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Trevor Edwards, Nike's corporate vice president for global brand and category management, in the New York Times on how they're shifting their advertising and marketing spend: "We're not in the business of keeping the media companies alive. We're in the business of connecting with consumers."
As I mentioned previously, my friend Becca is the author coordinator for this year's Wordstock Festival, which will include authors Dave Eggers, Carl Hiaasen, Kevin Brockmeier, one Brian Libby, and more. Wordstock is very excited to introduce their new email list, which will keep you updated on everything Wordstock. Sign up for the list here.
Buster Olney of ESPN broke the story yesterday saying that the former Senator George Mitchell’s report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball would be released sometime after the World Series and before the end of the year. At the time that is released it will reportedly be a “huge story.”
According to Olney’s sources, a conference call with Tom Carlucci, a lawyer hired to liaison between the Mitchell investigation and the teams, took place with representatives from all the clubs. As reported by Onley:
Said one source familiar with what was said on the conference call, “This is going to be enormous … it’s going to be a huge story when these names come out.”
While the names that come out might be huge, where the names come from might make proving whether players did, or did not purchase or use PEDs another matter.
Certainly, Troy Glaus, Jay Gibbons, or Scott Schoeneweis could be mentioned in the report. One of these three players is said to have been part of the investigation into Signature Pharmacy, an Orlando, FL based company charged with selling PEDs via the internet.
But, when one thinks of “huge story”, those names don’t seem to match the hype.
Where key names are most likely to be coming from is Kirk Radomski, the former clubhouse attendant with the New York Mets. As reported by the NY Times:
When Radomski pleaded guilty to steroid distribution in April, he was encouraged to cooperate with Mitchell’s investigation and to provide Mitchell with the names of the players he provided with drugs. One baseball official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday, said if Mitchell were to name players connected to drugs in his report, it would most likely come from information provided by Radomski.
Baseball officials, of course, did not comment directly about the conference call from Carlucci to the 30 clubs. They also did not deny that names could be within the Mitchell report. As further reported by the NY Times:
Rob Manfred, baseball’s vice president for labor relations and human resources and the official who oversees the sport’s drug-testing programs, said in a telephone interview that what Carlucci did yesterday was “nothing more than a lawyer doing what he should do: preparing his clients.” Manfred said that he did not know if Mitchell’s report would include the names of players and that Carlucci did not know, either.
“He is on the wrong side of the fence of knowing what is in the report,” Manfred said of Carlucci, referring to the fact that he does not work directly for Mitchell. “I am not sure Mitchell has made his mind up.”
Michael Weiner, the general counsel for the players union, said in a telephone interview that the union had been told within the last two days by lawyers working for Mitchell that no determination about the report’s final contents had been made.
Actions After Report Seem Unclear
In whether any actions against players named in the report, the answers seem unclear. It is, of course, one thing to say someone did something, and far more difficult to prove it. There would need to be proof that an active player was guilty of using PEDs after 2003. MLB did not have a mandatory testing program with penalties until 2004. Since all players went through the testing program from that point forward, the Players Association could easily argue that any active named players came up negative during testing and ask for any attempts at suspension be overturned by way of an arbitor. Distribution or PED convictions might be a different matter. If proven guilty in those instances, the penalties would be as follows:
Penalties for Steroids Convictions
- Suspended for 60-80 games for a first offense
- 120 games to one year for a second offense
- Lifetime ban for a third conviction
Penalties for steroid distribution
- Suspended 80-100 game for a first conviction
- Lifetime ban thereafter.
- In both cases, players suspended for life may apply to the Commissioner for reinstatement after two years and have the right to a review.
In the case of retired players, the report might be, as one source said, “salacious”, but there’s little that could be done. A stain would certainly be placed on the player’s career, but beyond that, little, if nothing else.
Conclusions
There is a certain need to have names named in the Mitchell report. Given the amount of time, and money placed into the investigation, it would be toothless (and may still be, for all we know) without something tangible such as player names within it.
But, if one of the key aspects of the investigation is to publish names of current players that are allegedly using PEDs, then what does that say about the current testing program? Human-Growth Hormone (hGH) would have to be given a pass as there is yet to be a definitive testing program for it. Steroids? If that’s the case, then pundits would have to ask if the current testing program is all that it’s supposedly cracked up to be. After all, if the players named in the report were using steroids, how did they not come up positive during testing?
What does seem clear is that the report will allow MLB to say that the report was a proactive “independent” effort designed to further eradicate PEDs from baseball. What is more likely to happen is further embarrassment. While the media and public continue to look the other way with the NFL, MLB will get yet another black eye.
Marco.org: iPhone SDK rage
You have a choice: buy the iPhone with everything that goes along with it, including its limitations, or go without it. Apple isn’t screwing you, you can’t sue them, and a handful of angry nerds aren’t going to make them change their plans and compromise their platform.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 10 women. With yesterday's announcement, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm has raised this number to a whopping 11. Congratulations, Doris Lessing!
Professor Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, made the announcement in five languages: Swedish, English, French, German and Russian. The fact that the announcement is multilingual is my favorite thing about it. Here it is:
Giving a Nobel Lecture is now pretty standard but in the early years of the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recipients only delivered a short Banquet Speech (and still do so in addition to the Lecture). Usually, the Banquet Speech consisted of little more than thanking the Academy but on some occasions, it was more comprehensive and contemplative. Selma Lagerlöf's Banquet Speech takes the form a dream story in which she imagines meeting her father in Heaven and discussing with him the debt she feels towards her audience and fellow authors. Wislawa Szymborska's delivered her very short speech in French. The only female writer for whom we have no Banquet Speech is the Sardinian novelist Grazia Deledda. I'm curious to know why that's the case but, at any rate, I've provided excerpts from the Banquet Speeches and Nobel Lectures of the 10 female recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Doris Lessing's speech will appear in the coming weeks.
Selma Lagerlöf (1909):
...I thought of my father and felt a deep sorrow that he should no longer be alive, and that I could not go to him and tell him that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that no one would have been happier than he to hear this. Never have I met anyone with his love and respect for the written word and its creators, and I wished that he could have known that the Swedish Academy had bestowed on me this great Prize. Yes, it was a deep sorrow to me that I could not tell him.
Anyone who has ever sat in a train as it rushes through a dark night will know that sometimes there are long minutes when the coaches slide smoothly along without so much as a shudder. All rustle and bustle cease and the sound of the wheels becomes a soothing, peaceful melody. The coaches no longer seem to run on rails and sleepers but glide into space. Well, that is how it was as I sat there and thought how much I should like to see my old father again. (Banquet Speech)
Grazia Deledda (1926):
Destiny caused me to be born in the heart of lonely Sardinia. But even if I had been born in Rome or Stockholm, I should not have been different. I should have always been what I am - a soul which becomes impassioned about life's problems and which lucidly perceives men as they are, while still believing that they could be better and that no one else but themselves prevents them from achieving God's reign on earth. Everything is hatred, blood, and pain; but, perhaps, everything will be conquered one day by means of love and good will. (quoted in the Nobel Presentation Speech)
Sigrid Undset (1928):
I write more readily than I speak and I am especially reluctant to talk about myself. (Banquet Speech)
Pearl Buck (1938):
This award, given to an American, strengthens not only one, but the whole body of American writers, who are encouraged and heartened by such generous recognition. And I should like to say, too, that in my country it is important that this award has been given to a woman. You who have already so recognized your own Selma Lagerlöf, and have long recognized women in other fields, cannot perhaps wholly understand what it means in many countries that it is a woman who stands here at this moment. (Banquet Speech)
When I came to consider what I should say today it seemed that it would be wrong not to speak of China. And this is none the less true because I am an American by birth and by ancestry and though I live now in my own country and shall live there, since there I belong. But it is the Chinese and not the American novel which has shaped my own efforts in writing. My earliest knowledge of story, of how to tell and write stories, came to me in China. It would be ingratitude on my part not to recognize this today. And yet it would be presumptuous to speak before you on the subject of the Chinese novel for a reason wholly personal. There is another reason why I feel that I may properly do so. It is that I believe the Chinese novel has an illumination for the Western novel and for the Western novelist. (Nobel Lecture, "The Chinese Novel")
Gabriela Mistral (1945):
At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues. (Banquet Speech)
Nelly Sachs (1966, award shared with Shmuel Agnon):
In the summer of 1939 a German girl friend of mine went to Sweden to visit Selma Lagerlöf, to ask her to secure a sanctuary for my mother and myself in that country. Since my youth I had been so fortunate as to exchange letters with Selma Lagerlöf; and it is out of her work that my love for her country grew. The painter-prince Eugen and the novelist helped to save me....An Stelle von Heimat/ halte ich die Verwandlungen der Welt (Banquet Speech)
Nadine Gordimer (1991):
How does the writer become one, having been given the word? I do not know if my own beginnings have any particular interest. No doubt they have much in common with those of others, have been described too often before as a result of this yearly assembly before which a writer stands. For myself, I have said that nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction. The life, the opinions, are not the work, for it is in the tension between standing apart and being involved that the imagination transforms both. Let me give some minimal account of myself. I am what I suppose would be called a natural writer. I did not make any decision to become one. I did not, at the beginning, expect to earn a living by being read. I wrote as a child out of the joy of apprehending life through my senses - the look and scent and feel of things; and soon out of the emotions that puzzled me or raged within me and which took form, found some enlightenment, solace and delight, shaped in the written word. (Nobel Lecture, "Writing and Being")
Toni Morrison (1993):
Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference--the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. (Nobel Lecture)
I will leave this hall...with a new and much more delightful haunting than the one I felt upon entering: that is the company of Laureates yet to come. Those who, even as I speak, are mining, sifting and polishing languages for illuminations none of us has dreamed of. But whether or not any one of them secures a place in this pantheon, the gathering of these writers is unmistakable and mounting. Their voices bespeak civilizations gone and yet to be; the precipice from which their imaginations gaze will rivet us; they do not blink nor turn away. (Banquet Speech)
Wislawa Szymborska (1996):
It's not accidental that film biographies of great scientists and artists are produced in droves. The more ambitious directors seek to reproduce convincingly the creative process that led to important scientific discoveries or the emergence of a masterpiece. And one can depict certain kinds of scientific labor with some success. Laboratories, sundry instruments, elaborate machinery brought to life: such scenes may hold the audience's interest for a while...Films about painters can be spectacular, as they go about recreating every stage of a famous painting's evolution, from the first penciled line to the final brush-stroke. Music swells in films about composers: the first bars of the melody that rings in the musician's ears finally emerge as a mature work in symphonic form. Of course this is all quite naive and doesn't explain the strange mental state popularly known as inspiration, but at least there's something to look at and listen to.
But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of thing? (Nobel Lecture, "The Poet and the World")
Merci, dziêkujê, tack. (Banquet Speech)
Elfriede Jelineck (2004):
Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of course, but what happens to me then? What happens to those, who don’t really know reality at all? It’s so very dishevelled. No comb, that could smooth it down. (Nobel Lecture, "Sidelined")
I filed Friday’s column on last night’s game a bit after noon today, moved on to put up the latest hoops piece, grab some lunch and prepare for today’s “Fantasy 411″ show. Around 2:30 this afternoon, halfway through a slice and a Coke, I suddenly turned to Sophia and said, “I never wrote about the ALCS.” Whoops. I’m absent-minded by nature, and the whirlwind of activity over the past week or so has definitely exacerbated that particular trait.
Technically, I did write about the ALCS, just not here. As part of BP’s ongoing relationship with Sports Illustrated, Nate Silver and I did previews of both LCSs for the magazine. Without simply repeating the material therein, here’s what I’m looking at in what should be a classic postseason series:
- The aces. I’m very excited about this matchup tonight. The two best pitchers in the AL this year, C.C. Sabathia and Josh Beckett, are going head to head in the first game of a semifinal. We don’t always get this lucky; Chris Carpenter vs. Jake Peavy in the 2004 NL Division Series is the only recent matchup that approaches this one, and after that you’re back to some Pedro Martinez starts during his peak. Beckett is coming off a wipeout of the Angels, while Sabathia scuffled through five innings against the Yankees and was helped along by his teammates to a win. Because the rest of the rotations are strong, this game doesn’t have quite the importance last night’s NLCS Game One did. However, it’s hard to win a short series if you don’t take advantage of having your ace on the mound, so tonight’s game is important.
- The closers. Joe Borowski had a three-run lead Monday night, and thankfully so, as he allowed one home run and one near-homer. I was wrong in my prediction that a Yankee win in the ALDS would involved beating Borowski, but he remains the weak point of a strong Indians‘ team. Any time Eric Wedge lifts someone named “Rafael” to bring in Borowski, the Red Sox‘ chance of winning the game ticks upward. I’ll reiterate my prediction, wrong in the last round, that the Indians will lose a game they lead in the ninth due to their alignment of relievers. Jonathan Papelbon inspires no such doubt, while the men in front of him, Hideki Okajima and Manny Delcarmen, are comparable to the Tribe’s setup men.
- The sluggers. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez eviscerated the Angels. Because Ortiz was perceived as having an off year, and Ramirez actually had one, the two have been forgotten a little bit. They’re still an amazing two-man wrecking crew, each a dangerous combination of discipline, skill and raw power. Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez are great players; they’re just not Ortiz and Ramirez.
Two great teams, clearly the two best left in the postseason, and one has to go home. I originally predicted Red Sox in seven, when I thought a Game Seven matchup would feature Curt Schilling and Jake Westbrook. Knowing it would instead be the possibly fatigued Daisuke Matsuzaka starting for the home team gives me pause, but not enough to change my mind. Red Sox in seven. Barely.
Jacqui Cheng, ars technica: “Our spider senses are tingling: Leopard’s final release as Gold Master is drawing near. We’ve already seen the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Gold Master release candidate floating around in the wild today (*cough*), and our sources confirm that a GM candidate build has been released internally at Apple.”
Leopard's official stamp of approval as Gold Master is drawing near, as Apple has released a couple of GM candidate builds within the company for final testing.
Apple has put up a tribute to Al Gore to recognize his win of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
As Erin mentioned in passing in the previous post, Serious Eats' National Meatloaf Appreciation Day is next week—October 18, to be exact. If you'd like to participate in our cook-along, the deadline is Tuesday, October 16. Just figured I'd remind you now so any of you procrastinators (like me) have the weekend to cook away like fiends. Details here. That is all.
Posted by: Emily I have started training from my first marathon, which I will run in October. I really don't have anyone close to me that has run a marathon before, and was wondering your take on...
ASK COACH JENNY! Coach Jenny Hadfield is the co-author of the best selling Marathoning for Mortals and the newly released Running for Mortals. She is a nationally recognized speaker, writer and co-owner of Chicago Endurance Sports, Chicago?s largest multi-sport training company.
i’m too swamped to blog original content at the moment, but have a look at this amazing art (via the wooster collective).
John McCain has become the first candidate for president to comment on Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize in a negative way, telling an Iowa crowd that there were more worthy people out there to whom the prize could have been awarded.
"I would have liked to see that prize go to the Buddhist monks who are suffering and dying in Burma," McCain said.
The Darjeeling Limited is the first Wes Anderson movie since Rushmore that I've really liked after seeing it for the first time. The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic both took another viewing (and now I love them both).
Two more Wes Anderson/Dareeling things and then I think we're done for awhile. Marc Jacobs created the luggage and the fashion "look" for Darjeeling:
The result is a large set of tawny luggage and a trio of suits with matching back belts and angled cuffs for the three main characters, played by onscreen brothers Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. Once again, as in Anderson's previous films like "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," the cast wears one look throughout the film. "I like actors to have costumes that help them to get into character," says Anderson. "Whether it's a good idea or not, I tend to give them uniforms."
See also How to Dress Like a Tenenbaum from Esquire in 2002. The Onion A/V Club recently interviewed Anderson. His response near the end about his commercial work is interesting.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Al Gore just gave a speech to the press regarding his Nobel Peace Prize, thanking the Nobel committee and everyone who helped him along the way. He then discussed the importance of the climate change issue, and how crucial it is for society to come together and make a lot of progress as quickly as possible.
Gore did not touch any partisan themes, and was clearly keen to avoid that when he finished his speech and left the room without taking questions — ignoring the reporters who were yelling out and asking whether he'll run for president.
Filed under: photographers
After writing a post about Hendrik Kerstens' Dutch Masters-inspired photos, a friend recommended I check out the work of Pierre Gonnord who also makes portraits heavily influenced by Vermeer Rembrant and the like. This time the photographer is a Frenchman who lives in Madrid. My bet is that he uses simple lighting setups-one big diffused light or a big northern facing window-to achieve this look.
Tags: french photography, rembrant, vermeer
Former vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. The Nobel committee said the shared award is "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." The award is worth $1.5 million and will be split equally between the two winners. According to the NY Times, Gore said, "My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis." Additionally, the Nobel Committee tried to explain that it wanted to make a statement about climate change, rather than U.S. politics. And while Gore hasn't discussed his future political plans, many people have urged him to run for president - and having a Nobel Peace Prize under his belt might only help with his credentials. The NY Times has a feature on the ups and downs of Gore's career.
IPCC Chairman R.K. Pachauri, who is based in New Delhi, India, released a statement, saying, "I would like to pay tribute to the scientific community, who are the winners of this award. The experts and scientists are the backbone of the IPCC and they provide the knowledge, which has contributed to the success of the IPCC." He also thanked governments who support and facilitate the IPCC. The full press release from the Nobel Committee, after the jump: Top photograph of Al Gore taken in 2006 by Francois Mori/AP; bottom photograph of R.K. Pachauri and his family by AP
Gore gets it! – the prize, and the crisis. Deeply rooted in science, Al Gore has established climate crisis as a moral and spiritual imperative. Now we must act with speed on an unprecedented scale. Speed and scale. -- John DoerrI have seen the VP's passion since my early days photographing him in Washington DC. He was a different person on the campaign plane than the public saw, and now the world sees him for who he is. [Above is] my favorite photo taken of candidate Gore on the campaign in California, May 2000. -- Kevin Gilbert
My wife and I came to TED uncertain about Al Gore and not thrilled to hear him. He seemed fake to us in the national political election he had gone through. His presentation profoundly changed our view of him even more than his message. We bought the messages. We did not buy the message presenter. At TED, he gave a sense of his humor, three-dimensionality, commitment to the cause, ability to criticize himself. We left with a positive attitude toward him and a commitment to help. -- David and Heidi Hoffman
At TED2006, Al Gore brought alive a vital and little-understood subject with humble, direct, passionate facts that were a call to action far beyond his previous resume as a politician -- bravo to a great humanist leader who made us address our history! -- Randy Antik
At 60 years old, there are rare seminal moments that cut across the arc of your life that make you stand up and cheer with joy of a 3-year-old, the passion of a 16-year-old and the wisdom of a 60-year-old -- Al Gore did that at TED! -- Sandra Kulli
Thank you, bless you -- Al Gore; what greater giving, what better gift to the planet, than your new dawning of insights, intelligence and calm authority in advising the world -- finally -- to what future there might be...and what future we might create anew? -- Tim Girvin
Watching Al -- and Tipper -- Gore at TED was my privilege; working to reverse climate change is my responsibility. -- Stuart Gannes
Photo of Al Gore: @Kevin T. Gilbert
Like any good producer/directors in the television business, there were no sweeping shots of empty seats at last night’s Game One NLCS game at Chase Field in Phoenix by TBS.
And like as a professional sports league, MLB has been tracking “paid attendance”—the number of tickets sold—not turnstile clicks that would show exactly how many fans actually went to last night’s game.
While it’s a bit of smoke and mirrors by both parties, it’s understandable. Hey, MLB and TBS have a product to sell and that product is baseball (although last night seemed to be a bit of WWE, as well).
But, what strikes me as odd is that in more than one story today, the game was referred to as being sold out. Whether it was the Arizona Republic or Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports, both referenced the announced crowd of 48,142 as being a sellout. Maybe the public address announcer said it was a sold out game—empty seats in the house be damned— and they reported what they heard. Still, there’s a slight problem with that notion.
The problem is, 48,142 isn’t a sellout. Or, at least by looking at the Diamondback’s own seat count, it isn’t. Seating capacity is 49,033 for Chase Field. So, last night’s paid attendance would come in at 98.2% of capacity. Hey. It’s close, but last I checked a sellout was 100%.
Maybe someone at the Diamondbacks can explain this to me. I’d be interested in hearing and can be contacted here.
Just in from the New York Daily News:
Bernard Kerik's legal nightmare is about to get worse, with federal prosecutors expected to file charges against the former police commissioner that will likely include allegations of bribery, tax fraud and obstruction of justice, the Daily News has learned.The indictment, expected next month, could prove to be an embarrassing obstacle for Kerik's former mentor Rudy Giuliani, who is cruising at the top of the polls heading into the presidential primary gauntlet.
Lest this get forgotten, it's worth remembering that Rudy personally advocated for this fellow to be the chief of Homeland Security -- that is, to be the chief defender of our nation against what Rudy terms the Terrorists' War on Us.
I can't imagine a more incongruous guest for yakfest The View than the godmother of all things sustainorganica, Alice Waters. I also can't sum up why it's so surreal (well, surreal to a food person, anyway), so I'll quote from the Amateur Gourmet's take on Ms. Waters's appearance:
"But you can get all this in a normal grocery store?" spat Joy, clearly uncomfortable around this weird Berkeley hippie.
You couldn't find two women more different than Joy Behar and Alice Waters. One ballsy and brash, the other dainty and delicate. Did Joy understand who Alice was, her significance, the impact she's had on food and the way we eat? I wasn't quite sure and then, when Alice was showing off the chicken she'd roasted, my worst fears were confirmed. Joy asked, "Can't you shove a beer can in the chicken's vagina and cook it that way?"
But more important is the Amateur Gourmet's takeaway on Waters's guest spot: "In her own way, Joy Behar was the perfect foil for Alice Waters: no coddling, no ring-kissing. Just crass reality in the face of lofty idealism. Between the two, the answer lies."
Two days of sitting next to Al, with some intense ongoing conversation, proved to me that he was wholly focused on substance rather than form, and graced by a biting sense of humor, the real stuff of which leaders should be made! -- Janet M. Baker
Al Gore takes climate change personally -- at TED, Al Gore looked at me directly, shook my hand firmly, remembered my email, spoke to my points and then I realized that he had done this a hundred thousand times to get this message to the world. -- James Kocis
He may have lost a smaller battle, but because of it, has triumphed in a global one. Thank you Mr. Gore for shining a strong light through the collective haze. -- Robert Leslie
Gore, at TED06, humbly communicated his kicks and shocks as lessons. In mythology, the Fool immediately takes over and drives the horses straight for the precipice. Gore in an auspicious manner kept still, and in attempting to heal the earth of its toxicity resurrected himself. -- Dr. Denise Phillips-Kelly
I was deeply struck by how his resolute commitment to his message, over time, was beginning to be heard. -- Bruce Kelly
Al: I didn’t believe it before I heard your talk -- now I know it’s true. -- Bernice Cramer
While waiting for Walter McCaffrey to send over an official version, we managed to get a hold of a bootleg copy of the executive summary of the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free's new report. Willie Neuman has a write-up of the report in the Times today as well.
The Committee's report aims to offer up alternatives to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, many of which are ideas familiar and appealing to regular readers of Streetsblog. The executive summary itemizes eight specific traffic mitigation suggestions and calculates that, together, these could reduce VMT, or vehicle miles traveled, between 7.6 and 11.5 percent south of 86th Street (table above).
New York City's $354.5 million federal grant is dependent on a plan that reduces VMT by at least 6.3 percent. The grant, however, is also dependent on the City implementing some form of congestion pricing technology as a part of that plan, so it's not at all clear if any of the suggestions above would allow the city to keep that money.
Hugh O'Neill, the president of Appleseed, the economics consulting firm which wrote the report, acknowledges that his numbers are soft. Neuman reports:
Altogether, the study says, such measures could reduce traffic volume by 7 to 11 percent. Mr. O'Neill said, however, that the estimate was very rough."I would fully acknowledge that those numbers are speculative and would need to be subject to further analysis," he said. "I think what the numbers legitimately show is that there are real options, real world alternatives, many of which are much simpler to implement than what the city has proposed."
The report does not include an overall estimate for the cost of putting its proposals in place, but it says it would cost far less than the mayor's congestion pricing plan.
In addition to a "speculative" analysis, the report offers no price tag for its proposed changes. Some ideas, like increasing the cost of on-street parking and reforming the city's government employee parking abuse problem, are almost certainly net revenue earners, though come with their own set of costs and political challenges. Other suggestions have a universally appealing but vaguely expensive ring to them; for example, this one: "Major transit improvements."
In addition to the eight congestion pricing alternatives listed in the table above, the executive summary offers these as well:
Options that reduce VMT, congestion or both (2008-2009)
- Reducing congestion caused by black cars and non-yellow for hire vehicles.
- More effectively regulating the use of streets for construction projects.
- Modernizing traffic signal systems.
- Implementing 511 (A system to notify drivers of real time traffic conditions).
Options for reducing congestion beyond 2010
- Bus Rapid Transit.
- Lower Manhattan bus depot.
- Incentives for off-peak delivery.
- Increased use of water transportation for movement of freight.
- Expanding the Lower Manhattan traffic management program to Midtown.
- Improving the distribution of information to motorists by state of the art technology.
- Encouraging greater use of bicycle transportation.
I love getting down to this little guy in a head of lettuce. I always let him hang out on the counter for a while, check out the surroundings while I admire his cuteness and introduce him to whoever is around...imagine my delight upon finding that Wee Tiny have given him his appropriate tribute!
As congratulations for Al Gore, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, pour in from the TED community, we asked people who saw Gore's TED2006 presentations to talk about the impact his talks had on them. This is the second in the series.
When I facilitate a gathering of wild tiger experts next month in India, Al Gore's inspiration will be front and center. Thank you, Al, for waking me up! to the interconnectedness of our earth and its species. -- Susan W. Bird
After experiencing Al at TED, vowed to change my Republican ways, support Hillary for President (unless, of course, Al agrees to run!), shift my business to sourcing sustainability innovations for Fortune 500 companies and admit publicly that I am now a “Recovering Republican” for the rest of my life… -- Mark A. Kaiser
Like TEDster John Doerr said, "I am afraid that we're not going to make it," but if we do the world will be indebted to Al Gore, a man of gravitas who did the right thing at the right time and is so deserving of the Nobel Prize (and the presidency, carpe diem). -- Bruce Hoffman
Al Gore's brilliant and powerful talk hit me square in the jaw -- he moved me to tears and called me to action in defense of our home, our Earth. -- Ralph Farris
What most strikes me about Al's leadership is that he has spent his entire life working on climate change with passion, commitment, intelligence and a firm resolve that never waivered. He didn't do this work for an award, and it makes him all the more deserving as a hero who inspires us all to be better and do more. -- Jacqueline Novogratz
Al Gore's talk at TED06 instantly gave me hope that the planetary climate crisis would finally become a front-and-center issue of public conversation and personal conscience. -- Tom Guarriello
Here is Jack Oswald's story of Al Gore's impact:
Prior to seeing Al Gore’s Climate Crisis presentation, I had always thought that he was a good person. He had always appeared bright, capable and well-meaning. On the night of the presentation, Al Gore was “on fire.” His true personality really came through, and I was truly wowed by the man and his passion for the issue he has been educating us all on. In addition, prior to his talk I had been peripherally aware of global warming and the looming climate crisis. However, I had had no idea how large a problem it was nor how immediate. I left that evening feeling a combination of scared yet moved.
The ultimate impact of that night is that shortly afterward I decided to make a major shift in my career. Until then I had been a high-tech entrepreneur, having worked on many different technologies from PC software to digital media and consumer electronics. For the past 18 months I have now shifted my focus completely toward clean energy endeavors that range from consumer conservation and efficiency to some breakthrough new sources of bio-fuel. In short, Al Gore’s talk changed my life in a dramatically positive way. His talk helped me focus my energy on combining all of the things I have wanted to do in my work: Combine exciting technologies, business building and doing something meaningful and socially beneficial. -- Jack Oswald
Al Gore won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for what is essentially a PowerPoint presentation. More info here.
(link)
As congratulations for Al Gore, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, pour in from the TED community, we asked people who saw Gore's TED2006 presentations to talk about the impact his talks had on them. This is the first in a series, to be posted throughout the day.
Al Gore's talk at TED 2006 was a turning point in my life. -- David S. Rose
I was actually crying for most of it; I could not believe I didn't know that our world was in jeopardy, I couldn't believe how much had already gone wrong without me knowing about it. -- Will Shipley
Al Gore’s talk at TED opened my eyes to what I needed to do for my grandchildren’s generation, and I now consider the impact we have on our earth in every venture we undertake. -- Howard L. Morgan
Gore's TED presentation on the climate crisis was at once riveting and inspiring -- his passion was so evident -- it prompted me to share the talk with our children, and our eldest, Charlie, now 11, has become a one-man global warming marketing machine. Charlie has created his own PowerPoint presentation, which he shares with virtually everyone he meets. -- Jeff Levy
Al Gore was the first to complement our work on Stormblade at his breakfast meeting, which was hugely encouraging and that really spurred me on to persevere, as a result of which we eventually got funding to continue the project which will in the end play a huge role in reducing global carbon emissions. -- Viktor A. Jovanovic
Al Gore's passion for spreading the word about man-made climate change is a signal that humanity still has a chance. -- Ann Willoughby
No one instance in my previous 53 years has clarified my thinking and simultaneously called me both to action and to an appreciation of the momentous importance of an issue like the TED night two years ago when Al Gore gave his Inconvenient Truth presentation. -- Jeff Studley
Lessing not impressed by Nobel Prize
"Doris Lessing pulled up in a black cab where a media horde was waiting Thursday in front of her leafy north London home. Reporters opened the door and told her she had won the Nobel Prize for literature, to which she responded: "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less.""
The TEDTalks archive is rich in proof that Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, speaking at TED and elsewhere, truly has the power to inspire action. Producer and activist Jeff Skoll heard one of Gore's PowerPoint lectures and started the ball rolling on An Inconvenient Truth -- a film and website that became an incredibly effective way to share the message on climate change.
John Doerr, the Silicon Valley financier, talks about a mind-changing conversation (like many of us had after An Inconvenient Truth) -- sitting with friends at a dinner party asking, "What can we do about what Al Gore has told us?" Doerr, it turns out, is doing quite a lot.
Speaker Tony Robbins was moved by the way Gore -- after the legendary disappointment of that 2000 presidential race -- rebounded and found his passion. Look for the moment when Gore and Robbins share a high-five down in the front row.
Majora Carter, meanwhile, offers new ways for Gore to share his passion -- by working with the thousands of people who are cleaning up the environment, starting in their own neighborhoods.
And after hearing Al Gore's first talk at TED, Jill Sobule sat backstage and learned a new song.
TEDBlog: Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize:
This morning in Sweden, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
At TED2006, Gore delivered to a rapt audience the seminal slide show that would later that year form the core of his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He followed it up with a second talk at the end of the conference showing ways of turning climate concern into action.
Throughout the day we'll be offering tributes to the impact of that speech on those present at TED2006 -- and the way the impact has spread throughout the world.
TEDBlog: Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize:
This morning in Sweden, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
At TED2006, Gore delivered to a rapt audience the seminal slide show that would later that year form the core of his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He followed it up with a second talk at the end of the conference showing ways of turning climate concern into action.
Throughout the day we'll be offering tributes to the impact of that speech on those present at TED2006 -- and the way the impact has spread throughout the world.
This morning in Sweden, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
At TED2006, Gore delivered to a rapt audience the seminal slide show that would later that year form the core of his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He followed it up with a second talk at the end of the conference showing ways of turning climate concern into action.
Throughout the day we'll be offering tributes to the impact of that speech on those present at TED2006 -- and the way the impact has spread throughout the world.
The Rocketboom for iPhone application allows you to play the most recent Rocketboom video right from your iPhone browser.
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by yatta to rocketboom iphone - more about this bookmark...
Gio from Technological Supernova speaks truth to the Dock whingers: But the whole thing about the Dock looking stupid while on the left or right side is... well... stupid. If you think that gravity is an argument against the Leopard's Dock appearance, then why don't you argue that gravity is an argument against being able to position your windows wherever you want them -- why don't your windows always fall to the bottom of the screen? Furthermore, who says Tiger's Dock doesn't have any gravity? In that case, Tiger's Dock also looks stupid when positioned on the side of the screen. The amount of blog inches (bytes?) that's been devoted to Leopard's dock is silly, and I'm a little sad to pile on. But I've been using that Dock, and I like it. It never made sense for 3d icons to be sitting in a 2d space, or for Finder's otherwise 2 dimensional metaphor to suddenly have texture. I use the dock as little as possible, which is how I believe it was meant to be used. But Leopard's dock (with stacks) is a big step forward.
Hans-Jörg Bibiko decided he couldn’t wait for a real scripting API (i.e. allowing you to remote control TextMate) and wrote
TMTOOLS, a shell command that works as a mini interpreter where the commands are all TextMate actions.You can find the help file for TMTOOLS here and his latest mailing list letter about TMTOOLS here.
Speaking of hacking, Ciarán Walsh (maintainer of the PHP and SQL bundles, and contributor extraordinaire) recently started a blog with several TM hacks, for example to make the project drawer show Finder labels or Subversion status.
Also on his blog is a glyph input manager which add the functionality mentioned in the multi-stroke key bindings post but which does not require you to remember the arcane multi-stroke key bindings (Leopard users have a look at the release notes).
On his site, but not on his blog, is also a ReMate plug-in to disable the auto-updating of the project drawer (the feature that drives people working over network connections insane). Another approach to this problem is by Rob McBroom who recently announced a Remote Project bundle on the mailing list.
Disclaimer: With the exception of Rob’s bundle, the above is all based on undocumented functionality or using things in ways they were not supposed to be used, i.e. end user innovation.
When I started blogging three and a half years ago, I quickly realized that I needed some way to embed equations into my blog posts. No solution existed at that time; although, there were several implementations of equation renderers for websites. I eventually put together an algorithm that processed LaTeX equations through latex, dvips, and ghostscript to produce png images containing the equations. I also wrote some post-processing that would allow the equations to be properly aligned with text: a+b=\frac{c}{d}=c/d. (I found the idea in one of the several rendering projects that I looked at, and improved on it.) My text processor for Movable Type, KwickXML, has included my equation rendering code from the beginning. I recently updated/rewrote KwickXML and have rewritten my equation rendering code simplifying and improving the algorithm. I now just run the equation through pdflatex, generating a pdf file that I then post-process. I no longer use latex to add color to the equation, instead I do that in the post-processing. On rendering, pdflatex produces a white equation on a black background, which I use as a mask in post-processing. When paired with another image, the white on black mask determines how opaque the pixels in the first image are, producing smooth, alpha blending. (Note that the following example may not work on browsers that don't support pngs with alpha transparency: *cough* IE6 *cough*.) The Mask Alpha Transparency Alpha Transparency Pixel Transparency Pixel Transparency The image with alpha transparency blend seamlessly with both background colors. The image with pixel transparency only looks good on the white background. Its nice anti-aliasing falls apart when it is placed on a color different than the one it was designed for---in this case white. When using equations in webpages, it is difficult to align them properly with the text:. Out of the many options for vertical alignment in CSS, I decided to go with "vertical-align: middle". However, not all equations display properly under such vertical alignment: a+e=c (
) and a+q=g (
). To properly align the equations with text on the webpage, I need to determine the "mean line" of the text and add space either above or below the rendered equation so that mean line is at the middle of the final image. To accomplish this, I add a dash before the equation, which will appear on the mean line:
I then process the image, using the dash to determine where the middle of the image should be and add any space as needed, remove the dash, and produce the final mask. Putting it all together, we have the complete algorithm:
insert equation into a LaTeX template render with pdflatex trim image, removing extra blank space use dash to detect the "mean line" remove dash and trim again add space above or below image to make the dash line in the middle of image compose the mask onto the foreground color with the "CopyOpacity" option compose that image over the background color save image
“Hillary’s laugh is unusually uninhibited for a politician—especially, perhaps, for a female politician. It is indeed a belly laugh, if not a “big belly” laugh, and it compares favorably with the incumbent Presidential laugh, a series of rapid “heh-hehs,” at once threatening and insipid, accompanied by an exaggerated, arrhythmic bouncing of head and shoulders in opposite directions.”
- Brouhahaha: The New Yorker
Today someone gave me a Sun Jar as a part of a press kit. I'm pretty thrilled as I have wanted one for a while. There is something about the idea of it that I just find poetic. Essentially it is a mason jar with a solar panel, a rechargable battery and a LED. After charging in daylight it becomes an ambient night light. Instructables has a guide to making your own. . Can't wait for the sun to return to try it out.
Red Sweater Blog: “So today I found it especially appropriate to ask myself ‘What Would Panic Do,’ when I discovered that MarsEdit’s icon has been misappropriated and included in a Linux distribution called PCLinuxOS.”
Gus Mueller, when writing about his journey toward indiedom, introduced a useful mantra for those of us trying to succeed in this business: “What Would Panic Do?” When faced with a question you haven’t answered before, whether it be with how to design a new UI, or how to respond to customers, just ask yourself what our beloved friends in Portland would do, and try your best to imitate it.
Anybody who has followed Panic’s success over the years may also have noticed noticed the sheer magnitude of image piracy they have suffered, in particular of the Transmit logo. So today I found it especially appropriate to ask myself “What Would Panic Do,” when I discovered that MarsEdit’s icon has been misappropriated and included in a Linux distribution called PCLinuxOS.
(Image courtesy of Kevin Rodgers, who brought the issue to my attention).It’s funny, MarsEdit of course isn’t even a web browser. But I guess somebody decided a globe icon of any kind would do in a pinch. After I got done laughing, I realized I had to figure out what to do. No, I mean, really what do I do? I’ve heard stories about how if you don’t defend your intellectual property, you run the risk of losing it. So I figured I needed to do something, anything that was not “sit back and do nothing.”
I’m not sure what Panic would do, aside from the “make a gallery and laugh at all the violators” angle. But because I’m a generally likable and friendly guy, I decided to try to get in touch with these PCLinuxOS people. I wanted to figure out how this happened, and who could remedy the situation. I went to the site and discovered there was no easy way to do so discreetly. There were forums, but I thought this would be best handled as an email inquiry. The closest thing I found was a PO Box in Texas. Somehow I was hoping for something a little more immediate. This is the internet, after all!
Via their web site I found out that they congregate in a couple IRC channels, so I figured that would be a good place to start. As a Mac developer who never touches Linux (I’m not anti-Linux, I just have other things to do), I put on my best polite humility personality and joined the channel, basically saying “Look, I’m not sure where to start, but you’ve got my app icon in your product.” The reaction was almost immediately hostile and confrontational. Whereas a responsible group of developers would appreciate having such a violation brought to their attention, this group seemed more interested in instructing me as the evils of not sharing, and bemoaning the hassle of yet another “patent” issue. To be fair, I don’t know whether this motley collection of IRC patrons actually represents the PCLinuxOS development group or not, but this kind of blind hostility to a tactful inquiry makes it obvious how some bad seeds do a lot to ruin the reputation of a community.
(Somebody from the channel has posted the first part of the transcript in the PCLinuxOS forums. To the great credit of the forum participants, there seems to be a general and somewhat immediate consensus that the problem needs to be remedied. I’m going to wait to see how this plays out, but hopefully the forum patrons, and the project’s developers, will adopt a less hostile approach than the IRC patrons did.)
Ironically, some of the same people who were hostile at first later became somewhat more helpful. Perhaps I killed them with kindness (or persistence). I couldn’t really pin a badge of complete honor or shame on anybody, since they tended to switch somewhat confusingly from helpful to antagonistic. One guy repeatedly suggested that I wasn’t doing my footwork, and that I shouldn’t be accusing them of something until I know it’s their fault. My response was basically I don’t know what the heck is going on, I just know my icon is in your product. Call me crazy, but what you put in your product is your responsibility!
Finally one very reasonable-acting guy just said he would let the main developer know, and it should be easy to sort out. That’s the kind of response I was expecting to get, about 30 minutes earlier. If PCLinuxOS is looking for a “PR Czar,” they should put “mikes1″ in charge. Step 1: Take responsibility. Step 2: Act responsibly. Pretty easy, really.
If you develop a product, even if it’s open source, make it easy for people to get in touch with you. And if you coordinate your support as a user around an open source project, don’t give your project a bad reputation by being a total jerk to anybody who drops in to gently inform you that your project is violating a copyright.
Hopefully dealing with this kind of situation won’t become a regular activity. I could really do with no more of that type of IRC chat. But if it does happen again, maybe I’ll be slightly more adept at handling it efficiently and without provoking hostility.
You might feel a twinge of guilt about eating a decadent chocolate fudge cake in the middle of the night, but that's not the kind of conscience-troubling fare that Paolo Tullio investigates in ""You actually ate that?"
Ever tried ortolan, a tiny bird cooked in alcohol that is eaten whole (after biting off the head) and is now banned in France? How do you feel about eating scorpions, grubs, poisonous puffer fish, suckling pig, or foie gras? Eager anticipation? Disgust?
Tullio says, "No matter how weird a food looks, if people are eating it for pleasure rather than because of starvation, then it's probably good."
I don't know if I could crunch into a fried scorpion pincer like he did in Vietnam, but the idea of eating a "pork crackling stuffed with crab meat" almost gets the salivary glands going.
Yet more proof Ann Coulter likes to hear herself talk - and that talk shows like that! She appeared on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, and talks about how Jews need perfecting - "we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say" - to the point of being Christians. Deutsch was shocked, argued with her, and went to commercial by saying, "Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I'm offended by that personally." Media Matters has a transcript of the show, and there was a pretty wacky part leading up the "perfecting Jews" moment.
COULTER: I give all of these speeches at megachurches across America, and the one thing that's really striking about it is how utterly, completely diverse they are, and completely unself-consciously. You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it's like they have a chip on their shoulder. They're just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And -- DEUTSCH: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don't see any more or less chips there either way. That's erroneous. COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you're lying. DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.Interesting, Seinfeld is a show created by some "imperfect" Jews! If anything, we'd like this to be a sign to the bookers at talk shows: Stop the Ann Coulter madness and stop inviting her on.
- "That's enough, fatty. And while you're at it, my wheel's stuck." Smart carts in London may soon warn shoppers they're buying too much junk food. [Reuters]
- Back where they started: Japanese food processors who once moved from Thailand to China now moving back to Thailand after food scares. [Bangkok Post]
- Hunters for the Hungry is a "national campaign that is racking up record amounts of donated deer, wild hog, and squirrel meat to bolster soup-kitchen chilis during the coldest, leanest stretch of the year for poorer Americans." [CBS News]
- Yet another recall*: "Aliki Foods says its 'Aliki Chicken Broccoli Fettuccine Alfredo Made with White Chicken' was distributed to several Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, including Maine. The packages in question are marked 'best if used by September 2008.' " There's possible Listeria issues with this incident. *These occurences are becoming so common that I might have to coin an acronym: YAR! [WCSH-TV]
- Polishing up the tailgate: How to elevate the typical parking lot menu. [Belleville (Texas) News-Democrat]
- Cordon Bleu opens branch in Lone Star State: It opened last week in Dallas and is located, conveniently enough, "right near Ace Mart, possibly the best restaurant supply store in the city and the place where true chefs really do buy their gear." [Pegasus News]
- Kansas woman wins Southern Living cooking contest: Lindsay Weiss $100,000 for her Roasted Banana Ice Cream with Warm Peanut Butter Sauce recipe. She's from my hometown, more or lessOverland Park represent! [The Kansas City Star.]
Apple’s iPhone Web apps directory is online. (It includes NewsGator Mobile, of course.)
Does this mean no native development for iPhone? It doesn’t necessarily mean that. But it does show how Apple is serious about folks creating web apps for iPhone.
It may be obvious—the screen shot for NewsGator Mobile on Apple’s new web apps pages comes from my own subscriptions list. A few of my favorites are shown, including the formidable I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?. ;)
I created the screenshot using iPhoney. Then I used a graphics app to remove the Aqua scroll bar, which would have obviously been out of place.
In last week's ProNet conference call, which is quickly evolving into a call-in internet talk show of sorts, I spoke with David Recordon, the man leading the effort behind the Open Social Graph Project, or "Glue." If you are interested in learning more about:
- the open social graph
- what actually is the "social graph"
- what the goals are for the project
- what are the principals that govern its development
- what kind of products one might build with this technology
- what is XFN and what are the other protocols and standards that this project is taking advantage of
Then this is a great podcast for you. Listen to it now (it is about 41 minutes long); and when you are done check out some of our previous podcasts posted to our ProNet Vox Community.
During the call I also gave updates about the Movable Type Open Source project, the Movable Type product roadmap, new plugins like Template Hammer and Ghostwriter and much, much more.
Remember our ProNet conference calls are open to the public. Anyone is welcome to join and participate in the conversation we have there.
Since the end of TimesSelect, I have been enjoying the ways in which various electronic explorers have been diving into the depths of our paper’s history to find interesting content. Jason Kottke is certainly the most prominent blogger doing this. He first led off with a smartly compiled list of gems from the deep archive [...]
I4U reports that Samsung today announced Beyonce Special Edition B'Phone, a limited edition handset exclusive to Sprint.
"As an update to the popular, award-winning UpStage by Samsung, the B'Phone features a dual-sided design.
The Samsung B'Phone is has a burgundy and gold color body. The B'Phone comes complete with a preloaded special Beyonce-styled start-up screen. Consumers who purchase the B'Phone will receive exclusive access to premium video and music content."
The spinning lady that is supposed to tell you if you're more right-brained or left-brained just makes my brain hurt. She was spinning counter-clockwise for a long time, and I tried to look away based on Kottke's advice, but just got distsracted by the ads. But after coming back to the browser tab after a couple hours, now she's spinning clockwise, and I can't make her stop. Damn you, spinning lady! How am I supposed to categorize myself into one of two buckets?
"Papercraft is the most versatile personal fabrication system: all you need is a printer, scissors and glue. now there's a CAD for papercraft called pepakura that unfolds any three-dimensional model, adds the tabs and prepares the pattern to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper. Using tyvek or felt you can even make durable, waterproof models - or even real things like lamps, wallets and all sorts protective covers for your delicate electronics."
Here's a superficial but interesting article about urban beekeeping in San Francisco. More common than I would have thought. I'd love to do this someday.
Hand-made by laurenalane, Mr. Brooks “likes to stroll in the rain. Or in the not-rain,” as frogmuseum2 reports. “He doesn’t say much. He enjoys the simple pleasures of life.” And he fancies attending his weekly Armadillo lectures, which spur much discussion “but no heated arguments.”
Photos from frogmuseum2 and laurenalane.
I've been obsessing over this optical illusion ever since I ran across it yesterday. Is she spinning clockwise or counterclockwise? Or both...and how is that even possible? It's a left-brain vs. right-brain test...which way she spins for you determines which side of your brain is more dominant. (Tip: if you're having trouble getting her to switch directions, focus on a point a couple of inches below her feet...that seems to do it for me.)
(link)
I think I'm sweating! Here is a new pic of the lovely Penelope Cruz and her latest love, Javier Bardem, as the couple vacation in Maldives. There's been buzz that these two have taken their close friendship to the next level -- but now there's proof. They've also been seen on the beaches of the islands kissing and playing in the surf.
Penelope denied that she and Javier were an item, back in July, saying, "It's not true. He's a friend and the best actor in the world." But something's obviously changed. You don't lay, all wet and tangled up, with someone who's just "a friend".
I'm happy for them. I'm a big believer in falling in love with your best friend -- I married mine.
For whatever reason, it’s suddenly become common to draft a “tweet” linking to just-published weblog entries. This practice makes me crazy, because if you’re following someone on Twitter, you’re obviously also following their site — that’s how you found out about their Twitter account in the first place!
In case you haven’t made the logical leap, these discourteous time-thiefs hit us twice with a notice that they’ve just added new content to their site. We’ll see your latest post in our news aggregators — we don’t need to see it in Twitter too! Sure, your admiring public will be in the dark for an hour (or less), but I promise they’ll make do.
Unless you’re warning me of imminent physical danger, please refrain from telling me about it more than once.
I realize that Twitter’s “what are you doing?” inducement fell away almost immediately and that the service is now used predominantly to communicate random, immediate, and ephemeral thoughts, but that doesn’t mean it need also be an extension of your weblog feed!
Am I missing something here? No? I didn’t think so.
APPP is organizing a Catalyst training event in Braga, Portugal, November the 2nd and 3rd. Catalyst Days is a two day training event for Perl programmers who don't know much (or nothing at all) about Catalyst or even MVC frameworks in general, with lectures in the mornings and exercises in the afternoons. Novis, Optimus, Clix, log, excentric and the Department of Informatics of the University of Minho are sponsoring, making the venue available and even going as far as providing lunch for the attendees during the two days.Read more of this story at use Perl.
I've just chucked out my old kitchen clock, too. Just in time! As it were!
At a very reasonable $18, too, over at Etsy. Except it's sold out, but maybe the maker would make some more..
(via Geek Alerts)
Events galore. Last night was at the Creative Commons mixer in SF, where we demo'd a new CC licensing widget we've built for TypePad (everything.typepad.com blog post coming soon) and presented to CC a check for $15,000+ that was raised by the LiveJournal community as part of this summer's permanent account sale. Tonight I'll be at the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association's event on Marketing 2.0 in Cupertino, on a panel talking about...wait for it...blogging! That makes it a "circle the Bay" day (Berkeley --> SF --> South Bay --> Berkeley), which means at some point there will be prog rock on in the car.
Not just R2 stuffed with a camera, either, apparently he's remote controlled and can zoom around your desk.
What corkin use a moving webcam is I don't know, but the remote control is lightsaber shaped! Equally, this thing is 350 bux, so clearly no-one in their right mind would actually buy one.What, there's an R2D2 home theatre system too. That one's $2799. In fact, I wouldn't even bother clicking the link.
(via Shiny Shiny)
Aww, how completely adorable is this?
Over at a Public School in Downtown New York, a teacher is using Link to help improve kids' math skills.
Peggy Noonan: I urge HuffPo readers to send in any pictures they might have or know of of presidents cracking up.
Photo by Joao Silva that made the front page of the NY Times yesterday.
An Iraqi boy peered Tuesday inside a car that was towed to a Baghdad police station after two women inside were killed.
As I was rushing late to an appointment yesterday, I saw this on the newsstand and had to stop for a long look. An arresting image.
(link)
I'm pleased at announce that CPAN::Reporter 1.00 has been released and should soon be appearing on a CPAN mirror near you. Now, anyone with CPAN and a relatively modern version of Perl can contribute to CPAN Testers.Read more of this story at use Perl.
This post will run on Beckett.com on Thursday, October 11.
It's always the same: I go to a card show with want list in hand, and I come home with a stack of random cards I don't really remember wanting (or purchasing, for that matter). It's like I enter a euphoric sleep walk between the orderly rows of eight-foot dealer tables, amongst Baby Boomers in over-stuffed, well-worn Mets t-shirts whiling away the hours haggling over commons, commiserating about the cards they used to have, and trading stories about forgotten utilitymen who still sign through the mail. It doesn't matter where the show is. Arena, junior high school cafeteria, or drunk tank – the feeling is the same: Bliss.
This past Saturday, I took the train up to the White Plains October Regional (I'm unclear about the show's actual name) at the Westchester County Convention Center in White Plains, New York. The County Convention Center is an old Art Deco/Neo-classical hall that, if I had to venture a guess, was probably built as part of a WPA project in the Thirties. It had that musty public library vibe in spades. It was fitting, perhaps, that one dealer's endless stacks of old sports books were relegated to a corner.
The show was good; my haul was good. I'm a dollar-bin, off-grade kind of guy, and shows like this one are great places for guys like me. I got a handful of mid-Sixties league leaders cards, a whole bunch of cards to help complete my 1978 Topps baseball set, and a number of cards of two of my favorite forgotten Dodgers, Claude Osteen and John Roseboro, including a perforated 1961 Post Canadian edition with John's last name spelled 'Rosboro' ... I'm finding it more and more enjoyable to buy cards from oddball sets. Perhaps it's a subconscious rebellion against the homogenized cards made today, but I'm having a great time discovering Topps' Venezuelan issues – new favorite card: Koufax's 'Retirado' Venezuelan Topps card from 1967– weird Topps inserts from the Sixties and Seventies, and Redman Tobacco cards from 1954 and 1955. I've also found that I appreciate those sets with weak rookie classes much more than I do sets with strong ones ... 1964 and 1959 Topps are especially high on my list ...
I bought a 1969 Topps card of Johnny Podres on the Padres, though shied away from having it signed by the man, even though he was in the building and I got a free autograph with my paid admission (I hope the show's promoters paid Mr. Podres well; there were a lot of people at the show).
I've always done that; I don't feel comfortable asking famous people for their autographs. Even though I guess from a celebrity's standpoint, signing autographs comes with the territory, I've never felt comfortable about asking. I'd have a pretty good collection, if only I'd have had the nerve: On a family trip to South Dakota one year, my dad and my sister and I saw Oil Can Boyd (still in his cleats) sitting on the hood of his Caddy in the parking lot of our motel in Sioux City, Iowa. My dad hustled us over to meet him, then told him that, as we're from Boston, we loved him. Then he and my dad shared an awkward handshake (or high-five, or hug – I'm not sure which) ... Luis Tiant, Norm Van Lier, and a few other semi-forgotten superstar athletes came to my elementary school to do a workshop on teamwork and when it was time for us to get El Tiante's autograph, I stood off to one side and watched ... My dad used to take my sister and I to Celtics Rookie Camp (back when they had such a thing), and while she collected the autographs of future stars like Vin Baker, in the one time I asked, I got shrugged off by John Havlicek ... And I feel the same way about asking through the mail. I find it's awkward to write a letter to a player when it's obvious to both of us that I want an autograph. I mean, I did get a couple of signatures this way, including Anthony Young (a pitcher for the Mets who lost a whole bunch of games in a row) and Loy Vaught (the poor man's Derrick Coleman).
But my enjoyment at the show wasn't only from the cards I bought. It also came from the eccentrics who surrounded me. I overheard numerous guys congratulating themselves on finding the rogue common that had eluded them for years and a few guys in mid-gloat about all the rare, valuable and fantastic cards that they had back home that were in much better condition than similar ones the dealers had for sale. My two favorite moments: First, two dealers agreeing emphatically that the Yankees, in an 0-2 hole and on the brink of elimination, had the Indians right where they wanted them. (That strategy worked out well.) Second, an older man with a cane limping down an aisle and stage-whispering into his cell phone that no, he was not at the baseball card show. He was at home, resting.
Like I said before, it was a good day. And then, on the train ride home, everything seemed to come full circle, like it was meant to be. There was a mother and her young child. The mother, though still young, was doing a very good impersonation of the classic overbearing mother. Even at a young age, the kid seemed to know what he was in for (the mother repeatedly asked him "PLEASE don't bang your head, Robert"). So while I'm hoping that little Bobby figures out a way to break the chains later on and listens to a lot of heavy metal (or his generation's equivalent), I've also come to appreciate mothers like this. I mean, let's be honest: Card collecting would be in a very different place were it not for the best intentions of overbearing mothers everywhere.
So let me amend my previous sentiment for young Robert: Let us hope that he breaks free of his mother's clutches, but let us also hope that she retaliates by throwing out all of his baseball cards, thus preserving the time-honored ebb and flow of this, our great hobby.
- Dinowitz to Host Congestion Pricing Forum Tonight (West Bronx Blog)
- European Air Pollution More Dangerous Than Car Crashes (Reuters)
- Bike Parking, Trees to Be Required in Parking Lots (Queens Gazette)
- Lopate: Could Paris Bike-Sharing Work Here? (WNYC)
- Ninth Ave Cycle Track Not the Same as Failed 1980 Broadway Lanes (TSTC)
- Bike Delivery Law a 'Safe Issue' for Lappin (Sun)
- Monserrate Bill Would Regulate Stadium Parking Fees (Sun)
- Quinn Ponders Term Limits a.k.a. Loss of Parking Privileges (Daily Politics, Post)
- Avella Says Real Estate Industry Rules Council (Politicker)
- Suffolk County Exec Holds Up Transpo Funds (TSTC)
- Public, Press More Fed Up With Albany Than Usual (ReformNY)
- Woman Killed by Motorcycle in Harlem (Post)
- Man in Wheelchair Hit by Two Cars; No Charges Filed (AMNY)
Damon Ginandes recently painted this amazing mural in Red Hook, Brooklyn on Degraw St. between Columbia and Van Brunt. It is 60 feet long and 12 feet high and was done with a mix of spraypaint and latex acrylic.
(Thanks, Duncan)
Nature has put a couple of short video interviews online to accompany two papers published in this week's edition that explain how certain aspects Indo-European languages have evolved over time.
The first study is by the inimitable Erez Lieberman and looks at why the used of 'ed' to make past tense verbs in the English language (e.g. 'juggled') has become so widespread despite historical competition with other irregular versions, only a few of which now exist.
The researchers found that the more frequently the a verb is used in the language, the less quickly it becomes regularised in the language.
A similar technique was used in a study by Mark Pagel and colleagues, who found that in Indo-European languages, the more frequently a word is used the less likely it is to be replaced.
The video interviews are with two members of the Pagel lab, who describe their findings and their significance.
Link to Nature video interviews on the evolution of language.
Link to Nature editorial with links to studies.
Link to write-up from Nature News.
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS: “The bits and pieces I've heard are maddeningly non-specific: I don’t know, for instance, whether a full software developer’s kit (SDK) will be released; what tier of Apple Developer Connection (ADC) program member you need to be (if any); and how much of the innards would be unleashed.”
Normally I wouldn’t think much about a piece like this—but it’s by Glenn Fleishman and it’s published in TidBITS, so I am thinking that something might be happening.
(geek level of this post: 90%)
This is so useful that I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about it earlier. I hate compiling PHP outside of the module-level convenience of yum on a CentOS or Fedora server, but I love coding against some features that only exist in PHP 5.2 and above, such as DOMDocument::register_node_class (for customizing the XML DOM with convenience methods and extra functionality) and DateTimeZone (which exists in 5.1, but only with a custom compilation flag that's not set in the yum-repo version).
Anyway, go here and set up the remi yum repository with that simple wget/rpm command for your OS. The page is in French, but it doesn't matter. I figured it out, and the only French I know is that télécharger means "download".
Example: For CentOS 5, go to the RHEL 5 section and run these commands:
wget http://[big long URL].el5.remi.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh remi-release-5*.rpm
Then you have the remi repository on your system. It's disabled by default (in /etc/yum.repos.d) so you don't accidentally upgrade unwanted components with automatic yum updates. To enable it for a particular package, like to get the latest PHP, do this:
yum --enablerepo=remi update php
Done. Don't forget to upgrade any additional modules that you've installed outside of yum's management (for me, I needed php-memcache and php-apc). Other PHP modules that you already have installed, such as php-mbstr, php-mysql, and php-gd, are updated with PHP automatically from remi.
[root@server ~]# php -v
PHP 5.2.4 (cli) (built: Aug 31 2007 16:02:49)
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies
Loving the Untitled Landscapes for Portable Media Players series by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir AKA EcoArtTech.
My only quibble is that there should be a version just for Zunes™… j/k
Turns out Atkinson dithering is really easy, for that classic Mac look!
Here's a minimal Python implementation (requires PIL).
From the always excellent xkcd, this comic absolutely drips hilarious nerdiness and nerdy hilariousness all over the place. "Oh yes, Little Bobby Tables, we call him."
(link)
Is super-sanitized food good for us in the long run or is it giving us weak digestive systems? Kent Sepkowitz of Slate magazine gives reasons "Why Americans should ingest more excrement."
No, you don't have to eat the stuff out of a bowl, but a pathogen or two won't kill you. Sepkowitz explains the current situation with our mostly squeaky clean food supply.
Our food is hosed and boiled and rinsed and detoxified and frozen and salted and preserved. Recently, we have begun to irradiate it, too—just in case. As a result, when our bodies encounter the occasional inevitable bug, they're unhappy. Our centuries-long program of winnowing out all the muck has turned us into sissies and withered the substantial part of the immune system mediated by our intestinal tract.
Instead of obsessing over killing all possibly harmful organisms in our food, Sepkowitz suggests that scientists should find out how much crap we can safely eat and how much we need to eat to stay healthy.
Daring Fireball, The ‘Un’ in ‘Unsupported’: “I think I finally understand a certain misguided mindset that I’ve been baffled by for a decade. This mindset is exemplified by the sort of person who thinks that Apple ‘screwed them over’ with the release of the iPhone 1.1.1 update.”
Oh boy. Bill Richardson's campaign now has a new motif for their campaign literature in Iowa, distributing information about him in the format of baseball cards, complete with him at mound and ready to pitch.
The back of the card lists "positions played" — congressman, ambassador, secretary of energy, governor — and names his accomplishments as "wins."
This is all very cute, but there's one big problem: Richardson claimed for about 40 years that he had been drafted in 1966 to play for the Kansas City (now Oakland) A's — he had not — then retracting it in 2005 and saying it had been an honest mistake on his part.
Mark this card down as an "error."
Errors in software used to just happen to one computer at a time.
Web applications mean that errors happen to lots and lots of people, all at the same time, often when they'd really rather be getting something done. Spurred on by Flickr, developers and designers have taken to adding a bit of personality to their branded error pages:
See more at: Who Has The Best Sorry Page?
"Sorry pages" are like a category of folk art unto themselves. They defuse a possibly difficult situation ("I can't get to my photos!") with humor, and help communicate expectations without overly technical jargon.
Keeping your applications on the web also means that moving your data around between apps is complicated. OAuth has jumped into the fray with a new standard for 3rd party API authentication. It's an extraction of several examples currently in the wild, and is designed to allow users of a service to grant temporary permission to a 3rd party to access their private data. It needs to be safe and revokable, and keep data consumers from having to ask users for their passwords. I've been watching this effort from a short distance, and I can honestly say that I have no desire to see politics, sausage, or technical specs get made. Especially when crypto-nerds get involved.
Read the OAuth page for an explanation of what they're on about, and what they've created.
OAuth mostly succeeds, but there's one new-to-me addition to the spec that dangerously interferes with meaningful, attributable Sorry pages like the ones illustrated above. I've written before about the niceties of Google Authsub, specifically the way it opens the door to experimentation without a pre-existing relationship with Google. OAuth has introduced a step into its specified flow that I think is a bad idea: instead of just sending the user to a service provider's authentication page, it's first necessary for the Consumer (the ones that want to access a user's data) to perform a little behind-the-scenes sleight of hand with the Provider (the app where the user's data lives) in order to juggle some keys back and forth. If this step fails, it's up to the Consumer to figure out what went wrong and report to the User that something has gone wrong, instead of letting the Provider do so themselves via their usual language / design: upside-down birds, Admiral Ackbar, massages, etc. There's a world of difference between a printer telling you "Flickr's not working" and you seeing it for yourself, and getting the comforting "massage" response that also tells you what's going on, whether it's unexpected, and when you might get to play with your toys again.
Mos Def and Kanye West trading verses as Damon Dash and others watch on. Exclusive freestyle cyphers coming from Perez Hilton, is this a sign that hip-hop is dead, or that it's still alive? Mos Def and Kanye West Freestyle
Faculty and students are reeling after a noose was found on the door of a black professor's office at Columbia University's Teachers College yesterday. The NYPD's Hate Crime task force is investigating the incident and the professor has been identified in the media as Professor Madonna Constantine, whose interests are listed as "Cultural competence in counseling, training, and supervision. Mental health issues of people of color in the United States and immigrants. Vocational issues of adolescents and college students of color." About 100 students marched to Teachers College late last night, and the Bwog reports they yelled chants like "We will not be silent!" and "Bollinger's house for justice!" Another rally will be held today in front of Columbia's Arthur Zankel Hall at 2PM, before a town hall meeting. One professor said, "You might expect this stuff at the undergraduate level, but not here. We've never had any ethnic or racial tensions." A source told the Post that the police are "investigating whether another professor put the noose there rather than a student...another professor who had a rivalry with her and was jealous over the work she did." Teachers College president Susan Fuhrman sent out a statement condemning the incident yesterday and the Columbia Spectator received a written statement from Columbia president Lee Bollinger: "This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us. I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action. I also want to express our full support of Teachers College and President Susan Furhman in dealing with this matter." Still, many students want the school to do more. Update: WCBS 2 adds more details to the police lead about a dispute between Constantine and another professor:
Constantine told police the other professor, a woman of Indian descent, had replaced her while she was on an extended leave, and grew upset when she returned to reclaim her position. "There's apparently ill will about that," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been completed. The official stressed that the dispute was only one possible lead, and that there were no official suspects as of Wednesday morning.
Supertaster: "a person who experiences taste with far greater intensity than average.... The cause of this heightened response is currently unknown, although it is thought to be, at least in part, due to an increased number of fungiform papillae. The evolutionary advantage to supertasting is unclear. In some environments, heightened taste response, particularly to bitterness, would represent an important advantage in avoiding potentially toxic plant alkaloids. However, in other environments, increased response to bitter may have limited the range of palatable foods. In our modern, energy-rich environment, supertasting may be cardioprotective, due to decreased liking and intake of fat, but may increase cancer risk via decreased vegetable intake. It may be a cause of picky eating, but picky eaters are not necessarily supertasters, and vice versa." [Source: Wikipedia]
Backstory: All of us here at Serious Eats HQ were surprised to receive envelopes in the mail today from Doug Cress, who recently set up Supertaster Test, a site that offers test kits to help you determine if you're a supertaster. They're $4.95, but we got ours as a surprise—good marketing on Cress's part, since here I am, taking the bait and writing about it.
I was making meatloaf in the Serious Eats kitchen while everyone else took theirs, otherwise I would have captured the full glory on video as Robyn made a presumably horrible face—she's a supertaster. I would have also captured Ed's disappointment at being a mere taster. Instead, I only got my own ugly mug on video.
Anyway, word is that Cress has sent these kits out to a number of food bloggers. There's a survey associated with the test, and Cress will be making the results public in a few weeks. Will be interesting to see who the super tasters are among the food blogging community.
Nine out of ten ESPN experts are picking the Rockies to beat the Diamondbacks. So is 71% of SportsNation. And if the lines from various shady gambling entities are to be believed, that’s what the betting public believes as well.
It was only a week ago when I was just another garden variety Diamondback basher. At that time I wrote “The Diamondbacks … have one of the worst lineups ever for a team that reached the playoffs, a group that resembles the 1988 Dodgers sans Kirk Gibson“, and went on to pick the Cubs to sweep the series.
I mentioned in passing in that article that the Diamondbacks’ offense had been much better in September, then quickly dismissed it by using Augie Ojeda’s name as a punchline. Well, I now think I might have bypassed that performance too quickly. Take a look at the following:
April-August September PECOTA Snyder .253/.330/.431 .246/.394/.439 .263/.340/.436 Young .234/.287/.468 .253/.333/.463 .283/.363/.541 Jackson .279/.362/.444 .326/.418/.562 .294/.380/.486 Reynolds .262/.333/.486 .300/.394/.522 .260/.325/.483 Drew .232/.308/.359 .266/.333/.426 .287/.349/.504 Upton .226/.278/.381 .214/.290/.339 .256/.319/.415 AVERAGE .248/.316/.428 .268/.360/.459 .274/.346/.478Through games of August 31, the six pre-peak regulars in the Diamondbacks’ everyday lineup were averaging a .744 OPS. And then, from September 1st onward, with nothing particuarly remarkable happening on the Diamondbacks’ schedule, that average shot up to a .819 OPS. What was the average PECOTA-projected performance from these players before the season began? An .824 OPS — essentially identical to their September performance.
Considering how young these players are, I think we need to ask ourselves whether the Diamondbacks were getting hot in September … or whether they were simply regressing back toward their true levels of performance. It was the April through August performance that was the aberration, in some sense.
This is a gross oversimplification, of course, and it is not necessarily to say that the Diamondbacks are the better team. They do however have some structural advantages in this series, with Brandon Webb potentially getting to pitch three times, plus the home field advantage, plus some favorable match-up factors (and that’s how I picked it in my Sports Illustrated preview that hits newsstands today: Bax in 7). In general, there have been too many words expended on trying to explain away how the Diamondbacks outperformed Pythagoras … and too few how they might have underperformed their talent.
"When these songs come on, White People look at each other and say 'Awwww yeah' or 'Hell yeah' and are compelled to sing along. Sometimes, there's also corresponding stupid dance move." Insane In The Membrane strangely absent. Also, God Bless YouTube.
If you're one of the, oh, I don't know, 5,000 people who have bothered to follow the Yankee Stadium parking garage story, or the Hudson Yards zoning story or the story about the city block in Prospect Heights that's being leveled and turned into a gigantic surface parking lot, you may enjoy James Howard Kunstler's column this week. The author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, has lately noticed that many American towns "are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends." He writes:Click to Continue-->Because I wrote a couple of books about the design of cities (and the shortcomings of suburbia), a lot of blather comes my way about what towns around the nation are planning for the future -- and, off course, I hear plenty on the subject in my own town, Saratoga Springs, New York, which is a classic "main street" type town. I also happen to travel a lot and actually see what's going on far from home. Almost everything I see and hear is inconsistent with what I think reality has in store for us.
Most American towns, including my own, are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends. Municipal leaders (and the public they serve) have no idea what kind of problems the nation faces with oil. Because life in the USA has worked a particular way all their lives, they assume that it will continue to operate that way. Not only will they be disappointed as happy motoring spirals into history, but they will create a lot mischief in the meantime in planning things based on faulty assumptions.
My own town, for instance, relies heavily on tourism, in particular tourism based on happy motoring. There is not the slightest apprehension among the people here, or our leaders in city hall, that automobile-based tourism may not be happening as soon as five years from now. All our political energy is being expended in fighting about what kind of parking structures we will build (with borrowed money) and where to put them, and how these things might incorporate some secondary uses, such as police offices. We have also been debating plans for the expansion of our modest convention center -- in connection with added parking structures. It seems to me that one of the first things to go as the US economy contracts, along with its energy supply, will be activities like boat shows and optometrist's conventions.
Now this town happens to be on a railroad line that connects New York City to Montreal. Before 1950, it was the main way that people came to this town. These days, we get one train a day in each direction. The trains are invariably late, and not just a little late, but hours late. The track bed is in miserable shape and, of course, Amtrak is a sort of soviet-style management organization. There is no awareness among the public here, or our leaders, that we would benefit from improving the passenger railroad service, and around the state of New York generally there is no conversation about fixing the railroads. (Governor Elliot Spitzer is preoccupied these days with arranging to give driver's licenses to people who are in the country illegally.) We are going to pay a large penalty for these failures of attention....
Giganti: A very large style of Provolone, typically weighing 200 to 600 pounds and measuring up to approximately 7 feet in length.
There's a surprising amount of language around cheese.
(link)
Open source Mac DVD ripping-and-reencoding tool, Handbrake, fixes bugs and increases speed in version 0.9.1.
I've just learned that nearly 90 members of the House of Representatives have now added their names to a letter to the President pledging not to vote for any more funding for the war and only to vote for supplementals that fully fund withdrawal and nothing else.
Back in July, 70 House members signed a similar letter vowing to only fund withdrawal. At the time, The Politico deemed this a "big development," adding: "This may be the beginning of the end for the Iraq War."
Now more than 15 new members have added their names to the letter, bringing the total to 87, another significant step forward.
I obtained a copy of letter and the list of signers -- which will officially be released and sent next week -- from a House aide. Here's the key quote from the letter, which is still being circulated among Dems for more signatures:
Dear Mr. President:Seventy House Members wrote in July to inform you that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.
Now you are requesting an additional $45 billion to sustain your escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion you requested for military operations during FY08 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, even more of us are writing anew to underscore our opposition to appropriating any additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq other than a time-bound, safe redeployment as stipulated above.
That nearly 90 members are now saying they won't vote for any funding save for redeployment is significant because it means that more than a third of the House Dem caucus is effectively saying they will no longer vote to fund the war, no matter what. Though this doesn't necessarily mean the House Dem leadership won't be able to get some sort of war funding passed, the leadership will have to reckon with this big block of No votes when figuring out its response to Bush's request for war funding.
"We've finally crossed the threshold of getting one-third of the Dem caucus to fund only redeployment and nothing else," says one aide to a House liberal. "That's a third of the Democratic caucus supporting the use of Congress' appropriations power to take the war reins away from the President."
The full letter and full list of signers are after the jump.
The Honorable George W. BushPresident
United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Seventy House Members wrote in July to inform you that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.
Now you are requesting an additional $45 billion to sustain your escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion you requested for military operations during FY08 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, even more of us are writing anew to underscore our opposition to appropriating any additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq other than a time-bound, safe redeployment as stipulated above.
More than 3,742 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 27,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.
We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Co-signers: Murphy (CT), Jackson, Brown (FL), Thompson (MS), Watt, Meeks, Loebsack, Weiner, Kucinich, DeFazio, Farr, Waxman, Thompson (CA), Lee, Woolsey, Waters, Watson, Frank, Conyers, Filner, Rush, Towns, Clay, Wynn, Delahunt, Holmes-Norton, Butterfield, Solis, Maloney, Nadler, Honda, Cohen, Hare, Napolitano, Hastings, McGovern, Kaptur, Schakowsky, Carson, Linda Sanchez, Grijalva, Olver, Jackson-Lee, McDermott, Markey, Fattah, Pallone, Hinojosa, Stark, Scott (VA), Moran, McCollum, Oberstar, DeGette, Tauscher, Holt, Hinchey, Pastor, Davis (IL), Hall, Velazquez, Rangel, Hodes, Blumenauer, Lynch, Artur Davis, Johnson (GA), Payne, Cleaver, Lewis, Clarke, Abercrombie, Moore(WI), Ellison, Baldwin, Christensen, Scott (GA), Paul, Gutierrez, Welch, Capps, Rothman, Cummings, Tierney, Doggett, Eshoo, and Tubbs-Jones.
Green Brooklyn (via Brownstoner) has a not-surprising-as-it-should-be post on, well, the Gowanus Canal having a touch of the gonohorrea. According to a Scienceline article, "a biologist at the New York City College of Technology, has her students analyze water samples and observe the oily substance that coats the water’s surface each afternoon. 'One group of students found gonohorrea in a water drop,' said Haque. She’s particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the canal’s bottom, and thinks that the substance is a colonizing life form that adheres to the contaminated sediments." Suddenly looking at these recent photos of swans on the canal is less heartwarming. Green Brooklyn suggests writing a note to Bloomberg to make him aware of this, especially prior to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection's stakeholder meeting later this month. In the meantime, you probably don't want to date anyone in the The Gowanus Dredgers canoe club. Photo via Keith Allison's Flickr.
Jakob Lodwick's take on Web 3.0"I hope two themes emerge in the next generation of websites: users subscribing to a service and users exchanging money amongst each other."
BLDGBLOG talks with experimental architect Lebbeus Woods about his work, starting with an image he made of Manhattan with dams on the Hudson and East Rivers, which reveals a deep canyon between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
(link)
“The secret unconscious desire for many hackers is for Dad to publicly recognise them, and to offer them jobs within Apple. When Dad doesn't do this, and indeed seems to thwart them, then Oedipal rivalry occurs, a love-hate relationship with Dad, and a desire to harm him. Thus the many writers who now say they won't buy an iPhone or who tell others that Apple is not the same company they knew it to once be, thus revealing a level of "stuckness" most family therapists understand.”
- A family therapist analyzes Apple fanboy rage
It turns out there's a picky eater gene. How many of you had it as a kid? If you have a child, have you passed it on? (No word on whether the gene is dominant or recessive.)
A new study says that 78 percent of picky eating is caused by genetics and the other 22 percent is caused by environment. This is a shock to me because I always thought my own picky eating was due to the fact that my late mother was an unspeakably bad cook. Mom, wherever you are, I apologize for complaining about the food that was put in front of me. I know now it wasn't your fault. Actually, maybe it was your fault, if your side of the family supplied the picky eater gene to the four Levine boys.
My son, Will, was not a particularly picky eater. To this day, the only thing he will not eat is mushrooms, although I managed, Jessica Seinfeldstyle (she's written a book, Deceptively Delicious
, with recipes to trick picky eaters into eating fruits and vegetables), to sneak some chicken-mushroom sausage by him this weekend.
Related: Picky Eaters in Serious Eats Talk
Hitotoki, short stories about New York..."short narratives describing pivotal moments of elation, confusion, absurdity, love or grief -- or anything in between -- inseparably tied to a specific place". Also available in the original Tokyo flavor.
(link)
This chart rewards careful study. Inspect one timeline of the universe from the Big Bang to yesterday. It skips through this vast scale in 16 jumps, each period nested inside the preceding epic. Combined here is cosmic history, geological history, biological history and cultural history into one unified, universal snapshot of the Great Story.
-- KK
Universal Heritage Chart
27 x 39 inches
$15
Available from timelineposter.comRelated items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Cartoon History of the Universe III
Correlated History of Earth
Singularity is Near
Most people see the dancer spin counter-clockwise. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise you are right brain dominant. It's such a simple illusion, but it's still hard to force the "switch" in your mind. (via)
Ryan Tate: "I have applied for a grant in the Knight News Challenge, a lively contest to improve the news media through digital publishing. My idea is CityPipeline.com, a Web hub for news and information on local real estate development. CityPipeline is basically a local real estate map that you can filter, search and add information to."
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, is a action-adventure game for the Nintendo DS in which you control a blond adventurer with a pajama cap and sword (pictured below) using a touch-screen stylus. I was playing it the other day when…
The hint told me to blow out the candle. I needed to blow out the candle to solve a puzzle.
Confused, I wiggled and moved my stylus across the screen to control my character: I ran into the candle, slashed at the air with my sword, and did a rolling attack. No results. I tried a spin slash. I threw some rocks at it. Nothing. I circled back and checked the hint. It just told me to blow out the candle again.
And then I had an epiphany: I took my stylus away from the touch-screen and blew.
More precisely, I blew into the microphone and out went the candle. Puzzle solved.
Looking for interaction design inspiration? Forget the iPhone. Get a Nintendo DS.
(Stay tuned for an interaction that surprised me even more in Part 2 of “Forget the iPhone. Get a Nintendo DS.” Coming soon.)
You may have noticed the new sidebar widget we launched today. It offers different views of the wealth and depth of Serious Eats, and gives you a snapshot of what other Serious Eaters are reading, talking about, and sharing. Let us know what you think!
I was interviewed using an Interrotron today. The Interrotron is an interviewing machine developed by Errol Morris for use in his documentary films and commercials. It allows an interviewer and interviewee to look each other in the eye while recording a straight-on view of the interviewee.
Would it frighten people? Would they run out of the studio screaming? Who could say? I used it for the first time in Fast, cheap and out of control. And it worked like a charm. People loved the Interrotron.
I loved it too, although I probably embarrassed myself by nerding out about it a little too much.
Attention New York City-area readers, tomorrow night at the NYPL there's "a discussion of the complex legacy of Julia Child." Julia Child in America will feature culinary historians David Kamp, Molly O'Neill and Laura Shapiro, chef Dan Barber, and journalist and former Cullman Fellow Melanie Rehak as moderator.
OK, Robyn, I see how it is. Bunch a copycats aping my idea here in the Serious Eats office.
Here's the deal: you know that Facebook site that's been in the news lately? The one all the kids are using? Well, on Friday, I created a Slice group on it. (Non-Facebookers: "Groups" are basically little Facebook-based clubs you can join.)
So then Robyn Lee here in the office goes and makes one for The Girl Who Ate Everything. And then today, she created a Serious Eats group. Hmm, wonder where she got that idea?
Anyway, I'm not really that hacked off at her. As official office curmudgeon, I just like to act like it. After all, if you're a Facebooker, you can join any or all three of them. Honestly, I don't know what we're going to do with it, but so far, I see that Alaina has updated it with information on our upcoming meatloaf cook-along. And, of course, it will remind you of any Serious Eats events coming up. (Psst: We have a meet-up planned for November!)
The grand prize of the 34th Annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Weigh-Off went to Thad Starr and his 1,524 pound pumpkin. How does one grow a pumpkin that large? According to Starr, all you need is "yards and yards of chicken manure, lots of mixed compost, and lots and lots of time." With enough hard work, a winning pumpkin can gain up to ten pounds a day during peak growing periods.
But what happens to these pumpkins after being declared "heaviest of them all"? One option: turn them into paddle boats.
Facebook may take on MySpace with new tools for musicians and iTunes shopping integration. Rock on.
Ah, prosciutto di Parma, prosciutto di San Daniele, and prosciutto di Carpegna: three hams from three places, each with its distinct flavor and yet similar technique. In each locale, the hams are salted for 30 to 45 days and then hanged in the vaulted rooms and halls to cure for as little as 400 days and as much as 3 years to achieve the delicate balance of pure porcine pleasure and the fragrance of the wind and the dew of the specific geography.
I have always found the sweetest hams to come from Friuli, (prosciutto di San Daniele), where I think that the cooler climate allows them the use of a little less salt (in fact, the only ingredient other than the pig's leg).
Parma (and its Langhirano hills) is the home of those eponymous hams that are perhaps the most famous in the world. Their specific flavors are a result of their exposure to winds blown down the valleys off the Tyrrhenian Sea from Liguria, and they help create a complex perfume unique to prosciutto di Parma.
Carpegna hams from the Pesaro Urbino region of Le Marche are perhaps the most rich and porky in flavor, a tad drier in younger ages (not a bad thing), and hard to findlegallyin the U.S.
In fact, from the mid '50s to 1990, Italian prosciutti were not legally imported into the U.S., but, since then, the understanding and love for these hams has grown exponentiallyalong with salesas a result of the rise of American gastronomic interest.
The fat around the perimeter of prosciutti, which many Americans fear, is essential in the creation of the complexity of flavor and the ethereal texture, as it slows the drying process (imagine the difference between a ragu Bolognese cooked one hour and one simmered four hours). For many people, there is no differencebut for you and me? Huge!
Culatello, which comes from just north of Parma, is made in the lower plains, where the winds are not as dry and the resulting temperature and humidity render the usual curing techniques useless. The process never worked as well, but out of this difficulty came culatello. It's the largest muscle in the leg of the pig and is cured in a bladder after being salted and rubbed with wine. Culatello is not legally imported yet into the U.S. for the same moronic breakdown in porkplomacy that barred prosciutto and mortadella for so long. My dad (at Salumi, in Seattle) makes a damn good one. If you can get my sister Gina to let you buy one, you shouldbut I doubt she will ...
The next big thing in American hamdom is jamón bellota de pata negra, a Spanish ham that will cost four times as much as the best prosciutto Italiano, but I won't tease you about that until it's availablesupposedly in November of this year. Let me say one thing, thoughwatch your back, Italy!
The best recipe ever for prosciutto di Parma?
Find a melon or fig or peach of the best quality, and cool it to 52 degrees. Slice it and the prosciutto, and lay gently on a plate or a board. Want to serve a wine with that? Try a Tocai or Malvasia from the hills of Parma.
Yummmmmm.
About the author: Mario Batali has created a thriving restaurant empire and has established himself as a top restaurateur. Together with his partner, Joe Bastianich, he operates seven New York City hotspots. Mario splits his time between New York City's Greenwich Village and northern Michigan with his wife Susan Cahn of Coach Dairy Goat Farm, and their two sons. More Mario: mariobatali.com. Photograph of Mario on scooter by Beatriz da Costa, from Molto Italiano.
A bunch of climbers took a portable jacuzzi up to the top of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in the Alps, and took a soak. The photos are crazy. (via stupid)
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Icky and Josh from Justseeds are heading to Europe, and have some events planned...If you happen to be in Copenhagen: presentation in YNKB LØRDAG 13 OKTOBER KL. 15/Saturday October 13, 2007, 3 pm: Josh MacPhee PRINTING AGAINST THE GRAIN Activist printmaking from 1960s to now In 1960’s, just as Andy Warhol was reinventing silkscreening as a fine art tool, printmaking was also being reinvented elsewhere for very different purposes. Activists, organizers, revolutionaries and political artists were using silkscreening, stencils, and block prints to create cheap, eye catching and easy to distribute political posters. From French students and workers in 1968 to Chicano community workshops in the late 60’s to Italian and German Autonomists in the 70’s to Act Up in the 80’s, printmaking has taken a sweeping democratic turn in the last 40 years. This presentation shows over a hundred images and follows the political, social and aesthetic development of this activist printmaking.
The Institution of Civil Engineers invites you to a debate in a bar:
"Congestion Pricing, as proposed in PlaNYC 2030, Solves Manhattan's Transport Problems"Arguing For Congestion Pricing:
- Thomas Maguire NYC DOT Director of Studies
- Daniel Peterson Professor of Transportation Planning, Columbia University, and Senior Transportation Engineer, Arup
Arguing Against:
- Joshua E. Bienstock Queens Chamber of Commerce
- Dr. John Falcocchio Professor of Transportation Planning and Director of the Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Center, Polytechnic University of New York
Moderators:
- Ed Plotkin
- David Caiden, Arup
The Onion AV Club tracks which films and directors have had the most influence on Wes Anderson, including The Graduate, Peter Bogdanovich, and Francois Truffaut.
The "uniforms" he outfits his characters in are like a variation on Charlie Brown's zigzag shirt and Lucy's blue dress, and there's an atmosphere of wistful melancholy common to Peanuts cartoons and Anderson's seriocomedies. A Boy Named Charlie Brown echoes Anderson's persistent "sic transit gloria" theme, as Charlie Brown blazes through the rounds of a local spelling bee, then washes out at the nationals. When he returns home to a group of friends who accept him as much as they mock him, he might as well be walking in slow motion, while "Ooh La La" plays on the soundtrack.
And today they're going to run a list of films which were influenced by Anderson...I'll have that link a bit later.
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A Delhi man is doing a booming business in virtual airplane flights. Indians who have never been on an airplane before come from miles around and, for a small fee, experience the interior of an Airbus 300 and meal service.
As on an ordinary aircraft, customers buckle themselves in and watch a safety demonstration. But when they look out of the windows, the landscape never changes. Even if "Captain" Gupta wanted to get off the ground, the plane would not go far: it only has one wing and a large part of the tail is missing.
(thx, catherine)
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Key 23, originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.
A lot of what gets said in press conferences and pre-game interviews gets left on the cutting room floor. Here are a few leftover thoughts and opinions from this past week’s Red Sox/Angels ALDS match-up:
“He’s certainly a talented pitcher, with a variety of pitches that are probably unique because not a lot of guys can throw as many different looks with their breaking balls as he can. He varies his tempo, his delivery, and there are things that he does that maybe some guys on our club, or some guys playing here in the states haven’t seen.” - Mike Scioscia on Daisuke Matsuzaka
“I think Daisuke’s considered a rookie by Major League standards, and he’s definitely had a lot thrown at him for the first time, but he’s not a rookie. He’s a pretty established professional pitcher.” – Terry Francona on Daisuke Matsuzaka
“You have to be even more careful. If you think you’re wasting a pitch, it may not be a waste pitch to him.” – Josh Beckett on pitching to Vladimir Guerrero
“We talk on the bench between innings. You know, I’m kind of notorious for that. There are a lot of guys who choose not to talk to anybody on the days they pitch. I’m just not one of those guys.” – Josh Beckett on talking to teammates during the game
“I was in the hospital. They made the trade during the winter meetings, and I was getting my knee – I was probably hooked up to something that was making me feel good. I probably would have approved of anything.” - Terry Francona on where he was when the Red Sox acquired Mike Lowell in November 2005
“My knee has been feeling way better than it was. I was really sore before I got it, and I was afraid because that big old needle is coming through your knee. It’s not fun to see.” – David Ortiz on getting a cortisone shot before the series
It seems to me that there are two angles being missed in the Joe Torre death watch.
The first is that of George Steinbrenner’s competency. From his reclusiveness over the past year or two, to some of his phraseology in yesterday’s Bergen Record interview, there are ample signs that The Boss is not entirely in command of his faculties. Speaking of umpire Bruce Froemming, for example, Steinbrenner said:
“The umpire was full of [expletive],” Steinbrenner said of the retiring Froemming. “He won’t umpire our games anymore.”
Nominally, this could be correct — if the Yankees indeed bow out to the Indians in the LDS, that might be the last time they’ll see Froemming, who is retiring. But Froemming is also on tap to umpire key games in the LCS and World Series. And the intent of Steinbrenner’s comment is another matter. It doesn’t seem to be a snide remark about Froemming’s retirement at all; rather it is an ominous, sort of Monty Burnsian decree about something which the Yankees have no power over whatsoever. The polite way to put this is that Steinbrenner has become a caricature of himself; the impolite way to put it is that he’s become senile.
I have no particular idea how estate laws work in a small, closely-held business like the New York Yankees. There seems to be enough mutual dissatisfaction between the Yankees and Torre that Steinbrenner is not exactly upsetting the apple cart by suggesting that Torre might not be offered a new contract. Nevertheless, if Torre does not get renewed, it’s worth wondering whether the same decision would have taken place if this was the Steinbrenner of five or ten years ago.
The other angle has to do with Torre’s salary, which is routinely cited as $7 million but which should more properly be described as $6.4 million, the average annual income from his current three-year contract. Either way, Torre is the highest-paid manager in baseball — and any time that you are the highest-paid anything, you make yourself a target. But is Torre’s salary too high in the abstract? If we backtrack through the MORP formula, we find that $6.4 million is roughly equivalent to what it costs to bring on a 3-WARP player. The closest we have to a consensus is that a great manager can be worth an extra 2-3 wins a season, so this would dovetail nicely with that. It’s also worth keeping this in mind the next time that your team brings on a new manager and claims that he’s going to turn the team around. If that’s really the case, why aren’t you paying him more than Mark DeRosa?
Torre’s salary represents about 8% of the average baseball payroll of $83 million. It might also be instructive to compare this figure to those in other major sports leagues.
- In the NBA, the Lakers’ Phil Jackson reportedly receives between $7 million and $10 million a year, which translates to between 11% and 16% of an average NBA payroll. Almost everyone would agree that an NBA head coach is comparatively more important to his team than an MLB manager — so far, so good.
- In the British Premiership, Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson, who regained his position as the top-paid manager when Chelsea’s José Mourinho resigned last month, is paid a reported £3.6 million per year (US $7.3 million), whereas player expenditures are in the range of £64 million ($131 million) per team, representing about 6% of team payrolls. Mourinho, for what it’s worth, was being paid £5.2 million per year (US $10.5 million), or about 8% of average player expenditures. So the economics here are about the same here as they are in baseball, which makes sense since
soccerfootball, like baseball, is a relatively hands-off sport, with most of a coach’s impact coming in between matches.- The surprise is in the NFL. Bill Belichick’s new contract reportedly pays him between $6 million and $8 million per year, whereas average NFL payrolls are about $102 million. (Seattle’s Mike Holmgren makes $8 million a year, but is also a de facto GM). So the ratio here is between 6% and 8% — no higher than it is in baseball, and possibly a bit lower. Now, it should be mentioned that the head coach is not the same as the entire coaching function in the NFL, since professional football teams have large and relatively well-compensated rosters of assistants. On the other hand, the NFL’s salary cap and non-guaranteed contracts are surely very effective in restraining player salaries, whereas there are no restrictions on salaries paid to head coaches. And NFL coaches can often receive competitive offers from the college ranks, which is less true in basketball and not at all true in baseball. Considering that NFL head coaches are unambiguously more important than their counterparts in baseball — an NFL coach can gain his team about 1/2 win a season (equivalent to 5 wins a season in baseball) simply by getting fourth down decisions right — and very probably more important than their counterparts in basketball, it seems clear that either the top NFL head coaches are underpaid, or the top baseball managers are overpaid.
I believe, in fact, that both of these things are true. If I were the GM of the Lions, I would not blink an eyelash at paying Belichick $15 million per season. At the same time, I don’t think there’s much reason to spend any more than you have to on a baseball manager, unless perhaps Earl Weaver comes out of retirement.
If baseball managers are overpaid, then why is this the case? I suspect this has to do with the nature of luck in the sport. When a team goes from winning 76 games in a season to 90, which really isn’t all that uncommon, this is taken as some sort of minor miracle, and credit is heaped upon the manager, the Veteran Leader, and whoever else might happen to be standing in the way. The reverse, of course, is true when a 90-win team becomes a 76-win team. And indeed, the margins can be much less than that. The Cardinals went from an 83-win team in 2006 with a healthy Chris Carpenter to a 78-win team in 2007 without Carpenter; their results this season were nothing if not eminently predictable. And yet Walt Jocketty has now been fired, and Tony La Russa might soon join him.
Manager salaries are, in many ways, just offerings made to the karma gods, by GMs and owners who are overly eager to attribute cause to what essentially amount to random events. If the Yankees fall to Cleveland and Torre gets canned by a tinfoil-hatted Steinbrenner, then there’s a certain amount of bad karma involved. But there was a certain amount of good karma in making Torre the highest-paid manager in baseball in the first place.
Nice to see grown folks thinking with grown folks logic, instead of the childishness that we usually confuse with manhood..Another surprise during the show was that Nelly and one-time foe KRS-One had apparently mended fences and were hanging out, just kicking it. "We were backstage chopping it up," Nelly confirmed with a grin. "[The feud] was a misunderstanding on my part and a rush to prejudge on his. After we both saw the type of thing ... well, I don't wanna say he made a mistake, he's the Teacha. Like I said, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here. ... Maybe we'll do something in the future."
via Miss Info, Rza exounds as only Rza can on Wutang's remake of the Beatles classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps.. "RZA Interview on Wutang "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Beatles Remake
As part of this weekend's New Yorker Festival, a parkour demonstration was held at Javits Plaza. Before the demonstration, Alex Wilkinson talked with David Belle, the inventor of parkour and the subject of Wilkinson's NYer article about parkour from April. In the interview and the Q&A that followed the demonstration, Belle explained that parkour is not about competition or showing off or being reckless. It's a test of self, of control, of deliberate practice. The journey is the point, not the sometimes spectacular results.
The demonstration consisted of a group of about 20-30 parkour practitioners, beginners and experts alike from all over the country. It seemed as though they included anyone with parkour experience who showed up and wanted to participate, and instead of a highly polished display of high skill (which is what I think the audience might have been expecting), we were treated to a more authenic look at the sport. The first five minutes were taken up with calisthenics and stretching in preparation of the jumps and vaults to come. After warming up properly, they began running through the course, each participant picking his way through the course according to desire and ability.
Experimentation was the rule of the day, not performance. With each pass, you could see the group learning the particulars of the course, where the good holds were, finding smoother combinations, and, much of the time, trying and failing. And then trying again until they got it. There was a single woman participant, one of several beginners in the group. When she had some trouble with an obstacle, Belle and his "lieutenant" stopped to show her some moves, a moment that revealed more about parkour than Belle's jump across a ten-foot gap twenty feet off the ground. Belle himself didn't do too much during the performance -- a couple of high jumps -- and had to be coaxed during the Q&A to perform one last big move for the audience. He shrugged off the applause and attention as he back-flipped down to the concrete, knowing that the true parkour had taken place earlier.
I am speaking this week at the OpenBase Summit 2007. I am doing a short introduction to Cocoa. Most of the people in the audience are OpenBase users and a large number use the LightSpeed Point-of-Sale system. (LightSpeed stores its data in OpenBase.)
So, I wrote an example that uses the LightSpeed data in an OpenBase database. You can download the source. There is a README.txt in the tarball.
If you don’t have LightSpeed, this probably isn’t that interesting to you.
Let me mention that OpenBase is a lovely database. I started using it in 1994, and I’ve had nothing but good experiences. If you are coming to the OpenBase Summit, please say hey. I’ll be the one in the cowboy hat.
I just uploaded the latest developer release for WebService::Google::Reader. This is the first version that contains all the planned functionality and is mostly documented. I mainly use it to keep my desktop client synched after being offline for a while. I have included a few example scripts as well- the most useful being reset-account.pl. It will remove all subscriptions and tags, and remove any tracking information- such as which entries were read, clicked, emailed. Google's backend may still store this information, but Google Reader no longer has access to any of it. Please take it for a spin and let me know if anything's missing or needs changing. I'm planning on making an official release in the next few days.Read more of this story at use Perl.
In August of 2006, then Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced that the U.S. commercial rice supply had been tainted with an experimental, genetically modified variety unapproved for human consumption. The experimental rice supposedly posed no threat to human health, according to both the USDA and Bayer CropScience, the company that created it. However, the European Union subsequently banned imports of American rice, a move that drastically affected the domestic market. Now, 14 months later, in absence of any evidence one way or another as to how this contamination occurred, Bayer CropScience has been cleared from any governmental enforcement action, and the investigation has officially been closed.
Anti-GMO folks are predictably up in arms. From yesterday's Washington Post:
Critics assailed the report as yet more evidence that the nation's regulatory system for gene-altered crops is broken.
"This underlines the anxiety people have about more such incidents occurring," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science-based advocacy group that has called for a more rigorous approval process for biotech crops. "After all this investigation, there is no reason to think there are not more of these genes out there just waiting to be discovered."
The main problem here isn't necessarily the dangers of GMOs themselves, but the lack of governmental regulation of the industry. Some GMOs are probably perfectly safe, while others are likely not. But without a system of testing and labeling in place, dangerous outcomes like the one above are sure to continue. A few years ago the documentary The Future of Food detailed many of the issues involved (from a decidedly anti-GMO angle). Earlier this year the FDA ruled that meat from cloned animals is fit for human consumption.
Where do you stand on genetically modified foods? Evil act of corporate hubris, or revolutionary scientific breakthrough with the potential to help feed untold numbers of hungry people?
Since I acquired and renovated Black Ink, it’s been cranking along steadily winning the hearts of Mac-loving crossword solvers. Thankfully I have a group of really dedicated solvers who seem to find the strangest bugs. Black Ink 1.0.7 fixes an issue where puzzles that contain multi-character answers (like “CAT” all crammed into a single square) were not being detected as “correct,” and therefore not triggering the congratulatory hurrah dialog.
This release also restores the ability to zoom the puzzle’s size in and out by keyboard shortcut. For many MacXword fans, this was a major omission in Black Ink, so I hope they’ll be pleased by the new functionality.
Black Ink 1.0.7
- Menu items for making puzzle larger/smaller
- Add keyboard shortcut for opening web puzzle chooser
- Fix correctly-solved detection for puzzles with multi-character answers
A front page story in the Sunday New York Times raised an an interesting point: Though lottery revenues around the nation are growing, lottery money covers only a minuscule portion of the spiraling cost of public education. In New Jersey,...
Hillary Clinton got into a rough verbal exchange at an Iowa town hall yesterday, when New Hampton resident Randall Rolph asked some pointed questions about Hillary's vote for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment.
Hillary differed with Rolph's interpretation — that the amendment was a de facto authorization for the White House to use force against Iran — saying that the truth differed with "what you read to me, that somebody obviously sent to you."
Rolph shot back that this was his own research, and nobody else put him up to the question.
"Well, then, I apologize," said Clinton. "It's just that I've been asked the very same question in three other places."
Rolph was obviously not impressed with the conversation. "I came here with an open mind, that's why I had to ask this question," he said. "By asking this question, that was going to be the defining moment for me. But it has been a defining moment."
Judith Supine put up a devious little piece in Union Square this morning-- when we went over to check it out at 10am, no one, including the vendors set up around the statue, had noticed that the head had been altered. When we started shooting some pictures, a little crowd formed-- the general consensus was that it was a very well made piece. It's unlikely to last long, however-- so if you want to see it, better get down there fast.
"It is fortunate that Joy Division did stay with Factory, as it is likely that its cover design would not have been sanctioned by an established record company, in whose hierarchies a designer would have little chance to explore this curious, instinctive relationship with the sound's production. Consider the tactile paper stock, no band name nor title on the cover - not even The Beatles got away with that on The White Album."
Sanderson has devised a systematic way of recording and representing an ecosystem. He calls it the Muir web ... In the Muir web, each species of plant or animal, and each characteristic of habitat, has a full set of needs and associations, which, taken together, form a tangle of connection and dependency. . . . He then plugs them all into his customized modelling software, which places them on the map . . . The software mimics that of social-networking sites. His son, who is six years old, once asked him to explain it, and he said, "This program writes programs that tell the mapping program to make the maps that predict where all the species were."Eighty per cent of the work is building the data sets. The glory part is turning that data into 3-D pictures.
—"The Mannahatta Project," Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, October 1, 2007 (full article not "yet" available online).
Universally, when computer science brushes up against a magazine subject, the journalist misses its role in the story. This very engaging story by Nick Paumgarten in the October 1, 2007 New Yorker, about an effort to create a model of Manhattan island when it was first touched by European, commits the error surprisingly.
To me, the glorious bit of the above project is that bit where someone has written a program that writes programs that guide the mapping software. This requires understanding the space of possible ecosystems, precisely enough to render it in code—which you might think is a respectable human and intellectual achievement. It calls on ecologists' knowledge, but also computer scientists' knowledge: what constitutes a representation (of an ecosystem), what parameters are needed to admit the necessary freedom, what parameters are unnecssary, and how to make such a model concise and precise.
Eric Sanderson, profiled in this article, is an ecologist working with the Wildlife Conservation Society; he has a vision of exploring Manhattan in 1609; some programmer somewhere has helped him realize this vision. I long for such a programmer to garner the same respect as the ecologist he works for.
Here's a manifesto, then.
I am interested in the "computational turn" in the history of our civilization—namely, the idea that we can explore a much wider range of imaginative objects (ecosystem models, say, or texts, or games) by creating a process that generates them. In centuries past, we were much more limited: for example, you could draw up one historical map of a place by manually placing roads and creeks in accordance with evidence. But now, we can codify our knowledge of what constitutes such a map, and then the computer becomes a toy for exploring all the possibilities. Computers are powerful not because they have an amazing amount of memory or speed, but simply because they allow us to work at a higher level, the level of defining the process by which imaginary 1609 Manhattans can be generated—rather than the lower level of making a particular guess about it.
Let some magazine reporter come along and do a piece on that.
Produced by cia_b of Writing With My Mouth Full
The Takeaway
George Weld says:
- Use a nonstick pan over medium heat. The pan should be hot, but not too hotthe egg shouldn't sizzle when it hits the pan.
- Place egg gently into pan.
- The egg actually has two separate whites, outer and inner. The inner takes longer to set and is the part of the egg that you should judge doneness by. Once inner white is solid, then you flip.
- After initial flip, let egg sit 15 seconds to set outer white, then flip again.
About the Chef
George Weld is a self-taught cook who grew up in Virginia and the Carolinas. He has been cooking eggs since 2004 at his restaurant, Egg, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. In 2005, Egg was named best breakfast in New York by New York magazine and has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Japan's Title magazine, and Charleston magazine.
Egg's address is 135A North 5th Street, Brooklyn NY 11211; 718-302-5151. It is open 7 a.m. to noon weekdays, 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. weekends.
About the Video Folks
cia_b is a Filipino New Yorker who writes with her mouth full at writingwithmymouthfull.com.
When not dealing with scut as a medical intern, Stan Kang flexes his one creative muscle by making still and moving images.
More in this series: How to Poach an Egg, How to Make a Rolled Omelet, How to Scramble Eggs Perfectly
