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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.
