randomwalks/dj

When Hitchens is on, he's just so damn on. Slate:

Romney does not understand the difference between deism and theism, nor does he know the first thing about the founding of the United States. Jefferson's Declaration may invoke a "Creator," but, as he went on to show in the battle over the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, he and most of his peers did not believe in a god who intervened in human affairs or in a god who had sent a son for a human sacrifice. These easily ascertainable facts are reflected in the way that the U.S. Constitution does not make any mention of a superintendent deity and in the way that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention declined an offer (possibly sarcastic), even from Benjamin Franklin, that they resort to prayer to compose their differences. Romney may throw a big chest and say that God should be "on our currency, in our pledge," and of course on our public land in this magic holiday season, but James Madison did not think that there should be chaplains opening the proceedings of Congress or even appointed as ministers in the U.S. armed forces. Trying to dodge around this, and to support his assertion that the founders were religious in the Christian sense, Romney drones on about a barely relevant moment of emotion in 1774 and comes up with the glib slogan that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Any fool can think of an example where freedom exists without religion—and even more easily of an instance where religion exists without (or in negation of) freedom...

According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater? Those who elected to believe this stuff were quite rightly told to expect a hard time, and the expression "fool for God" or "fool for Christ" has been with us ever since. That concept has some dignity and nobility. Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity) is the well-heeled son of a gold-plated church who wants to assume the pained look of martyrdom only when he is asked if he actually believes what he says. A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man, and we are still waiting for some straight answers from him.

That last paragraph practically sings, and its impossible to read it without hearing Hitch's voice in your head. Maybe one day I'll learn to write like this...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Good People Better Rise Up!, on December 8, 2007 8:58 AM

88 Speakers representing the 88 notes on a piano, by sound artist An-Ting Chung, with the audience inside a circle of speakers.

surround sound 4 real.

http://insidethepiano.com

Originally posted by iansen from Protein® OS -, on December 8, 2007 8:40 AM

(From WGA Member and Negotiating Committee Member, John Bowman)

Today, after three days of discussions, the AMPTP came back to us with a proposal that included a total rejection of our proposal on Internet streaming of December 3.

They are holding to their offer of a $250 fixed residual for unlimited one year streaming after a six-week window of free use. They still insist on the DVD rate for Internet downloads.

They refuse to cover original material made for new media.

This offer was accompanied by an ultimatum: the AMPTP demands we give up several of our proposals, including Fair Market Value (our protection against vertical integration and self-dealing), animation, reality, and, most crucially, any proposal that uses distributor’s gross as a basis for residuals. This would require us to concede most of our Internet proposal as a precondition for continued bargaining. The AMPTP insists we let them do to the Internet what they did to home video.

We received a similar ultimatum through back channels prior to the discussions of November 4. At that time, we were assured that if we took DVD’s off the table, we would get a fair offer on new media issues. That offer never materialized.

We reject the idea of an ultimatum. Although a number of items we have on the table are negotiable, we cannot be forced to bargain with ourselves. The AMPTP has many proposals on the table that are unacceptable to writers, but we have never delivered ultimatums.

As we prepared our counter-offer, at 6:05 p.m., Nick Counter came and said to us, in the mediator’s presence: “We are leaving. When you write us a letter saying you will take all these items off the table, we will reschedule negotiations with you.” Within minutes, the AMPTP had posted a lengthy statement announcing the breakdown of negotiations.

We remain ready and willing to negotiate, no matter how intransigent our bargaining partners are, because the stakes are simply too high. We were prepared to counter their proposal tonight, and when any of them are ready to return to the table, we’re here, ready to make a fair deal.


John F. Bowman
Chairman, WGA Negotiating Committee
Contract 2007

Originally posted by Kate Purdy from United Hollywood, on December 7, 2007 5:34 PM

On-set photos of David Lynch and cast members from the final episode of Twin Peaks. (via waxy)

Behind-the-scenes of a Gucci perfume ad directed by Lynch, referencing his own most recent feature, Inland Empire. Finished commercial here. (via spoutblog)

Upon watching Inland Empire, I was so immediately immersed, my first thought was that David Lynch should only ever shoot video. Apparently, he feels the same.

(link)

Originally posted by lisagor@lonelysandwich.com from kottke.org, on December 7, 2007 3:34 PM

As Patric Verrone explained today, last Thursday, the AMPTP promised to offer up the second part of their "breakthrough" proposal. A week later, they still haven't added to the initial and unacceptable offer. The back channel conversations have only increased the widely-held impression that the AMPTP wants to prolong the strike. During the week, we've heard that two PR firms specializing in crisis-management have been hired by the studios at great expense, in an apparent effort to put an avuncular mask on the scowling face of the AMPTP negotiators.

Every indication from the AMPTP is that their negotiators are getting ready to storm out of the room, exiting with their usual hand-wringing lament that writers are an unreasonable bunch of emotional artists.

Clearly the AMPTP would like us to think that we are victims in a trap of their making. They would like us to fear that they hold all the cards, that we have no power, that we are doomed. All that will save us is to accept their offers (whatever they actually are) and return to the comfort of their bosoms.

As much as the AMPTP wants us to feel helpless, the facts of the past week suggest otherwise. We've all read here and in the news that the companies are being hurt by the strike.

Television networks are having to give back advertising revenue because ratings have fallen off, especially in late night, normally a cash cow. Targeted by fans, advertisers are actively considering pulling their ad dollars from networks until the strike is concluded. More and more financially important tent-pole movies are falling off the studios' production schedules. The stock prices of the AMPTP member companies are dropping.

The public sees through the AMPTP charade and sees that they aren't wearing pants. $130 million, a "breakthrough," but no explanation how the calculation was made. Who would hire a contractor who won't explain his numbers much less accept a deal with an employer without explanation?

The holidays are coming, what will be the AMPTP's seasonal gift? More cynical manipulations in an effort to break the spirit of the strikers? That was the Thanksgiving turkey served up the last time they were in a 'giving' mood.

This holiday season we all have much to be thankful for. In the past month we have seen that the WGA membership is united. That writers have shown they can forge a powerful community of union members throughout Los Angeles. That fans are loyal, dedicated, and energetic allies in a struggle against a formidable foe. That the public isn't fooled by the AMPTP's silly, arrogant pronouncements.

This holiday season we will continue our many strike efforts. We'll find time to recharge so we can continue the struggle, no matter what the AMPTP throws at us, no matter how much money they waste on PR-Crisis Management Firms.

The WGA has said repeatedly, writers want the strike to end. There's too much at stake; too many people are being hurt by the continued work stoppage; the city of Los Angeles itself is at risk.

As Patric Verrone said in his email, "The Writers Guild will remain at the table every day, for as long as it takes, to make a fair deal."

Originally posted by David Latt from United Hollywood, on December 7, 2007 3:15 PM

taken on the set of the final episode by the actor who played Benjamin Home [via] 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on December 7, 2007 2:46 PM

Recent interesting catchwords from the Double-Tongued Dictionary are:

facetimer n. Cornell University slang for a person who only attends and event or appears in public in order to be seen by others.

moofer n. a person who works in a variety of places and not just in an office. Coined by Microsoft from Mobile Out of Office.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Lexicographer's Rules, on December 7, 2007 11:22 AM

Justin Timberlake was one of Barbara Walters's most fascinating people of 2007 and the pop singer had some interesting words on his undercover lover, Jessica Biel, and about how sexy he is.

When Babs dove in to Justin's relationship with Jess, and asked if he thought this one will last, Justin replied, "Well, I’ll work on that!” with a laugh.

As for his sex appeal, Babs said, “Rolling Stone called you the new King of Sex. Do you think you’re sexy?”

“I’ll hold on to the title for as long as I can!” Justin cracked back. “Ya know, Brad, George, you guys may be the most beautiful whatever but... eat your heart out boys!”

Justin as compared to Brad Pitt and George Clooney? Oh, I don't think so. We're talking a boy versus men. And I think there is no way Justin will age as beautifully as B and G have. Talk me to when you're 40, Justin.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on December 7, 2007 10:27 AM

4 Months old today!!

She is as old relative to me as I am to the last Pharoah of the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on December 7, 2007 10:21 AM

After watching (and re-watching) the new Sex and the City trailer this morning, we’re convinced that, like many of the scenes filmed around the city, this trailer is a fake.

The proof:

1. You can hear Carrie say, “Hello, Lover!” This is not new- it’s from when she sees the Louboutins that she buys for Big’s last night in New York.

2. You can hear the quote, “trends come and go, but friendships never go out of style,” also from an old episode.

3. In one scene, she is wearing the same tutu outfit from the opening credits of the show (we’re just going to pretend that no one would buy a tutu twice in one lifetime.)

Not to mention that it also seems too short to be a real movie trailer, and so much emphasis is put on Carrie’s photo shoot in a wedding gown- we’re pretty sure there’s no way Carrie will be married by the end. That would just be too much.

Does anyone else feel like it’s a fake?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 7, 2007 10:05 AM

Patric Verrone and Michael Winship just sent this message to the membership. The WGA is determined to stay at the table until we have a deal. If the AMPTP wants to negotiate in good faith, and end the strike, we are at the table.

Dear Fellow Members,

Before we head into negotiations this morning, we want to give you an update on where we stand.

On Tuesday, after the companies had requested a four-day break so they could work on their proposals, we returned to the bargaining table. We presented a counter proposal to their streaming proposal of November 29. They presented no new proposals. On Wednesday, the AMPTP again had no new proposals, but they did have detailed questions about our streaming counter proposal and other aspects of our overall proposals – and from the give and take of those discussions, we felt that they might finally be ready to engage in serious bargaining. They told us they would have new proposals for us Thursday. On Thursday, we met at 10am, and they told us their new proposals would be ready shortly. At 5pm, they told us their proposals still weren’t ready, that they would be working on them late into the night, and that we should come back this morning at 10am. The fact that we saw everyone from the AMPTP leave the building by 6:45pm is not a promising sign, but we will be at the table at 10am this morning, ready to receive their new proposal.

We’d like to address some of the disturbing rumors and back channel communications we’ve been hearing. For one, we’ve heard that one or more of the companies are prepared to throw away the spring and fall TV season, plus features, and prolong the strike. Aside from the devastating effect this would have on the unions, workers, and their families in this industry, it would certainly explain the AMPTP’s refusal to put any new proposals, even a bad one, on the table. Also, highly placed executives have been telling some of our writers that the companies are preparing to abruptly cut off negotiations. They say the companies plan to accuse the WGA of stalling and being unwilling to negotiate, and that the companies will use that as an excuse to walk out.

The Writers Guilds of America, West and East are going on record now that any such claims are absolutely untrue. We have been at the negotiating table every day, willing to bargain. Furthermore, we hereby challenge the AMPTP to negotiate in good faith, day and night, through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays – whatever is necessary – to get this done and get the town back to work. The Writers Guilds will remain at the table every day, for as long as it takes, to make a fair deal.

Thank you for your patience, support, and solidarity through these difficult times. Please come to the Fremantle rally today. We remain all in this together.

Patric M. Verrone
President
Writers Guild of America, West

Michael Winship
President
Writers Guild of America, East

Originally posted by Laeta Kalogridis from United Hollywood, on December 7, 2007 10:00 AM

I’m a big fan of cupcakes, huge fan. 30lbs overweight fan.

Anyway, a couple months ago, my wife gave her students some cupcakes and someone BLEW MY MIND with a simple hack that solved one of cupcakes’ few failings: sometimes there’s just too much frosting, they’re too tall for your mouth, and/or the frosting/cake mix is all wrong in your mouth.

Behold my illustrated guide to How to eat cupcakes

Originally posted by Matt Haughey from A Whole Lotta Nothing, on December 7, 2007 9:52 AM

Quick Post

These awesome photos make me want to grow my beard again. With wedding events beginning as early as March (!!), now is the time...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dubstyle/sets/72157602944817973/

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on December 7, 2007 9:48 AM

Penn Station concourse under West 33rd Street

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer wants to trade parking spots for wider sidewalks and bike infrastructure on West 33rd Street, moving more Moynihan Station commuters above-ground.

AMNY has the story:

Stringer will float the idea to widen sidewalks and create bike lanes at a public hearing [Thursday] on the future of Moynihan Station. The pathway, which would run past the station, would link Broadway and the planned mega-development at the Hudson Yards.

Parking is already restricted along some of the stretch, and pedestrians need the space in the already congested area, his office said.

"During rush hours, 33rd Street could become a walkway and bikeway for commuters traveling to and from the new station, as well as a thriving, active retail corridor," Stringer said in a written statement. "During the day and on weekends, it could be a lively thoroughfare for New Yorkers to get from midtown to the West Side Rail Yards, and to the Hudson River waterfront beyond."

The plan is backed by Transportation Alternatives and the Regional Plan Association. The Empire State Development Corp., which is overseeing the station project, did not offer an opinion on Stringer's ideas or how it would impact parking in the area.

Photo: moynihanstation/Flickr

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Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 7, 2007 8:20 AM

Fred Wilson’s Social Blogging chart

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on December 7, 2007 7:13 AM

Now that the trippy stills have whetted your appetite, feast your eyes on the trailer for Speed Racer, in freaking HD no less. The race courses remind me of those in Mario Kart: Double Dash, particularly Rainbow Road, Dry Dry Desert, and especially Wario Colosseum. (thx, askedrelic)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 7, 2007 7:10 AM

My fellow blogging cousin Angelina has created these cool little Thriller drawings so in the spirit of familial teamwork I have animated them!

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on December 7, 2007 6:09 AM

Chatting with someone from Random House's digital division on the day of the Kindle release, I suggested that dramatic price cuts on e-editions — in other words, finally acknowledging that digital copies aren't worth as much (especially when they come corseted in DRM) as physical hard copies — might be the crucial adjustment needed to at last blow open the digital book market. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that Amazon was charging way too much for its e-books (not to mention the Kindle itself). But upon closer inspection, it clearly doesn't add up that way. Tim O'Reilly explains why:

...the idea that there's sufficient unmet demand to justify radical price cuts is totally wrongheaded. Unlike music, which is quickly consumed (a song takes 3 to 4 minutes to listen to, and price elasticity does have an impact on whether you try a new song or listen to an old one again), many types of books require a substantial time commitment, and having more books available more cheaply doesn't mean any more books read. Regular readers already often have huge piles of unread books, as we end up buying more than we have time for. Time, not price, is the limiting factor.

Even assuming the rosiest of scenarios, Kindle readers are going to be a subset of an already limited audience for books. Unless some hitherto untapped reader demographic comes out of the woodwork, gets excited about e-books, buys Kindles, and then significantly surpasses the average human capacity for book consumption, I fail to see how enough books could be sold to recoup costs and still keep prices low. And without lower prices, I don't see a huge number of people going the Kindle route in the first place. And there's the rub.

Even if you were to go as far as selling books like songs on iTunes at 99 cents a pop, it seems highly unlikely that people would be induced to buy a significantly greater number of books than they already are. There's only so much a person can read. The iPod solved a problem for music listeners: carrying around all that music to play on your Disc or Walkman was a major pain. So a hard drive with earphones made a great deal of sense. It shouldn't be assumed that readers have the same problem (spine-crushing textbook-stuffed backpacks notwithstanding). Do we really need an iPod for books?

We might, maybe (putting aside for the moment objections to the ultra-proprietary nature of the Kindle), if Amazon were to abandon the per copy idea altogether and go for a subscription model. (I'm just thinking out loud here — tell me how you'd adjust this.) Let's say 40 bucks a month for full online access to the entire Amazon digital library, along with every major newspaper, magazine and blog. You'd have the basic cable option: all books accessible and searchable in full, as well as popular feedback functions like reviews and Listmania. If you want to mark a book up, share notes with other readers, clip quotes, save an offline copy, you could go "premium" for a buck or two per title (not unlike the current Upgrade option, although cheaper). Certain blockbuster titles or fancy multimedia pieces (once the Kindle's screen improves) might be premium access only — like HBO or Showtime. Amazon could market other services such as book groups, networked classroom editions, book disaggregation for custom assembled print-on-demand editions or course packs.

This approach reconceives books as services, or channels, rather than as objects. The Kindle would be a gateway into a vast library that you can roam about freely, with access not only to books but to all the useful contextual material contributed by readers. Piracy isn't a problem since the system is totally locked down and you can only access it on a Kindle through Amazon's Whispernet. Revenues could be shared with publishers proportionately to traffic on individual titles. DRM and all the other insults that go hand in hand with trying to manage digital media like physical objects simply melt away.

*     *     *     *     *

On a related note, Nick Carr talks about how the Kindle, despite its many flaws, suggests a post-Web2.0 paradigm for hardware:

If the Kindle is flawed as a window onto literature, it offers a pretty clear view onto the future of appliances. It shows that we're rapidly approaching the time when centrally stored and managed software and data are seamlessly integrated into consumer appliances - all sorts of appliances.

The problem with "Web 2.0," as a concept, is that it constrains innovation by perpetuating the assumption that the web is accessed through computing devices, whether PCs or smartphones or game consoles. As broadband, storage, and computing get ever cheaper, that assumption will be rendered obsolete. The internet won't be so much a destination as a feature, incorporated into all sorts of different goods in all sorts of different ways. The next great wave in internet innovation, in other words, won't be about creating sites on the World Wide Web; it will be about figuring out creative ways to deploy the capabilities of the World Wide Computer through both traditional and new physical products, with, from the user's point of view, "no computer or special software required."

That the Kindle even suggests these ideas signals a major advance over its competitors — the doomed Sony Reader and the parade of failed devices that came before. What Amazon ought to be shooting for, however, (and almost is) is not an iPod for reading — a digital knapsack stuffed with individual e-books — but rather an interface to a networked library.

Originally posted by ben vershbow from if:book, on December 7, 2007 4:19 AM

It’s Tiffany’s birthday.

Go over and wish her a happy birthday.

Originally posted by Reed A. Cartwright from De Rerum Natura, on December 7, 2007 2:22 AM

M-----l wrote me a letter! With underwear drawings!

http://outgoingsignals.vox.com/library/post/so-there-was-this-boy-and-this-girl-and-theyd-never-met.html

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Originally posted by Krissy from david’s Neighbors, on December 6, 2007 2:27 PM

The Onion's Third Annual Surprisingly Specific Holiday Gift Guide on Michael Ruhlman's The Elements Of Cooking: "[He] has a different conception of the average American's baseline culinary competency."

Originally posted by raphael from Serious Eats: Main, on December 6, 2007 2:00 PM

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, iTS, iTunes

A report issued by Forrester Research suggests that contrary to conventional wisdom (or at least the comments here at TUAW), Apple is the loser in their feud with NBC-Universal. The on-going fight, which reached fruition last week, as all all NBC-Universal content was removed from iTunes, hurts Apple more than it hurts NBC. James McQuivey, an analyst for Forrest Research, urges Apple to make-up with NBC, otherwise they risk losing their spot as a major source in the distribution of online broadcast content. Why? Because although iTunes dominates the world of digital music sales, the same cannot be said for iTunes video downloads.

According to the report, which was quoted by CNET, Apple relies on NBC to deliver 30% of their video download sales. This is in line with the 40% figure claimed by NBC in October (I say we split the difference at 35 or call it a third). Furthermore, a Forrester study revealed that only 19% of users buy video content (either TV shows or full length movies) from iTunes and of that 19%, the average amount spent on videos is $30. Meanwhile, competing pay services like Amazon Unbox and the free offerings provided by the networks own websites and through services like the Fox and NBC collaboration Hulu.com make paying for an iTunes download, just so you can watch it on an iPod or Apple TV, less inviting or appealing to users.

Continue reading Report shows Apple needs NBC back, like yesterday

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Originally posted by Christina Warren from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 6, 2007 12:30 PM

Type-design gurus Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones find an awesome font rendered in chocolate. Text aus Schokolade, from € 0.60 a character. [via Print magazine]

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Main, on December 6, 2007 12:00 PM

This is the video the WGA doesn't want you to see! Studio Head and AMPTP Member, Roger A. Trevanti explains the AMPTP's groundbreaking new deal in a way writers can understand!

Originally posted by Lew Wasserman's Plumber from United Hollywood, on December 6, 2007 11:53 AM

Skirt steak is one of the more compelling reasons that a ridged, cast iron pan is a worthy investment for your kitchen. It’s one of the best cuts off the grill—a high fat-to-meat ratio helps keep it rich and moist—and it adapts incredibly well to off-summer adventures on the stove. This particular recipe is from The Best of Gourmet: A Year of Celebrations, an über-fancy, photo-laden dinner party cookbook that has hidden in its less-glamorous final 100 pages a collection of absolutely spot-on recipes.

A food-processor sauce comes together in the same amount of time it takes the steak to finish cooking and rest. Flank steak would also work for this recipe, a similar, leaner cut that’s sometimes easier to find, and which has a more profound beefy flavor (though with less fat, it’s harder to cook perfectly). Either way, cutting the meat across the grain is essential—on a flank cut, the grain usually goes lengthwise along the steak, while on skirt it's crosswise. You can further thwart the inevitable chewiness of both these cuts by slicing on the bias at a 45 degree angle, which helps make thinner slices.

At first I’d thought about serving the steak on a bed of greens with extra sauce, allowing the cilantro-garlic pesto to seep down and season everything. But if I’d had some flour tortillas in the fridge, this would have been rolled up with some chopped onions and another sprinkle of the cilantro.

Skirt Steak With Cilantro Garlic Sauce

- serves 6 -

Ingredients

For the sauce:
1 medium garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon cayenne

For the steak:
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 pounds skirt steak, cut to manageable grilling sizes (you may have to do batches)

Procedure

1. Combine the steak spices in a small bowl. Pat the steak dry so that the surface is tacky, then rub the spice mixture into both sides. Turn on the burner to high under the grill pan to get it heating.

2. Meanwhile, mince the garlic and mash to a paste with the salt (the flat edge of a chef’s knife works well for this). Transfer to a blender or mini food processor with the rest of the sauce ingredients, and blend until smooth.

3. Rub the grill pan with a bit of oil, and grill the steak about 5 minutes per side for a typical cut (medium rare). Once it’s cooked and rested, slice thinly and drizzle with the sauce.

Originally posted by Blake Royer from Serious Eats: Main, on December 6, 2007 11:30 AM

Today's Lifehacker interview with Quicksilver developer Nicholas Jitkoff (neé Alcor) has struck a note of gloom into the holiday spirits around TUAW's home office (currently located in an unoccupied storefront of the West Edmonton Mall). While Nicholas is still planning to do what he can to improve stability for the existing b54 branch of QS, the road is less clear for future feature development; he doesn't have the time in his off hours to advance the wildly popular launcher to the next level, and the existing version meets his needs (other than the problem of stability). His words: "that branch is condemned to a long slow death," and "I'm inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like LaunchBar." Ouch!

This, of course, means an opportunity for some eager young guns to show the world what they can do with the source code to QS, available to one and all. A forked version of QS might never attract the attention and plug-in support of the original, but in the right hands... well, you never know. Check out Nicholas' Google Tech Talk video on QS for more behind-the-scenes info.

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Originally posted by Michael Rose from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 6, 2007 11:30 AM

Don't get excited - really - but rumours have been zipping around the internet that Sega is considering dipping its unwisest toe back into the world of home console manufacturing. This all stems from the company's decision back in August,...

Originally posted by Keith Stuart from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on December 6, 2007 11:24 AM

Last week we all learned the new Apple store would be opening in the Meatpacking District just in time for a holiday spending spree. Since then, eager Mac fans have been stalking the place at night -- trying to get a glimpse into the shiny new tech haven.

Today we went inside for a sneak peak at what has to be the nicest of the three Manhattan stores so far. Upon entering you'll be greeted on the "Mac floor" by the concierge team, wearing light blue shirts and helping you navigate the three-story shop. There are helpful Applebots just about everywhere, and the store boasts 175 employees in all. Expect patrons and internet-less folk to be surfing the net on the ground floor, while others flock to the staircase.

Housed in a beautiful old building in the Meatpacking District, the centerpiece of the store is this glass staircase. While there is also one in Japan, this is the first to climb 3 floors in an Apple store (and we're guessing Steve Jobs likely has a design patent on them). At the top, on floor 3, you'll find their service level, this is where the Genius Bar is -- boasting 100 customer per hour capacity. Falling short of being the longest Genius Bar in the country by just 4 feet, it makes up for it's physical shortcomings by having 50% more total technical support space than any other store. This is also where the pro labs are, where they expect the creative types to gather.

In the midst of it all is the 2nd floor which will host all of the iPods, iPhones and iGottaHaveIts, as well as third party products. Just don't expect to purchase any of those things, or get any Mac emergencies solved post-Midnight, that's when they close up shop.

The latest in Apple's takeover of NYC is located on W 14th St and 9th Ave, and will open tomorrow at 6pm.

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 6, 2007 10:08 AM

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Retail

Gothamist has some beautiful photos of NYC's newest Apple Store on 14th street, scheduled to open Friday, December 7th. According to Gothamist, customers are greeted by a concierge team upon arrival in the three-story store. There's a spiral glass staircase (the first to span 3 floors in an Apple Store) and a Genius Bar capable of managing 100 customers per hour.

If you're going to see this store over the weekend (doors open officially at 6:00 PM on Friday), please let us know! You can get subway directions here.

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Originally posted by Dave Caolo from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 6, 2007 10:00 AM

50 Cent: I Get Money (I Dap Money Remix)

A Soul Sider (Andrew G.) sent this in: a remix of 50 Cent's "I Get Money" using a Sharon Jones and Dap-Kings song. Heck, if Jay-Z can flip about the "Roc Boys" over the Menahan Street Band, why not this? Reminds me of that Clipse/Lee Fields blend from last year.

Verdict?

Originally posted by O.W. from soul sides, on December 6, 2007 9:45 AM

Hi Coach Jenny! I am fairly new to the running world. (About 6 months) The furthest I’ve run is 5 miles on a treadmill. I am nursing a sore IT band. My question is whenever I get up early to...

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.

Originally posted by jenny hadfield from Ask Coach Jenny: Everything you wanted to know about running but were afraid to ask., on December 6, 2007 8:34 AM

Alec Baldwin must relish the opportunity to channel his rage through Jack Donaghy, the beloved heartless media executive he plays on 30 Rock, a rage in evidence at The Huffington Post in his open-skewering of the suits who own and run his show's network.

On the problem of the studios in the ongoing WGA negotiations:

They are owned by huge, creativity-deadening corporations and operated by lawyers and marketing executives who lord over the worst creative decline I have witnessed in a long time, particularly in films. In television, companies like GE view properties like NBC the way realtors view square footage. GE does not care what is on NBC. So long as the programming is relatively inoffensive, they want to earn as much per square foot as they can.

I missed this at the time, but 30 Rock snuck in a last-minute subversive writers' strike joke for its last pre-strike show.

For some defictionalized 30 Rock goods, t-shirts for the parent company of 30 Rock's NBC, Sheinhardt Wig Company, can be had here.

(via glass shallot)

(link)

Originally posted by lisagor@lonelysandwich.com from kottke.org, on December 6, 2007 8:32 AM

Heh, this is fantastic:

A Norwegian news site is reporting that a young boy and his sister were attacked by a moose, and the boy reportedly "taunted' the moose away from his sister, and then feigned death, causing the moose to lose aggro and leave.

"Just like you learn in level 30 in World of Warcraft," the boy is reportedly quoted as saying.

He'll be a Hunter, then...!

(Thanks Cory!)

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on December 6, 2007 7:34 AM

Much nattering takes place on this blog about the distinction between lettering (letterforms rendered for a particular situation) and fonts (sets of type designed for reproduction.) Edible lettering is an ancient tradition, but edible fonts may be something new: our designer Sara Soskolne discovered this marvelous set of Movable Type in Chocolate, created by Sandra Kübler and Christine Voshage.

I have to commend the duo for including a broad character set, including accents and punctuation. (The Droste company, which makes the chocolate initials given to Dutch children for Sinterklaas Eve, doesn't produce even the letter I, presumably because it's challenging to design a chocolate I that matches the weight of the M or W.) As we know, children are a stickler for fairness, especially when it comes to chocolate, just as typographers are a stickler for fidelity, especially when it comes to chocolate. —JH

Typolade: Text aus Schokolade. From € 0,60/character.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on December 6, 2007 7:27 AM

Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting....

Some folks think Postmodernism means little more than the Empowerment of the Vulgar. Some folks think the same about Perl.

But I take Postmodernism to mean that a Text, whether spoken or written, is an act of communication requiring intelligence on both ends, and sometimes in the middle too. I don't want to talk to a stupid computer language. I want my computer language to understand the strings I type.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 6, 2007 6:44 AM

We’re pretty darn excited about these. You might remember us complaining about wine gift packaging a while back. We’ve been trying to find some creative solutions and came up with some buckets and modern wine crates for multiple bottle packaging. (more…)

Originally posted by admin from domaine547, on December 6, 2007 6:20 AM

Larry Wall's annual State of the Onion describes the state of Perl, the language and the community. In his 11th address, he discussed the past, present, and future of scripting languages, including the several dimensions of design decisions important to the development of Perl 6.

Originally posted by Larry Wall from Perl.com, on December 6, 2007 6:15 AM

• Roberts Says Subway Lines to Operate as Individual Railroads (NYT)
• Cyclist in "Freak Mishap" Identified as David Smith (News, NYT, Post, Sun)
• Unlike Neighbors, Some Businesses Welcome Parking Meters (R'dale Press)
• Letter: Selfish, Double-Parking Parents Deserve Tickets (R'dale Press)
• Drivers in a Fit Over Verrazano Congestion (Bklyn Eagle)
• Few Transportation Options for Aging Americans (USA Today)
• No Room Left on California Bike Train (Palo Alto Daily)
• Miami Residents Surprised to Find Selves in a Walkable City (Transit Miami)
• States Ask EPA to Regulate Airline Emissions (NYT)
• Sunlight Project: A Ray of Hope for Albany? (NYT)

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Originally posted by Jason Varone from Streetsblog, on December 6, 2007 5:13 AM

After Louis Vuitton's Paris show, rumors swirled that their Spring '08 ads would return from starlets to super models.

We haven't seen the new shots yet, but we heard a fun rumor tonight that makes us hope it's true:

That Kate Moss has returned to Vuitton, after a hiatus of several years.

Naomi Campbell won't be joining her, although that would be amazing. Instead, we hear Claudia Schiffer and Angela Lindvall will be part of the Vuitton power package.

We've also heard word of a Stephanie Seymour booking, though that seems to be wishful thinking... much like the idea that those Richard Price bags will be available if you're not Lucy Liu, or someone who can name-drop them on Gossip Girl...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 6, 2007 4:02 AM

Lifehacker: When we say 'stalk,' we're exaggerating, not recommending. I love that Gina still has a sense of humor on Lifehacker. A lesser editrix would have broken down and become serious and plodding, sticking us with keyboard shortcut upon keyboard shortcut.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 6, 2007 4:00 AM

These newly released stills from the upcoming 'Speed Racer' movie do a lot to lend credence to star Susan Sarandon's claim back in August that the Wachowskis' entirely unique vision for the film required the development of new, unprecedented technology and visual effects trickery. Her summary of the film's thematic elements: "It's all about cheating and betting and how things are fixed and everything else, but it's also about family values and pancakes are love."

At the time it was just a whimsical sound bite, but these new images make me head-splittingly happy, enough to buy all the way in to the pancake love. (thx joseph)

(link)

Originally posted by lisagor@lonelysandwich.com from kottke.org, on December 5, 2007 11:15 PM

In today's Curious Cook column I write about a new English cheese intended to be a re-creation of the great blue cheese Stilton at its greatest, when it was made largely by hand with unpasteurized milk.



_____________________________________

Stichelton Dairy

Originally posted by Harold McGee from News For Curious Cooks, on December 5, 2007 8:28 PM

This whole "no Daily Show" thing[1] really sucks ass.[2]

[1] I mean, seriously. There's a whole new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and all of us self-satisfied armchair liberals are stuck looking for the humor in Tom Friedman columns. Shoot me now.

[2] Classy, eh?

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on December 5, 2007 8:03 PM

I’ve long stuck to the position that connecting performance on the field in certain situations to character is a terrible idea. Players succeed and fail in high-leverage moments, over their careers, in basically the proportion that they succeed and fail all the time. The notions of “clutch” and “choke” are post-facto labels we use to create narratives, not skills that actually impact the game on the field.

Writers, however…boy, can we choke.

About six hours ago, I found myself eight inches away from Don Mattingly as we rode an elevator here in the great state of Opryland Hotel. He was unassuming, and in fact, charming, holding the doors for some women to ensure they got on the car, making small talk with them as we climbed. It was the perfect spot to say something to him, to thank him for the ridiculous amount of enjoyment he gave me as a boy, to congratulate him on his new job in a place where it’s warm all the time (yeah, I’m missing L.A. weather), to inquire as to his son’s development. Heck, I wasn’t even wearing  a credential, so I didn’t have to worry about violating some kind of ethics. For the moment, I wasn’t a baseball writer, I was a child standing next to his hero.

So what did I do? I stole a couple of nervous glances, like a teenager eyeing the cute girl across the room, too shy to say anything lest he feel the sting of rejection. Reaching my floor, I nodded politely to the ladies and exited the elevator, hoping against hope I’d hear the sound of a Yankee legend’s feet behind me so I’d have another opportunity, and hearing only the sound of the doors closing and my own heartbeat in my chest.

I don’t get it. I’m a grown man, reasonably successful, reasonably deft with words, and twice now the presence of Don Mattingly has reduced me to a mute, blushing tween with raging insecurities and no game at all. Maybe you never get past your heroes–although I did manage to sustain a conversation with Peter Gammons without stammering–but one of these days, I’d like to hold it together long enough to thank the man for everything he gave me for 14 seasons. I owe him that much. 

 

Originally posted by Joe Sheehan from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on December 5, 2007 6:51 PM

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends

Google has announced the opening of their new Google Mac Developer Playground. This is basically just a Google Code site that collects together a variety of the Mac related projects that Google's Mac team works on during their so-called 20% time, the time that Google gives their engineers to play around with the things they really want to work on. The Playground will be a gathering place for these different projects, like Amit Singh's brilliant MacFUSE and others, including the just released Statz that lets you automatically update your status across a variety of chat clients.

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Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 5, 2007 5:00 PM

My roommate and I are fixin' to head out to the Mohawk to see Frank Smith tonight. 

I read a brief description of their music the other day - I forget where - so I asked Jeff if he knew anything about them.  Among Jeff's response was the declaration "they moved to Austin because of Booher" which I found to be very intriguing.  See, Frank Smith is, from what I can tell, basically two dudes from Boston.  And although I will admit our friend Michael Booher is pretty extraordinary, I didn't anticipate his awesomeness would lure people to this city in pairs like that.

That was enough to inspire me to do the requisite Google searching and Myspace listening.  It sounds like good alt-country, complete with tambourines, banjo and steel guitar.  Juliana Hatfield fans should note they put out an EP with her earlier this year, cleverly titled Sittin' In A Tree.

Here's a pretty cool video for "Throwin' Rocks":

So tonight Jeff and I will see them at the Mohawk.  I'll let you know how we like it.

Originally posted by Krissy from art is the new religion, on December 5, 2007 3:25 PM

As the year comes to a close, the web becomes filled with lists – Top 10-this, Top 100-that. I love these lists and wanted to throw one into the mix. Below is a list of software and web services that we use here at Adaptive Path. If you haven’t made use of these, take a peek:

Software

Adobe InDesign – All our proposals, project narratives and a good chunk of our deliverables are done in InDesign. It’s an amazing page layout tool that allows you to assemble all your models, charts, visual designs and wireframes into consistently designed deliverables for your clients.

Adobe Illustrator – Many of us use Illustrator for drawing models, graphs, wireframes and design comps.

Adobe Photoshop – We honestly don’t use Photoshop to any large degree. But for tweaking images, cropping, minor editing, etc., you can’t find a better tool.

Adobe Acrobat Professional – PDFs are our deliverable blood. So, making the most of Acrobat is important. Often, we’ll use the sticky note features to provide feedback on designs or ideas. We’ll convert our presentations to PDF for release to the public after events as well.

Adobe Flash – We use Flash for creating prototypes of interfaces and applications. Thermo looks promising for this, but we’ll have to wait.

Keynote – One of our most favorite applications. Keynote is not only used for our presentations for events, but also for deliverables to clients. When you absolutely need a fast, powerful and simple application to convey your ideas, Keynote is the one.

OmniGraffle – Graffle is a great tool for creating wireframes and other diagrams. It’s faster to get started in Graffle than Illustrator sometimes and it’s made for wireframes. Many of us use this on every project.

OmniOutliner – Another fine tool, especially for taking notes that later need to be translated into a presentation, narration or deliverable.

Coda – This is a great little app for code editing and FTP services. The guys at Panic make awesome software.

SubEthaEdit – We use this during client meetings and sales calls. The Bonjour enabled document editing makes it so easy for all of us to take notes on one page. This saves time combining notes later and allows us to make corrections on the fly.

Microsoft Office – We use this a lot less than we did a year ago. We’ve stopped using Word for our proposals and communication. But we still use Excel for accounting purposes.

OS X – Of course, we’re a Mac house, so OS X is our most favorite “app” of all!

Web Services

Twitter – Twitter is great service that allow us to maintain connections with each other and with the community. Not only do most of us have our own accounts, Adaptive Path has an account where people could follow our office antics.

AIM – Instant messaging is still king for instant fast communication. Since we’ve grown to use two floors in our building, we rely on AIM for quick intra-office check-ins.

Harvest – Rather than doing traditional punch-in timecards, or submitting our project hours via email, we’ve switched to Harvest. It’s a great online service that makes it easy for the practitioners and the project managers.

Basecamp – Couldn’t run projects as effectively without it. Though it’s basic in many respects, it does 80% of what we need and our clients love the ability to communicate with us in such a simple and direct manner.

Wordpress – Our blog is powered by Wordpress and we’re happy with it’s ease of use, configurability and industrial strength.

MediaWiki – Instead of an intranet, we maintain a wiki. All the office and personnel stuff goes here. Everyone can edit it and we use it daily.

We’ve also experimented with using Google Docs and Spreadsheets with clients. We’ve tried countless online file storage delivery services. Most of us are on LinkedIn and Flickr.

Software and web services are crucial to doing our jobs, but face-to-face interaction and clear communication skills are the best tools you can have in your arsenal.

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Originally posted by Andrew Crow from Adaptive Path, on December 5, 2007 2:06 PM

Google Checkout for Non-Profit Organizations. Free, online donation processing until 2009. No monthly, setup or gateway fees.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on December 5, 2007 12:49 PM

Loic Le Meur’s Ten Rules For Startup Success

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on December 5, 2007 11:52 AM

Has Morgan Spurlock found Osama Bin Laden?

Spurlock has finished his new movie Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, in which he sets out to do what the United States government has apparently failed to do: Find Osama Bin Laden. The Weinstein Company bought the thing after seeing only 15 minutes of it at the Berlin Film Festival, and here’s where it gets really interesting. Rumor has it that Spurlock actually found Osama Bin Laden.

Either way, it’ll be great.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org Tumblelog, on December 5, 2007 11:31 AM

To Our Fellow Members:

Yesterday, the WGAW and WGAE presented to the AMPTP a response to its proposal on streaming television programs.

We accepted the framework in their proposal of last Thursday for a fixed residual in the first year.

But rather than basing the residual for the entire first year on a small percentage of the applicable minimum, we proposed that the fixed residual be paid on a higher percentage of applicable minimum for each 100,000 streams per quarter.

This is a readily ascertainable number. In fact, the companies are already keeping records of streams for their advertisers. Both the advertisers and the companies are already using these numbers as the basis for their business model.

We believe these formulas will protect the writer even if all television reuse migrates to new media. This is our real goal – we simply want to make sure that writers keep up if reuse moves to the Internet. If new media reuse turns out to be additive, both partners will benefit.

After the first year, following the companies’ proposal, reuse is paid on a percentage formula. We held to our proposal that the appropriate rate for that payment is 2.5% of distributor’s gross and the same rate should also apply to streaming of theatrical motion pictures.

Finally, we modified our position to move closer to the companies on determining fair market value and ensuring our ability to obtain documents to enforce these revenue-based residual formulas.

Our fixed residual proposal is based on thorough analysis. To reach our formula, we looked at the value to writers under existing fixed television residuals and blended those residuals to the scale of new media. Our proposal protects the interests of both parties.

We look forward to the AMPTP’s response as we continue to pursue a discussion of all the issues important to writers.

If you care to read the language of the proposal, it can be found at these links:

http://www.wga.org/contract_07/W8.pdf

http://www.wga.org/contract_07/W12a.pdf

http://www.wga.org/contract_07/W12b.pdf

We also recommend an article from today's Wall Street Journal entitled, "Cracks in Producers' United Front". Thank you for your continuing involvement and resolve as this process moves forward. We are all in this together.


Best,

Patric M. Verrone
President, WGAW

Michael Winship
President, WGAE

Originally posted by Daniel T Thomsen from United Hollywood, on December 5, 2007 11:18 AM

Operation Lucky Bag, the NYPD program that threatened to ensnare good Samaritans along with subway thieves, is making a comeback after being effectively shut down earlier this year. Initially, the program involved cops leaving bags of merchandise, wallets, or purses on subway benches. When someone picked them up and didn't immediately turn them over to the police or subway personnel, he or she was arrested. According to the police, Operation Lucky Bag netted 101 arrests of people with 716 prior arrests on their records.

Last week, the New York Times wrote there were actually 220 arrests, so 119 had no prior arrests to their names. One such person was Helen Calthorpe, who was arrested after picking up a bag with a phone in it while she was on her way to her job. And that gets to a serious flaw in OLB in our opinion - leaving decoy belongings on subway platforms, where people are usually hurried and an arriving train isn't going to wait for you to find a police officer or transit worker.

Judges eventually started throwing out OLB arrests, noting that people actually have ten days to turn in lost items. The NYPD is renewing the program, however, and rigging it for stiffer penalties. The dropped items now include legitimate credit cards (registered to cops' pseudonyms), the theft of which is a Class E felony and can result in four years in prison. And they've expanded the locales. According to the Times, cops have been leaving abandoned purses in stores such as Macy's.

Prosecutors say they'll focus on cases that involve sneaky behavior that indicates guilt, such as a man who found a purse in a store, removed the wallet and stuck it in his pocket, and then left the purse behind before attempting to leave. But that doesn't explain the police nabbing a guy who picked up at a wallet at the Grand Central Station. He told the Daily News he intended to return but rushed onto a train - only to be hauled out by the police, frisked, and questioned how many times he had been arrested.

Originally posted by Dave Hogarty from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 5, 2007 11:16 AM

Quick Post

A traceur and landmine activist traverses the full 50,000 square meters of London without touching the ground to bring light to the need for landmine clearance. There are lots of great videos and photos on the site.

http://www.dangerousground.org/

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on December 5, 2007 11:07 AM

A side-by-side comparison of PlaNYC congestion pricing and alternatives offered by pricing opponents shows that the Bloomberg proposal is the only one that would have an immediate impact on auto traffic while improving transit. Further, the report concludes that plans put forth by Congressman Anthony Weiner, Council Member Lew Fidler, and Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free would actually promote driving.

Does the Rubber Meet the Road? Investigating the Alternatives to Congestion Pricing, a 14-page study (pdf) issued by Environmental Defense and the Pratt Center for Community Development, breaks it down as follows.

Anthony Weiner's Reducing Traffic and Improving Our Environment: An Alternative to the Car Tax: Many aspects of this proposal are similar to the PlaNYC's original congestion pricing scheme. However, Congressman Weiner would limit congestion pricing to trucks only and would take a series of steps to open up more existing road space for faster-moving traffic, such as reducing alternate side street parking, and increasing traffic law enforcement, that would attract more traffic in the long run. He also suggests large-scale, long-term capital investments, such as building a Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel, that while essential for long-term regional planning, cannot address traffic with the immediacy and revenue-generating capacity of congestion pricing.

Lew Fidler's 9 Carat Stone Plan: This plan to fund long term transportation projects, including three major tunnels requiring massive capital investment, essentially levies a regional payroll tax that would support the state's general fund and not be dedicated to transportation investment, unlike tolls. Councilman Fidler proposes hydrogen powered cars, which automakers and scientists agree are many years and breakthroughs away from being practical and commercially viable. He supplements these ideas with short term measures such as increased truck loading zones and enforcement of traffic laws that, while perhaps good to speed traffic flow and ensure better safety, are not likely to achieve significant reductions in traffic volumes. Other elements of Councilman Fidler's plan, such as moving government offices from Manhattan to the other boroughs, would simply displace current traffic to new locations, and to the extent that those locations are less centrally-located in the transit system, there would likely be a net increase in traffic overall.

Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free's Alternative Approaches to Traffic Congestion Mitigation in the Manhattan Central Business District: This plan, primarily supported by AAA, the Metropolitan Parking Association and the Queens Civic Congress, among others, combines several separate measures that collectively claim to meet and exceed the 6.3% vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction of the mayor's plan. In fact, many will simply make driving easier in the Central Business District, thus probably attracting more drivers over time. Furthermore, the report's additive approach for totaling VMT reduction overstates the results dramatically, double-counting many overlapping traffic reduction measures.

"Unlike congestion pricing, these alternatives would encourage driving -- not discourage it -- and as a result attract more traffic in the long term," says Michael Replogle, transportation director for Environmental Defense and the report's primary author, via media release. "They also fail to match the criteria required by the federal grant, by state law, and the reality test for effectiveness, timeliness and revenue potential."

"Alternative proposals to fund mass transit through broad income and payroll tax increases are like taking a sledgehammer to a nail because they place special burdens on low and middle income residents," says Joan Byron, Director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative of The Pratt Center. "In contrast, a congestion pricing plan benefits lower-income folks most and burdens them least since the vast majority of them rely on public transportation, and do not drive into Manhattan's zone."

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Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 5, 2007 10:24 AM

Amusing but not essential. Thanks to Mike for the tip.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Elsewhere, on December 5, 2007 9:47 AM

Tune in to hear writer/director/producer Joss Whedon (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) who joins us on United Hollywood Live today (12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern). We'll be talking to Joss about the "Mutant Enemy Strike" in which fans of Joss' shows will picket outside Fox's Pico Gate this Friday.

Also on the show will be the staff writers from JERICHO as well as members of the Network Organizing Committee who will be discussing the Fremantle rally, also coming up this Friday.

Tune in by CLICKING HERE (or by using the widget located along the right hand side of UnitedHollywood.com). The show, which airs Monday, Wednesday and Friday, is also available as a podcast immediately after each broadcast via the widget.

Fans and WGA supporters are encouraged to become a part of the broadcast via live IM chats, video feeds and phone calls to the studio. They can also add the United Hollywood Live widget to their websites.

Originally posted by Lew Wasserman's Plumber from United Hollywood, on December 5, 2007 9:46 AM

Yesterday, Governor Spitzer, Mayor Bloomberg, MTA CEO and Executive Director Lee Sander and other officials kicked off the extension of the 7 line by unveiling a new sign in Times Square pointing the way to Hudson Yards. Ah, nothing like putting in signs for things that won't be ready for years - the 7 will reach 34th and 11th Avenue in 2013.

The 7 line extension will cost $2 billion for the 1.5 miles (and the platforms will get glass doors), but one of the more controversial aspects is how the line does not have a stop at 41st Street and 10th Avenue at the moment. The MTA has the option to build a "shell" of a station in case funds make it possible to build out a stop, but for now, the agency and city and state governments aren't concerned with giving Hell's Kitchen residents a subway stop. amNewYork reports Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff "[said] the area around 41nd Street and 10th Avenue in Hells Kitchen is developing without a subway already," therefore no stop is needed to continue the neighborhood's growth.

And yesterday, the five developers bidding on the Hudson Yards took their projects to the public last night by having designer present the plans. Reactions ranged from "meh" to "interesting" to "horrifying", but Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder points out that at least there's a public process for the West Side rail yards, unlike the Atlantic Yards.

Photograph of Governor Spitzer, Mayor Bloomberg and other officials show off the new Hudson Yards sign at the Times Square subway station by Richard Drew/AP

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 5, 2007 9:33 AM

Here is another one of my blog comments made elsewhere that went too long that I want to post it here.

Ben Tshin posts about migrating his sister’s MT and blogger/blogspot blogs to WordPress and writes:

So they took the originally open source MT2.x and made it “closed source” for MT3.x.

What now follows is the comment I left with a few minor grammatical edits and hyperlinks added.

---

MT never had an open source license ever.

MT was built using various open source technology particularly Perl and numerous addons libraries from CPAN, but it was never released under a GPL or like license. (This is changing shortly though.) The code has always remained open as in viewable. Nothing is done to hide or obfuscate it — anyone can view and modify if you need to. You just couldn’t freely distribute MT amongst other proprietary license terms.

The difference and what the ruckus was all about then is that payment for its use went from being mostly optional (donations) with MT2 to required with the release of MT3. Also, and perhaps more significantly, that change in the license/practice was never mentioned or discussed until MT3 was released.

MT started out with Ben and Mena always asking that anyone who used the software contribute what they thought the software was worth with suggestions of $20 and $40. Most people abused that and didn’t pay a dime, but some did that they could scrape by doing this and some consulting full-time. By the time MT3 was released, Ben and Mena had formed Six Apart, took on investors, hired staff and had launched TypePad — their software had stopped being a hobby or a side business into a full fledge enterprise. I personally saw no problem in this since they never ever had released the software under a GPL license and had always asked to paid for its use. Besides forming Six Apart and all that came with it meant that a lot more resources that would benefit MT and blogging tools in general.

Six Apart don’t really enforce that you pay or license — in fact personal use was made free not long after the MT3 release debacle. You have always been able to download MT and run it completely unencumbered. Without a license the software was not crippled nor did it nag you or “phone home” to report you.

Where Six Apart did blow it was not communicating this shift and their intentions BEFORE the required payment license was unveiled. Afterall, blogging is about transparency and they are a leading developer of blogging tools so they should have known better, right? In retrospect, the shift was far to abrupt and dramatic that it shocked many. I’m pretty darn sure they know they screwed up there though I believe it was more of an unintentional oversight made by a really young and inexperienced company then something “evil” as the WordPress community is so fond to call it. Despite all the apologies, continued goodwill and contributions it seems that one mistake is one many won’t forgive no matter what they do.

The point here is that to say MT was open source software that was taken “closed source” is completely inaccurate and a falsehood that has been perpetuated over time for reasons that I’ll probably never understand.

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on December 5, 2007 7:38 AM

Opening this week is Juno, which is pretty terrific. Ellen Page is simply sensational as the spunky, defiantly nonconformist, 16-year-old Juno, who finds she is pregnant after sleeping with boyfriend Bleeker (the goofy, sweetly endearing, Michael Cera). She decides to have the baby and give it up to a deserving couple, which she picks out of an ad in a penny saver (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). And that’s the jumping off part to Jason Reitman’s marvelously offbeat comedy, which is sheer joy from beginning to end. Much of that is because of the smart screenplay by Diablo Cody, which crackles with comic effervescence and sly wit -- there are times when the jokes machine-gun past you at alarming speed. But Page gives such dynamic assertion to the role, that in other hands might be cloyingly cute. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are just delightful as her accepting parents. As for Juno, any girl who digs Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and Dario Argento is my kind of gal.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on December 5, 2007 6:59 AM

Drama rocked the tabloid news website Gawker last week when half the editorial staff abruptly resigned. The news came to readers through an initially unassuming post on the website by editor Emily Gould, who addressed at length an essay about Gawker in the new issue of literary magazine n + 1 before divulging news of her departure, along with managing editor Choire Sicha. (It was later learned that a third editor, Joshua Stein, had also resigned.) This is Sicha’s second time quitting Gawker, having returned to the site in February after a hiatus at The New York Observer. Speaking to the Times, Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media, acknowledged that “Choire’s departure as managing editor, and that of his blogger protégés, will obviously be a complete pain.” So folks, mystery solved on that inhuman screeching you may have heard echoing up from Spring Street; that's just the sound of Denton's complete pain.

Emily Gould’s resignation post on Gawker quoted your friend's email impressions of Keith Gessen's new book, which your friend described as “SUCH a cautionary tale.... To me it's screaming *Get out of NY before it's too late*!!” What on earth is this cultural decline of which your friend speaks? [Laughs] It’s a good question. The decline of New York is seen in careerist social climbing. It’s seen in people who call or email us to ask, “Can you give me advice about my career?” And my advice is: “Maybe you should go write something exciting!”

But hasn’t that always been New York – Sure, people move to New York and scheme but it’s weird if you think back to the era of Tama Janovitz and Bret Easton Ellis coming to New York and thinking, “I’m going to write a novel that knocks socks off!” At the time people probably thought they were transparent social climbers but they were actually sitting in their apartments trying to come up with a book that would knock people’s socks off! I don’t know. Maybe the Dana Vachons and whoever are the same way.

In the New York Magazine cover story, you’re quoted as saying: “Not a week goes by I don't want to quit this job, because staring at New York this way makes me sick.” How did Nick Denton react to that? He’s sort of promulgating that more and more right now. I know he sees my quitting as like my own “existential crisis” in his words, when really, I just don’t like being management. I’ve always been a whiny little girl.

But because Emily and Josh resigned simultaneously it seems there’s more to the story than just your dissatisfaction with being a manager. Wasn’t there some big final confrontation with smashed laptops and bloggers tossed through Balthazar's windows? Oh my God, that would be so awesome, I wish it had been that dramatic. No, I mean, we’ve both been doing this for a good while. No one’s had the strength of a Jessica Coen who lasted two years, I think. I only lasted exactly one year the first time around and that was pretty low-impact back them. I’ve always said it’s not a job people should do for very long.Why is that? I quit the first time because I was kind of sold out. I realized I knew too many of the people I was writing about. And the second time around I realized I didn’t really care; that didn’t really matter.

After leaving Gawker, Jessica Coen wrote in Glamour: “I never thought I’d say this, but the unmitigated and unintelligent nastiness has to end—on MySpace, over e-mail, on blogs and everywhere else.” Do you think internet nastiness was as prevalent before Gawker and Gawker just gave it a voice and taught readers how to make meanness funny? No, the internet's always been nasty. It’s just maybe a little more codified and centralized thanks to Gawker.

How did you feel about the New York Magazine profile in terms of its overall depiction of Gawker? It was fine. I like Vanessa [Grigoriadis, author of the article] a lot; I think she’s really smart. I would like some day to read her original version of the piece. I think it got sort of mangled in edits. I think they were interested in schadenfreude and I would have liked to have heard more of Vanessa’s original take.

It was weird though because that article seemed like the sort of thing Gawker would usually have a field day with, but it went unacknowledged on the site. I wrote a couple of posts about it and they didn’t really seem worth publishing.

Why not? There really wasn’t anything to add. I should go back and look but it just seemed so long and overblown. And I don’t think our readers really care. I think they’d really rather hear about something that isn’t about this website.

Really? Because it seems there’s a bit of a cult of personality when I read the comments. People seem pretty enthralled with the different writers and who their favorites are on Gawker. I don’t really care about that. Commenters are a pretty small part of the overall audience. Some of them are really informative and I like reading some of them. I was reading comments from one of the small items yesterday and some of the comments were from people who really had experience with the topic and I got a lot out of it. But when Gawker’s operating correctly it should be mostly a news site. And while I really kind of love the sort of meta and ridiculous transparency thing where we talk about ourselves or we talk about quitting or what work is like, while it’s interesting in a conceptual way it’s not that interesting in a news-delivering way. [Laughs.] I’ve gotten all serious now, goddamnit!

Okay, let’s try to keep it light here. What’s the biggest misconception people have about Gawker? I don’t know. I think any misconceptions are entirely our fault so I hate to harp on any of them because they’re all our own doing.

Are there any Gawker posts you regret? I don’t know that I regret anything. I know I’ve definitely done misinformed or knee-jerk things. But I think it’s important not to regret anything.

What was one of the posts you thought was misinformed. There are tons. I’m trying to think. The problem is that you get up in the morning and you realize you’re twenty minutes late so you have to write a couple things fast before you have coffee and who’s not going to suffer from that? There are a couple every week I’m sure are totally jackass and stupid.

Their new pay-per-page-view system: yay or nay? I think I’m one of the few who’s really in favor of it, essentially. Conceptually what paying people for their traffic does is it puts income in the hands of the worker; it puts control of the income, in some slightly messy way, in the hands of the people actually doing the writing. I think that’s actually kind of a huge advance. I don’t know if it’ll bear out entirely in practice but conceptually I think it’s a great idea.

I wonder though how someone like you, who would be the managing editor, arbitrates who gets the hot juicy post of the morning? Well, the thing is there’s always a hot juicy post on any beat, you know what I mean? In any news organization I feel like anyone can win, whether you’re in the Metro section or the Business section, there’s always a way to gain readers for a story. The fact of the matter is I write posts that get incredibly low traffic because my interests are really sort of boring or obscure or weird. If you look at traffic numbers I perform pretty poorly. [Laughs.]

Have you considered starting your own website with your ex-Gawker colleagues, perhaps a kinder, gentler Gawker? Wouldn’t a kinder, gentler Gawker be hideously unreadable? No, we never talked about that. It would be hysterical but we haven’t.

Have the job offers started rolling in? What are you considering? I think it’s possible to freelance and possibly, like, have time to exercise during the course of the week, maybe? One of the things with a desk job like this is you get fat in the winter and I can’t tolerate fat anymore at my age. I’m too single and too old to get fat right now. I don’t mean to be fat-phobic either; fat is okay. Fat phobia is a great affliction in New York City.

Where would you like to be this time next year? My big plan this winter was to go to Miami or something. That’s not working out very well.

Why not? I don’t know. You get sort of trapped in New York, don’t you? Though there is sort of a nice exodus to Los Angeles going on right now. Even former Village Voice nightlife queen Trisha Romano is moving to Los Angeles.

Makes sense; I was there a couple months ago. A buddy of mine lives downtown, which has some of the raw excitement that parts of now-gentrified Brooklyn had years ago. Yeah, L.A.’s got a lot going on but I sort of feel like I can’t move there, partly because I grew up there. But I wish I could move to L.A., where it’s sunny and vapid but also secretly a little bit “New Yorky” at heart.

Where do you see Gawker a year from now? I think Gawker will be better. I definitely think Gawker will be in good shape a year from now. It’s an amazing job and a great opportunity and I know they’ll get someone smart and ideally it’ll be a pretty tight tabloid news site.

Photo via Blaise K's Flickr.

Originally posted by John Del Signore from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 5, 2007 6:59 AM

A few weeks ago, I posted some scans of nineteenth-century wood types by William Page, from the rare specimen book Wm. H. Page & Co. Wood Type of 1872. The designers at the Cary Graphic Arts Press (Rochester Institute of Technology) apparently share my love of Page's colorful woodtypes, for their lovely Wood Type Notecards reproduce some pages from the exceedingly rare Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c. of 1874. I don't imagine I'll need much of a pretext to send these to my favorite typophiles; I think I'll save the SIN cards to send to clients who don't correctly use small caps or smart quotes. —JH

Set of eight Wood Type Notecards, $7.00.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on December 5, 2007 6:19 AM

Andy Warhol: 1928-1987, by planetschwa on flickr.com    

via iCommons.org:

Warhol is turning in his grave
by Cory Doctorow (International) · Dec 02nd, 2007 8:53 pm
An exhibition of pop art at London's National Portrait Gallery unwittingly celebrates a golden age before copyright was king.

The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the artists used to produce their provocative works.

Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley - and that's just in the first of seven rooms.

The programme describes the aesthetic experience conjured up by these transmogrified icons of high and low culture. Celebrated pop artists including Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol created these images by nicking the work of others, without permission, and transforming it to make statements and evoke emotions never countenanced by the original creators.

Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright. Can you blame the authors? A treatise on the way that copyright and trademarks were - had to be - trammelled to make these works could fill volumes.

Reading the programme, you can only assume that the curators' message about copyright is that where free expression is concerned, the rights of the creators of the original source material must take a back seat to those of the pop artists.

There is, however, another message about copyright in the National Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition.

These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash Photography"). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works hung on the walls - a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly confirmed.

Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained that the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted.

If true, presumably the same rules would prevent anyone from taking any pictures in any public place - unless you could somehow contrive to get a shot of Leicester Square without any writing, logos, architectural facades or images in it. Otherwise I doubt even Warhol could have got away with it.

So what's the message of the show? Is it a celebration of remix culture, revelling in the endless possibilities opened up by appropriating and reusing images without permission?

Or is it the epitaph on the tombstone of the sweet days before the UN set up the World Intellectual Property Organization and the ensuing mania for turning everything that can be sensed and recorded into someone's property?

Does this show - paid for with public money, with some works that are themselves owned by public institutions - seek to inspire us to become 21st century pop artists, armed with cameraphones, websites and mixers, or is it supposed to inform us that our chance has passed and we'd best settle for a life as information serfs who can't even make free use of what our eyes see and our ears hear?

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading as a pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the delicious irony of celebrating copyright infringement while simultaneously taking the view that even the "No Photography" sign is a form of property not to be reproduced without the permission that can never be had.

Cory Doctorow is a digital activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing. This article was first published on the Guardian Unlimited website on 13 November. It is reproduced here with Doctorow's permission.

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on December 5, 2007 5:47 AM

And it was at that moment, reading the paper about bike thieves in London, that I realized I’d forgot to pack the lock! Well, ok, I can fold it and take it with me into most places … that also explains all the thoroughly locked bikes on racks I saw during the cab ride into town.

While listening to Police & Thieves, by The Clash, I read more about cycling in London:

• Safer Cycling
• Cycling in the Square Mile
• Give up your car and get £100

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on December 5, 2007 5:16 AM

I just did a Q&A on the Freakonomics blog. Nothing regular readers of this blog haven't heard before, but it was fun all the same. There's also a Slashdot thread on the Q&A.

Originally posted by schneier from Schneier on Security, on December 5, 2007 5:10 AM

I would rather eat my own shoes than Two Boots pizza.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 4, 2007 5:30 PM

I learned what I know about greasemonkey and an awful lot about accessibility by reading Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Accessibility and Dive Into Greasemonkey. He has a blog at DiveIntoMark, of course, which I sometimes read. Today I was directed there by David Weinberger to the post called The Future of Reading. As David points out Mark’s post is not just a cheeky then and now juxtaposition of some of the things Jeff Bezos has said, it’s also “the story of the coming change in norms. And a change in norms rewrites all the stories leading up to it.” How are you feeling about your digital rights, and the content in your libraries?

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on December 4, 2007 5:04 PM

I’m a little burnt out on blogging, so forgive me folks for having been somewhat absent here over the past few weeks. Fear not; I fully intend to regain my mojo before too long. In the meantime, though, I’m trying to get through December’s litany of social distractions: the holiday season, for one, and just a little bit more travel before the calendar’s done, too.

If you’re also coping with the former, and if you’re in New York City, what better way to ease yourself through the December craziness than by spending it with a passel of your peers at AIGA New York’s Annual Holiday Party? Last year’s was a bit of a mob scene, but this year we’re upping the ante: dancing, a bigger, more spectacular venue, dancing, an auction of design goodies, dancing, and M.C. services provided live and in person by the inimitable John Hodgman — for real! The party is this coming Sunday night and tickets are a measly US$20.

The day after the party, I’m heading out to Paris again to visit my father for about a week. My goal is to visit him there twice a year, for at least as long as I can cobble together enough incredible shrinking dollars to pay for meals in Euros. Oof. I’m bringing a brand new, work-issued MacBook with me, so in theory I’ll be blogging a bit. It all depends on whether I some cool stuff to do or not. If you know of anything, drop me a line. Otherwise, happy holidays!

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on December 4, 2007 3:43 PM

• Not safe for some workplaces: Late night potty mouth and all-round entertaining individual Charlie Brooker takes a look at the 'Ten Biggest Cocks in UK Advertising'
  Sent to me by my younger brother and possibly rather beyond the standard acceptable threshold for some offices, exemplifying as it does the very best swears in contemporary UK usage applied vigorously and often to adverts...
  (tags: advertising charliebrooker)
• Another appalling Charlie Brooker video that you absolutely should not watch: 10 biggest Cocks and she cocks in advertising
  Actually there are bits where you do shift a little uncomfortably, even if—like me—you just think swearing is funny and cool. My mother would be appalled. I'm like Dexter only with bad words instead of murdering people.
  (tags: charliebrooker screenwipe)
• Slightly more seriously, the Open Rights Group and the electoral commission looked into e-voting and found it was massively flawed. The Government doesn't care.
  Deeply depressed by this one. One of those situations where very intelligent professionals work hard, independent groups agree with their conclusions and yet they're completely ignored by people with power.
  (tags: openrightsgroup)
• OAuth Core 1.0 has been published. We're using OAuth on Fire Eagle should that be interesting to you in the slightest.
  For those of you who don't know, OAuth is a spec for the kind of process that Flickr does when you tell it you can share information with a third party site.
  (tags: oauth)

Originally posted by Tom Coates from plasticbag.org, on December 4, 2007 2:35 PM

Bandai's 1982 plane hijacking simulator would seem to confirm suggestions that today's kids are being bubble-wrapped. Disappointingly you play the role of "police inspector" not "hijacker". (via churnshaft)

Originally posted by Rufus from That's How It Happened, on December 4, 2007 2:27 PM

I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, you know. I might or might not be wearing a Tigers cap as I type this. So you’ll excuse me if I have a hard time remaining objective about these things. But I can’t help but like what the Tigers’ blockbuster move for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis is going to do for that club.

Here’s the key number in this deal: Four.

Four is the number of relatively cheap arbitration-eligible seasons that the Tigers are picking up between Cabrera and Willis. Half of the league is willing to bend over backward — perhaps giving up a package analogous to what the Tigers just gave up — for one season of Johan Santana. Although Willis is not the pitcher than Santana is by a long shot, he’s an excellent buy-low guy who was mostly victimized by some poor defense and some poor luck in Miami last year, and an extremely viable #2/#3 starter. And Cabrera might well be the equal of Santana in terms of 2008 value. In terms of overall value, the Tigers are getting perhaps three times as much incoming value as the Red Sox might get for one year of Santana.

Four is also the number of high draft picks that the Tigers will get if Cabrera and Willis eventually depart for free agency. For a team that drafts as aggressively as the Tigers do — those picks could turn into four more Rick Porcellos — that’s an extremely non-trivial factor.

Finally, four is the number of American League teams that make the playoffs. This trade addresses clear areas of need for the Tigers, and could easily be worth as many as seven or eight games in the wins column. From my vantage point, the Tigers, Indians, Yankees and Red Sox are now in a four-way tie for the Best Team in Baseball heading into 2008; it’s going to be fascinating to see which of the those teams is the odd man out.

I’m just about finishing up the hitter PECOTA’s, so a quick note on Maybin: the system likes him, but does not love him, regarding him to be well behind the Jay Bruce / Evan Longoria class of prospects. In particular, it has him getting up to an EqBA/EqOBP/EqSLG of .267/.357/.460 (.284 EqA) by the time he hits age 25, with roughly league-average defense in center field. It also has him at .248/.330/.428 for 2008 (.261 EqA), which means that he’s probably ready to step into a major league lineup right now for a second-division club like the Marlins. That’s potentially quite valuable, but not necessarily All-Star caliber, as PECOTA has quite a few concerns about Maybin’s strikeout rate.

Originally posted by Nate Silver from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on December 4, 2007 2:19 PM

Picnik’s awesome photo editing tools are now only a click away. If you’ve ever wanted to deal with the dreaded red eye or crop a photo just so, click on the new “edit photo” icon located above one of your photos and get started.

We’re thrilled to announce a unique, new partnership with Picnik

Picnik has been providing online photo editing for a while now. As soon as we saw it, we knew that there was huge potential for us to join together. Rather than Flickr diverting from our speciality to enter a realm we had no (particular) expertise in, the thought of a partnership seemed much more sensible.

The Picnik/Flickr collaboration works similarly to other 3rd party services who’ve built additional tools on top of the Flickr API: You’ll need to pass through the step of giving the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos… It’s a little bit like you’re “installing” Picnik on your Flickr account, but with nothing to download.

For more info, feel free to check out Picnik’s FAQs and ours. You can also see more before and after samples in Picnik’s official Flickr group, Picnikers. And, as usual, we love to hear what you think in this Flickr Help forum topic.

To the Picnik team - Mike, Darrin, Monica, Peter, Jonathan and Charlie — thank you. You’ve been a pleasure to work with, and we look forward to growing the partnership into the future.

Before and after photos courtesy of Brenda Anderson.
Doggy “artistic Santa rendering” courtesy of heather.

Originally posted by George Oates from Flickr Blog, on December 4, 2007 2:17 PM

Several weeks have passed since the release of Amazon's new eBook reader, Kindle, and I am ready to explain to you why this hardware will fail and why it is the first step towards the eventual end of paper books.

It's Still A Screen

Forget that it's ugly, because that doesn't matter too much. The biggest reason it will fail is that it does not replicate the experience of reading a book or magazine. From all I've read and seen, you are still reading on a super fancy, high contrast PDA. Chip Kidd put it best when he said, "People don't want to read books on a screen." I agree, but only because screens today suck.

This is where flexible screens come in. Right now in a lab somewhere, there is a painfully expensive piece of plastic that you can bend and will display video or still images. No matter what anyone tells you, this is not ready to use. As this 2004 BBC article notes, "eventually the displays are expected to be in colour". While no one knows exactly when, eventually there will be a flexible screen with contrast and resolution that comes incredibly close to paper. Remember digital cameras 10 years ago and the 600x480 photos they produced? Today we have 39 megapixel professional cameras and there will be a screen equally ridiculous ten years from now.

When flexible, 8"x10" color screens can run for a full day without a charge at 300dpi, then you'll hear paper books' death rattle. I want something that can approximate the experience of reading a broadsheet, a magazine and book while being able to play a video or song. Basically I want Harry Potter newspapers with sound.

Sharing is Good

The only other point of failure is Kindle's DRM. Dive Into Mark put it best, so I'll let you head there to find out the details, but I can't imagine not being able to lend my friend a book or magazine. Just like many of the music stores, if Amazon shuts of the service tomorrow your books are gone. The got the music store right, but they got this horrifically wrong.

The Rest Ain't Bad

The distribution method, the selection, the acquisition process and even paying for blogs are done well. Kindle makes reading books on a digital device very easy. They're just five to ten years too early.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on December 4, 2007 1:38 PM

Jim Ramsey, our lead designer on Movable Type (and the guy responsible for the gorgeous design of Movable Type.com), has just published Designing for Flow over at A List Apart. Jim eloquently describes the idea of "flow" in his essay:

Flow, as a mental state, was first proposed by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is characterized by a distorted sense of time, a lack of self-consciousness, and complete engagement in the task at hand. Software engineers might feel it when they're writing code, gamers might feel it when playing Guitar Hero III, Christopher Cross felt it when he went sailing. For designers, it's exactly the feeling we hope to promote in the people who use our sites.

We've been proud of the huge number of talented designers that have been members of the MT community from day one, and hope that talking through a little of our design process can inspire even more creative work from all of you.

Originally posted by Anil Dash from MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community, on December 4, 2007 1:22 PM

Editor's note: Starting today, Dinner Tonight will also appear on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rounding things out so you've got a quick and easy recipe to make every weeknight. Today also marks the Dinner Tonight debut of Blake Royer, who will be handling these Tuesday/Thursday recipes. Blake has written for us before, as part of the Paupered Chef team with Nick Kindelsperger—our MWF Dinner Tonight contributor. OK. Enough. You're hungry. Without further ado, here's your recipe... —Adam

I'm especially fond of pasta recipes so simple, they leave you twiddling your thumbs waiting for the water to boil. Pasta might be my favorite thing to cook for a weekday dinner: It adapts easily to cooking for one, it’s cheap, and it’s a serious comfort food that leaves you far happier with yourself than if you’d ordered pizza. So when I was flipping through Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman, this title caught my eye: Spaghetti With Oil and Garlic. Talk about out-of-the-pantry dinner.

This recipe takes pasta minimalism to an extreme: There will be no complaints about oversaucing. Yet the result is greater than the sum of its parts—a combination so carefully simple it makes you wonder if life itself is too complicated. And, as if the grand total of seven ingredients (including salt) wasn't already spare enough, the authors say that the addition of lemon juice, "strictly speaking, isn’t necessary." I wouldn't agree—it provides a nice acidic foil to the garlicky olive oil and, along with chopped parsley, brightens the dish. But I suppose if your pantry is especially sad and lacking, you could still pull this off without the lemon. Just make sure you cook your pasta perfectly al dente.

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio (Spaghetti With Oil and Garlic)

- serves 4 -

Ingredients

3/4 cup good olive oil
12 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 lemon
Large handful chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 pound spaghetti

Procedure

1. Heat the olive oil with the garlic over very low heat in a small skillet (you want it to at least cover the bottom of the skillet, and then some, so the garlic can “steep”).

2. When the garlic turns opaque, add the chili flakes, salt, and squeeze the lemon into the oil. Turn off the heat--the garlic should gently begin to brown around the edges. When the oil has cooled somewhat, add the parsley so that it gently wilts.

3. In the meantime, cook the spaghetti in abundant, salty water until al dente. Drain, transfer to a serving bowl, then cover with the warm oil and toss with tongs. Drizzle more olive oil if desired.

Originally posted by Blake Royer from Serious Eats: Main, on December 4, 2007 11:30 AM

This one goes out to my homie Krissy:

http://ydnar.vox.com/library/post/got-kt.html

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Originally posted by Krissy from david’s Neighbors, on December 4, 2007 10:37 AM

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

Now this is just amazingly cool. iPhone hacker hachu developed a download plug-in for MobileSafari. Once installed and customized, it allows you to download data off the Internet and store it on your iPhone or iPod touch local disk in the /var/root/Downloads folder.

I downloaded the package (it's variously on RapidShare and BadOnGo; see the hackint0sh thread for links) and gave it a whirl. Following the instructions on the thread for modifying the Info.plist file, I told the plug-in to download MP3 files. (I had to disable playback as well in the QuickTime plug-in--so make sure to read the entire thread!) Now back in Safari, when I navigated to an MP3 file and selected it, this green Download button appeared. I tapped it, and the file downloaded perfectly. Before, the QuickTime plug-in would have just played the file back in Safari.

iPhone enthusiast RohitK asked if there was an easy way to play back these downloaded files using my software. As there wasn't at the time, I went ahead and modded my SendFile application to search ~/Downloads as well as ~/Media/Documents. You can grab a copy of the modded app here. This allows you to email, share and play back the downloaded media on demand, whether or not you are connected to the Internet.

Thanks to RohitK and Xadacka.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Erica Sadun from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 4, 2007 10:00 AM

On November 24, a woman and an 11-year-old girl were hit by different vehicles at the same Brooklyn intersection -- Liberty Avenue at Crescent Street -- in the space of 90 minutes. Both victims were injured; the girl, who was hit by a cement truck, was hospitalized.

Though the woman, according to reports, was crossing with the light, only the truck driver who hit the girl received a summons, for failure to yield to a pedestrian. Neither Liberty nor Crescent is a truck route.

The driver who "tapped" the woman, knocking her unconscious, received no citation or charge of any kind. Both crashes occurred in the middle of the day.

Liberty Avenue has seen dozens of pedestrian and cyclist injuries over the last decade, with 19 crashes at the Crescent Street intersection from 1995 to 2005, according to Transportation Alternatives' CrashStat. That intersection is in close proximity to Conduit Boulevard, where seven pedestrians died during the same period.

Share this

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 4, 2007 9:17 AM

Arresting poster for Michael Haneke’s English shot-for-shot remake of (his own) Funny Games.

The trailer is up on Apple’s site now as well.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on December 4, 2007 8:26 AM

Gucci was keen enough to release a behind-the-scenes video of their perfume commercial on YouTube, and it confirms a few things for us:

1. Gucci is really trying to evoke to decadent, industrial Halston spirit of the '70s.

2. Freja looks about ten years younger with long hair, which is both good and bad.

3. Gucci creative director Frida Giannini is maybe the cutest designer we've ever seen.

4. The Gucci by Gucci perfume has been treated a little like a borrowed Louvre artifact - note how it's only handled on set by white-gloved art directors, who look a little bit like butlers when polishing the bottle.

5. Director David Lynch is more obsessed with glitter than Heatherette during Fashion Week. A surprising revelation indeed.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 4, 2007 8:18 AM

...and a thousand Photoshop files were launched!

Diane Sawyer may be a veteran journalist and may seem totally unflappable, but even she has totally embarrassing moments. This morning, during a segment unveiling Good Morning America's new holiday windows from the New York Botanical Gardens, she called Mayor Bloomberg a "munchkin." Really: “As a little munchkin, did you come to New York?”

To be fair, she was asking Bloomberg whether he visited New York during the holidays as a child, but let's face it, Mayor Bloomberg's 5'7" stature has been a topic of conversation before. From City Room:

The mayor, who is not the tallest fellow around, did not appear fazed. “My parents brought me down from Boston,” he replied, without missing a beat. “I don’t recall about being a munchkin at that time, but I guess I was.”

The mayor and Ms. Sawyer laughed. Awkwardly. And Ms. Swayer blurted out: “I don’t believe I just called the mayor of New York a munchkin.”What kind of munchkin is Bloomberg most like? The Wizard of Oz munchkin? The Dunkin Donuts' kind? Or the munchkin cat?

Tonight Mayor Bloomberg will be at the holiday lighting of the arch at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn (5:30PM for the LED coolness). And our Bloomberg-in-the-Lollipop Guild Photoshopping after the jump.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 4, 2007 7:21 AM

Happy Birthday, Serious Eats!

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on December 4, 2007 6:35 AM

evhead on the Kindle:

Look, blogs aren't free anyway. You paid for your computer, and you're paying for your Internet access (or someone is). You paid for your iPhone, and you pay for your iPhone's Internet connection. You get blogs with the package.

If Amazon charged a monthly connection fee for the Kindle and made blogs free, instead, no one would complain (about the blog part). Because that's the pricing model they're used to.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 4, 2007 6:28 AM

Remember last year, when y'all raised an enormous amount of money for Heifer International, and we sent sheep to a community overseas?

This year, I'm hoping you'll join me again in raising money for another good cause ... homeless women veterans.

Whether or not you support the war in Iraq (I don't); whether or not you believe women should serve in the armed forces (I do); whether or not you believe in Santa (I'm Santagnostic, actually) ... the truth is that many women veterans, who have made considerable sacrifices for our country, are not getting a fair shake now that they're home.

Women veterans seem to get the short end of the very short stick that returning soldiers are asked to hold. (For instance, of the some 1,400 V.A. hospitals and clinics, currently only 27 house inpatient PTSD programs, and of these, just 2 serve women exclusively. Almost one in three veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq confronts mental health problems. You do the math.) Approximately 4% of the homeless veterans in VA programs are women -- and that doubles to 8% in community-based (non-VA) programs. Women have special health care needs; many have dependent children.

With women making up 14% of the nation's combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of homeless women vets is rising every day. By donating to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, we can help develop programs to support women vets as they return home.

So this year I'm hoping we can raise $1500 for homeless women veterans, by Dec 24. (It may not sound like much, but every little bit helps.)

The day we hit the goal, I'll post a new full-length "Secret Lives of Dresses", and for every day between Reach-The-Goal Day and Dec 24, I'll post a Secret Lives drabble, just like last year.

To donate, just click on the widgety thingy below. It's all run by Changing The Present; I won't see who donated or how much. (Credit cards only; if you want to pay by Paypal, email me and we'll work something out.)

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on December 4, 2007 5:10 AM

PAPER managing editor Rebecca Carroll gives y'all a guided tour through PAPER's most recent double issue featuring none other than Miss M.I.A. on the cover!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on December 4, 2007 5:01 AM

The New York Times has a piece today on Heather Kuzmich, the Top Model contestant who just got booted.

Most of it is stuff you already know: Heather has Asperger's Syndrome, she often can't look people in the eye, she still looks ridiculously good on camera.

It's also no surprise that Heather wants to be the new spokeswoman for Asperger's, as she tells The Times.

But we did like it when Heather admitted "I'm used to people ignoring me," something that's going to be very hard now that she's a reality TV star - at least for the rest of the year, until a new ANTM cycle starts going.

We do wonder what will happen to Heather now that she's had this unusual experience, but we also wonder about the reporter's musings that "the addition of Heather Kuzmich to an otherwise superficial show has given millions of viewers an unusual and compelling glimpse into the little-understood world of Asperger’s."

Really? Because we thought Tyra played it like any other plot angle - you could be the girl from the projects, or the one who had an eating disorder or an abusive boyfriend, or you could have a neurological condition - it all seems to get the same editing treatment of Tyra turning her little ducklings into wannabe swans.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 4, 2007 4:46 AM

Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History Traveling Exhibit! Arriving in New York at CUNY Graduate Center Opens: December 10th, 6:30 - Recital Hall To read the article in it's entirety: http://www.friendlyagitate.net/category/art/ This text lifted directly from their website: The SDS Comic Show, a traveling exhibit drawing upon the book Students for a Democratic Society: a Graphic History, will be open at the CUNY Graduate Center in December. Come see the exhibit and join us for a book signing and panel discussion for Students for a Democratic Society: a Graphic History, scripted by Harvey Pekar and others and edited by Paul Buhle, editor of the 1960s SDS magazine Radical America. Harvey Pekar, real-life star of the award-winning film and the book series American Splendor (and sometime Letterman Show guest), will deliver a talk on comics and politics, followed by a panel including Buhle, former SDS-NY regional officer, Weatherman Jeff Jones, and members of the New SDS.

Originally posted by Meredith Stern from Just Seeds: Blog, on December 4, 2007 4:30 AM

One of my all time favorite political art publications, World War 3 Illustrated, is coming out with a new issue! Started in 1981 as a response to Ronald Reagan's aggressive free market ideology and the US' swing to the right, WW3 is a one of a kind publication. For 26 years they've been publishing some of the most compelling political comics and art, and have published some of the most interesting graphic artists at work in world, including Christopher Cardinale (one page of his new comic in WW3 is shown here), Sue Coe, Scott Cunningham, Eric Drooker, Fly, Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper (who did the cover of the new issue shown here), Mac McGill, Kevin Pyle, Joe Sacco, Nicole Schulman, Chuck Sperry, Seth Tobocman and Anton Van Dalen. When I was in high school I stumbled upon WW3 and it really helped me understand the first gulf war, pulling together great art and radical politics. To this day I think it still think it is one of the few places to regularly see visual artists grapple with the most important political issues in the world. Last issue included some amazing work by Christopher Cardinale and Seth Tobocman on the New Orleans. Anyway, I'm blabbling and here's the info on the release paty: World War 3 Illustrated #38 the ‘Facts on the Ground’ issue Release Party Friday December 14th, 7:30 pm at the Time’s Up! space 49 West Houston Street, NYC Featuring multi-media presentations by: Fly Seth Tobocman Mac McGill Peter Kuper Christopher Cardinale Rebecca Migdal Penny Allen with music by the I.E.D.s admission is free More info here and here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Just Seeds: Blog, on December 4, 2007 2:34 AM

The Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, has compiled some disturbing numbers from the war on drugs. Starting with a thesis, backed by survey research, which shows that illegal drug usage rates are the same among whites and African-Americans,...

Originally posted by Rob Gebeloff from NJ.com: Stat Attack, on December 4, 2007 1:30 AM

At Nokia World in Nokia today announced its global partnership with Pangea Day, a unique event that will bring together millions of people around the world through the power of film on May 10, 2008.

Pangea Day will be broadcast globally to millions on television, in digital theaters, online and via mobile devices. It will be a live 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The goal of Pangea Day is to create greater understanding among different people and cultures, and to form a global community focused on improving the future for all people.

"From the earliest days of movies, film has had the power to bring people together. But today, Internet technology is allowing film to bring together not only neighbors, but an entire global community," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia president and CEO (pictured at right). "Nokia is proud to work with Pangea Day as we embark on this important shared mission of connecting people across the globe."

For many people today, especially in developing markets, the mobile phone is providing their first Internet experience.

"Perhaps Nokia's greatest contribution to Pangea Day is the ability of our technology to give a voice to people who previously were unable to take part in the global community that is the Internet," Kallasvuo said. "By integrating the power of wireless technology into Pangea Day, we can help it meet its goal of bringing together people from around the world."

Nokia and Pangea Day will work with aspiring filmmakers in disadvantaged areas and conflict zones to make it possible for their stories to also be told. By distributing video-enabled mobile devices to these filmmakers, their works can be captured and shared globally, demonstrating how wireless technology can not only provide a platform for people of diverse backgrounds to express themselves, but also to bring them together.

"Pangea Day was created by TED Prize winner Jehane Noujaim. One of the core goals of the TED Prize is to recognize a new generation of global citizens," says Chris Anderson, Curator of TED. "Jehane's work has shown how powerfully film can help us understand and connect with other people.

For more information on Pangea Day, visit www.pangeaday.org.

About Nokia

Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED | TEDBlog, on December 3, 2007 10:15 PM

For those of you who wake up every day and think to yourself "My God my life isn't complete because I haven't been able to walk the picket lines with scribe-o-bloggers Craig Mazin, John August, Jane Espenson and Josh Friedman" here's your chance.

The four of us will be hitting the bricks together at Warner Bros. Gate 2/3 on the 8am-11am shift Wednesday.

I'll be the one wearing sweatpants.

Originally posted by josh from I find your lack of faith disturbing, on December 3, 2007 4:21 PM

The following letter was written by Carlton Cuse and sent today to members of the WGA. His candor and honesty are deeply appreciated by all of us here at UH. The AMPTP is counting on us becoming more divided as time goes on. But we believe the opposite will happen -- is happening, right now. We are staying strong.

To my fellow WGA Members,

I want to clear up any misunderstanding about where I stand.

On November 16 I, regretably, was quoted by a Wall Street Journal reporter saying I was going to perform some of my non-writing, post-production duties on episodes of LOST to protect the show for the fans. However, I'm sure to the delight of the AMPTP, my statement became the story and gave the false impression that there was disunity among showrunners over the issues of this negotiation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Every showrunner I know, whether producing or not producing, stands in full support of the goals of our guild.

For the past two months I have been working seven days a week on these negotiations alongside my fellow negotiating committee members.

As a committee we did everything we could to get both parties back to the bargaining table this last week. We were fully prepared to enter into the kinds of back-and-forth discussions that are necessary to reach any sort of labor deal. I sincerely hoped this return to the table would lead to real progress.

I was wrong.

In fact, given the events of last Thursday -- and where things currently stand -- I can no longer in good conscience continue to work on my show in any capacity.

What I will be doing is continuing my work as a member of the committee for as long as it takes, contributing in any way I can, to get us the fair and just deal that we must have.

It's going to be an arduous fight.

But make no mistake -- we are united, we are resolute...

And we are indeed ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

Yours,

Carlton Cuse

Originally posted by Laeta Kalogridis from United Hollywood, on December 3, 2007 3:53 PM

Darel Finley has a nice explanation and example photos taken with a microscope of how sub-pixel font rendering works.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 3, 2007 3:00 PM

"I got a rock."

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on December 3, 2007 11:50 AM

Mega link-aggregator site Digg adding new categories tonight. Says Digg founder Kevin Rose, "... we'€™re adding a whole new '€œLifestyle' category with topics like Autos, Food & Drink, and Travel." One more place for food lovers to watch.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Main, on December 3, 2007 10:45 AM

fig. a: videoblogging in action

Isabella's Oven

We paused outside of Isabella's to squeeze in a little video food-blogging, but after our disappointing experience at Adrienne's we were eager to get our mojo back, so we marched in the door to find Isabella's empty, its entire staff taking a break. It was mid-afternoon at that point, so although it did make for a stark juxtaposition with Adrienne's, that fact alone wasn't exactly cause for panic. What was cause for panic, however, was that Ed and Adam instantly noticed that "their pieman"--Luigi, the fantastically talented, Naples-trained pizzaiolo who'd made each of the exceptional pies they'd enjoyed at Isabella's since Ed first got tipped off to Isabella's last summer--wasn't in the house. Ed and Adam had heard from other pizza enthusiasts that they'd had less than exemplary pizza experiences at Isabella's, that, in fact, the pizza at Isabella's wasn't "all that," but every time the Serious Eats boys had visited Luigi had been there to greet them with an expert Neapolitan pie. This time, however, they found real cause for concern. Maybe there was some kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing going on at Isabella's, depending on whether Luigi was around. Ed tried to get the skinny on Luigi's whereabouts and was informed that he'd had to return to Italy on personal business and that he'd be back there for an indefinite amount of time. In his absence the daytime pieman had become Isabella's principal pieman. It was clear that this was bad news.

We ordered a Margherita D.O.C. pizza (with D.O.C. bufala mozzarella) and tried to keep things upbeat, but Ed and Adam were clearly worried that they might have to relegate Isabella's to a lower division. And that's exactly what happened. The 16" pie that arrived was perfectly fine, respectable even, but far from transcendent, far from being the pie that had Ed had deemed potential national-top-ten material back in July. I mean, you can tell by just looking at it. See that crust?

fig. b: Margherita D.O.C. from Isabella's Oven

Now compare that with the crusts we got at Di Fara and Franny's. And compare it with the crusts you're going to see below.

Remember that "myth of the pizzaiolo" jazz I went on about in "Real Italian Pizza, pt. 2"? Well, here was an abject lesson in how a single, solitary pizzaiolo can make all the difference in the high-stakes pizza game that is New York City pizza.

So after starting off with a bang, we were on a bit of a losing streak. First, an undercooked grandma pie at Nick Angelis's Adrienne's Pizzabar, and now this? We needed a little help, and that's exactly what we got.

Verdict: pinch-hit single.

fig. c: Una Pizza Napoletana

Una Pizza Napoletana

Minutes later, we'd relocated from the Lower East Side to the East Village, and we were standing in front of a place we'd heard a lot about over the course of the day and a place that Ed devotes a considerable amount of ink to in the pages of Pizza: A Slice of Heaven: Una Pizza Napoletana. Just three years old, the aura that surrounds Una Pizza Napoletana is already enormous.

The story goes something like this: a few years ago, Ed was contacted by a friend of his in New Jersey who proceeded to tell him she'd just recently eaten the single best thing she'd ever eaten in New Jersey (which, considering she was the long-time food critic at the Asbury Park Press, was saying something)--and that thing wasn't some high-falutin' dish from some high-falutin' restaurant, it was pizza from a little strip mall pizzeria in Point Pleasant, on the North Jersey Shore. Ed hustled his way down to Point Pleasant and there he encountered the talent of Anthony Mangieri for the first time. Mangieri had started off as a bread baker and he'd taken that very seriously too--opening his first bakery before he was 21. A few years later he switched over to pizza exclusively. He'd grown up in a family with strong ties to Naples, so he'd visited often, eaten a lot of pizza, taken a lot of mental notes. Pizza became Mangieri's thing, his raison d'être. Ed could see he had that gleam in his eye--the one that distinguishes the merely professional from the certifiably obsessed. Better yet, he could taste it in Mangieri's pies.

Not long after Ed's momentous visit, Mangieri moved the operation to the East Village, barely changing a thing. He's only open four days a week, and on those days he's only open until the dough lasts. He still offers only four pizze--Marinara, Margherita, Bianca, Filetti--and these are essentially the only items on the menu. No salads, no appetizers, and no desserts, with the exception of the Italian chocolates that come with the bill. He uses only the purest of ingredients, including mozzarella di bufala (the only cheese Mangieri uses), Sicilian salt, Italian extra-virgin olive oil, and D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes, and his dough is a homemade sourdough that takes a minimum of 36 hours to produce. Mangieri started off with a locally made wood-fired brick oven, but this summer he upgraded to a handsome white Neapolitan model, and, it's safe to say, he knows how to use it. Neither Michelle or I had ever seen anyone tend an oven like Mangieri does. It was mesmerizing.

We showed up at Una Pizza Napoletana just before opening time that Saturday. We were a little early and we were just about to take a walk around the block to kill some time and check out the latest restaurant in the Momofuku family when we ran into Mangieri outside. Perfect timing. We got a chance to talk to him about pizza, about Italian food more generally, about Montreal (and about the shortcomings of Montreal pizza), and we got a chance to see that gleam too. A few minutes later he invited us in to grab a seat. The oven was ready, therefore he was ready.

While Mangieri was preparing our pizzas, Ed asked him a hypothetical question. Let's say you go into a reputable pizza place, you order your pizza, and then they bring it out to you. It looks great from the outside--nicely colored, apparently well cooked--but then you bite in and it's all gummy and undercooked. What gives? Is that a dough problem? Is it an oven problem? Mangieri walked us through the possible scenarios, but the probable cause was an overly hot oven. Then he explained the trials and tribulations of a wood-burning pizza oven: its intense heat, its temperamentality, and the fact that your optimum cooking time might only last an hour or so, which means that the rest of the evening you might be dealing with an oven that's just too damn hot, quickly scorching the dough on the outside, while leaving the interior insufficiently cooked. This means that every night the pizzaiolo working a wood-burning oven struggles to make the adjustments necessary to guarantee the best possible pizza given the conditions of the moment, that the best pizzaiolo is the one who's most capable when it comes to making these countless adjustments. This gave a further wrinkle to the "myth of the pizzaiolo."

The first of our pizzas to arrive from Mangieri's oven was our Marinara--"San Marzano tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil, oregano, fresh garlic, fresh basil, sea salt," according to Una Pizza Napoletana's menu--a pizza that Ed described as being "a minimalist masterpiece" after his first encounter. I wanted to know how Mangieri worked a cheeseless pie, so I'd lobbied for Marinara, and I was glad I had. I mean, just look at that thing.

fig. d: Una Pizza Napoletana's marinara

Simple perfection incarnate. Mangieri's sourdough crust was enough to make you cry. So much flavor, so masterfully handled.

It's hard to believe, I know, but the next pie, the Filetti, was even better. Topped with cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, fresh garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh basil, and that Sicilian sea salt, this pizza was deluxe. We'd been having buffalo mozzarella all day--at Di Fara, at Franny's, at Isabella's, and now at Una Pizza Napoletana--but this was by far and away the tastiest, most satisfying buffalo mozzarella we'd encountered. And its marriage with the garlic, the cherry tomatoes, the salt, the basil, and that sourdough crust was astounding. Looked great too:

fig. e: Una Pizza Napoletana's filetti

On some level, eating at Una Pizza Napoletana is an austere experience. As mentioned above, there are no salads or other kinds of appetizers. There are only four pizzas on the menu to choose from and subsitutions or any other special requests are not allowed. There are no desserts, aside from those chocolates mentioned above, although they do offer Neapolitan-style espressos--very good ones, in fact. The restaurant is small and simply appointed. The menu reads part history lesson, part manifesto, part throwdown. The overall aesthetic is nothing if not spartan. That said, Mangieri is capable of taking the most basic and ingredients and transforming them into a pizza so extraordinary that one bite makes you feel like you're sitting on top of the world. His pizzas don't come cheap--"We have no quarrel with the man who sells cheaper pizza", the menu exclaims, "he knows how much his is worth!"--but, at the same time, pizza's inherently democratic appeal is still very much intact. "Nothing... purer or [more] honestly wholesome can be bought at any price," Mangieri's menu reads, and he means it.

Pizza fanatics talk about the five-minute rule or the third-slice rule: the first slice or two, fresh out of the oven, can be a little misleading. The third slice, when the pizza has had some time to cool down a bit, is the true test of a pizza. The problem with Mangieri's pizzas was that they were so good, they didn't last that long, The four of us had been at it for 6-7 hours already, but we tore into those pies as though they were our first.

Verdict: grand slam.

How do you continue after you've been to the mountain? Not wanting to risk another difficult comedown, we decided to call it a Pizza Tour after Una Pizza Napoletana. That would mean leaving Joe's and Bleecker Street Pizza for another occasion. But there was something almost operatic about it. A 5-act, seven-and-a-half-hour opera, with some true highs and lows, some tears, some triumphs, a couple of Italian heroes, and a few important lessons. We thanked our hosts profusely

fig. f: the Serious Eats boys

and headed back to Brooklyn to try to make sense of it all. Days later, back in Montreal, we were still reeling.

Di Fara, 1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY, (718) 258-1367

Franny's, 295 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn, NY, (718) 230-0221, www.frannysbrooklyn.com

Adrienne's Pizzabar, 54 Stone St., New York, NY, (212) 248-3838, www.adriennespizzabar.com

Isabella's Oven, 365 Grand St., New York, NY, (212) 529-5206, www.isabellasoven.com

Una Pizza Napoletana, 349 E. 12th St., New York, NY, (212) 477-9950, www.unapizza.com

Don't ask us to provide you with directions so that you can replicate this pizza tour exactly. Adam made sure to throw in plenty of dekes and diversions so that this pizza tour would remain absolutely one-of-a-kind. You will find plenty of handy-dandy interactive pizza maps at slice, though.

Sources:

Ed Levine, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven

John Thorne, "Existential Pizza," Pot on the Fire: Further Exploits of a Renegade Cook

Alan Davidson, The Penguin Companion to Food

Ed Behr, "Pizza in Naples," The Art of Eating (spring 1992)

aj

ps--apologies to any and all members of our New York posse (you know who you are) that we weren't able to see during our whirlwind visit.

Originally posted by aj kinik from ...an endless banquet, on December 3, 2007 10:03 AM

Twitter / epicure

A private experiment with Twitter. (Yes, this blog is public, but there are only like 4 of you reading.) I think I get it. I still don’t get why people care.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on December 3, 2007 9:53 AM

The latest installment of Super Mario has received plenty of notice for its revolutionary style of gameplay. But just as striking is the intricacy of its sound design. One convention of the game is a Pull Star, a floating anchor that Mario can grab with some sort of magical, musical force which, when activated emits a creepy, almost theremin-like wail, wavering just a bit before solemnly sliding down in pitch. This sound is one of those elemental formulas for touching an emotional soft spot. The other day I was playing a level with a series of Pull Stars in succession and my girlfriend implored me to stop, as it was making her sad, and not only because I'm a grown man playing a child's video game. Here is an example of the Wailing Pull Star (and a taste of the very Vangelis-like score scattered throughout the game).

Also: via Boing Boing Gadgets, footage from a live orchestra scoring session for the game. Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto sits aside and supervises.

Also also: I noticed that the menu for selecting levels to play is a musical instrument in its own right, allowing the player to create melody with chord changes and everything. It's a subtle touch.

Originally posted by lisagor@lonelysandwich.com from kottke.org, on December 3, 2007 9:46 AM

Since Anil bestowed such high praise on me, I guess the pressure is on to live up to it.

I've been meaning to write about some of the not so apparent features in Feeds.App for a while now. A lot of effort and consideration has gone into the design of that plugin (more then anyone could possibly appreciate) and, truth be told, I've done a poor job of documenting and explaining it.

This post is mostly based on a reply I made on the Feeds.App discussion list. (No link -- I'm looking to officiall phase that list out in favor of the MT community forums.)

Martin Pertrov, a Feeds.App user, asked me if it was possible to show posts from the last two days instead of showing a specific number regardless of date.

The mt:feedentries does not support something like a days attribute that would allow for such filtering -- at least for now. (It's on my list of potential enhancements for later versions.)

All is not lost though. With the use of a couple of time based conditionals. From the Feeds.App template tag reference:

MTIfFeedEntryPublished [minutes= days=] A conditional tag that will display its contents if the feed entry in context was published in the defined period of time. A minute or days attribute is required.

MTIfFeedEntryUpdated [minutes= days=] A conditional tag that will display its contents if the feed entry in context has been updated in the defined period of time. A minute or days attribute is required.

Filtering on when an entry was published is most common so let's see how we'd implement what Martin is trying to do using MT4 notation:

<mt:feed uri="http://example.com/index.atom">
    <mt:feedentries>
        <mt:iffeedentrypublished days="2">
            <!-- markup to display the feed entry here -->
        </mt:iffeedentrypublished>
    </mt:feedentries>
</mt:feed>

The above is a minimal example, of course. The mt:feed tagset identifies which feed we are working with. We then loop through the feed's entries using mt:feedentries tagset. Rather then displaying every feed entry we wrap its layout in the mt:iffeedentrypublished conditional that will only insert its contents if the entry was published in the past 2 days (48 hours).

This solution is less then ideal because it's more verbose then having a days attribute like mt:entries. It's also not as efficient because all the feed entries are being looped through it's just that only those made in the past 48 hours are output. One other potential problem is if there are more entries within that 48 hour period then the default value of lastn. That can be remedied by setting the lastn value to some number like 99 or other ridiculously high number. Do that it makes that looping even more inefficient though so be cautious.

Overall, this these tradeoffs have minimal impact and will get you what you want.

Martin also asked if it was possible to present a feed or entry differently if it was newly published or recently updated. Employing these same two condition tags we certainly can. This time its much more straight forward. Here is another minimal example for the display an entry differently based on publishing date:

<mt:feed uri="http://example.com/index.atom">
    <ul><mt:feedentries>
        <li>
        <mt:iffeedentrypublished days="2"><strong></mt:iffeedentryupdated>
            <!-- markup to display the feed entry here -->
        <mt:iffeedentrypublished days="2"></strong></mt:iffeedentryupdated>
    </mt:feedentries></ul>
</mt:feed>

In this example I'm using mt:feed and mt:feedentries as before though I've inserted some HTML for an unordered list to make this example a bit more concrete to what you might do. In this example I use the mt:iffeedentrypublished tagset to conditionally wrap the feed entry display in strong tagset.

Before closing this post out I should mentioned that you can also apply similar logic to feeds as a whole with the mt:iffeedupdated condition tagset. If works just like the previous two I discussed, it's just that you don't have to be in a feed entries context.

With these basics you can take the conditional display and formatting of content from feeds much further the just displaying links to content on other sites.

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on December 3, 2007 9:38 AM

I'm off to Miami this morning to pull together the PAPER tent at the Raleigh Hotel where we will be holding court this week starting Wednesday for Art Basel. So if any of you are down there STOP BY and say hi and see what we've done. I definitely feel like the balloon is bursting down there, and that's why I'm so glad we are having an amazing show by the artists at Creative Growth Art Center to add a little levity to the situation. I've invited the artists to recreate trendy artists' work and the results are amazing. We open our tent Wednesday night at the Raleigh and are open the rest of the week as well. Here is the schedule.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on December 3, 2007 9:17 AM

"I would love it if it just fell off the face of the earth....I don't want to say the meanest thing or the most shocking thing possible anymore, because it gets so old and so soul-killing. There is stuff I really care about. I'm not interested in tearing it down as much as describing it." - Emily Gould Gawker's departed Editor.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on December 3, 2007 9:14 AM

Bush travels with an average of 655 people, 15 dogs, 40 cars, three jets and two helicopters. That's one hell of a carbon footprint.

We found this on The Agonist. It's also on BoingBoing.

Originally posted by andrewprice from Good Magazine:, ReBlogged by Mandiberg on Dec 3, 2007 at 01:48 PM

Originally posted by andrewprice from Eyebeam reBlog, on December 3, 2007 8:48 AM

 

We're just catching up to this piece of good news in The Villager last week:

With the Houston St. renovation project on the West Side finally nearing completion, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the sidewalks between Sixth Ave. and W. Broadway on the street's south side have doubled in width. And, in an interesting twist, the existing trees were left in place - right in the middle of the pavement. Ian Dutton, vice chairperson of Community Board 2's Traffic and Transportation Committee, said this was not a mistake by the Department of Design and Construction. "People really expressed concern that trees were being destroyed needlessly in this project," Dutton said. "So I think that was D.D.C.'s way of preserving these trees."

Surprisingly, some people had expressed concern about widening the sidewalks. Dutton said Lucy and Leonard Cecere, who own a building at MacDougal and Houston Street, feared they'd have more snow to shovel in the winter, while Sean Sweeney, the Soho Alliance's director, thought wider sidewalks could become a "circus," attracting an influx of vendors and performers on top of the vendors who already congregate there under a deal with St. Anthony's Church.

But Dutton said he believes that only a path needs to be cleared in winter, not the entire sidewalk. "I think it has actually changed the mood of the street," Dutton said of the mid-pavement trees. "It almost feels like a European promenade."… Meanwhile, Councilmember Alan Gerson is still fuming at the Department of Transportation over the project's having narrowed traffic islands at pedestrian crossings heavily used by local senior citizens. "I am at my wit's end with this department," he declared at C.B. 2's meeting last Thursday.

Photo: Ian Dutton

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Originally posted by Jason Varone from Streetsblog, on December 3, 2007 8:22 AM

Jennifer Lopez's ginormous baby bump aside, the red carpet showstopper of the Movies Rock party had to be Carrie Underwood. The American Idol winner-turned-country superstar stunned in an orange Grecian-style gown. How gorgeous does she look? She absolutely killed it. Carrie is my orange crush for the day.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on December 3, 2007 8:01 AM

Hannes Broecker's exhibit in Dresden, Germany, invites the viewer to grab a glass and drink in the art—literally. The flat, wall-mounted glass containers empty as the night goes by. No need to have studied art history—this is one gallery show almost anyone can appreciate. [from The Cool Hunter, via Prairie]

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Main, on December 3, 2007 6:30 AM

I love the Internet, no doubt about that. But I love the Earth too...good ol' Earth...making life possible. So when the Internet helps the Earth...I love it. Which is why I started EcoGeek.

But it turns out that the Internet is doing a lot more than just helping get the word out about environmental problems and solutions. It is, itself, an environmental solution.

Also on EcoGeek

• RadioHead and the Earth
  
• Downloadable Everything
• Wal-Mart's Digital Movies
• CDs ARE DEAD
• GoToMyPC and EcoGeeks

A new report from the American Consumer Institute has calculated the current and future effects that broadband Internet will have on our carbon emissions. The resulting numbers are staggering. In the next 10 years, ACI reports that the world will save roughly 1 BILLION tons of carbon in the next ten years by operating on the Internet.

The trends break down like this:

• E-Commerce will reduce emissions by 200 M tons
• Telecommuting will prevent 250 tons of carbon emissions from reduced driving, 30 tons from reduced office construction and 300 tons of energy savings
• Teleconferencing could prevent 200 M tons of carbon emissions (if it replaces 10% of face-to-face meetings.)
• Shifting newspaper from print to digital could save 60 M tons of carbon
• Digitally shipping other goods, such as music, movies and books would also contribute.

Rock on, Internet! Well done...read the full report here (pdf).

Originally posted by Hank Green from EcoGeek.org, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 3, 2007 at 10:28 AM

Originally posted by Hank Green from Eyebeam reBlog, on December 3, 2007 5:28 AM

What It Is: The Clear card is designed for frequent travelers, to let you skip the line at airport security (You still have to go through security, of course) in exchange for a fee. This one I was fascinated by as soon as I heard about it. I fly a lot -- about a quarter million miles in the past two years alone -- and I have a bad case of Flying While Brown, so this was right up my alley.

The Experience: This is some straight-up James Bond shit right here, people! I filled out an application online, with an appropriately intrusive set of profile questions and some nicely reassuring fine print on their site making me feel fine about any privacy concerns. A couple days later, I got word that I was good to go, and could proceed to step two, the physical registration. This is where it got seriously cool.

Clear registration points are either at the airports they serve or at other locations that frequent travelers might find themselves. In my case, I went to the Hyatt in midtown Manhattan, right above Grand Central Terminal. They have a machine set up in an alcove off the lobby which is slickly futuristic, with the overall vibe being brushed metal and blue LEDs. After showing my passport and driver's license, I was walked up to a really freaking cool machine to have my fingerprints digitally captured and my retinas scanned.

In all the bad dystopian future scifi movies I've ever seen, they never mention that the mysterious private corporation that will be performing the biometric scans would be so upscale I'd felt underdressed for my retina scan because I wasn't wearing a tie. Seriously -- this was the fanciest invasion of privacy ever.

It gets even better at the airport. I finally got to try out the card itself on my way through airport security today, and it was the worst-case scenario. I was held up and got to the airport a scant 30 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off -- way late, and this was on an airline where I don't have frequent flier status, so they probably weren't inclined to indulge me.

I wasn't even at the place where the security line begins when I took out my Clear card, and a really nice guy in a suit and tie came over and shook my hand. He glanced at the card, and immediately greeted me as "Mr. Dash", and then scurried me past the entire line. He handed me off to another equally formal Clear staffer, who apologized for the fact that I'd have to wait about 30 seconds for another Clear member's passport to get checked by the TSA. After that, I was whisked to a walk-up Clear security verification machine that looked like it was something out of The Incredibles. (The guy had some nice banter about San Francisco without being annoyingly overbearing on the friendly chit-chat.) A quick scan of my left index finger, and the Clear guy grabbed two of the x-ray trays for me, helped get my laptop into them and made sure all my other stuff was safely on the x-ray belt, and then walked me right up to the metal detector, saying "have a nice flight to San Francisco, Mr. Dash!"

It was fanastic. In literally less than 3 minutes, I'd gone from frantic about making my flight to all the way to the metal detector, and they were even discreet enough the way it was implemented that I didn't feel like some line-jumping jerk. Even if, you know, that's essentially what you pay Clear for.

Even the card itself is cool -- it looks a lot like an American Express Blue card, mostly transparent with a little set of metal contacts on the side so the machine can read the card's chip. High-tech.

The Gotchas: There's a couple weird things about Clear. First and foremost, it's absolutely ridiculous that our TSA and Federal Government are so incredibly fucked up that this has to be handled by a private company instead of, you know, by our tax dollars. That's not Clear's fault, though, and I commend them for doing what must be the world's most ridiculous set of paperwork.

Second, anybody who's a privacy zealot is not gonna be able to get behind the whole Clear thing. Fingerprints, retina scans, background checks, two forms of photo ID -- they do the works. If you can't trust a company with that kind of info, then Clear isn't for you.

Third, I think any feeling person's gonna have a little bit of guilt using this Clear to skip the security line. There's no more straightforward expression of class inequity than the fact that I can use my disposable income to get treated better in a situation that is mandated and policed by our federal government. We all reckon with these things in our own way, but this falls squarely into the category of things make you confront your privilege in an unsubtle way.

Finally, Clear isn't in every airport yet. It's not even in most airports yet. I live in JFK and SFO, and end up in La Guardia a lot -- those are all on the Clear list. And they're doing a commendable job of getting new airports online with the system all the time. But if your local airport isn't covered, this isn't going to be a great deal for you.

What It Costs: Clear is $99. If you fly from one of the Clear-covered airports more than 2 or 3 times a year, I think it's a no-brainer, and in fact is actually a bit on the inexpensive side compared to a lot of other amenities like airport lounges or flight cabin upgrades.

Recommended If You Like: Showing up late, getting upgraded on a flight, James Bond movies, "Catch Me If You Can".

---

This post is one of a series of unsolicited testimonials. Please view that introductory post for more background information.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on December 3, 2007 3:50 AM

Have you feeling bad for Ethan Hawke since his split with Uma Thurman? Uma seems to be having the time of her life with one rich boyfriend or another, gallivanting on beaches and making movies, while Ethan seemed to be the brooding loner, milling around New York City by himself.

Well, Gatecrasher is reporting that Ethan has duped us all -- and the actor has actually had a girlfriend for two years! A source says that Ethan is dating his kids' former nanny, Ryan, who worked for the fam while Uma and Ethan were still married.

Apparently Ryan contacted Ethan about a year after the split from Uma to confess her feelings. Brave girl!

"She had nothing to do with the divorce, and they started seeing each other after she was no longer the children's nanny," says a friend. "They've been keeping a lid on this for some time," says another source close to the couple. "They are incredibly in love."

Yay for Ethan!

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on December 3, 2007 2:54 AM

Fat? I don't think so.

Jennifer Love Hewitt felt the need to take time out from celebrating her engagement to Ross McCall to address the recent comments about her weight. Jen was photographed frolicking on the beach with her love, in a black bikini, which caused tons of media reports saying The Ghost Whisperer actress has "piled on the pounds."

Jen decided she wasn't just going to sit around and let the media dog her. She posted this message on her website, defending herself and women everywhere:

"This is the last time I will address this subject.

I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image.

A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. And being a size 0 doesn't make you beautiful.

What I should be doing is celebrating some of the best days of my life and my engagement to the man of my dreams, instead of having to deal with photographers taking invasive pictures from bad angles. I know what I look like, and so do my friends and family. And like all women out there should, I love my body.

To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini -- put it on and stay strong."

Good for Jen! She's is not even close to fat and, more than anything, I'm glad she knows it. Screw everybody else.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on December 3, 2007 2:20 AM

Source: pewsocialtrends.org Click To Enlarge We here at Stat Attack are always ready to pounce when perceptions clash with reality. So we couldn't resist this 2006 Pew study we came across last week. The survey asked 2,250 Americans about the...

Originally posted by Rob Gebeloff from NJ.com: Stat Attack, on December 3, 2007 1:30 AM

It looks like I wasn't the only one having a Gawker reckoning; A remarkable post revealed that both Emily Gould and Choire Sicha are leaving the site. (Thanks to Rex for the link.)

That post impressively uses Carla Blumenkranz's words about Gawker to highlight the worst tendency of the site: "The status of Gawker rose as the overall status of its subjects declined, and it was this that made Gawker appear at times a reprehensible bully." I'd tried to make the same point, albeit less eloquently, in my own post a few weeks ago:

I'm all for snarky-smart assed blogging, I just think that emulating traditional media's willingness to destroy people who aren't villains isn't a strategy for long-term success.

Perhaps as impressive as Emily and Choire's self-reflection was Gawker's post announcing an opening for a new Managing Editor. It kind of makes explicit that this (re-?) imagining of Gawker is not as the site that takes down the traditional media by mocking them, but as the site that takes down the traditional media by stealing their advertising dollars. In their own words:

It's no longer enough to take stories from the New York Times, and add a dash of snark. Gawker needs to break and develop more stories. And the new managing editor will need to hire and manage reporters, as well as bloggers. Gawker.com receives more than 10m pageviews per month. Think of Gawker less as a blog than as a full-blown news site. The right candidate will oversee Gawker's evolution.

I always believed that those of us who were creating personal media online would win. I still hold out hope that when we do so, it's not because we were willing to fight dirtier (or work cheaper) than the media that inspired us, but rather because we could do a better job of making media than the legacy media does today. Congratulations to everybody involved for being willing to indulge in a little bit of the most positive sort of creative destruction.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on December 3, 2007 1:28 AM

Even though he got a shout-out in our last post, it's worth giving some link love to Tim Appnel's "On Code" blog again. He's doing one of the best jobs of blogging regularly about the nuts and bolts of Movable Type, a topic he knows well as one of the longest-standing members of the most technical parts of the MT community.

Over the past six (!) years, Tim's done a great job of not just understanding and explaining functional details of Movable Type, but of building award-winning plugins and of holding our feet to the fire at Six Apart when he thinks it's in the best interest of MT. It's a thrill to see him posting frequently about MT with his uniquely informed perspective, and it's well worth adding his site to your list of regular reads if you want to keep up with a strong independent voice in the MT community.

And of course, if you value Tim's insights into creating content and community with Movable Type, it's worth finding out more about Appnel Solutions to help with consulting.

Originally posted by Anil Dash from MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community, on December 3, 2007 12:50 AM

- "New Economic Partnership." NEP. Hmm. Sounds so familiar. Wasn't there another famous NEP somewhere? Some other exciting NEP cooked up by a really trustworthy and benevolent organization? Oh, now I remember.

- The lie that online content delivery is a risky bet crumbles more and more each day. Nikki posted information from the Financial Times estimating that online advertising is a $120 million market for the conglomerates. And Media Life Magazine reports that viewers are 44 percent more engaged by ads that appear in television programs they watch online than those they view on traditional television. And thus more valuable. And thus more profitable. And thus the writer who creates the content to draw them in should get the equivalent of two trips to Pavilions for doing so. Hey, wait...

- And naturally, the AMPTP's distortions and dodges are catching up with them. As of Tuesday, Americans were seven times more likely to support the writers as they were the all-devouring future-stealing machine. Meanwhile, big thanks to Daily Kos for the love.

- The Criminal Minds Fanatic website has been raising funds for the support staff and crew of the show as well as holding auctions with the help of the writing staff. Lately, they've held auctions on eBay. Webmaster Jill Davidson tells us, "All the proceeds minus the eBay fees are going directly to our Appreciation Fund." Check the site for more.

- Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com spoke about the strike on C-Span. It's at about 3:49.

- This article by Patrick Goldstein has really made the rounds. I'm posting it now for anyone who might have missed it. Goldstein foresees the strike hastening rise of the "writer-entrepreneur" who ditches the studios for independent financing and distributes online. It's a vision that cuts the AMPTP out of the picture. This idea was raised earlier by Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape and currently of Ning, in his blog post "Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's Image." This business model is clearly what Joss was alluding to in his post this weekend. The New York Times adds, "traditional television is being quickly superseded by the market chaos of a freewheeling and open digital network." And the longer the strike goes on, the more this idea gains steam. Even someone with no stake in the business, a Libertarian blogger named Mike Roberto, is intrigued by the idea and sent us his take.

- Jo of JOpinionated, writes: "I have interviewed Kevin Collins, a TV writer who is currently undergoing radiation treatment for a rare form of thyroid cancer and honoring 'Pencils Down' at the same time. He is very sweet guy and his story is quite compelling. He was nice enough to grant me an interview during his recovery."

- A VERY detailed account of the strike so far from ComicBookResources. Thanks to Emmett Furey for the analysis and for sending it our way.

- Just For Pickets and Giggles

Don't you just love that MTV reality show, "The Hills"? Judd Apatow and friends don't either.

A Flickr pool of picketers' feet titled "They Walked the Line"

Former "Raymond" and "Lucky Louie" scribe Mike Royce wrote a piece lampooning Variety's coverage of the strike by showing how they might have covered the Jets' victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III.

Aspiring screenwriter Brian Carroll sends us his comic strip "Genrezvous Point." Genres living together on a mountaintop. Complications ensue...

Originally posted by John Aboud from United Hollywood, on December 3, 2007 12:40 AM

soxiam: tumblr t-shirt idea 1

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org Tumblelog, on December 2, 2007 7:00 PM

Linzie Hunter’s Spam One-Liners, typographic doodles based on the subject lines of junk e-mails were a big hit after we posted about them last month. After many requests, Linzie now offers these gorgeous pieces as prints from Thumbtack Press.

An article in the latest New York Times Magazine titled Recycled Phrases, details the genesis of the project and even credits Drawn! with helping to spread the popularity of Linzie’s work.

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on December 2, 2007 5:12 PM

Have you ever wanted to take green computing to the next level? Maybe, instead of upgrading to an EPEAT Gold machine, instead you want to take it a little bit further? Like...you want your computer to consume NO electricity EVER.

Well, this Christmas season, you can do just that. This tiny Linux box from Aleutia consumes 8 watts when running at maximum capacity, and it will only cost you around $350 dollars. The rest of your thousand dollar budget goes into a tiny 8-inch, 12-watt LCD screen and a big ol' Brunton Solar Roll to power the low-impact workstation.

You can buy them all together from Aleutia right now. Of course, the system isn't designed for home users...more for researchers and aid workers in developing countries, but it is a fantastic example of what can already be done with existing technology.

Via TreeHugger

Originally posted by Hank Green from EcoGeek.org, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 2, 2007 at 08:19 PM

Originally posted by Hank Green from Eyebeam reBlog, on December 2, 2007 3:19 PM

(via jeb)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on December 2, 2007 5:42 AM