan, ahead of her official announcement later today:
I commend Senator Clinton for her health care proposal. It’s similar to the one I put forth last spring, though my universal health care plan would go further in reducing the punishing cost of health care than any other proposal that’s been offered in this campaign. But the real key to passing any health care reform is the ability to bring people together in an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus for change. That’s how I was able to pass health care reform in Illinois that covered an additional 150,000 children and their parents, and that’s how we'’ll prevent the drug and insurance industry from defeating our reform efforts like they did in 1994.Note the line about how "an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus for change" can help prevent a divisive political debate — a direct hit against the closed process that helped bring about "Hillary Care" in 1993-94.
Katherine Heigl's having a funny night. First they misprounced her name when she was presenting and she corrected them. Then when she won for best supporting actress in a drama, she clearly mouthed "sh*t" and Fox bleeped her out. Meanwhile, I can't believe she won! It was all about Denny.
If I never see Eva Longoria again it will be too soon. And must Ryan Seacrest talk about Eva's bling? Like she isn't conceited enough. Barf.
Radically simple web-based web page editor, by Aaron Swartz and Simon Carstensen. Starting a new page, the first time you visit the site, could not be any simpler: you just type text (Markdown-formatted, natch) in a textarea and click a button. No sign up, no account creation. Just write. After creating a page, you can password protect it, but you don’t have to if you don’t need to.
More info on Jottit from Aaron Swartz.
so much disk detritus
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by fruminator to emacs - more about this bookmark...
Brown and yellow, to be precise. Leaf and Volkswagen.
One of those great old rounded Sixties non-beetle VWs.
Since many people I know accuse me of never telling them about the film goings on in my life, here is one that 99.9% of you will not be able to attend. Still, you can't say I didn't tell you.
Rose and Nangabire, a feature length documentary film that I am producing at Big Mouth, will be screening a ten minute piece of the film at the IFP Market this Monday, September 17th at 4:30pm at The Angelika in NYC. It is mainly for film industry people who have passes to the Market. However since I have no idea who actually reads this blog, that might be you.
We have just begun the process of making this film so I do not want to say too much about it here, not because I am being cagey but because we still are on the journey to figuring out where this film is going. We are putting up a trailer soon and when we do, I'll link to it.
pjf writes "Perl tips via Atom: For all those people who'd prefer yet-another-feed over yet-another-mailing-list, Perl Training Australia's Perl tips are now available via Atom and FeedBurner as well as via e-mail. RSS will follow if anyone asks nicely."Read more of this story at use Perl.
Finally, we were motivated by the artistic enjoyment to be derived from designing the wide variety of glyphs found in the Unicode standard. It is an opportunity to contemplate the past, and take part in the future development, of thousands of abstract graphical forms that have been developed through several millennia by generations of scribes in different civilizations. —
Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, "The design of a Unicode font."The Unicode font in question is Lucida Grande, a handsome and unfussy font that comes with MacOS X. It boasts more than 1700 glyphs.
I was disappointed to miss Laura when it screened last week, but managed to catch Advise & Consent by accident. It's a twisty and complex political portrait which sits uncomfortably on the brink of the 1960s. Henry Fonda, plays Leffingwell the dying Presidents nominated Secretary of State. His unimpassioned performance doesn't really justify the Presidents determination to get him into office, or the resulting political snake party. Worth watching for Laughton's final performance, and for the typically Preminger styled gay bar scene.The inner workings of a US Senate sub committee circa 1960 is a topic which is only going to appeal to a certain type of film watcher, and they'll probably be patient enough to put up with the slow pacing.
This was also the first of six movies Preminger (who played Mr. Freeze in the Adam West Batman teevee show) cast the previously blacklisted Burgess "The Penguin" Meredith - he plays Gelman, a man who had once mistakenly found himself in a four-man Communist cell.
Mind Hacks brought me to two mentions of Harry Potter and field of headache research. The journal Headache, published an article Harry Potter and the Curse of the Headache, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published "I know you are but what am I?!" [PDF]..
I always assumed Harry's headaches were simply manifestations of teenage angst, but the author's draw connections between all of Harry's headaches and well documented medical conditions (particularly migraaines). I wonder how much research (if any) Rowling did on headaches before she decided on that particular affliction to symbolize the proximity of Voldemort, or if she herself suffers from migraines or other serious headaches. I also didn't realize that headaches were passed on biologically.
The second article demonstrates it's there's less brain activity required for younger people to consider individuals familiar to them than people who are not familar. However, other studies show that the ideas of familiarity and belonging are in fact very malleable. I think there's more than headaches going on here, if it's easier for us to consider those closer to us than those foreign to us, that may explain how both communities and bias form in young minds.
I had to use Google Scholar to find the full text each of these articles. \I was a little disappointed the Headaches article only covers the progression through the first six books.
Also, Tricia links to HipHop.CN's Rap Challenge, "in search of China’s next big rap talent." I think Alaina's cousin run's this site? I also can't help but notice how similar The Rap Challenge logo is to Otorevo's logo.
A funny article in the medical journal Headache discusses Harry Potter's difficulties with what seems to be a recurrent migraine. This isn't the first time that Harry has turned up in the medical literature. In fact, he's made almost 20 appearances so far.
However, this is the first to consider his neurological problems in detail:
Harry Potter and the curse of headache.
Sheftell F, Steiner TJ, Thomas H.
Headache. 2007, Volume 47, Issue 6, p911-6.
Headache disorders are common in children and adolescents. Even young male Wizards are disabled by them. In this article we review Harry Potter's headaches as described in the biographical series by JK Rowling. Moreover, we attempt to classify them. Regrettably we are not privy to the Wizard system of classifying headache disorders and are therefore limited to the Muggle method, the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II; pdf). Harry's headaches are recurrent. Although conforming to a basic stereotype, and constant in location, throughout the 6 years of his adolescence so far described they have shown a tendency to progression. Later descriptions include a range of accompanying symptoms. Despite some quite unusual features, they meet all but one of the ICHD-II criteria for migraine, so allowing the diagnosis of 1.6 Probable migraine.
The young wizard also appeared in a recent fMRI study that investigated which brain areas would be most active when children and adults thought about themselves compared to others.
In the study, participants were brain scanned while being shown short descriptions and were asked to indicate whether they best described themselves or someone else.
One difficulty is that the 'someone else' needs to be well known to both children and adults, so Harry Potter was chosen.
In the final study, when participants judged that the phrase described themself, rather than Harry, the medial (midline) part of the frontal lobes were relatively more active.
Interestingly, this area was significantly more active in children than adults, possibly suggesting that this task requires more effort for children and becomes easier as we age.
Link to PubMed entry for Harry Potter headache article.
Link to abstract of self vs other study.
