« December 2, 2007 - December 8, 2007 | Main | December 16, 2007 - December 22, 2007 »
"Twitter recently added a Twitter Tracking feature that lets you track keywords and phrases that twitterers use while twittering. Just for kicks, I tracked the word library for 24 hours - every time someone entered the word library into twitter, I received the update. Here's what I got back from Twitter:"
This appears on my Examiner Blog.
This Monday's column will be part 3 of a meditation on the validity and limitations of the brand new U.S. News high school rankings. It's worth noting that, unlike Jay Mathews' "Challenge Index," updated this past week in the Washington Post, the U.S. News rankings bill themselves as rating the "best" high schools in America. Mathews never claims that; he simply ranks access to college-level AP/IB courses as an important criterion in looking at the quality of high schools.
The reaction to my last column, which called into question how literally we should take the ranking--and made the modest contention that we should look carefully at the criteria used to rate schools before we accept those rankings--was quite surprising. There was gratitude from some schools that had not made the "best" list, noting that I put a reality check on that loaded word BEST. But there was vitriol from some who had been ranked very high, accusing me of undercutting their glory.
Rating high schools is obviously a complicated issue, and I welcome the debate. On Monday I will attempt to wrap up a few thoughts on the issue, and return to a theme of part I, and a favorite subject for many years in my columns: the value of engaging students in real-world, interdisciplinary thought in high school. We'll see what my inbox brings after Part 3. Can't wait!
This video comes from Japan and, well… You just have to watch it yourself to appreciate it.
After watching it be sure to leave a comment telling us which one is your favorite.
I have heard rumors that someone created a patch (no idea how you would use it) to the Fire Red and Leaf Green Pokemon games that allows you to replace the sprites in the game with the ones in the video above.
All I can say is that some things go over real big in Japan that do not do so well outside of Japan.
The New York Times just released its 7th annual Year in Ideas round-up, and there are some interesting inclusions.
Amidst short articles on airborne wind turbines, Islam in outer space, UPS's ban on left-hand turns – all of which have been explored on BLDGBLOG before – and even so-called "marijuana mansions," we're asked to consider "whether full-scale lightning farms might one day become a meaningful source of electricity."Practically speaking, the NYTimes explains, building a lightning farm would entail the construction of an entire specialty landscape. You could probably even patent it.
There would be "a tower, an array of grounding wires to shunt off most of the incoming energy and a giant capacitor. Theoretically, if enough energy is delivered to the capacitor, it can be stored, converted to alternating current and transferred to the power grid."
Unfortunately, the article explains, lightning farms don't really work.
But no matter: BLDGBLOG would like to propose turning the entirety of Paris into a lightning farm. The Eiffel Tower would loom over a network of grounding wires. Groves of steel poles – orchards of power, virtually harnessing the sky – would stand amidst cobblestones, spiraling up hills, and the outermost streets of the city, connecting cafe to cafe down stairways, leading up to bars and scenic overlooks, glow every fortnight as that great central spike gets thrashed with aerial electricity. You can toast bread with all that power, draining the clouds, awaiting storms with videocameras in hand to film that apocalypse of alternating currents in the sky.Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, ReBlogged by Steve on Dec 14, 2007 at 11:58 PM
More thoughts on Eric Turkheimer's research:
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am Turkheimer's work is one of the keys to unraveling the Race-IQ debate. His argument goes something like this:
Right now, there are two conflicting pieces of evidence, each of which is seized upon by each side in the debate. On the one hand, there are twin studies. You look at twins, raised in very different adoptive families, and you find that their IQs are very similar. That suggests IQ is largely heritable, and that environment plays only a modest role.
On the other hand, there are studies showing that if a child of a very poor family, adopted at birth into a wealthy family, will have a much higher IQ than his or her siblings, or his or her parents, who remain in poverty.
This is, obviously, not a trivial disagreement. Someone like Charles Murray, who takes the former position, uses it as explanation for why he think social programs--like Head Start--are a waste of time and money. It is also why he thinks that the gap that presently exists between white and black average IQ scores will likely persist, regardless of what kind of steps we take as a society. Liberals, meanwhile, use the latter evidence to justify the idea of an aggressive social policy.
So who's right? Turkkeimer would say, both sides are.
He used a very large data set--the National Collaborative Perinatal Project--and found that the relationship between socio-economic status and IQ was non-linear. Children moving from poverty to the middle class see their IQ's jump: IQ at that end of the socio-economic scale is highly sensitive to environmental improvements. But the kinds of twins studies usually relied upon by IQ fundamentalists and that yield such high genetic effects, are much more likely to involve comparisons among middle and upper middle class environments--and that end of the scale, Turkheimer's data suggests, environment doesn't play a big role.
In other words, the lawyer who plays Mozart in the crib for his daughter, in order to raise her IQ, is wasting his time. But dramatically increasing the educational resources available to inner city kids makes a lot of sense.
This, I think, helps to clarify a lot of what drives so many of us crazy about Charles Murray and his ilk. We're not disputing the importance of IQ. And we're not disputing that genes play a huge role in determining IQ. We're just saying that it's hopelessly naive to assume that the same rules apply to suburban, middle-class whites as apply to, say, urban, inner-city black families.
Hottt Off the Press! Collective 2008 Toolkit Organizer $5 Philadelphia's Toolkit is a pocket-sized organizer that teaches a new skill or shares some knowledge over the course of every month. Topics range from making a pinhole camera to planning dance parties or bike trips to stencil tips to challenging gentrification. Artists include Eian Weissman, Beth Pulcinella (who did the Great Arizona Mine Strike People's History poster), Hilary from the Beehive Collective, & Erik Ruin. Plus it's a fundraiser for Hottt Offf the Press print collective! Cover colors vary wildly. pocket organizer 4.25"x5" approx.200 pages
Whoa, so Apple now officially supports free, custom ringtones for the iPhone? (Thanks to Paul Kafasis.)
This photo of lower Manhattan taken from the Statue of Liberty in 1901 is plenty interesting, especially what I believe is the beginnings of the Manhattan Bridge under construction behind the Brooklyn Bridge.
(link)
On Serious Eats I believe we're leading the nation in cool gift guides, and there are still more to come. That said, there are still a few items on my personal gift wish list that haven't been mentioned yet. Some I have found on other websites. And others just popped into my head at various times in the last couple of weeks. I'm sure other serious eaters find themselves in similar situations. So perhaps we can rectify this problem. I invite all of you to leave your food-centric gift wish list as a comment on this post. With any luck, the people in your life searching for a present for you will find their way to Serious Eats. Consider this post the world's biggest department store Santa lap.
Vicky, Will, if you're out there, read on.
On Slate Simon Hopkinson, author of Roast Chicken and Other Stories, the heralded book that according to my friend Sam is exceedingly hard to find this year, mentioned Cooking in 10 Minutes, a book by Edouard de Pomaire that was first published in 1948. Here's a sample recipe from the book along with a pithy comment from Hopkinson:
Oysters and Sausages
1. Fry some chipolata sausages. Serve them very hot on a dish and on a second dish a dozen oysters.
2. Alternate the sensations. Burn your mouth with a crackling sausage. Soothe your burns with a cool oyster. Continue until all the sausages and oysters have disappeared.
3. White wine, of course.
Look out, Mark Bittman.
I haven't been able to find this book on-line, so anyone interested in getting this book for me (are you listening, Vicky and Will) would be wise to call Nach Waxman at Kitchen Arts & Letters. Nach can locate a copy of just about any book if you give him a few days.
In the same Slate post Mollie Katzen, author of many books, including The Mousewood Cookbook, raves about another book I've never heard of, Salt & Pepper: 135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes, by Michele Jordan. Mollie writes,
"Once in a great while, I'll have a transcendent food-book-reading experience. This happened when I first picked up a copy of Salt & Pepper: 135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes by Michele Jordan. I was familiar with Michele's work—she is a friend of mine, and I admire her work. But inspired though I have been by everything she has done, this book has given me something beyond inspiration. It has given me permission."
I crave transcendent food-book-reading experiences, I love salt and pepper, and I especially like permission to put more salt in my food, so I definitely want this book.
I love a good tamale. Whether it's a Mississippi Delta tamale or a designer tamale or a more traditional Mexican tamale, I love them all. Don't you? And where I live, in New York City, a good tamale of any stripe is hard to find. So I would love for some most excellent tamales to find their way to my house this holiday season. There are many tamale purveyors that ship (I have googled mail-order tamales many times over the years), so if you are listening, Santa, please bring some tamales down my non-existent chimney.
So that's it. Three gifts, none obscenely expensive. They may take a little bit of work, but inspired gifts always do. What would you like to get this holiday season?
"USAspending.gov is pleased to announce the availability of its data in an Application Programming Interface (API). The API consists of two methods, fpds.php and faads.php, that allow access to the data to the Federal contracts and Federal assistance databases respectively. All data present on USAspending.gov is available through the API, except for pie charts and end-of-search totals."
This week's launch of the Movable Type Open Source project was huge news for our community. But as part of that announcement, we promised even more news to come. So today, we're introducing some of the next steps that will outline how we're going to fueling that community in the coming weeks and months.
- We're beginning the beta of Movable Type 4.1 today, with tons of new features.
- We're announcing the Professional Pack, the first of the extended benefits that paid users of MT will be receiving.
- We're launching the Movable Type reseller program designed to offer resellers a 30% discount that you can pass on to your customers or keep for yourself.
Each of these announcements on its own would be big news, but one of the things we wanted to demonstrate was how much we value our paying customers who've supported MT's development (the Professional Pack and MT 4.1 will be a free upgrade for all paying customers of MT 4.0), as well as how having an open platform will help benefit everyone who uses Movable Type.
Enough talk -- let's show you what's coming!
What's new in Movable Type 4.1?
Here's what you can look forward to in MT 4.1:
You can check out the full details about the MT 4.1 beta on the beta home page.
- It's Faster! We've made performance improvements across the board for everythign from publishing to reducing the size of the scripts that load when you want to write a post.
- User Interface Improvements. There are minor tweaks all over the application to make creating and managing your content easier.
- Global Templates. Now you can easily create templates or widgets that are shared across all the blogs in your system.
- Avatars/User Pictures. Authors and commenters can upload an image or icon for themselves that will show up next to their entries and comments.
- Asset Editing. Whether it's audio, photos, videos or uploaded files, you can view and edit information like the size of a file and its tags, and even see which entries or pages that asset appears in.
- Template Sets. You can create, share and use entire sets of templates between different Movable Type blogs, including all of the stylesheets and feeds for your site. For designers, it's a great way to deliver a design to your clients.
- Smart Template Tag Documentation. Just use any of Movable Type's template tags in designing a template, and the system will automatically provide you with a link to the documentation for that tag -- handy!
- Better API suport for Pages. Using tools like Windows Live Writer, you can now create and manage Movable Type's pages just as easily as you work with your entries.
- Tons more. There are lots of little improvements all over the platform -- like the ability to replicate published content across multiple servers, or to plug in your own rich text editor like FCKEdit.
What's in the Professional Pack?
We'll be revealing the full details of the Professional Pack as the official launch of MT 4.1 gets closer, but here's just some of the benefits for paid users of Movable Type:
- Professional help ticket support direct from the Movable Type team.
- New integrated Custom Fields for Movable Type:
- Customize the fields for all of your blog entries, with support for uploading images or assets, and creating text fields, pull-down menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, and more
- Define fields on a per-blog basis
- Change the order in which fields are displayed on any entry screen
- Define custom fields not just for entries, but for pages or even folders and categories
- Completely customize the fields used to describe users in your system -- build on MT4.1's Avatar support
- Easily embed any of your custom fields in your templates using template tags that the system provides for you
The first beta release of the paid commercial release of MT 4.1 with the Professional Pack is available now. This is an early beta -- upgrading from 4.0 isn't supported yet, and of course betas shouldn't be used in a production environment.
The Movable Type Reseller Program
And finally, we've completely revamped the Movable Type reseller program, and we've tripled the cut you get for selling MT. The Reseller Program is a way for all of you who design, develop and deploy Movable Type to get the most benefits from the buzz around MT4. The way it works is simple:
- You get a 30% discount off the retail price of Movable Type
- You choose whether to pass all of part of that discount on to your customers, and pocket the rest.
When you're accepted into the Reseller Program, here's some of what you'll get:
- A Free Movable Type Commercial 5-User License
- Listing on our MT Reseller Partner page
- Discounts on qualifying Movable Type products
- Direct Technical support from the MT team
- Downloadable product and sales sheets
- Exclusive use of the sexy new Movable Type Reseller logo
Signing up for the Reseller Program is easy -- just fill out the application form and we'll read over it and get you into the program as quick as we can. (If you'd worked with our affiliate program in the past, don't worry -- we're handling our resellers ourselves now, so you don't have to worry about a complicated third-party affiliate system.)
It's just getting started
So far, 2007 has been a momentous year for Movable Type: MT4 was released, the Enterprise and Community Solutions launched, MTOS was kicked off, and now we're off and running towards MT 4.1 with a kick-ass new reseller program backing it up. But we think 2008's going to be even more amazing, and we hope you'll be there with us because even after six years, we're just getting started!
Urban Rustic, the new Brooklyn grocery store whose shelves are almost exclusively stocked with food from within a 100-mile radius, opens tomorrow. Located on North 12th Street across from McCarren Park, the grocery is the brainchild of Aaron Woolf, a partner in the nearby faux-alpine Lodge restaurant/bar/general store. Woolf is also one of the producers of the indie documentary King Corn, which followed the misadventures of two neophyte corn farmers and their harrowing journey into the dark heart of American agribusiness.
Urban Rustic’s locavore angle seems a perfectly timed fit for the trendy location, what with all new condos lumbering toward completion in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg area. But Woolf and his partners Dan Cipriani, and Luis Illades say they’re determined to make sure the old neighborhood isn’t excluded – a big chalkboard above the deli boasts a wide variety of meaty sandwiches intended to lure “the guys playing handball across the street.” The salad bar and stocked produce will vary according to what local suppliers have fresh each week: the owners are promising a selection of vegetables that were in the ground two days prior. They’re also placing an emphasis on farmers who use electricity from wind-powered sources.
Breakfast and lunch can be ordered from the deli counter and eaten in the back dining area or, during better weather, in the small outdoor space behind the café. Items range from seitan stew to roast beef sandwiches, with smoothies, espresso and coffee. Dinner will feature table service and a variable menu dictated by the day’s fresh haul from their local suppliers. And on weekends Urban Rustic will serve as another neighborhood brunch option for those who can’t seem to make it to the Lodge before the rush.
Urban Rustic, 236 N. 12th St., 718-388-9444. Open seven days a week, 7am – 10pm. Weekend brunch served between 10am – 4pm.
More on this steroids nonsense.
The players names included in the report were based on uncorroborated evidence provided by 2 individuals who are under federal indictment. And ESPN is now reporting (on TV) that Roger Clemens is firing back hard, claiming both that he has never once tested positive and that they have no evidence that he has ever done anything wrong. If that's true, this is all very, very f'd up.
These are allegations that will define everything these people have done with their lives. If they don't have something more than the word of one or two people, they shouldn't have included their names. The standard of proof should have been much, much higher than this. Hearsay isn't enough in a court of law. Why should it be enough for this report?
Baseball is looking for scapegoats. They better be damn well sure they picked the right people. Because if they didn't, the falsely accused players will sure, and they will win. A false accusation here is as clear a case of defamation as you're ever likely to see.
Recently, legend became reality when a 10-story building in SoHo was being converted to a luxury condo. Unearthed in the walls was a large mural created by graffiti pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000.
The artwork contains a variety of images and writing executed in spray paint, grease pencil, magic marker and whatever else was on hand — in silver, gold, pink and red. There are cartoonlike pictures of a bomber airplane, images of a heart and a cake, and several references to Quaaludes, a popular 1970s party drug.The mural was found in the eighth-floor loft owned by art critic Edit deAk in the late '70s and 1980s — a time when much of fringe art, including graffiti, was being validated. The wall is nearly intact, except for gaps where a dishwasher and plumbing were installed years later.And that's not all...one part of the mural is believed to be by Jean Michel Basquiat (his tag "SAMO" also appears in the stairwell). deAk even told the new owners of the building that "There is a Basquiat, and it's somewhere where you won't think it is." This being the beginning of a movement, many in the art world who were consulted agree it's "a critical piece of history," and the "Holy Grail" of graffiti.
So how does one preserve such a thing in the midst of a luxury condo conversion? Wall stabilization, tissue paper and cheesecloth were all involved until the graffiti could be "peeled off" and mounted to a movable panel. That panel is being unveiled for all to see tonight at an exhibit focusing on the graffiti art movement in the early '80s. The show will also include works from Keith Haring, Basquiat, Kenny Scharf and Ero. Titled "The Wild Style Exhibit" will be on view through February 15th at Gallery 151 [151 Wooster St, 2nd Floor].
The New York Times has an interesting piece on Heather Kuzmich one of the recent contestants on reality TV show America’s Next Top Model who reportedly has Asperger's syndrome.
Asperger's syndrome is essentially High Functioning Autism (the difference in diagnosis lies in a fairly academic point about the age at which someone acquires language), meaning that the person is not impaired in terms of intelligence, but has difficulties understanding others' emotions, social interactions and can have 'special interests' or repetitive behaviours.
The stereotype of someone with Asperger's is that they're quite shy, withdrawn or socially unattractive.
In contrast, a video of Kuzmich on YouTube shows her to be an engaging and outgoing personality with a delightfully kooky edge that shines through.
It's always great to see when someone doesn't conform to a negative stereotype and the impact is all the more enhanced when it's someone high profile or in the public eye.
Link to NYT article 'Asperger’s Syndrome Gets a Very Public Face'.
Personally, I can't believe someone would be caught dead with one of these pieces of proletarian rubbish.At my law firm, Clifford Chance, a most prestigious English establishment, we use quill and ink, as other civilised professionals are most fond of using.
The very thought of using an injection-molded plastic instrument to draft earth-shaping corporate documents offends my professional sensibilities.
With Prestige and Honour,
H. Maxwell Harbinger VI, Esq.
- One of the many mischievous reviewers who have taken over Amazon.com's customer reviews for... a plain Bic pen
Billy Shaheen, the Hillary official who said Obama's past drug use would make him vulnerable to GOP attacks in a general election, steps down from the campaign with a statement:
“I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Senator Clinton or the Clinton campaign. Senator Clinton has been running a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to America’s families. She is the best qualified to be the next President of the United States because she can lead starting on day one. I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the Co-Chair of the Hillary for President campaign. This election is too important and we must all get back to electing the best qualified candidate who has the record of making change happen in this country. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”
Lots and lots of people have asked how I’ve been making the maps I’ve posted here on the blog. The answer is simpler than one might think, and a whole lot less automated than one might assume. I use Adobe Illustrator and draw them by hand. It’s a labor of love that I’m making while on the road, and once I’m home, I plan to print it out and keep it as a memento of the trip.
The idea for doing it Illustrator came to me after I made the map for the first day. To make that map, I simply traced over a Google Map capture with the paintbrush tool in Photoshop. Here’s what that map looked like:
While informative, I didn’t really like the look of it. And, I didn’t want to have a separate map for each day. Instead, I wanted one big map to have at the end of the trip. So, I took a raster map into Illustrator and started tracing over it using the pen tool. While I’m working on filling in the state lines, National Parks, and route lines, this is what my screen looks like:
Then, when it’s time to place in the text labels, I turn off the raster base map and am left with this view:
It’s from this view that I export the maps you’ve been seeing on this blog, such as this view that I cropped from the full map and posted in my previous entry:
That’s it. That’s how it’s done. I have to say that making this map has been a lot of fun for me. It’s the first time I’ve attempted my hand at map making, but it does feel a lot like the kinds of drawings I used to do in architecture school. It feels good to work those parts of my brain again.
Posted by Susan Straccia, Google Zeitgeist Team
Every year we put out the Year-End Zeitgeist, a look at the most popular and fastest-rising search terms in hopes of telling us something about what's been on our (collective) mind. This was my first year working on this project, and I'm here to report I was pleasantly surprised by many of the findings. Yes, 2007 was a big year for U.S. politics, and, of course, there were several peaks coinciding with the indiscretions of a few starlets -- but what I found particularly interesting were some of the timeless themes that surfaced: what is love, who is god and how to kiss, to name a few. No matter how much changes over time, these questions seem to be constants. I don't know about you, but I hope we never get to the bottom of them. Searching for an answer is half the fun.
If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out our complete list for 2007.
Referrer-tracking shows where people come from when they look at your photos.
Former senator George Mitchell’s “Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball” implicates a slew of top players, including Yankee pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, and sluggers Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa. Fucking cheaters. The full report runs 409 pages (PDF).
I'm asking honestly: Assuming that the league has not established a comprehensive ban backed up with a comprehensive testing policy, why is taking steroids cheating? Everyone acts as it this is obvious, but I don't see it.
Players drink Red Bull and Gatorade to alter their performance. They spend countless hours in the weight room to give themselves a competitive advantage. They train at night, on weekends, nearly 365 days each year to play better, run faster, hit harder, and entertain better. We ask them to hit more home runs, so they do it, and then we pay them more. We ask them to hit quarterbacks and running backs harder, and they do it, and then we pay them more. Why is this form of self improvement cheating but others are not?
Steroids didn't hit the home runs for Barry Bonds. They didn't throw the pitches for Roger Clemens. They might have helped each of them perform better, but if both the pitcher and the hitter are on the juice, who has the advantage? Aside from producing a more entreating and exciting game, what difference does it make? These are grown men. Unless you are going to do everything possible to prohibit this, let them put whatever they want into their bodies.
"Former commissioner Fay Vincent told me that the problem of performance-enhancing substances may be the most serious challenge that baseball has faced since the 1919 Black Sox scandal," Mitchell said in the 409-page report.
"The illegal use of anabolic steroids and similar substances, in Vincent's view, is 'cheating of the worst sort.' He believes that it is imperative for Major League Baseball to 'capture the moral high ground' on the issue and, by words and deeds, make it clear that baseball will not tolerate the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs."Eric Gagne, Troy Glaus, Gary Matthews Jr., Brian Roberts, Paul Lo Duca, Rick Ankiel and Jay Gibbons were among other current players named in the report. Some were linked to Human Growth Hormone, others to steroids.
"We identify some of the players who were caught up in this drive to gain a competitive advantage," the report said. "Other investigations will no doubt turn up more names and fill in more details, but that is unlikely to significantly alter the description of baseball's 'steroids era' as set forth in this report."
The Balck Sox scandal was about taking bribes to lose games. This is about players using substances to perform better on the field. They simply are not the same thing. They are not even close.
I don't get it. I honestly don't.
A woman shoved into the Brooklyn-bound Q train tracks at Union Square was saved by two bystanders on Monday night. Suzanne Trotman only suffered bruises as she was pulled from the tracks less than a minute before a train pulled in.
Two people, a man and a woman, jumped into the tracks to help Trotman out. Trotman told the Post she 'got up really quickly," adding, "Good thing I didn't get knocked out... I kept telling myself, 'I'm not going to die like this.'" When the train pulled in, others stopped the person who apparently pushed her from getting on board.
Police arrested 24-year-old Tenesha Thompson for reckless endangerment and assault. Witnesses say she seemed to be talking to herself, saying, "You don't know what she did to me," repeatedly. And Trotman wants to thank the two Good Samaritans who helped her out of the tracks safely, "You hear stories of things like this, but you don't think it can ever happen to you."
At the beginning of the year, a man jumped into the subway tracks when a young man had a seizure and fell. Wesley Autrey covered the man's body with his own as a train passed above them and turned into a hero for all of us.
According to their web site and TV Guide, last night's episode of Mythbusters was supposed to address the airplane on a treadmill question. They didn't and nerds everywhere are upset. According to an email from the executive producer of the show, the segment got rescheduled:
First up, for those concerned that this story has been cancelled, don't worry, planes on a conveyer belt has been filmed, is spectacular, and will be part of what us Mythbusters refer to as 'episode 97'. Currently that is due to air on January 30th.
Secondly, for those very aggrieved fans feeling "duped" into watching tonight's show, I can only apologise. I'm not sure why the listings / internet advertised that tonight's show contained POCB. I will endeavour to find out an answer but for those conspiracy theorists amongst you, I can assure you that it will have just been an honest mistake.
Not sure that's going to quench the nerdfury, but I'm glad the piece will air in January.
I'm not only a writer, I'm a GE shareholder! And I think GE's CEO Jeff Immelt deserves a lot of credit for telling the truth yesterday: The strike is hurting NBC. The negative buzz about NBC's fortunes had built for days, and Jeff Immelt faced it directly with a minimum of spin:While some media companies have denied the "Hollywood" writers' strike will hurt profits short-term, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said Tuesday that it's already having an impact at NBC Universal--and GE cut profit projections for the fourth quarter there. ... GE had projected a 10% to 15% growth in segment profit at its NBCU unit in the fourth quarter, but Tuesday Immelt said it will come in at the 10% low end, citing the "impact of the strike." ... GE's downgrade was striking, since NBCU competitors have denied the strike would have a negative impact for some time. News Corp. COO Peter Chernin even said: "My guess is that during fiscal '08, a strike is probably a positive for the company."Separately, this Reuters article claims that CBS and ABC are also in trouble, just not as much. Of course, come "Idol" season, the other networks' situation could become catastrophic. With minimal competition from original programming, "American Idol" seems poised to demolish the other networks as never before. The Reuters piece includes, finally, an assessment of the strike from Shari Anne Brill, The Most Quoted Woman in Media™! I can't believe I haven't seen her show up in strike coverage until now.Shari Anne Brill, senior vice president and director of programming for media buying agency Carat USA, said advertisers are growing increasingly worried about the ratings impact of a prolonged strike.
"Clients are in an upset state without knowing what's six weeks away. We have (programming) schedules through January, but nothing is really set for the month of February," [Aaron] Cohen said.
"Ad agencies have to negotiate with networks for revised schedules based on current strike replacement programming and get client approval for the revised schedule. We're working on a month-to-month basis," he added.
Brill said the advertisers placed their money on different expectations.
"If the networks are in this ratings under-delivery situation now, it could only worsen in the event of a prolonged strike," Brill said.
"Advertisers generally prefer to be in scripted content, and will not readily accept being put into lower-quality reality fare when their upfront dollars were spent on the expectation of being placed in quality scripted content," she said.
The arrival of a new year means it's time for a new Pentagram Calendar. We'll forever be partial to the 2006 edition, for which Pentagram commissioned us to design twelve new fonts of numbers; we subsequently added three additional styles, anticipating of course the post-revolutionary 15-month calendar under which all earthlings will unite in observance of Hoefluary, Frerember and Jonesember. (Reminder: font licenses must be paid in full by Tribute Day, Hoefluary 15.)
But until the revolution comes, enjoy your quaint 12-month ways with the stylish 2008 Pentagram Typography Calendar. 2008 looks like it's going to be a vintage year, for this year's edition is designed exclusively using the typefaces of Matthew Carter. Few things can make January more exhilarating than a brace of Galliard old-style figures, and the appearance of the scarce Walker typeface in February hints at many more treats throughout the months to come. —JH
Pentagram 2008 Typography Calendar. Large, $36.00; small, $22.00.
In less than 24 hours, the entire American media will be consumed with Roid Rage. Columnists and bloggers will never have had it so easy, with myriad angles to cover, so-called big names to out and moralizing to be done. But the question that probably won't be raised (because it doesn't sell papers) is: Does anybody actually care? Seriously. Do you really want to know if your favorite sports star has injected himself with more hormones than a Perdue chicken?
I mean, read any anecdotal baseball book and you'll see that ballplayers have been popping greenies since the Seventies. It's one of the things that ballplayers are all about: getting an edge, acting batshit crazy on the road, and winning the World Series. But you still like those players from the Good Ol' Days, right? You still collect their cards. Even if they were users.
And what about the Pittsburgh Drug Trials? Players were buying cocaine from the Pittsburgh Parrot, for chrissakes. Sure, it may have ruined Tim Raines's and Dave Parker's chances at making the Hall of Fame, but Keith Hernandez figured into that stuff as well, and well, he's still a well-liked baseball celebrity.
Baseball has probably weathered more vice charges than any other sport in America, and may rank second to soccer on the world stage in terms of public relations nightmare scandals and fuck ups.
Here's a handful of other good times: Hal Chase gambling on games while still on the field playing in them, Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb fixing a game in 1927, legends Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays banned for life for appearing at a casino, and who could forget Sammy Sosa losing his grasp on English before the Senate Committee? Yes, it's easy to make it through a whole post on baseball's storied scandals without even mentioning Pete Rose or the Black Sox. (Well, almost.)
So let's face facts. There will be hundreds if not thousands of articles written on the Mitchell Report. ESPN will launch special coverage and Pedro Gomez will go without sleep for six weeks as Barry Bonds will most certainly be named in the report.
Will card prices suffer? Cards of The Asterisk have had plenty o'time to have the bottom fall out, and if anything, it's been a slow decline. But what about others? I just don't see it happening. Well, unless Clemens is named...
The Taxi and Limousine Commission has made it official: Cabs purchased after October 1, 2008 must get at least 25 miles per gallon. Then, after fall of 2009, newly purchased cabs must get at least 30 miles per gallon.
As the AP puts it, this means "taxi fleet owners, who must replace their cabs every three to five years, will probably be forced to buy fuel-efficient hybrids, which run partly on electricity." The Taxicab Board of Trade isn't happy about that, noting that the old Crown Victoria's safety rating is higher than the Ford Escape (one of the hybrid models being used as a taxi now). The board's Joseph Giannetto told the Sun, "We don't know much about the safety or durability of these hybrid taxis. A New York taxi is on the road perhaps more than any other vehicle in the world and demands more attention of safety and durability."
Earlier this year, Mayor Bloomberg announced that more and more hybrid taxis would be rolled out, increasing the percentage of hybrid vehicles to 30% of the fleet by October 2009 and hitting 100% by October 2012. It was just two years ago that the TLC gave the okay to introduce hybrids into the taxi mix - for extra fun, check out this 2005 PDF cost/benefit comparison of hybrids from the TLC. These days, there's a luxury Lexus hybrid taxi somewhere, too.
Photograph of a Prius taxi by Triborough on Flickr
I saw a link on the internet last night that I really wish I wouldn't have clicked on. What I saw behind that link irked me on so many levels, I must write about it.
Let me begin by stating I don't particularly hate Fergie as a whole. I can understand her appeal, her talents, her fashion audacity, her struggle to the top or whatever. Fine.
But Fergie's voice has a chainsaw or dentist drill quality to it, especially when she's belting out a song. It is a truly disturbing sound. If this sound were to awaken you out of a peaceful slumber, you would instinctively hurl a heavy object at the source and the experience would likely leave you cross for the rest of the day.
It is not a pleasant sound, Fergie's full-on singing voice. When she's speak-singing a song like "London Bridge" I don't feel particularly assaulted. Or even "Big Girls Don't Cry" - she didn't bring out the buzzsaw timbre on that one really.
But she did bring it out, full force, to cover one of my least favorite songs ever: "Live and Let Die".
I have no idea why Fergie would cover this song. Is it for a movie soundtrack? Because it's been covered enough before, hasn't it? The occasion for the live performance of it was the televised Movies Rock event. I'm not going to waste my time or yours wondering why this event even happened.
If you haven't already seen it, please watch this YouTube clip of her performance.
And now I must rant.
How many thousands of dollars did they pay the wardrobe stylist? All the stylist could come up with is shiny black catsuits with holes cut out in the midriff, high ponytails and ankle booties? It's a fine line between edgy and tacky, isn't it?
And the choreographer, what were they thinking? "Dancers! Gather 'round Fergie now and point your thumb up and index finger out, yes, yes, like guns! That's it! Now point your guns, point them at the audience, now bend from the elbow and point your gun up, up to the sky! Up, out, up, out! Brilliant!" I know they're trying to conjure Bond imagery here, but these moves are kind of a cross between old-school Fosse jazz, the Charlie's Angels logo, and some dance me and my friends in 7th grade would have made up during a Friday night sleepover. (I've always thought there's something very 7th grade about Fergie, like she's one set of hairsprayed donut-bangs away from copping the style of a 13 year old girl in the 80's.)
As if the dancers' finger-guns weren't enough, Fergie's got a bedazzled pistol affixed to her microphone stand. And of course she, at one point, menacingly aims it at the audience.
The song itself is not my favorite. The most irritating part is this line:
"And in this ever-changing world in which we live in..."
The repetition of "in" is like a poke in the ribs every time I hear it. I know rock songs play fast and loose with grammar, I get that and I'm OK with it. I dig it. But this line wants it both ways, and I can't go for that. No can do.
Fergie herself plays fast and loose with the timing of the chorus too, waiting just a beat after the backing track kicks in to join in the "Live and let dieeeeee" part. I'm assuming this is a stylistic choice, and not the result of a malfunctioning of her in-ear monitors, but...stop it!!
Then she somehow manages to make the "when you got a job to do, you got to do it well" part sound dirty, by virtue of growling it with a stage full of women in spandex gyrating their hips in unison. I never thought if it that way before, but now I will, for the rest of my life. Thanks.
All the hair-flipping, pyrotechnics and Fergie's own smug delivery make me feel like they were expecting everyone to be blown away by this performance. I mean, I couldn't hold on to a rope with one arm and swing from the ceiling while singing, but why would anyone want to?
To the audience that gave a standing ovation for this performance: we'll just have to agree to disagree.
To my chagrin, I made an error in my New Yorker piece "None of the Above." In the "Bell Curve," Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein did not advocate a "high-tech Indian reservation" for low-IQ groups. Rather, they warned that if current welfare policies continued, we would end up having to build high-tech reservations for those with low IQs--which is a very different argument, obviously (although not, if you think about it, any less ridiculous). I regret the error. The New Yorker will be running a correction.
Today's Blog of the Year Picks: Some Bits: Nelson's Weblog and RC3.org.
These two are just for me, some real old-school-blogging nerd picks. Some Bits: Nelson's Weblog is the work of Nelson Minar. Formerly of Google (where he helped pioneer their API work), and lately assisting with Twitter, Nelson is a geek's geek, reveling in coding and gaming and exploring the edges of web culture. But honestly, there are lots of blogs that try to cover that territory. What I love is that there's a real humanity to the way Nelson presents his posts, and he frequently veers from the technical to the political or even the worlds of food and travel while retaining that characteristic warmth. Frankly, if you've been reading or writing blogs long enough, you can remember how blogging used to be, and Nelson's Weblog is old-fashioned in a great way, not least because he still calls it a "weblog". That the sidebar linkblog is so incredibly well-curated and consistently good is the icing on the cake.
In a similar vein, Rafe Colburn's rc3.org is a blog for people who appreciate code, sure. But it's also a rich discussion of politics, community, and culture. For those of you who are newcomers to the blogosphere (that means you showed up in this century), this is what most blogs used to be like. Now, neither Rafe nor I is posting 100 links a month like we used to 8 years ago, but the evolution into a more considered set of brief essays interspersed with interesting links is still satisfying to see done so well, and so consistently, for so long.
Pick of the Posts:
- I found Nelson's sympathetic look at Larry Craig from earlier this year to be particularly moving.
- There is nothing but good in Nelson's "bad" category of posts.
- Quality is the Killer Feature: Inspired by the shutdown of OINK, Rafe neatly sums up a key weakness of digital music marketing efforts thus far.
- And a must-read for anybody who deploys servers or server-based applications: When Deployments Go Wrong
If you like these, try: Hack the Planet. A full 30% of the time, I have no idea what the hell Wes Felter is talking about. Another 20% of the time he's either wrong or just infuriating. These are just two of the best things about his blog if you're a geek.
This is one in a series of posts about Blogs of the Year for 2007. They're my subjective picks about blogs that inspired or influenced me this year, and you can check out my introductory post to find more.
We've been monitoring how I am Legend, the big budget post-apocalyptic zombie movie set in New York, will be portraying the Big Apple ever since filming took place on the Brooklyn Bridge (it eventually gets blown up). Now, with reviews starting to pop up, we're hearing mixed things about the movie but raves about how a futuristic people-less New York City looks.
The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson was freaked out, noting how the city is "desolate with grass growing up and over Park Avenue sidewalks, deserted cars abandoned in the streets, the only sound of life is the flock of birds flying overhead or the herds of deer going for a romp up Lexington (until one gets eaten by a lion, sigh)."
Variety says "the opening minutes are breathtaking in their haunting imagery. The setting is a desolate Manhattan, parts of it unchanged but others in ruins, upholstered in part by grass and weeds and with abandoned vehicles jammed together. Billboards for 'Hairspray,' 'Rent' and 'Wicked' still adorn Times Square, but the only living beings in evidence are some flying birds, a herd of stampeding deer and a family of lions stealthily hunting its dinner." Hey, Mr. deMille, deer and lions are ready for their close-up!
The Hollywood Reporter, though, couldn't quite suspend its disbelief about apocalyptic NYC: "All utilities work perfectly, which might come as a shock to New Yorkers who experience problems with water, gas or electricity when a full work force mans those departments." Ha!
I am Legend opens this Friday - are you getting ready to see it? The website offers apocalyptic views of Union Square, plus wallpapers of destroyed NYC.
"Beanstalkd is a fast, distributed, in-memory workqueue service. Its interface is generic, but is intended for use in reducing the latency of page views in high-volume web applications by running most time-consuming tasks asynchronously."
