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Mr. Rentczchxh has posted my talk from C4, and if you would enjoy watching a talk without paying, you can watch it. It's on hype, and how I generate it, but it also touches on other topics concerning having your own software company, like making good software, bundling, getting into stores, having sex with cylons, &c.
Watch it!
Or don't.
A married couple in the Upper West Side's Ansonia Building are suing their neighbor over her smoking. They claim her smoking is adversely affecting the hallway environment and the health of their four-year-old boy.
Johnathan and Jenny Selbin are both lawyers and say their son Charlie's health is at risk due to Galila Huff's chain-smoking in her own apartment. Huff, who owns Caffe La Fenice just a couple blocks down Broadway, has lived at the Ansonia for 15 years and has been a smoker for 40 years (since she was 17).
While she'd like to quit smoking, Huff says she just can't and has tried to address the situation. Huff gave the NY Times at tour , pointing "to her two Oreck XL air purifiers, double the number the manufacturer recommends for her 635-square-foot apartment." The Selbins, who doubt the existence of the purifiers because Huff has refused to show them receipts, actually think the smoke in the hall has gotten worse in the winter, suspecting Huff is smoking with closed windows.
Huff doesn't appreciate being characterized as a monster for something she does in the privacy of her own home. But smoking tenants are becoming an increasing sore point in the city's real estate market. Apparently concerns about neighbors smoking and the effects of secondhand smoke bring one real estate lawyer at least one new case a month.
A big problem in resolving such disputes arises from the legal murkiness of who's responsible for a remedy like sealing a smoker's apartment so it's essentially airtight, and also the subjectiveness of what constitutes secondhand smoke. Is it direct exposure harmful, or does the slightest scent of smoke constitute harm?
Have you ever been bothered by a neighbor's smoking? Or has your smoking prompted complaints from neighbors? And the Ansonia is no stranger to tenant lawsuits: It's being sued over a "biblical infestation" of roaches by other tenants.
Ansonia Detail, by michaelbrandon at flickr
With things looking something like this around Montreal at the moment,fig. a: birch tree, Mount Royal
we need our simple pleasures, our sources of comfort.fig. b: pistachio pastries, Pâtisserie Mahrousé
1. Michelle and I have long been fascinated with Montreal's largely overlooked Petite Belgique neighborhood, a tiny sliver of the north end of the city tucked between Boul. de l'Acadie and Rue St-Hubert that includes Avenue d'Anvers, Rue de Liège, and, yes, even the miniscule Avenue des Belges. Predictably, a lot of our interest in this neighborhood stems from the fact that it's a treasure trove for those who appreciate good food, and one of la Petite Belgique's greatest gems is Pâtisserie Mahrousé, a humble Rue de Liège storefront that just happens to produce some of the city's finest, freshest, and most subtle Middle Eastern pastries. We're especially fond of their wide variety of pistachio pastries, like the beauties you see pictured above.
Pâtisserie Mahrousé, 1010 Rue de Liège W., 276-1629fig. c: Cream Earl Grey, Un Amour des Thés
2. Montreal, "the Paris of the North," is a city that, like Paris, is much more closely associated with coffee than it is with tea. In fact, Montreal might actually be more coffee-centric than Paris, which, after all, is home to Mariages Frères, Betjeman and Barton, La Maison des Trois Thés, and several other top-flight salons de thés. Montreal is no Paris, of course, but that doesn't mean its tea lovers are completely without options. Camellia Sinensis is the city's most accomplished tea house and tea shop, and the only absolute "must" for tea aficianados visiting from out of town, but there are a number of neighborhood tea merchants that also hold their own. Un Amour des Thés is probably Outremont's best tea shop, and we've recently fallen in love with their Cream Earl Grey blend. It's so smooth that it requires neither any cream, nor any sweetener, but that hasn't stopped us from giving it a little shot of each to make it even smoother, even more comforting. After years of favoring the feminine charms of "the Lady," Lady Grey, this blend has made us believers in "the Earl" again.
Un Amour des Thés, 1224 avenue Bernard, 279-2999
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Emotions are flying fast and furious around this issue: do we hold a ratification vote before we lift the strike? Or do we go back to work as quickly as Monday, and hold the vote afterwards?
To get our position up here as quickly and accurately as possible, we decided to do separate grafs signed by each of us, and combine them into one post.
We're all coming at this from different perspectives
After breakfast on Saturday, Pınar and I wandered around SoHo and the Village, ending up at Magnolia Bakery. Of course I got a cupcake. It was indeed good, but I have to say that Portland’s Saint Cupcake has them beat, hands down on the cupcake front.
In case you missed it, you'll want to check out Six Apart CEO Chris Alden's post MT in 2008: Open, Powerful and Easy. It's a great look at the vision for the MT platform going forward, and offers a compelling look at the philosophy behind the huge investment in MT over the past year:So, back in 2006, we made some decisions. First and foremost, we were going to compete. MT has brought more to blogging than any platform in history -- it was the first professional grade blogging platform (when it launched) and the first enterprise grade blogging platform (with MT Enterprise) -- but in 2006 it was time to double down or take the chips off the table.
We decided to bet on the future.
Central to this effort is Movable Type 4, a completely re-thought version of the software designed to address the way the web and social media have changed in the past half-decade. We wanted to improve the ease of use, the user interface, the installation process, and the content & community management capabilities. We also greatly enhanced our advanced capabilities, launching an Enterprise Solution, making MT unrivaled in its power for large customers who need to run large numbers of blogs integrated with enterprise systems, and the Community Solution, which we believe makes MT the leader in the emerging "CCMS" space (community content management systems) for which we have seen huge market demand.While MT is obviously always going to be powered first and foremost by its community, it's worth noting how much of a commitment we've made at Six Apart to Movable Type both as a platform and as a community.
Rock the latest in pork-related fashion—our favorite Pig Butchering Guide is now available in the form of t-shirts, bags, and other wearables. Now it's up to you to spread the gospel of delicious pig parts. Thank you, Carl!
Reuters has chosen Nokia Ad Business to sell their mobile inventory. Nokia’s media sales team will sell advertising space on Reuters’ UK mobile site as well as offering additional solutions such as branded mobile websites for Reuters’ advertisers.
The existing Reuters sales team will be supported by the Nokia Ad Business, which was formed when Nokia acquired mobile advertising leader Enpocket in October 2007.
“We believe this will greatly extend the breadth of our advertising reach within the mobile arena,” said Tim Faircliff, General Manager for Consumer Media, UK & EMEA at Reuters.
“Working with Nokia offers us access to premium global audiences through its advertising network and will offer broader opportunities to our existing media sales team.”
Nokia Ad Business offers advertisers the reach of over 100 million mobile consumers and delivers mobile advertising across multiple formats, including mobile Web display advertising, SMS, MMS, in-application, and video.
Almost 2 years ago I linked to an audio clip of Werner Herzog ruminating on the jungle. I went looking for my post today and found a longer video clip on youtube instead.
Note whenever I'm bored with myself I mentally switch my inner dialog over to Herzog voice and suddenly I bore myself a bit less. I recommend this.
Filed under: elsewhere
Sol was sick in bed with the stomach flu this week, and it might sound horrible, but I've revealed far worse about myself here, so I'll just come right out and say it: I kind of liked it. It's not that I took pleasure in his discomfort, or enjoyed cleaning vomit off the bathroom wall. Those parts of it were sad and disgusting. No, what I liked was his stillness; the part of him that I hardly ever see anymore. He's always so busy, running somewhere, bouncing around, flinging his body from one end of an enclosed space to the next. Even when he isn't actually moving his mind and his mouth are speeding off on a train of thought that carries him out of earshot of my voice. While confined to his bed, Sol preferred the sound of my voice to anything else. He let me cuddle up next to him and wrap him in my arms like I could when he was smaller and didn't have so many other more interesting places to go. For the past couple of year he's needed his daddy more than he has me, so it was like a little gift when he sent Adam away Tuesday night and called for me. He's feeling better now, and making his way back to busy again, but I caught a glimpse of that stillness, that baby boy I sometimes miss. Now the trick is learning to recognize him, stomach flu or no.
Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone
When reverse engineering, it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what you're looking at, and what it all means. For example, the iPhone's supported platforms include the following.
Platforms = (M68, N82, simulator);We know what the M68 platform is. It's the iPhone. And we know what N45 is, the iPod touch. So what's the N82? Could it be another member of the iPhone family? Perhaps. It's hard to make that call without any more data -- so rather than worry about N82, let's consider the next entry: "simulator."
Platforms = (N45);Continue reading Will the iPhone SDK offer a built-in simulator?
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Just got a report in from Jonathan Kaplan of the Portland Press Herald. Apparently Bill got heckled at a Hillary event and, well ...A lone heckler calling on Sen. Clinton to “end the war” in Iraq interrupted the beginning of Clinton’s speech. “Would you like to make this speech?” Clinton said. “Sir, this is not your event, this is for Hillary.” When he said that, “the war is still going on,” Clinton responded, “That is because George Bush is still fighting it.” The crowd erupted in cheers and shouted down the heckler, who was escorted out of the building by a single police officer.I'll get the link when it goes online.
Well I have been eying the use of Quicktime together with javascript for quite some time now but was very afraid to actually shun the build in controller in favor of a custom designed controller. This is not a problem...
Michael Ruhlman's "Percolator Love"
Cajmere's "Time for the Percolator"
I just found out the followup to his 1991 debut was announced right before my entry; nice timing!
Rebecca Mead on young composer Nico Muhly in the New Yorker.
When Muhly composes, the last thing he thinks about is the actual notes that musicians will play. He begins with books and documents, YouTube videos and illuminated manuscripts. He meditates on this material, digesting its ironies and appreciating its aesthetics. Meanwhile, he devises an emotional scheme for the piece-the journey on which he intends to lead his listener. Muhly believes that some composers of new music rely too heavily on program notes to give their work a coherence that it might lack in the actual listening. "This stupid conceptual stuff where it's, like, 'I was really inspired by, like, Morse Code and the AIDS crisis,'" he says.
A sampling (no pun intended) of Muhly's music is available on the New Yorker site and on his personal site (which seems to be in a similar vein to The Believer and McSweeney's Store, design-wise).
(link)
Five years ago few people knew the difference between Kirin and keirin. But the traditional, steel track bikes used in the Japanese professional racing circuit have become highly desirable. Rather than comment on the irony of the Japan’s handbuilt bike renaissance following the collapse of its large scale manufacturing and exports due to the so-called “yen shock” of the late Eighties and increasing costs of labour, I thought I’d stir up the brake/no-brake argument about riding those treasured track bikes on the road.
Who would put brakes on their keirin bike?….Professional keirin riders.
Why would they? Because they go too fast when they train on the road (if they need to train on the road, since the velodromes there are open all year). No matter what, riding with brakes gives you more options for stopping, and you can stop in a shorter distance in more conditions than just using your legs to halt the fixed gear.
Those pro keirin riders get paid pretty well, and they frequently race into their later thirties. Though crashes are frequent in actual racing, that’s just part of the job. Getting injured because of a crash on the road doesn’t pay the bills.
A lot of keirin builders also make “training” bikes: fixed gear bikes that are designed to accept brakes front and rear, sometimes with provision for fenders. These bikes do not meet regulations for the keirin circuit, but they are meant to give keirin riders an affordable and suitable training tool for the road.
If you really wanted to ride the certified keirin bike on the road with brakes, you could get something like this precision product made in Japan (photos courtesy of famed keirin rider Koh Annoura). The special mounts allow you to temporarily mount regular road brakes to the bike without altering the bike or even damaging the paint. Cheaper (and kinda cheesy) versions have been available for years in Japan, and I believe Soma will be debuting in this country something in between the two.
NOTE: don't read any further if you haven't watched episode 6 of The Wire's 5th season. SPOILERS.
I've been meaning to write a post on my thoughts about season 5 of The Wire but luckily Heaven and Here beat me to much of what I was thinking. The highlights:
Too many characters, too many stories, too much telling and not enough time for showing, which is why it feels more like a conventional TV show than in years past.
Unnecessary cameos. What is this, a reunion tour? Hi Nicky, hi Randy! (Although I think the Randy thing is interesting in relation to his dad...did Cheese get the way he is through a similar trajectory? And I suspect that Randy will come back into play...the season 4 kids are the only ones, besides the drug dealers themselves, who have any evidence of wrongdoing by Marlo, et. al.)
How are they going to wrap this up? I don't care what happens to Carcetti or McNulty or Freamon or Daniels and we're obviously going to get some sort of closure on either Omar or Marlo, but if they leave the Dukie, Bubs, and Michael threads significantly hanging, I'm gonna be pissed. (Prediction: if Marlo gets got, it will come from within...either Chris or Michael or both.)
The whole McNulty/Freamon thing: blah. Same thing with the newspaper angle...not as interesting as I thought it was going to be.
But all the rest of the seasons started slow and built into something...they coalesced. Maybe this one will as well?
The only thing I really like about McNulty's manufactured investigation is how it affects so many different things in the system. Carcetti running for governor on the homeless issue. The newspaper switching their focus from the schools to the homeless. All the little things that pull resources and energy away from the Marlo Stanfield case. Pulling Kima off her triple. Motivating Bunk to reopen the case files on the bodies in the vacants. Everything is connected, unexpectedly.
Oh, and I love the "Dickensian" stuff in the newsroom...it's Simon's little shoutout/fuck you to the real media's coverage of the show, frequently called Dickensian. Heaven and Here on the term's misuse:
Something that has been bothering me about the deluge of stories on the show lately (which is , as Shoals said to me earlier today, "split now between nay-sayers and people drowning in their own adulation,") is the loose use of the term "Dickensian." Some stories are simply grabbing onto the upcoming plotline of the Sun editor assigning a story on "Dickensian" kids, but more often than I like, I see lazy writers using Dickens as a sort of shorthand for intricacy, urban despair, and nightmarish institutional breakdown, as if he owned the patent on all that.
Maybe much of the media criticism we were promised in season 5 is meta?
What do you get when you cross an ouroboros with a Möbius strip?
M.C. Escher knew: The dreaded Mouroboröbius!
Feast your eyes on this bit of loveliness.
(link)
Hurricanes pound the Gulf Coast with unrelenting force. Floods deluge the Midwest. Wildfires rage out of control in California and Florida. A "red tide" of algae blooms off the West Coast, endangering marine and coastal wildlife. Dengue fever spikes in Mexico and looms over the United States. No one can say with certainty that any single one of these events is due to global climate change. But there is little doubt among scientists that we are making unprecedented changes to our environment, with grave potential consequences already upon us and others on the horizon.Originally from ENN: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Feb 7, 2008 at 10:33 AM
What if human consciousness isn't the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn's clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant's-eye view -- to consider the possibility that nature isn't opposed to culture, that biochemistry rivals intellect as a survival tool. By merely shifting our perspective, he argues, we can heal the Earth. Who's the more sophisticated species now? (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:31.)
Watch Michael Pollan's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Michael Pollan on TED.com.
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Maureen Dowd's Op-Ed yesterday about the Clinton machine versus Obama was harsh but perhaps painfully true.
Excerpt:
As she talked Sunday to George Stephanopoulos, a former director of the formidable Clinton war room, Hillary’s case boiled down to the fact that she can be Trouble, as they say about hard-boiled dames in film noir, when Republicans make trouble.
“I have been through these Republican attacks over and over and over again, and I believe that I’ve demonstrated that much to the dismay of the Republicans, I not only can survive, but thrive,” she said.
And on Tuesday night she told supporters, “Let me be clear: I won’t let anyone Swift-boat this country’s future.”
Better the devil you know than the diffident debutante you don’t. Better to go with the Clintons, with all their dysfunction and chaos — the same kind that fueled the Republican hate machine — than to risk the chance that Obama would be mauled like a chew toy in the general election. Better to blow off all the inspiration and the young voters, the independents and the Republicans that Obama is attracting than to take a chance on something as ephemeral as hope. Now that’s Cheney-level paranoia.
Bill is propelled by Cheneyesque paranoia, as well. His visceral reaction to Obama — from the “fairy tale” line to the inappropriate Jesse Jackson comparison — is rooted less in his need to see his wife elected than in his need to see Obama lose, so that Bill’s legacy is protected. If Obama wins, he’ll be seen as the closest thing to J. F. K. since J. F. K. And J. F. K. is Bill’s hero.
What's going on under the seas? Five undersea communication cables have been cut in the past two weeks, two near Alexandria in the Mediterranean, two in the Persian Gulf, and one near Malaysia (see map below, from Engadget).
Internet data (which is mostly carried, long-distance, via undersea cables), voice calls and video traffic were all disrupted, affecting tens of millions of people (at a certain point, rumors went around that Iran was cut off from the Internet, which was/is not true). The first occurrences were attributed to ship anchor's dragging, but the Egyptian government dismissed that. There are no reports so far of intentional sabotage, but five cables severed within a few days seem more than a coincidence and do raise questions and suspicions.
Khaleej Times and the IHT have detailed stories, security expert Bruce Schneier is tracking the developments, and Steve Bellovin at Columbia is analyzing them.
Roger Peet Dance Of Death $3 Summon, children, the flaming death's head. See if you can't get it to do your bidding. blockprint on acid-free mulberry paper 5"x7" signed/unnumbered
Google Docs Blog:
Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet.
I just gave it a shot, and it’s amazingly simple. I’m not sure it could be any easier than this to create surveys or signups. This sort of collaborative feature simply isn’t possible with desktop spreadsheets like Excel and Numbers. (Via Ian Betteridge.)
Over at TPMCafe, Micah Sifry of techPresident explores: Obama, the Internet and the Decline of Big Money and Big Media.
Taring Padi Postcard Set $5 A set of 9 postcards benfiting the Taring Padi group in Java, Indonesia. 9 offset printed postcards 4x"6"
Wow — if, as Doug Struck writes in today’s Post, giant African locusts have been found alive in the Caribbean, carried there by dust storms, why not expect microbes and other contagions to be there too? And that some might infect people?
This is among tidbits in a widely-reported roundup of the growing conviction among public health authorities that polluted, dusty winds can carry not merely noxious chemical but infectious agents half way around the globe. Another amazing stat in the piece: Some days in Los Angeles, one fourth of the smog is from China. (Of course, were the wind to turn around, LA smog would blend into China’s - but who would notice?).
Grist for the Mill: Univ. of Arizona Press Release ;
*UPDATE: Related sandstorm news: BBC reports on an expedition into the Atlantic to chase African sandstorms and estimate their impact on marine ecosystems.
Pic source, hi res . One of the storms wound up dusting southern England ;-CP
My winter conference season finally came to an end with the AWP, the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. This year's AWP took place in NYC and I was urged by many friends to give it a try, "if only for the bookfair." As far as conferences go, this one was pretty laid back for me. I didn't give any papers or feel compelled to attend many panels. I spent my mornings working at the American Literary Translators Association table, raising visibility for my beloved organization, and my afternoons at the occasional panel or reading. But most of the time that I wasn't with ALTA, I was at the bookfair. The bookfair involved the participation of the usual suspects--mass market and university presses--but the real draw for me was the opportunity to support my favorite small and independent presses and to discover new, emerging publishers. One thing that I noticed is the increased interest in translation, which I found very encouraging both as a translator and scholar of translation. Action Books, in particular, stood out for me as a small publisher committed to English translations of contemporary writing. At their table, I picked up Jen Hofer's translation of Laura Solórzano's Lobo de labio and had a nice chat with Johannes Göransson, Action Books co-founder and editor and a translator of Swedish literature into English. He remarked that their decision to publish a translation is rarely guided by what is canonical. Their manifesto declares "We want poetry that goes too far," and that commitment to bold, experimental writing carries to their translation choices.
If you take a look at my book list (see post below), you'll notice quite a few purchases from Etherdome and Belladonna*, two presses that promote work written by women (in fact, only four of the books I acquired were written by men). Etherdome publishes two chapbooks a year and each one is stunning. I love the simplicity of their books--the layout of the poems is uncluttered and the covers always feature a delicate print in monochrome. Belladonna* refers to its chapbooks as pamphlets or "chaplets" and they have more of a classic zine feel to them than the Etherdome books. But belladonna* publishes with greater frequency, usually timing their chaplets for a poet's reading, and the range of the work they promote is more extensive (including poets like Marcella Durand, Alice Notley, Laynie Browne, Jen Benka). They also publish translations, most recently a gorgeous English translation of Lila Zemborain's Malvas orquídeas del mar (Mauve Sea-Orchids). (On 2/12, belladonna* is hosting a reading with the poets Barbara Cole and Elizabeth Robinson, who is one of the editors of Etherdome.)
One press I had never heard about until the bookfair was Pilot Books, which is affiliated with the on line poetry magazine Pilot. From their website:
We strive to publish innovative work, and believe that innovative work demands innovative design. All of our limited-edition poetry chapbooks and broadsides are designed and printed in ways unique and luminous to the manuscript itself. We use fine papers and construct all books by hand. Someday, we will own our very own Vandercook printing press and oh the fun we will have then!
The design and layout of their books generate unique reading experiences. Take for instance, their most recent publication: Joshua Marie Wilkinson's The Book of Flashlights, Clovers & Milk. The book is meant to be read from back to front and as you read, transparencies with text fill in the white spaces of the page before. This creates three distinct but related texts: the text on the page, the text on the transparency, and then the text they create when they are brought together. I love this kind of play and multiplicity. And I'm kicking myself for not picking up a copy. I am glad, however, that I decided to buy Lori Shine's Coming Down in White, a chapbook with a pale blue cover that folds like an accordion. The publishers recommend unfurling it and hanging it on the wall, and if it weren't for the fact that I am sure I would find a way to rip it accidentally, I would do this. The fragility of handmade books means that they often end up in a cool, dark box far from the bookshelf, but, that being said, the books made by Pilot Books felt sturdy and were priced very fairly. The Center for Book Arts also produces limited-edition, letter-pressed books (for the winners of its chapbook contest) but follows a more standard book design.
A final word on the bookfair. Most publishers and writers promoted new works with postcards and fliers, most of which get lost amid all of the paperwork you gather as you walk through the fair (in fact, there was an entire table on the second floor of the fair that looked like a purgatory for discarded paper). So the little blue origami bird that fell on the ALTA table made an impression. It was distributed by Briery Creek Press to promote A Book of Birds by Amy Tudor. I also liked the $3 chocolate candy bar (free with a purchase!) for Sholeh Wolpé's collection Rooftops of Tehran. Here's a picture:
As for panels--I did enjoy very much (though it feels strange to put it that way) a panel on "The Disabled Body Poetic." Greg Fraser talked about poetic form and disability and discussed the ironic relation between strict, regular forms in poems addressing the breakdown of the body. Paul Guest read the first chapter of his memoir One More Theory About Happiness, forthcoming from Ecco Books. A bicycle accident left him paralyzed at the age of twelve and as he described this moment--in very direct, unsentimental language--the audience reacted with soft gasps of dismay and a lot of cringing in seats. The point, which didn't need to be stated, is that readers respond to bodily disintegration and disability in literature with their bodies. We imagine (some don't even have to) our own "immobility and impairment" (quoting from the the panel description) and respond by holding our breath, clutching our hands. We remind ourselves that our bodies our still present and intact, for now. Guest's presentation gave me so much to think about it and since then, I've had the chance to read more of his poetry, which is absolutely wonderful (click link, scroll down to Exit Interview). I misplaced my notes from this panel but Jim Ferris read a poem, from his 2004 collection The Hospital Poems, which contained a great rhyme like "hope springs gymnastic/ I sing of the body plastic." The link I provide is not from a bookseller--you can find the book on Amazon, etc--but it does link to excerpts from this book. Finally, Susannah Mintz talked about Lucia Perillo's I Hear the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature. My only notes were "MS, Park Ranger" which four days later I read as "Ms. Park Ranger." Perillo was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow and the author of several books of poetry, including Luck is Luck and The Oldest Map with the Name America (two poems: 1, 2). The Q&A was fantastic. Someone asked "Is the mind elastic enough to deal with disability on a mass scale...thinking of Iraq War returnees?" I think it was Ferris who answered that actually, WWI changed the way the public perceived disability, particularly the permanent injuries and disfigurement caused by war. This reminded me of an early twentieth century French book on plastic surgery that I came across on line. It featured several stories of war veterans and the massive facial reconstruction they underwent in the years following WWI (not about France specifically, but this article from 1945 is very interesting).
Another panel that jump started my synapses after a long morning was "Crafting an Eco-Poetics." The panel promised to address the question "Aside from issues of theme and reference, how might syntax, line break, or the shape of the poem on the page express an ecological ethics?" and finally did so with Jonathan Skinner's talk on weeds and invasive species in poetry. He began with a Lorine Niedecker poem that contained the following lines:
Thoughts on things
fold unfold
above the river bedsHis presentation brought together Gilles Clément's writings on "moving gardens" and the "vagabond behavior" of plants. According to Clément--or maybe I'm referring to Skinner's reading of Clément--an "aversion for weeds [is a] kind of xenophobia." "Demonization of foreign species--invasive species," I wrote in my notes. Skinner cited Maggie O'Sullivan's poem "Starlings" as well as his contribution to Julie Patton's Slug Art (in Ecopoetics 1 [links to PDF]). Peter Larkin's poem "Opening Woods" (from Leaves of Field) also came up, but really, I need a copy of this talk (Carrie Etter wrote about this panel as well and was able to sum up Skinner's talk more elegantly than I can.). Marcella Durand discussed "false color views". She observed that false color descriptions tend to be written in the passive voice--they are colors that are imposed on the image and fall outside of color theory. She demonstrated how false color views have shaped our perception of the cosmos, beginning with the stunning image "Pillars of Creation," taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 (the latest reports claim that they may "have met their demise"). I wish she had had time to discuss the impact of issues raised by false color views on her own work or on other poets. Rochelle Tobias provided a very interesting reading of Gottfried Benn's poem "Kleine Aster." The poem takes place in an autopsy room, and as Scott Horton (who translated the version I link to) mentions "Benn really was a medical doctor, and he wrote this as he was spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with cadavers" (Horton, "Poor Aster: The Expressionist’s Take on a Flower"). Unfortunately, there wasn't time for Cecilia Vicuña to offer her entire presentation. She sang an impromptu song that gathered together themes and language from the previous presentations. Her delivery is incredible. I need to write a separate post about her. When I first saw her perform, at Poet's House, I couldn't believe her total lack of self-consciousness. She sings, warbles, holds the individual letters of a word until they become uncomfortable, which means that they become real. She briefly spoke about "a shipwreck poetics," "una poesía náufraga." She said "a name begins and dies at the same time." The way she said this gave me goose bumps.
Somehow I squeezed in two readings. One hosted by Colin Cheney at Pacific Standard, a Brooklyn bar, and another at the Bowery,celebrating the publication of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press). The highlights: Malena Mörling (@ Pacific Standard), Laynie Browne and Forrest Gander (both @ Bowery).
A collection of time-lapse movies of people playing Wii. One fellow plays for quite some time while holding a newborn baby.
(link)
The presidential race has been a goldmine for talk shows (well, when the Writers' Guild strike isn't happening) and nowhere is that more apparent than on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. On last night's Colbert Report, on a riff about John McCain's Super Tuesday chances and taking credit for Mike Huckabee'e campaign, Stephen Colbert was joined by Jon Stewart, his Comedy Central crony, and then Conan O'Brien!
This comes after O'Brien discussed who gave Huckabee more of a bump (videos 1, 2) last month and the feud continued last night on O'Brien's show.
"A good font, line-spacing, and a nice line-height-smaller-than-font-size trick make this look like the work of photoshop. ... Stamen uses letter-spacing, absolute positioning, font-size and good semantic markup to make this tasty date."
Imagine that final beach scene in Planet of the Apes, but substitute every small patch of sand for a chain restaurant and that’ll give you an idea of where the NY restaurant scene might be heading – all blown up, with Charlton Heston eventually smashing his fists into a huge pile of thermal cardboard coffee cup sleeves instead of foamy surf.
Just a few weeks after Heston’s 2nd birthday in 1926, the very first White Tower restaurant opened in Milwaukee. Long vanished competitor to the still-standing White Castle chain, the White Tower franchise went national in the late 20’s, opening its first New York location in 1930. The city later was home to a few dozen of the restaurant’s branches, which not only served diminutive 5-cent hamburgers, but everything from fried eggs to spiced ham. Desserts included 10-cent pie, jelly rolls, marble cake, and fruit cocktail. It may have been a chain, but White Tower was a different kind of place. Most locations varied slightly in appearance from one another but the legend is that they were all clean and well-lit, some resembling open-all-night art deco spaceships. In the 1930’s, waitresses (or Towerettes) wore uniforms modeled on nurse’s garb.
Last fall we went in search of White Tower ruins. Considering the enormity of the five boroughs and the number of original restaurants, it seemed as though the odds were stacked (like sliders) in our favor. Adam Kuban of A Hamburger Today kindly pointed us to page 116 of the recently reprinted White Towers, by Paul Hirshorn and Steve Izenour. The book depicts White Tower buildings from all over the country, taken from 1926 to 1972; only one New York location is explicitly labeled with an address.
We didn’t find it. It doesn't exist, probably like all of the other New York locations depicted all ghost-like in the book, with empty counter stools and sort of beautiful glass cases of pastries. 1140 St. Nicolas Avenue, whatever it is now, does not sell hamburgers. Following a close inspection, we determined that a different White Tower restaurant (above, from 1933), stood at either 226 or 228 2nd Avenue and was next door to a bridal shop. Although the White Tower seen above was actually attached to the building behind it- the crenellated tower was built out to give the appearance of a freestanding structure- what stands there today bears more than a suspicious resemblance to a fast food castle.
On the corner of 14th and 2nd Avenue is Opti-Tech, an optometrist’s office adjunct to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. With an odd architectural equivalence to something like genetic memory, Opti-Tech seems to celebrate its vague tower, roughly the same size as the one from the old White Tower building. It turns out their business card is even printed on special stock cut into a tower shape. There’s no way they're the same building, but there’s something of a compelling family resemblance going on here. We asked an optometrist if she knew what the joint was before it was an eyeglass showroom. When she said “a hamburger place,” an older woman being fitted with frames (we liked the tortoise shell, by the way) got excited. “That’s right,” she said. “My friend used to tell me they had the best burgers here. Small, but good. The best burgers.” True story.
White Towers; MIT Press, 216 pp. $24.95
Photo: Detail from White Tower #11, 1933, from White Towers
Bussels sprouts from Momofuku
Burnt brussels sprouts
If those brussels sprouts look wildly overcooked, it's because...they are. I don't know who was in the Gourmet test kitchen the day they sent this recipe off to the press, or if my oven is malfunctioning horribly, but I ended up with a mushy mess after the recommended 450°F and 40 minutes. I should have realized what a long hot cooking time that is, but I was blinded by a desire for that roasted, nutty, caramelized flavor on the sprouts, which is the best part of that vegetable in my book—when its natural sweetness come out and the off-putting odor reviled by so many American children disappears. So I didn't even peek at them until it was too late.
Luckily, the sauce these guys get coated in is marvelous. I first had these sprouts at Momofuku Ssäm Bar and they blew me away; seeing the recipe online immediately sent me to the grocery store. It was also a perfect opportunity to use my Thai red chilies and fish sauce from Iron Pot Chicken, which was once again stirred into sugar with a little water to make a dressing of surprising depth, instantly, with little effort. The inclusion of mint and cilantro gives it an herbal quality, the garlic some extra pungency, and the crispy puffed rice some crunch (the rice bit is optional, though). Usually I just do my brussels sprouts with a little olive oil and balsamic, which is a wonderfully simple combination, but just a bit more effort made for something extraordinary.
The ingredients list for this recipe is longer than usual for "Dinner Tonight," but you can easily skip the puffed rice, which doesn't add much to the flavor of the dish.
Momofuku Brussels Sprouts
- serves 8 as a side dish -
Ingredients
For Brussels sprouts
2 pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butterFor dressing
1/4 cup Asian fish sauce (preferably Tiparos brand)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons finely chopped mint
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro stems
1 garlic clove, minced
1 (1 1/2-inch) fresh red Thai chile, thinly sliced crosswise, including seeds. (I used dried and halved the amount.)For puffed rice (optional)
1/2 cup crisp rice cereal such as Rice Krispies
1/4 teaspoon canola oil
1/4 teaspoon shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice blend)Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 450°F with a rack in the upper third of the oven. Trim and halve the Brussels sprouts, toss with oil, and roast, cut side down on baking sheet, for 20-35 minutes, depending on size and desired taste. They should brown but remain somewhat firm.
2. Meanwhile, stir together the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl.
3. If making puffed rice, cook ingredients together in a small skillet until toasted and slightly browned.
4. When sprouts are done, transfer to a serving bowl and add just enough dressing to coat. Top with more chopped mint or cilantro, and puffed rice if using.
Someone made a video overlay of the 134 times it took him to get through one level of hacked version of Mario World.
Oh, and how that relates to quantum mechanics:
But, we can kind of think of the multi-playthrough Kaizo Mario World video as a silly, sci-fi style demonstration of the Quantum Suicide experiment. At each moment of the playthrough there's a lot of different things Mario could have done, and almost all of them lead to horrible death. The anthropic principle, in the form of the emulator's save/restore feature, postselects for the possibilities where Mario actually survives and ensures that although a lot of possible paths have to get discarded, the camera remains fixed on the one path where after one minute and fifty-six seconds some observer still exists.
Some of my favorite art and media deals with the display of multiple time periods at once. Here are some other examples, many of which I've featured on kottke.org in the past.
Averaging Gradius predates the Mario World video by a couple years; it's 15 games of Gradius layered over one another.
I found even the more pointless things incredibly interesting (and telling), like seeing when each person pressed the start button to skip the title screen from scrolling in, or watching as each Vic Viper, in sequence, would take out the red ships flying in a wave pattern, to leave behind power-ups in an almost perfect sine wave sequence. I love how the little mech-like gunpods together emerge from off screen, as a bright, white mass, and slowly break apart into a rainbow of mech clones.
According to the start screen, Cursor*10 invites the you to "cooperate by oneself". The game applies the lessons of Averaging Gradius and multiple-playthrough Kaizo Mario World to create a playable game. The first time through, you're on your own. On subsequent plays, the game overlays your previous attempts on the screen to help you avoid mistakes, get through faster, and collaborate on the tougher puzzles.
Moving away from games, several artists are experimenting with the compression of multiple photographs made over time into one view. Jason Salavon's averaged Playboy centerfolds and other amalgamations, Atta Kim's long exposures, Michael Wesley's Open Shutter Projekt and others. I'm quite sure there are many more.
Dozens of frames of Run Lola Run racing across the giant video screen in the lobby of the IAC building.
The same kind of thing happens in this Call and Response video; 9 frames display at the same time (with audio), each a moment ahead of the previous frame.
Related, but not exactly in the same spirit, are projects like Noah Kalina's Noah K. Everyday in which several photos of the same person (or persons) taken over time are displayed on one page, like frames of a very slow moving film. More examples: JK Keller's The Adaption to my Generation, Nicholas Nixon's portraits of the Brown sisters, John Stone's fitness progress, Diego Golberg's 32 years of family portraits, and many more.
Update: Another video game one: 1000 cars racing at the same time. (thx, matt)
Update: More games: Super Earth Defense Game, Time Raider, and Timebot. (thx, jon)
Google and Libraries Conference - March 10, 2008 « LACUNY BlogRegister Now for Google and Libraries, on the METRO web site: Google and Libraries An International Conference Sponsored by ILIAC, The Harriman Institute and Columbia University Libraries, and METRO School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University 420 West 118th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive Monday, March 10, 2008, 8:30AM – 4:30PM Program & Speakers Keynote: Google and the Libraries of Russia & the CIS. Yakov Shrayberg, Director of the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology (Moscow), and President of ILIAC (http://www.iliac.org/) Reference Retooled: How Google Tools Strengthen and Streamline Reference Service. Jill Cirasella, Assistant Professor and Computational Sciences Specialist, Brooklyn College Library (http://userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/cirasella/) Google, Digitization Projects, & Library Contracts. Laura Quilter, Attorney-at-Law, Librarian, and Consultant on Open Source Licensing, Employee Intellectual Property Rights, and Related Topics (http://lquilter.net/) The Googlization of Everything. Siva Vaidhyanathan, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Law, University of Virginia; author of Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (2007) (http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/Faculty.nsf/PrFHPbW/sv2r; http://www.sivacracy.net/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siva_Vaidhyanathan) What hath Google wrought? Is Google a boon or threat to libraries, librarians, and support staff? What will become of access to library collections after they have been scanned by Google, Microsoft, and the Digital Archive? Who will “own†them and what kind of access will there be? Is there a future for libraries, librarians, and support staff? What will become of the print medium and the rest of the information that does not, or cannot be made to, reside on the Web? What is the impact of Google on the libraries of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), especially in view of the importance to them of Cyrillic and other non-Roman alphabet information? Google and Libraries originated as part of a 2008 ILIAC study tour for librarians from Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to meet and exchange ideas with Slavic librarians. Google and Libraries has been broadened so that there is a greatly expanded focus on U.S. Google-related issues. If you want to know more about the impact of Google on the future of libraries and library work, you should attend Google and Libraries. Registration Please register by using the link Google and Libraries, on the METRO web site: http://metronylibrary.augusoft.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=1010 Attendance Charge (includes refreshments and lunch): Columbia University Libraries Staff: $50 METRO Member Library Staff: $75 Non-METRO Library Staff & Others: $90
Strictly on the geek tip...
for those of you with iPhones or an iPod Touch, Soul Sides now has a custom webclip icon if you want to subscribe to the site as a bookmark on your homepage. It will appear automatically.
Don't forget - you can listen to our songs via many PDA/phones (assuming you also have a wifi connect unless you really like waiting for stuff to download via 2G and 3G connections).
Unlike most days, when this site is bustling with activity and new posts, today I'm putting up Matt's vote page to remind ya'll to get out there and pull that lever, push that button or whatever it is you do to make your vote count.
And if you do go, take a picture and send it to the Polling Place project.
When you take a picture with an S.L.R., there is a distinctive sound, somewhere between a clatter and a thump; I worship my beat-up Nikon FE, but there is no denying that every snap reminds me of a cow kicking over a milk pail. With a Leica, all you hear is the shutter, which is the quietest on the market. The result -- and this may be the most seductive reason for the Leica cult -- is that a photograph sounds like a kiss.
That's Anthony Lane in the New Yorker.
(link)
From TPM Reader EC at 9:25 AM ...The new optical scanners in my voting precinct (in West Hartford, CT) were not working this morning either. We were instructed to leave our ballots and told that they would be scanned later. I miss the old lever machines! The turnout looked substantial, however, at 7:20 a.m.GE checks in from Manhattan ...Josh, you can tell EC that lever machines aren't any great prize either... one of the 2 machines for my election district in Hell's Kitchen went down while I was in line. Things were still moving pretty fast, but the line was up to about 25-30 when I left, which is highly unusual for our precinct. Lots of energy out there this morning.
Kalina, 1/4/07.Bar Boulud, celeb chef Daniel Boulud's four week old Upper West side venture, was covered extensively during the buildup to its opening in early January. All early reports, especially those coming from attendees of the big opening night bash, were glowing. Now, it's time to check in, and, what do you know, we've got some good news and some bad news.
1) Very Good News: As reported earlier, Ed Levine is batshit crazy for this place: "Simply put, [charcutier Sylvain] Gasdon is making the best charcuterie Americans have ever seen and tasted on these shores... But are Americans ready for this kind of food?... Bar Boulud is Boulud's gutsiest endeavor to date (forgive the obvious double entendre), and also his most heartfelt." [Ed Levine Eats]
2) Bad News: While she likes the cuts of meat, the exclusivity of the bar and a majority of the dishes rub Gastro Chic the wrong way, "The front area shouldn't even be a seating area in the winter - for one thing, that's where everyone's standing around waiting. Daniel Boulud, why not put a foosball table and a TV in your bar instead?...The St. Jacques au chou, grilled Maine scallops, were disappointing. They did not seem to be overcooked, yet they were rubbery and stringy. This was particularly strange since scallops are in season now. The accompanying Orleans mustard winter slaw is a sort of sauerkraut, but ironically, I liked the Guss' Pickles sauerkraut at Fette Sau better." [Gastro Chic]
3) Very Bad News: "...after I few bites I noticed the fish was bloody inside. I was completely grossed out and couldnt' even eat another bite. I had eaten all the vegetables at this point, so I felt bad turnign it back...His steak frites he said were delicious. For dessert...I won't be returning. Aside from the fish fiasco, nothing on the menu really popped at all." [Chowhound]
4) Good News: We've got a good but bland review from a FoodistColony user, though design seems the main selling point, "...the ring-shaped design of this bar is quite distinct and is certainly a new twist on the communal table. Love it...We ordered steak frites and frisee with eggs and smoked bacon. All very good. [Foodist Colony]
5) Good News: Though overall the eGulleters on this thread had mixed reviews, this one writer had a coherent opinion: "Coq au vin: AWESOME. ORDER IT. EAT IT. BE HAPPY. It was so good we gave some to a neighboring table. It was so good, I wanted to lick the plate. A very generous portion, yet again. I am going back for this dish specifically." [eGullet]
Check out Jill Sobule and Rives on NPR's Bryant Park Project, singing about Super Tuesday, when "30 zillion voters in 20-something states" cast their primary votes, and the rest of us watch the returns all day long. As Jill says, "I have no life! All I do is watch news shows!" Rives' snappy patter will make a fine companion to whichever 24-hour news ticker you happen to be watching. "Jill Sobule Sings for Super Tuesday" >>
…i was able to speak with RHP Kevin Mulvey, one of the four Mets prospects traded last week for Johan Santana, on friday evening after
word got out that the Mets and santana had reached a new contract…
Mulvey, the Mets top pick in the 2006 draft, went 11-10 with a 3.32 ERA and 110 strikeouts in 151.2 innings for Double-A Binghamton last season.
…double-a pitching coaches and scouts i spoke with while covering the 2007 b-mets unanimously agreed mulvey will be a major league starting pitcher in the near future, though likely not an ace…
He finished the season with 13 shutout innings in New Orleans.
Evan Drellich: What’s going through your head after the trade?
Kevin Mulvey: I still have the same answer that I’ve always had, I know that I have no control over what happened and I look forward. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity that everybody’s telling me that I have to go into spring training and try to make the team.
Evan Drellich: Have you been informed that you’re in contention for a major league roster spot with the Twins?
Kevin Mulvey: Well, they didn’t tell me whether I would make the team or not, but they told me I’d come into spring training with a chance, you know? Anybody in spring training has the chance to make the team.
Evan Drellich: What are your final thoughts on your time with the Mets?
Kevin Mulvey: I never played for the New York Mets, but I can say that the Binghamton Mets fans were great. I never played in New Orleans, but on the road it was a lot of fun to play in a Mets uniform at the Triple-A level.
I have nothing but great things to say about every single coach that I ever had in the brief Mets career that I had, I have nothing but good things to say about the organization and the front-office people. They’re a first-rate organization, they had a lot of class, they treat people well. Obviously they’re doing a good job—the Mets are a very successful organization, both money-wise and on the field—and I have no bitterness toward them at all.
Evan Drellich: Though you were just one part of the package the Mets put together for Santana, is it in any way a compliment to you to be traded for one of baseball’s best pitchers?
Kevin Mulvey: I can’t say if it was a compliment or not a compliment. I can say that, as of right now, the Mets needed a front-line starter and Johan Santana was available and they did what they needed to get him.
...best of luck in Minnesota, kevin…
…added to by Matthew Cerrone……first off, hat’s off to evan for being able to reach mulvey, who i am certain was getting inundated with phone calls from friends and family as news of trade became public…
…i’ll say this, during the Winter Meetings, i was very impressed by the number of people inside baseball who spoke so highly about mulvey, especially the Twins and A’s…so, good for him, and i hope he goes on to have a great career…
You can see more of Cena7's work here.
From the LA Weekly comes this terrific anecdote.
Last December, a massive billboard went up on Melrose Avenue to promote the Murakami exhibition at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art. Not long after it went up it was tagged by Augor and Revok of MSK and Seventh Letter Crew. Less than 72 hours later the entire tagged billboard was gone.
It turns out that, after seeing a photo of it on the internet, Murakami himself liked the tagged billboard so much that he had it removed and shipped back to his Kaikai Kiki studio in Tokyo.
(via our friend Greg Allen)
One of the things that makes Snoop's "Sensual Seduction" video so compelling is his outstanding use of vocal effects. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
In the video, Snoop makes liberal use of a breath tube on his keytar, an obvious homage to the talkbox made (in)famous by Roger Troutman of Zapp fame. (If you don't know and love the funk, then you at least know Roger from the hook to Tupac's "California Love".) Snoop even even explicitly credits Troutman in an MTV interview, along with the much-more-obvious nods in the video to Prince and Rick James.
The thing is, "Sensual Seduction" doesn't use the talkbox, nor does it use a vocoder, which is a completely different instrument that often gets credit for the talkbox's outbut. The vocoder is an amazing instrument; There's an interesting background on the technology in this survey of milestones in electronic musical instruments, and the good folks at O'Reilly will even tell you how to make your own, if you're so inclined. I've been hoping for the vocoder and talkbox to return to the top of the pop charts for a solid decade now (ever since "California Love", really) and am somewhat chagrined that so much of the recent voice-distortion on pop singles is in the context of rather uninspired songs. But I digress.
Music today isn't made by connecting breathing tubes to home-built contraptions. Instead, commercial music is made in Digidesign's ProTools. ProTools is to commercial audio what Photoshop is to commercial design: Platform, product, and verb. And the first, and signature tool for performing pitch-correction on ProTools was Antares' Auto-Tune. The fun part is, now that we've entered this brave new world of digital distortion of vocals, Auto-Tune isn't just correcting pitch, it's being used to arbitrarily alter them.
You know the rest. Cher's "Believe"? Auto-Tune. Snoop's "Sensual Seduction"? Auto-Tune. And all of T-Pain's career? Auto-Tune. Now, it's possible that some producers are using other software to perform similar pitch-correction/pitch-manipulation duties; There are even free clones of Auto-Tune's functionality. But as often as not, the software that's become synonymous with the effect is the one that's responsible for the sound.
And so, another bit of analog sound-hacking makes way for its digital successor. Even if he's using the latest software, I gotta give props to Snoop for honoring the low-tech inspiration.
- Naturally, "Sensual Seduction" is available as an MP3 on Amazon.com
- You can also buy "California Love" over on Amazon, too. No iTunes links because DRM is wack.
The Col-Pop: emerging technology from South Korean fried chicken chain BBQ Chicken. Popcorn chicken rides up top; cola chills out below.
Proving yet again that South Korea is light years ahead of everyone else in fast-food technology is The Col-Pop. The nation that brought the world the spiral-cut potato on a stick and hot-dog-stuffed pizza ushers in a new era of snack portability with this mashup of drink cup and food container that holds popcorn chicken up top and a cold drink in the bottom.
The Col-Pop is the brainchild of BBQ Chicken, a South Koreabased fried chicken chain that has recently set its sights on worldwide chicken domination (though at this time, it only has locations in New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina). From the looks of this container, on-the-go America will certainly eat it up. It's perfect for handy snacking while walking, driving, talking on the phone, or—as we discovered the other day—blogging.
And the genius doesn't stop at popcorn chicken. In South Korea, sister company BHC Chicken also offers spaghetti, french fries, and fried mozzarella balls in Col-Pop containers. The Col-Pops we inspected come in two sizes: small (20 ounce cup) and large (32 ounce).
Gratuitous Chart
Col-Pop Video
Col-Pop: The Future of Fast-Food Technology
Update
This post got linked on Gizmodo, where Matt Buchanan says: "[Adam] doesn't comment on the effectiveness of keeping the two separate. I mean, the obvious problem with this triumph of science over nature is that piping hot chicken nuggets will water your Dr. Pepper down to Diet Coke-like consistency, while cold soda will turn your steaming nuggets into tough, lukewarm chunks of breaded styrofoam."
I also realize I didn't really mention what the chicken actually tastes like. So let's answer these questions ...
Separation Effectiveness
Eat fast: Condensation poses a threat to your nuggets' hot, crisp breading!
I have to admit that hot side hot, cool side cool was not foremost in our minds as we played with the Col-Pop—though the McDonald's McDLT [video] did come to mind among the older members of the staff (myself included).
It wasn't until we were down to the last couple of nuggets that I noticed the condensation factor (as seen above). This was after about 20 minutes of goofing around with the cup, taking photos, and shooting video. Honestly, are most people going to take 20 minutes to finish a small tray of popcorn chicken? I doubt it.
Sure, we tested in winter, indoors, at a temperature of around 72 degrees. I'd expect heavier and faster cup sweat in sweltering summertime conditions. But, again, a caveat: You'll be eating this in your air-conditioned car, so not (much of) an issue.
Taste Factor
Have you had popcorn chicken from a fast-food joint? Then you've basically had BBQ Chicken's Col-Pop nuglets, which are made from all-white-meat chicken and check in at roughly the size of a Gobstopper. Sure, they were plenty tasty in that fast-food fried-chicken way, but they were nowhere near as good as the regular fried chicken (right) that BBQ Chicken turns out. Now that stuff is truly remarkable from a flavor, texture, and crispness perspective. Serious Eats overlord Ed Levine remarks on regular BBQ Chicken here.
Liquid Capacity
Of course, placing a 2-inch-deep insert in the top of a 32-ounce cup will diminish its liquid load considerably. I took the time to measure the true holding capacity of the large Col-Pop. It holds about 18 fluid ounces. The only thing I wonder about is how Col-Pop employees know when to stop filling, as there's no internal line to mark the failsafe point. I'm guessing their fountains are calibrated with a special Col-Pop setting.
Related
Pizza in a Cone [Slice]
The Best Fried Chicken in Fast Food: Not the Colonel, Not Popeyes [Ed Levine Eats]
Korean Pizza [Slice]
"There are no rules for making nabe," said Chef Ono, as we got to talking about Japanese hotpot cooking to me the other night at Matsuri restaurant. I've been fascinated by this homey soul food, as readers of the Report know (see posts here and here), and wanted to learn more -- and understand what hotpots say about Japanese cuisine as a whole.
First, what about the ingredients? While different styles of hotpot reflect distinct regional identities, there seems to be a clutch of foods that are central to these dishes:
-- shiitake, shimeji and enoki mushrooms
-- hakusai (Napa cabbage)
-- shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves)
-- naga negi (Japanese leeks)
-- tofu
-- non-grain based noodles (like arrowroot kuzukiri, harasume (bean thread noodles), or konyaku noodles)
The vegetables here I believe are all seasonal winter vegetables (right?). Even in far northern Akita Prefecture snow country I saw farmers dig out hakusai and negi that they buried under the snow and a layer of dirt to preserve them -- amazing. But, as the chef emphasized, this list isn't hard and fast. "You could put in anything you want," he said. For example, he explained there's a traditional hotpot from Tokyo called negi-ma-nabe -- leek and tuna nabe, just those two ingredients, that's it. Both are signature foods of the Tokyo area.
The chef describing this Tokyo-style hotpot got me thinking of the empirical aspect of Japanese cooking. Since this food culture is such an old one, it seems that certain combinations that taste delicious have become codified into the cooking over the years -- like tuna and leek or other regional hotpot combinations or even that list above. As the chef pointed out, too, the list I mention is naturally well-balanced and healthy -- protein, carbs, fiber, vitamins, it's got it all. (Hey, the author Michael Pollan would approve!)
What about the broth? Here the chef made a fascinating point: He explained that Western cooking is oil based, that is, fats like butter and oil form the flavor foundation of the cuisine, while Japanese cuisine is traditionally water based. Dashi, broth, underlies Japanese cooking. This "water", whether prepared with konbu (kelp), dried fish, fresh fish parts, dried mushrooms etc., then infuses other ingredients. The chef added that even if you cook wagyu, Japan's richly marbled beef, the traditional way -- as thin slices boiled in a shabu-shabu hotpot -- the fat comes out of it. Hotpots are a great example of this idea. The wide range of wan mono -- steaming, simmering, boiling -- comes to mind, too.
What about the flavors? A friend of mine, a serious French and Italian gastronome, had dinner recently at my pal Reika Yo's En Japanese Brasserie. His experience with Japanese cuisine had been limited to sushi, so he was really surprised by the flavors and cooking styles he encountered. He thoroughly enjoyed his dinner but compared it to the difference between listening to Western classical music and Japanese classical music -- the rhythms, tempo, tone, etc., totally unrelated. I think he makes a good point. When I first started tasting real Japanese cooking, I sometimes found dishes bland. It took me a while for my palate to appreciate the subtleties of the "water" and appreciate the ingredients that drive this cooking.
(Now I have the opposite problem: I was invited to dinner last week to a highly-regarded Modern American place last week was overwhelmed by the fats and butter. As Chef Ono joked, "I'm ruined" now that I'm eating so much Japanese!)
But how do you learn about these flavors and ingredients? How do you experience what chrysanthemum leaves or burdock actually taste like?
Hotpot to the rescue!
"Nabe are a great way to get to know ingredients unfamiliar in the West," the chef said as we sat in his office in the back of the kitchen. I see what he means. What I love about hotpots, aside from how they're such a wonderful window into Japanese regional food culture, is they're such an easy, homey and thoroughly enjoyable way to experience and begin to appreciate Japanese ingredients (or even ingredients we're familiar with, like salmon -- but cooked in a Japanese "water" way). Whether you cook a hotpot with miso or konbu broth, "shungiku tastes like shungiku, shiitake tastes like shiitake," the chef explained. "And the dashi doesn't have such a strong flavor."
What do you think of all this? Do you have anything to add or do you disagree with anything here? Please comment and enlighten us... (Thanks)
Despite the valiant attempts of many of my neighbors, I'm usually not one to fall for impassioned appeals for liberal causes. But I couldn't ignore the internal "hell yeah" that rose up after reading today's bit on Barack Obama from fellow Berkeleyan Michael Chabon...
To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope, to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation to be more than merely secure or predominant. We must allow ourselves to believe in Obama, not blindly or unquestioningly as we might believe in some demagogue or figurehead but as we believe in the comfort we take in our families, in the pleasure of good company, in the blessings of peace and liberty, in any thing that requires us to put our trust in the best part of ourselves and others. That kind of belief is a revolutionary act. It holds the power, in time, to overturn and repair all the damage that our fear has driven us to inflict on ourselves and the world.
sixapart: Talking about privacy in relation to Google's Social Graph API and why we didn't feel comfortable shipping it. http://tinyurl.com/2nymqy
Portfolio is reporting that the Food Network plans to launch its own magazine, and it has been picking off writers from Every Day with Rachel Ray for months. Early predictions don't bode well: "The problem is that the network's personalities aren't an automatic part of the package. And of course Ray, possibly the network's biggest star, has her own magazine, as does Paula Deen. 'All you really get is the logo,' says the source." [Eater SF]
If we weren't having such severe technical issues -- apologies again, and thanks again for your patience -- I would have posted this many hours ago. Anyway... Michelle Obama went on Good Morning America today and sent decidedly mixed signals as to whether she'd back Hillary, should she become the nominee. Michelle did say that everyone would work hard for "whoever the nominee is." But when asked directly whether she'd back Hillary, she said: "I'd have to think about that." Michelle also said that Obama was the "only" candidate who could take the country in a new direction, suggesting that Hillary represents nothing but a continuation of the status quo. This is a pretty harsh assessment, both because Hillary would of course be our first female president, and because, as Paul Krugman says, Hillary and Obama "are far closer to each other on every issue than either is to any Republican." Take a look...
Eli Manning was given a 2009 Escalade Hybrid for winning the Superbowl. Elizabeth Howard wants him to give it back.
So, with 2008 marked already as the Year of Green, I can only humbly ask that our first hero of the year, Giants quarterback Eli Manning, give BACK to Cadillac the keys to their hybrid Escalade with a thanks but no thanks.Why? Because this so-called “improvement” is like rubbing snot on dry chapped hands and hoping that will make it smoother and silkier. This conspicuously huge road-oxymoron– a luxury SUV? — boasts that it will now get you “50 percent better fuel economy.” It said so even during the multi-million dollar ad campaign.
But unlike its humbler non-hybrid co-campaigner, Ford Focus, it didn’t mention what that fuel economy was.
It’s 12. You get 12 miles per gallon with a traditional Escalade.
DB here:
In Number, Please? (1920) Harold Lloyd plays a lovesick boy who’s been jilted by his girl. Moping at an amusement park, he sees her arrive with a new beau.
He shifts to another spot to watch them. When she notices him, she scorns him, and he reacts.
She and the escort stroll past, then she turns and cuddles up to him, making sure Harold notices.
Her flirting precipitates the rest of the action in this very funny short.
In this scene from Number, Please? Harold and the couple aren’t shown in the same frame. The action is built entirely out of singles of Harold and two-shots of the couple, with an especially emphasized close-up of the girl’s snooty reaction. The sequence is rapidly paced and carefully matched in angle; note the shift in eyelines as the girl and her beau walk a little way and then she looks back at Harold.
This approach to building a scene was consolidated in American studio cinema in the late 1910s, as we noted recently, and it soon spread around the world. One of the places it caught on most fervently was Soviet Russia.
Kuleshov glories in the gaps
The great director and theorist Lev Kuleshov always claimed that he and his associates learned the power of editing from American cinema. Russian films were slowly paced, consisting of long tableaus occasionally broken by an inserted closer view of an actor. (For examples, see my Bauer blog entry from the summer.) Kuleshov noted that the Hollywood films brought into Russia grabbed audiences’ interest more intently, and Kuleshov attributed this effect to the fact that the Americans exploited editing more fully, creating the scene out of many shots.
Kuleshov’s example was the formulaic scene of a man sitting at his desk and deciding to commit suicide. The Russians, Kuleshov claimed, would handle this all in one distant framing, with the result that the key actions were just part of the overall view. By contrast, Americans would shoot the scene in a series of close-ups: the man’s face, his hand taking a pistol out of a desk drawer, his finger tightening on the trigger, and so on. This gave the scene a powerful concreteness, and was cheaper to film besides (no need to have a full set).
But most American filmmakers didn’t create the scene wholly out of close-ups. Typically there would be an establishing shot before the action was broken down into detail shots. The process has come to be called analytical editing. (We discuss it in Chapter 6 of Film Art.) As the label implies, the cutting analyzes an orienting view into its important details.
Less commonly, as in our Number, Please? example, American directors could create a scene entirely out of separate areas of space, without ever showing a master framing. This technique, usually called constructive editing, remains common today as well, especially in action scenes.
While praising analytical editing, Kuleshov was particularly taken with constructive editing, because that shows that cinema can call on the spectator’s tacit understanding to assemble the separate shots. Kuleshov realized that we will build a sense of the scene’s space and action out of separate shots without need for the comprehensive view supplied by an establishing shot.
What the Americans developed, the Soviets thought seriously about. Around 1921, Kuleshov and his students mounted some experiments, several of which he discusses in his books and essays. He probably didn’t need to experiment; the American films were full of examples. Indeed, the Number Please? passage is more intricate than any experiment Kuleshov seems to have mounted. But he had a bit of the engineer about him, and he sought to break the technique into its simplest components.
For one thing, constructive editing offered production efficiencies. You could film two actors separately, at different times, and then cut them together. Further, Kuleshov saw that editing could abolish real-world constraints. It created events that existed only on the screen, with an assist from the viewer’s mind.
This is perhaps best seen in his experiment involving an “artificial person.” Evidently it wasn’t a case of constructive editing, because it seems to have begun with an establishing shot. The first shot shows a girl sitting at her vanity table putting on makeup and slippers. A series of close-ups of lips, hands, legs, and the like were derived from different women, and they were edited together to create the impression of a single woman. (Something of this effect survives in the idea of a body double in contemporary films and TV commercials.) But the point is that the woman on screen, made out of different parts, doesn’t exist in the real world.
The same possibility could apply to geography, if we delete the establishing shot. As Kuleshov describes his experiment, we initially get a shot of a woman walking along a Moscow street. She stops and waves, looking offscreen. Cut to a man on a street that is in actuality two miles away. He smiles at her and they meet in yet a third location, shaking hands. Then together they look offscreen; cut to the Capitol in Washington DC. Kuleshov saw the potential for imaginary geography as both a useful production procedure and a demonstration that editing could create a purely cinematic space, one not beholden to reality.
Kuleshov’s most famous experiment, the one he identified with the “Kuleshov effect” proper, involves a stock shot of the actor Ivan Mosjoukin, taken from an existing film. In his writing he’s rather vague and laconic about the results.
I alternated the same shot of Mosjoukin with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl, a child’s coffin), and these shots acquired a different meaning. The discovery stunned me—so convinced was I of the enormous power of montage. (1)
Kuleshov’s pupil the great director V. I. Pudovkin offers a different description of the shots: a plate of soup, a dead woman in a coffin, a little girl playing with a teddy bear. He also goes farther in reporting how the audience responded. People read emotions into the neutral expression on Mosjoukin’s face.
The audience raved about the actor’s refined acting. They pointed out his weighted pensiveness over the forgotten soup. They were touched by the profound sorrow in his eyes as he looked upon the dead woman, and admired the light, happy smile with which he feasted his eyes upon the girl at play. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same. (2)
Now it isn’t only geography or a human body that has been created by editing; it’s an emotion.
These experiments have been poorly documented, and only a couple have survived. One consists of fragments of the imaginary geography exercise. Here is Alexandra Khokhlova waving, but we don’t have the answering shot of the male actor responding. The two meet at the foot of a statue.
After the two shake hands, they look up and out of the frame, but unfortunately we lack the shot of the Capitol.
Kristin and other scholars have written more about these surviving fragments, and their essays are published along with Kuleshov’s proposal for funding the experiments and his wife Khokhlova’s memoir of filming them. (3)
It’s worth taking these prototypes of constructive editing apart a little bit. Clearly, there are several cues that prompt us to see the shots as continuous.
One cue is a common background, or at least a consistent one. Kuleshov thought that sometimes a neutral black background worked best, especially for close shots, as you can see with the handshake shot. Another cue is roughly consistent lighting from shot to shot. Yet another is the presumption of temporal continuity; no moments seem to be omitted in the cut from shot A to shot B. It never occurs to us to consider that Kuleshov’s man is looking at something hours or days before the soup is laid on the table in the second shot.
One of the most important cues goes unmentioned by Kuleshov: the very act of looking. Like most commentators, he seems to take it for granted. Yet it’s crucial in prompting us to imagine an overall space in which the actions take place. Knowing the real world as we do, we can infer that if you’re close enough to watch someone, both people are probably in a shared space, such as the arcade strip in the amusement park in Number, Please?
Another cue is facial expression. In his soup/girl/coffin sequence, Kuleshov supposedly picked a shot of Mosjoukin that doesn’t have a clearly identifiable expression. If Mosjoukin was smiling in his interpolated shot, he would presumably seem not grieving but wicked. Normally, though, performers seen in the single shot are expected to express the appropriate emotion more fully, in order to specify what we take the characters’ mental states to be. Our sequence from Number, Please? makes sure we understand the drama by giving the actors unambiguous expressions.
Finally, in the Kuleshov prototypes each shot should be simple. Its action can be stated in a brief sentence. A woman waves. A man responds. A man looks. A plate of soup sits on a table. Even in Number, Please? we can summarize each shot: Harold looks off. His former girlfriend disdains him. That’s to say that the shots are composed to present only one, quickly grasped point of interest.
Filmmakers don’t need to tease apart all these cues; they use them intuitively. Soon after Number, Please?, Hollywood filmmakers were creating amazing passages of eyeline-match editing—the most virtuoso being probably the racetrack sequence in Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1926). Within a few years of Kuleshov’s experiments, Soviet filmmakers were creating their own masterworks, like Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Kuleshov’s By the Law (1926). Benefiting from a very compressed learning curve, filmmakers took constructive editing to new heights.
Constructive editing, dissolved relationships
Sometimes constructive editing is used to save a scene when production goes astray. When Doug Liman reshot the climax of The Bourne Identity, Julia Stiles couldn’t be on set, so singles of her taken from the first version were wedged in among the retakes, to create the impression that she was watching Jason confront his controller. More positively, a carefully calibrated constructive editing is central to a sequence I analyzed a while back in In the City of Sylvia. For over 100 shots, the spatial relations are built up without an overall establishing shot. (4)
Constructive editing can be used systematically throughout a film. A good example is Alan J. Pakula’s thriller Presumed Innocent (1990). Spoilers coming up!
Harrison Ford plays Rusty Sabitch, a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office who becomes infatuated with a new woman on the staff. He has a brief affair with her, but after she’s broken it off she’s found brutally murdered. He has to investigate the crime without involving himself, but eventually he becomes the prime suspect.
At the start of the film before Rusty learns of the murder, Rusty and his wife Barbara are shown at breakfast, and establishing shots bring them together.
At the office Rusty learns of Carolyn’s death, and after he comes home, the conversation between Rusty and Barbara is treated without an establishing shot. Barbara knows about the past affair, and Rusty is wracked by guilt and shame. The cutting seems to reflect the fact that Carolyn’s death has revived the pain in their marriage.
In a series of flashbacks, Rusty relives his affair with Carolyn. Pakula treats their early encounters by means of constructive editing. The common-background cue is especially helpful in this scene in a kindergarten.
Only after Carolyn and Rusty cooperate and win a child-abuse case does the cutting’s rationale become clear. Pakula has saved the traditional two-shot framing for their moment of passion, as they make furious love in the office.
But soon their affair wanes and Rusty is reduced to watching Carolyn from across the street in point-of-view shots.
After the flashbacks end, Rusty is investigated and eventually charged with Carolyn’s murder. In these scenes Pakula often situates Rusty and Barbara in the same frame, as if the threat to him has healed the breach between them.
Yet in the film’s climax—and here is the big spoiler—they are pulled apart again. The last scene is a sustained monologue by Barbara. As Rusty listens, across twenty-six shots the two are never shown in an establishing shot.
Contrary to the standard Hollywood ending, in which the loving couple embrace in reunion, here they are left divided.
Pakula’s use of constructive editing has effectively traced two arcs: the growth and dissolution of Rusty’s affair, and the reuniting and dissolution of his marriage. In such ways, what might seem a purely local effect, confined to a handful of shots, can create stylistic patterning across a film. The judicious use of constructive editing matches the dramatic development.
Godard of the gaps
Robert Bresson has made more varied and complex uses of constructive editing across a film, as I tried to show in Narration in the Fiction Film and in an Artforum essay. (5) A more radical approach, somewhat in the purely Kuleshovian spirit, can be seen in Godard’s films since the late 1970s. In presenting a scene, Godard often omits an establishing shot, so constructive editing takes over. But he makes the technique quite abrasive and ambivalent.
In watching films like Number, Please? and Presumed Innocent, we fill in the gaps between shots with ease. Godard, however, makes his images and sounds more fragmentary by equivocating about the Kuleshovian cues. The background elements and lighting don’t match entirely; time seems to be skipped over; glances and facial expressions are ambivalent. Adding to these factors, lines of dialogue slip in from offscreen. Godard does present a dramatic scene taking place, but he also creates a sense that images and sounds have been pried loose from their place in an ongoing action, floating somewhat free and functioning as objects of contemplation for their own sake. The cues that Lloyd insists on and that Kuleshov plays with are ones that Godard suppresses or makes ambiguous.
I’ve mentioned this tendency in a recent entry, but to elaborate a little, consider the science lecture in Hail Mary (Je vous salue Marie, 1985). A professor who has emigrated from an Eastern bloc country is explaining his theory that life on earth began and evolved because it was directed by extraterrestrials. No establishing shot of the classroom shows us where he, Eva, and two male students are located, so we have to construct a rough sense of their positions on the basis of a few cues. As Eva, perched on a windowsill, toys with a Rubik’s cube, we hear the professor’s lecture begin to speculate on whether life could have evolved spontaneously. His remarks about sunlight coincide with a burst of sun on her face.
After the Biblical title, “In those days,” we get a series of shots that allow us to apply our mental schema of a classroom lecture: attentive students looking off, a professor at the blackboard.
Lacking an establishing shot, we can’t specify how many people are in the class, nor indeed where Eva and her classmate are sitting—since the professor looks off in several directions during his talk.
At the end of his talk he remarks, still scanning the room, that we can presume that life exists in space. “We come from there.” At that point Godard cuts to the head of another student, seen from behind. The sproingy haircut is a little explosion of yellow, and it’s accompanied by a burst of choral music. And as the shot goes on, we start to notice that the professor is pacing in the background, out of focus.
The student, whom we’ll learn is named Pascal, asks a question (at least the slight head movement suggests that it comes from him), and the professor replies. Pascal scratches his head as the professor continues, still out of focus. If I had to choose one shot that condenses Godard’s strategy of suppression in this sequence, this shot would be my candidate.
At the end of the shot, the professor asks Eva to stand behind Pascal. Cut 180 degrees and somewhat farther back to Pascal, now seen from the front. The professor’s hand brings the Rubik’s cube into the shot and Eva comes up behind Pascal as the professor passes.
Later she and the prof will become lovers, but Godard lets them meet first as simply two torsos intersecting behind Pascal. The purpose is a demonstration that a “blind” agent can be steered toward a goal through simple yes/no commands. This models the professor’s theory that an alien intelligence could have guided evolution.
Pascal will twist the facets of the cube under Eva’s hints. Godard makes this a tactile, even erotic exchange, with the close-up of her by his ear and Eva saying, “Yes,” more urgently as Pascal’s hands arrive at a solution, in the close-up surmounting this blog entry.
The next two shots of the sequence center on the prof, who has exited frame right from the “three-shot.” Now he’s at the window, recalling the initial shot of Eva; but unlike her he’s little more than a silhouette. As crashing organ music is heard, he seems to be watching the experiment from afar. The second shot, an axial cut-in, coincides with the offscreen voice of a male student: “Were you exiled for these ideas?”
“These ideas, and others,” the prof replies. He says he’ll see the class on Monday, evoking the idea that he’s dismissing the offscreen students, and he turns his head slightly, though we can’t be sure they’re on his right. This shot will be held for some time as students quiz him more about his theory, and Eva asks him if he’d like to come over for a drink some evening. But we don’t see her say it. Godard cuts to a shot of Eva at the window, bathed in sunlight, opening and shutting her eyes as she slightly lifts and lowers her head.
As we see her, we hear the rustling of people leaving (so the class was evidently larger than three). And we hear him reply to her invitation, “That’s another story [scénario].” Are Eva and the prof looking at each other? We’re inclined to say yes, but her closed eyes and tilting head suggests someone lost in contemplation rather than engaged in conversation. Here the classic facial-expression cue made indeterminate. We have no way of knowing if the prof’s line comes from offscreen, or is displaced from another point in time; maybe he has left the room. Such displaced diegetic sound occurs elsewhere in the film.
We don’t have to decide; our indecision is the point. By pruning away the most reliable cues, Godard wins both ways. We’re kept somewhat oriented to an intelligible action: a prof sets forth his far-fetched theory of human origins and a woman in his class invites him for coffee. This side of the balance allows us to feel that a story, however sketchy, is moving forward.
But the moment-by-moment texture of the scene allows the individual shots, gestures, and sounds to drift somewhat free. Each image takes on a more intrinsic weight, and the juxtaposition of picture and sound acquires a resonance that we usually call poetic. A shot of Eva in the sun playing with the Rubik’s cube, unanchored in time (during class? before class started?), invites us to apply metaphors, especially once we learn her name. Pascal’s thorny hair suggests not only extraterrestrials but the explosion of a nova. The silhouetted prof, detached from the mechanism he has set in motion, hints at an unknown deity watching the game play out according to his rules. Why do Godard films spawn long essays built out of erudite associations? Because the narrative progression relaxes and we can weave our own connotations out of what we see and hear.
If you don’t want to go down the expanding-association route, there’s another one open. When individual moments no longer accumulate ordinary dramatic pressure, we can savor the fugitive pleasures of the separate shots (light on face, lips by ear) and the patterns they form: flipover cuts, yellow hair and yellow facets, bookended shots of Eva at the window.
Those patterns, it should be clear, depend on our sensing a bump at every shot change, looking for a way to skip across the gap that Godard creates. The same belief that meaning and effect are born of gaps impelled Kuleshov too, and perhaps even Lloyd. If we pay attention to those gaps we can feel minds—both the filmmaker’s and ours—at work in them.
(1) Lev Kuleshov, “’50’: In Maloi Gznezdinokovsky Lane,” Kuleshov on Film, trans. and ed, Ronald Levaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 200.
(2) V. I. Pudovkin, “The Naturschchik instead of the Actor,” Selected Essays, ed. and trans. Richard Taylor (Oxford: Seagull, 2006), 160.
(3) See Kristin Thompson, Yuri Tsivian, and Ekaterina Khokhlova, “The Rediscovery of a Kuleshov Experiment: A Dossier,” Film History 8, 3 (1996), 357-367.
(4) The sequence does begin with a long shot of the café, but it is so distant, crowded, and brief that it can’t really be said to establish the spatial relationships among the several characters we see.
(5) “Sounds of Silence,” Artforum International (April 2000): 123.
Here is my quick dump of the notebook, probably useful to no one but me. Names mostly removed to protect the guilty.
I think “Social Graph” is kind of a dumb phrase to apply to the back question of relationships. I promptly re-dubbed the event “Social Foo” and thereby found interesting things to talk about. Kevin Marks proposed “social cloud”, clouds hide details. (operations people get hives when you talk about clouds)
XMPP, OpenID, OAuth are all going to be huge in 2008; DiSo, DataPortability, and Social Graph API aren’t as clear winners to me.
“Bowling Alone misses the point. There has been a transformative change from groups to networks. Groups are just a funny form of network.”
“Differentiated role networks”. Differentiated roles, and the failure of monolithic identity and friending were one of the things I went to Sebastopol to talk about this weekend, the people who got it got it, and everyone else wasn’t interested in the hard squishy details of real community. I think this might be the side effect of running social software for social softwares sake vs social software as bath for social media object sharing.
“Relationships can be broken down into 5 types: emotional aid, sociality, major help, minor help, and $$$”
Note to self: try block modeling interactions in high profile/high turn Flickr groups. (central, utata, etc)
No one really understands user expectations. Privacy expectation is currently, “unstable”.
Huge conceptual issues with the difference between public information hand aggregated, and public information computer aggregated. Cognitive dissonance ensues.
Rules, games, and rulesets. Modeling of social software as games. Tension of implicit vs. explicit rules. Mag.nol.ia’s altruism game derived from the cracks board (witnessing altruistic acts is a public good, way to update the Mag rules of game to support this?), Satisfaction’s status update game. Hoping Teresa can bring the quality gaming to BoingBoing’s anemic community. Social games + adversting.
Parody/pastiche as lit analysis. Investigate for web.
Social networks need NPCs. e.g. the Instructables Robot.
Standards works should be done in small groups, with a clear need, that selectively grow the list of participants. No hierarchy of early/late joiners (aka OAuth did it right)
Everything public bores me.
Beyond LAMP.
Find a feed for Nathan Eagle’s research.
Language communities are “small world networks”, partitions communities by language. 2-5 hops vs 8 in analyzed network.
The Plaxo way: “We gets ze data Lebowski”
“Twitter is my early warning system. My blood pressure has gone down over the last 18 months”
Identity and sharing can make everyone warm and fuzzy, but also came face to face with sobering consequences that kept me up at night with a bottle of tequila. Re-thinking proposed Flickr features.
I’ve been intrigued by the discussion, in the media, on blogs, and on mailing lists I’m on, about Microsoft’s move to acquire Yahoo! The initial reaction from most folks is a knee-jerk negative — folks basically don’t like Microsoft, and so they don’t like the idea of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo!.
Today’s SF Chronicle continues the story, and features this statement from Yahoo! CEO (and co-founder) Jerry Yang: “We can’t let any of the noise we’re hearing around this situation distract us from our core mission. It’s critical that we continue to focus on running our business, executing our strategy and delivering value to all of our users, advertisers and publishers.”
I would bet money that you could ask a sampling of Yahoo! employees what their core mission is, and you’d never get the same answer twice. This has long been a problem with Yahoo! Google, for example, has a pretty clear core mission: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Whereas Yahoo!’s values are a mess of pabulum.
This is the thing that those of us who work in or near Silicon Valley, and who know folks at Yahoo! know: it’s a mess. It’s been a mess for years. It’s been drifting and directionless. It’s made moves that seem to only compete with itself. It’s spread itself too thin.
Pretty much the only savvy things Yahoo! has done in the past few years is acquire Flickr, del.icio.us, and Upcoming.
So, what I’ve realized, is that acquisition by Microsoft might actually be a very good thing. Say what you will about MSFT, but they’ve been around for awhile, and have a pretty stable, solid corporate culture. They know how to run a business. They’re even innovating in some interesting spaces (physical computing, social computing.) They might just be the tonic to shake Yahoo! of its ailments.
I’ve never felt the need to post a film on Pixelsumo before until now. I have been waiting to watch the Austrian Our Daily Bread (UNSER TÄGLICH BROT) since I read about it a year ago. This weekend I got to watch it at the Institute of Contemporary Art (25 Jan - 13, 15 - 28 Feb 2008)
Our Daily Bread is a film about where your food comes from in this age of globalization. 92 mins in length, there is no soundtrack, no dialogue and no interviews. Unlike some British TV shows, the film makes no judgement or tries to persuade your way of thinking, it simply presents everything in a raw and seemingly honest way.
“Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living.”
The film is beautifully shot, and although some scenes aren’t for the squeemish, I highly recommend you go and see this. Check this page for dates in your country or contact local distributors
My first Django app has no real use other than it's terribly pleasing to click that random link (well it is for me). Does anyone really need to bookmark a color? I don't know, but now you can.
I do attempt to determine if the text color needs to be white or black but other than that it's pretty dumb. I was just pleased to have a completely senseless idea and get it up and live within a few hours with Django and Python.
I'm in the middle of creating a specialized CMS for Amber's print site in Django. Whenever I'm working on a project of that size, and in a new framework, I like to make simple little projects to test ideas. In this case I wanted to see how Django handled load, errors, and how to get mod_python and Django working correctly in a production environment.
Plus also I kind of liked the idea of owning a Google result for a hex color.
(crap, doesn't work in IE.)
Now that his single Sensual Seduction (a.k.a. Sexual Eruption) is in the Top 10, it's official: Snoop Dogg can see the future. First, let's pause to watch the best video in the history of anything, ever. (The song is about four minutes long, so you'll want to allot approximately half an hour so that you can watch it in its entirety at least six times.)
Though the song has been out a few months, I had somehow missed the video when it was first released, and now I can barely express how profound my regret is that I have lived a few more weeks of my life without this video in it. That being said, we have a lot to learn from, here. I'll be exploring that in my next few posts.
(Special note to the Universal Music Group: I've been trying mightily to promote your product, and yet you are so intent on sucking ass that I can't even embed your video on my blog. N.B. I'd have been happy to do so with your ads wrapped around it. Meanwhile, there's about 1,000 other copies of it on both YouTube and Brightcove. Weak! Also, given that this is a Snoop video, I think that while the video is buffering, it should say "Loading, Player" instead of "Loading Player". Thanks!)
Really, I just want an excuse to post a picture of my Art Monk rookie card. I'll add scans as I find the cards.
Fred Dean
Art Monk
Darrell Green
Andre Tippett
Emmitt Thomas
Gary Zimmerman
Today's Rasmussen national tracking poll is out. And it has another bump up for Hillary. Clinton 49%, Obama 38%. Two days ago it was 43% to 37%.
I've got a bad feeling about this...
Political art can be a dangerous quagmire, often lending to sanctimony and didacticism, to a keen embrace of the obvious by artists (and curators) who should know better. Witness the anti-capital punishment exhibition, Under Pain of Death, currently at the Austrian Cultural Forum, which adheres to the expected and respectful by being impressed with the seriousness of the issue it addresses. But in carefully covering its bases (Warhol's Electric Chair, natch, and then another one constructed from Lego blocks) it fails to ignite any passion or real interest. It remains literal, antiseptic and inert, like a UN policy paper.
Some of the the most crucial elements in successful product and service design are the dynamics of the team that is working together. Sadly, I hadn’t been seriously thinking about it when we were writing our forthcoming book, Subject to Change (pre-order today!), but maybe the following is fodder for the second edition?
Team dynamics has been in the back of my mind ever since we started Adaptive Path in March 2001. The seven of us who came together fit remarkably well as a team for a surprisingly long time (Mike left after a few years, and everyone else stuck around until the 6th year, with Jesse and I now the only founders remaining). During that time, I considered team dynamics was largely about a spread of skills and perspectives — successful teams are those that can bring to bear a range of skills, and where people come at problems from different points of view. Such diversity ensures a more robust and considered approach than if everyone thinks the same.
In the last few months I’ve been realizing there are other aspects of the dynamics that are essential in order for the team to work well. A petri dish of sorts was our UX Intensive workshop last November, which was the first I had attended. We get over a hundred people each day into those, and much of the workshop is spent in small group activities. The teams typically have a pretty random mix (which we encourage by getting people to move around and not work with just their colleagues), and, in these activities, three types of teams emerge, and they emerge roughly in even proportions:
- Those who work together perfectly fine. Nothing special, but they engage in the activity and come up with a decent result.
- Those whose collaboration just sings. These teams produce an amazing amount of material in a short time, and typically have a blast doing it.
- Those who go nowhere. These folks typically sit around, unable to get beyond talking about what they’re doing, never willing to commit to ideas or creation.
I haven’t done deeper research on these teams, but my observations indicate that the successful teams usually have two factors — a shared desire to suppress ego and truly work as a team, and some individual who steps up as a leader and helps provide the team focus or encouragement.
On other project work I’ve observed, this is crucial to success. And the only way you’re going to get there is through mutual respect. In our multidisciplinary environments, we can’t all be experts in everything. So, we have to trust the expertise and intent of others. In other words, we have to respect one another. This has been crucial in our growth at Adaptive Path — mad skills are only part of the package we need in a person to bring them on. Passion for the cause, and respect for others with that same passion, even if they have wildly different approaches and perspectives, are just as important.
I’ve been fortunate, because I’ve had a very direct hand in growing our team. In the world outside Adaptive Path, sometimes one doesn’t have that opportunity. I’ve been thinking, in particular, of teams that get a new leader, and what often transpires. It’s perhaps easiest to think about this in terms of sports teams.
I’m a fan of the Golden State Warriors basketball team. I became a fan shortly after moving to Oakland a few years ago, which was a dire time for such fandom. They hadn’t had a winning record in a decade, and the team was simply a mess. After a couple years the coach was fired, replaced by NBA legend Don Nelson. For a while, Don tried to make do with the team he had, and it didn’t go so well. Then, in a storied trade in the middle of last season, the Warriors got rid of a few non-producers, and acquired some players that many thought were too mercurial to be trusted. And what happened? They started winning. They made it to the playoffs, and even beat the heavily favored Dallas Mavericks in the first round.
Or look to football, and what Bill Belichick has been able to do with the Patriots. Because of salary caps and other equalization measures, a dynasty is supposed to be impossible in the NFL. But the Patriots are a dynasty (even though only 5 players remain from the team that won that first Super Bowl). Because it’s clear that Belichick demands that his players suppress their egos, respect one another, and work as a team.
I’ve seen this happen in user experience. A new manager was brought to lead a group, a manager who was not a designer, but (gasp!) an MBA. When she arrived, this UX group she lead was doing okay, but was no great shakes. They definitely weren’t cohering as a team — every member had their little piece of territory and didn’t seem to really get along well together. Within a year of her arrival, all of the practice leads that reported to her either left or were let go, and she replaced them with staff that understood how crucial it was to engage one another. Since then, this team has grown, both in size and stature within the organization, evolving from an execution-oriented design group to one that helps drive strategic decision-making.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, except to say that I suspect it’s remarkably difficult for a new leader to inherit a team not of their own making, and have it succeed. Teams have to be brought together under a common sense of purpose. I suspect it’s nearly impossible to assemble a team for one thing, and then try to get it to behave in a new way.
So, yesterday was Groundhog Day and so we watched Groundhog Day. And since, the last time I searched, I did not come across an obsessive timeline of the sort that I have come to expect from the interwebs in re the likes of Back to the Future and Terminator, this time I took notes on how many days had actually passed.
These are the days actually seen in the movie:
- February 1
- February 2, #1
- "You're playing yesterday's tape"
- "Meet me in the diner", "Don't drive on the railroad tracks"
- Punches Ned
- "Nancy Taylor, Lincoln High!"
- Bank robbery -- "I've seen this film over 100 times"
- Interrogating Rita
- "Sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist"
- "I like to say a prayer and drink to world peace"
- "I studied 19th century french poetry." (He has a good French accent on the quotation, and is a good dancer.)
- Insincere snowman. Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face.
- Slapped in the face. Notices ice sculptures.
- "Rough night."
- "It's cold out there every day."
- "What is... Mexico."
- "A thousand people waiting to worship a rat."
- Smashes clock.
- Smashes clock.
- Smashes clock on floor, kidnaps groundhog, blows up.
- "Aw nuts." Drops toaster in bathtub.
- Steps in front of truck.
- Jump from bell tower.
- "I'm a god." "I've been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned." Throwing cards: "Six months, four to five hours a day."
- Gives money to bum. First piano lesson.
- Second piano lesson.
- Has learned ice sculpture.
- Not bad at piano.
- Hits on Ned, takes bum to hospital.
- Feeds bum, gives CPR.
- Final Groundhog day! Very good at piano.
- February 3.
Now, beyond the days we actually see, much time is implied:
- Between days #6 and #7, at least 100 days passed: the time to see the movie 100 times, and also to fully memorize the plan for the bank robbery.
- Between days #11 and #12, he may have just memorized a single quotation (but his accent is good) and he may have already known how to dance (but that seems unlikely). So I think we can assume at least a few months passed.
- Between days #21 and #22, he memorized the entire Jeopardy show, which would take at least a few viewings. It's possible he did that while learning piano, or French.
- Some time before day #30, six months of card throwing. But that could have all been after midnight, and overlapped with any other activities.
- We saw "burned" and "electrocuted". That leaves at least five days (and presumably more) for "stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, and hung."
- How long does it take to learn ice sculpture, if that's all you do? Six months? A year?
- How long does it take to become a good piano player, if you begin in your early 40s when you have your first lesson? Concensus among those present at casa del jwz was "at least two years."
So.
Based on evidence presented in the movie, he re-lived February 2 for at least four years.
The Wikipedia entry says [citation needed] that "director Ramis has stated Phil repeats the day for about 10 years, noting that it would take that long to become as proficient on the piano as Connors does from daily lessons, though the original script had February 2 repeating for ten thousand years."
Which answer, you know, I found insufficient.
Incidentally, this year the rat saw its shadow.
