randomwalks/dj

Andy has a collection of fanboy supercuts, a "genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage." His collection includes some of the excellent and bizarre Lovelines isolation studies by Chuck Jones.

I'm reminded of how these constitute a kind of search index, a concept first introduced to me 11 years ago via Brian Slesinsky's Webmonkey article, Roll Your Own Search Engine. That was the first of many demystifications of big, web-scale technology for me. The thread running through all these fan cuts is the inverted index, identical to the concept introduced in that ancient article. An inverted index maps elements such as words to their source locations in a data corpus. Each of the pieces Andy links to is a kind of inverted index, pointing to locations of obscenities, audible inhalations, wilhelm screams, and so on.

The other thing it reminded me of was Simon Winchester's excellent book, The Professor And The Madman, an account of W.C. Minor's assistance in constructing the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Minor was a confined lunatic with an extensive personal library, and the OED required that every sense of a word in its definition be traceable to an original, printed quotation. These were crowd-sourced from literate Englishmen of the time, but Minor's contribution went above and beyond because he noted interesting words as he read, constructing an inverted index of his library for OED-worthy terms. When dictionary editor James Murray needed a quotation for a particular word, there was a good chance Minor had already encountered and indexed it.

The works pointed to by Andy's blog post (and additions in the comments) are a special form of indexing, made possible by cheap communication and digital media. Let's hope the RIAA/MPAA don't fuck everything for an emerging form of media consumption.

Comments

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on April 12, 2008 10:24 PM

Apple could really do a lot more to make this easier.

My appreciation for PHP is growing. Not the language, but the development community and references. PHP.net is really good. Nearly every function has a usage example and user comments. I guess I took that for granted.

Also, PHP isn’t updated randomly every few weeks in ways that break old functionality with no schedule or roadmap.

Apple’s secrecy is great for product launches, but it’s painful to try to develop against it. And while developing for the iPhone SDK, you feel like you’re the only person in the world doing it. There’s no community. No examples. No websites. No tutorials. It took all night before I even found the beta-3 changelog (after they helpfully removed a critical rendering function of UITableView and broke my code).

It’s a good thing this is an attractive platform for other reasons.

Because of the pain required to make them and the ease of charging money in this environment, I don’t expect any high-quality iPhone applications to be free.

But that’s probably a good thing:

• For developers: It’s a massive new market of people willing to pay for software. Good free alternatives are unlikely to arrive and erode the paid products’ marketshare.
• For users: A healthy paying market will encourage good developers to write good software for the platform.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org Tumblelog, on April 12, 2008 9:30 PM

Theda Skocpol writes in ...

I have been in meetings with the Clintons and their advisors where very clinical things were said in a very-detached tone about unwillingness of working class voters to trust government -- and Bill Clinton -- and about their unfortunate (from a Clinton perspective) proclivity to vote on life-style rather than economic issues. To see Hillary going absolutely over the top to smash Obama for making clearly more humanly sympathetic observations in this vein, is just amazing. Even more so to see her pretending to be a gun-toting non-elite. Give us a break!

I wonder if she realizes that gaining a few days of lurid publicity that might reach a slice of voters is going to cost her a great deal in the regard of many Democrats, whose strong support she will need if she somehow claws her way to the nomination -- and even more so if she does not clinch the nomination. The distribution of "we're not bitter" stickers to her campaign rallies is the height of over-the-top crudity, and the reports are that very few audience members seem to have much enthusiasm for this nonsense. Not surprisingly, people cannot see the reasons for so much fuss.

Yes, she wants a big break, she desperately wants the nomination she and Bill believe is hers by right. We all know that. But where is her authenticity and her dignity and her sense of any proportion?

This has to be one of the few times in U.S. political history when a multi-millionaire has accused a much less wealthy fellow public servant, a person of the same party and views who made much less lucrative career choices, of "elitism"! (I won't say the only time, because U.S. political history is full of absurdities of this sort.) In a way, it is funny -- and it may not be long before the jokes start.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 12, 2008 7:53 PM

TPM Reader GB sent me in the video of a 2004 appearance by Barack Obama on the Charlie Rose show in which he talks about the same issue of rural and working class Americans and the Democratic party. It's from November 23rd, 2004, so just after Obama was first elected to the senate but a couple months before he was sworn in.

It's interesting to watch since it's in a very non-campaign setting and almost four years ago. He makes exactly the same point, but explains it differently. Some of it is likely equally demagoguable, but shows up some of the tendentious misconstruals of what he said. I clipped out the three minutes or so of the hour segment where he addresses this issue ...

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 12, 2008 7:45 PM

David Bowie on Saturday Night Live, 1979. Strange, strange puppetwork, via AG.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 12, 2008 5:52 PM

Examiner column for April 14.

    On one of my seniors’ last days in high school, they heard a world-renowned scholar of James Joyce lecture on “Dubliners.”  He took an afternoon off from his immersion in Joyce’s first work to speak to them about two of the stories they were studying. Most found it interesting, and a few responded enthusiastically, but in several ways his talk was wasted on the young.

    Coilin Owens is the scholar in question, and he is Professor Emeritus at George Mason University, where I teach part-time. He left Ireland long ago to study in the United States where, ironically, there is much more opportunity to do serious Joyce scholarship than in Irish universities, where they consider Joyce a tourist industry.

    During the thirty years Coilin has been researching and publishing on Joyce, I have been reading and rereading Joyce in my classes. I have probably taught “Dubliners” to a couple thousand students, and each time I learn something new. With Joyce the learning curve is particularly steep because so much is left unstated. Reading his prose is like climbing a steep mountain every time you do it—and the “scenic views” are as breathtaking the twentieth time you visit them as they were the first time. The “Dubliners” stories just keep getting better.

    Coilin is a scholar who inhabits the period he studies. He reads daily papers from the early 1900s because Joyce did, and reads the books in Joyce’s library in the editions he owned in order to trace their influence. Of course he also reads Joyce’s prose carefully. In answer to a student’s question about how he goes about interpreting the language, Coilin replied: “First, I memorize it.”

    For me, his lecture was eye-opening. He illustrated with his passionate delivery how satisfying an intellectual pursuit can be, and how much wisdom comes with time spent on a subject you love. I last heard him speak on “Dubliners” four years ago, and his words were just as intelligent then. But this time he was better: he showed us that by studying Joyce you study the world, that by probing the “signs” he gives us we can find answers to perennial human questions about what’s important in life, and the futility of the pursuit of perfection.

    To illustrate this last point, Coilin analyzed Joyce’s use of the word  “gnomon,” a geometric shape missing a corner. The word takes on symbolic significance throughout the stories as  “a figure aspiring to be a perfect square, but missing something—just like we all aspire to be a perfect figure, but never quite make it.” These words of Coilin’s “blew my mind,” observed my student Joe.

    I felt lucky to be present at his talk because I realized why Joyce never becomes repetitious or boring, no matter how often I teach him. Yet most of my students did not have similar epiphanies. They liked Professor Owens’ words because they illustrated serious scholarship, but didn’t see that they could apply those words to their own lives, as well.

    But for Joe and a few others, Coilin Owen’s words resonated far beyond “Dubliners.” Education is sometimes, but not always, wasted on the young.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on April 12, 2008 4:17 PM

The Bronx-born Yankee-hating and Red Sox-loving construction worker who buried a Red Sox jersey in the new Yankee Stadium has given photographic evidence to the Post proving it's no tall tale. "Gino" explained, "As I stuck it in, I said, 'The Yankees are done for the next 30 years.' I only put a 30-year curse because I'm 46 and in 30 years I'll be dead, and I won't care if the Yankees win then."

Well, at least Gino, who currently works at a construction site in Manhattan, is being rational. He said the jersey, buried somewhere along the third base line, is a David Ortiz jersey, "The reason why is George Steinbrenner told [Yankees GM Brian] Cashman to get Ortiz and Cashman told him, we don't need him, We have [Jason] Giambi and Nick Johnson.'" The Curse of Big Papi?!?!

While there are a range of reactions from Yankee players (Jeter: "I am sure somebody, a Yankee fan, would dig it up, right?"; Petitte: "I'm not a superstitious person. It is kind of funny, though."), the most heated seems to be from Mayor Bloomberg:

"It is an outrage!" the Boston-born Bloomberg told The Post before the Yanks played the Sox last night.

"The one thing that I'd really like to be able to do is to go in there and pitch for the Yankees and beat the Red Sox with a perfect game. That would be a way to end the curse," the mayor said.

"They envy the Yankees. They wish they were the Yankees. And every once in a while, you might not win the whole thing, but to say that the public is on the side of the Yankees is an understatement." Hmm. Maybe he should take a cue from Yankees fan Christopher Rogers who said, "[Red Sox jerseys] should be buried under two tons of concrete. Buried because that's what we do. We bury them."

The Yankees now have a new official statement: If they are able to find the jersey, "we will say thanks to The Post for showing us where the T-shirt is, so that we can put an extra layer of concrete over it to make sure it stays buried." And today's Yankees game against the Red Sox is at 3:55 p.m., with Mike Mussina pitching against Josh Beckett.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 12, 2008 4:14 PM

Six reasons why baseball is the best of all games, from a 1961 conversation.

First: the rules of the game are in equilibrium: that is, from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher's mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise. Whereas, basketball, e.g., is constantly (or was then) adjusting its rules to get them in balance.

Second: the game does not give unusual preference or advantage to special physical types, e.g., to tall men as in basketball. All sorts of abilities can find a place somewhere, the tall and the short etc. can enjoy the game together in different positions.

The comments are entertaining as well; the level of erudition is higher than most blog comment threads, but the insults and arguments are still there.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 11, 2008 5:23 PM

Some footage I caught last night at the Knittign Factory, Jeru Tha Damaja hopping on stage with Tha Alkaholiks.....

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 11, 2008 2:29 PM

CARROLL GARDENS— Back on Tuesday we all learned Beyonce and Jaz-Z had made a visit to pizza haven Lucali. Today a blogger who was kicked out for the stars emails Cutty with a complaint: "I was actually sitting at the table [Iacono] gave to Beyonce and Jay-Z. His whole bit about how he didn't know they were coming was extremely annoying, because actually he kicked us out so they could have our table, right next to him. It was actually the rudest thing that's ever happened to me in a restaurant in New York. He asked us to eat as fast as possible and leave..." [Cutlets]

EAST VILLAGE— Plywood alum Panificio has finally opened in the doomed Uovo space, according to Imbible. Don't get too excited—they're still waiting on their liquor license: "Earlier this week I spoke with the manager, Ayo Balogun, who explained that part of the concept behind Panificio is to cater to neighborhood locals in particular, with specialty coffees offered at a reduced price if you leave nearby...So...what about the matter of that elusive liquor license, which Uovo was unable to procure (eventually forcing its closure)...? Ayo says a full liquor license is on the way." [Imbible]
—photo credit

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 11, 2008 1:55 PM

Artist Mark Penxa has created a series of 100 portraits of old ball players with the mouthful of a title Stealing Signs: Dead-Ball Era Baseball - Memories from My Last Life; 1927

ShareThis

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on April 11, 2008 1:33 PM

What's the play count on your most played song in your iTunes library? My top five are:

Emerge by Fischerspooner, 97 plays
Alpha Beta Gaga by Air, 76 plays
A Dream by Cut Copy, 68 plays
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand (Daft Punk mix), 68 plays
Around the World by Daft Punk, 66 plays

Sixteen songs in my library have been played 50 times or more. More than 70 songs have been played at least 35 times. I'm wondering where that lies on the scale of obsession...do I listen to my favorite songs more or less than normal? If you folks can be considered normal... ;)

(Comment on this)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 11, 2008 1:17 PM

Long rumination on the use of slo-mo in movies, particularly in Standard Operating Procedure. Being a slo-mo fan myself (especially when wielded by Wes Anderson or by NBC Sports during football games), I enjoyed this description of it:

Slo-mo can be a mesmerizing revelation of the grace inherent in the ordinary.

Slo-mo was invented and patented in 1904 by an Austrian priest-turned-physicist named August Musger. And who was working in the patent office in Austria in 1904?

My fantasy now is that Albert Einstein -- working in the Swiss patent office in Bern in 1904, when Musger patented slo-mo in (relatively) nearby Austria -- might have become aware of Musger's slow-motion patent (perhaps it even crossed his desk?) and that contemplation of slo-mo might have influenced Einstein's thinking about the nonabsoluteness, the relativity, of time.

Two other sort-of-related bits of Errol Morris news: 1) part 2 of his short series on re-enactments is now online, and 2) Morris will be talking about his new movie at the Apple Store in Soho on April 23 at 6:30pm. Prepare to wait in a long line. (thx, findemnflee)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 11, 2008 12:08 PM

Obviously, I'm insanely jealous of Sarah Larson. It seems like one day she was working as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas, and the next she was v on George Clooney's arm. So, how did she snag the superstar?

Contrary to popular belief, the couple didn't meet at Ocean's Thirteen premiere party at the Palms Casino Resort in 2007 --  it was actually years before that.

"It was on his birthday three or four years ago at Whiskey at [Vegas's] Green Valley Ranch," Sarah said, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, and she and George's party met up. "I was with some friends. We were all dancing, taking pictures, being silly."  But, Sarah had a boyfriend at the time. Then, when the actor went to Vegas for the Ocean's premiere last summer, "he heard I was working at Moon [nightclub]." He went to find her and, she says, "we hung out." 

It must have been a good time because, a month later, he took her to his house in Italy. The rest is history.

Why don't these things ever happen to me?? Though I did meet the mayor of Hoboken once at the diner. It was thrilling, but he's not George Clooney and I was never his girlfriend. Oh well.

For more celebs who date outside the Hollywood pool, check out our Average Joe and Jane slide show.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on April 11, 2008 12:05 PM

There are so many ways to be a baseball fan — you can be a stats person, a hometown loyalist, a fan of one slugger in particular, or just into the notion of sitting outside with your friends and drinking beer. I grew into a fan reading great baseball books, many by David Halberstam, who died last year. Check out his October 1964 if you want to see how baseball can echo the struggles of society at large. Or just check out Zach Hample’s Watching Baseball Smarter if you want a fun primer on the sport.

The beginning of the season is about optimism, so here’s to the fact that everyone’s team is still in post season contention. I hope your team makes it.

    

    

Photos from misschatter, , kellyhafermann, rocknroll91, philliefan99 and ennailuj.

Originally posted by Shanan Delp from Flickr Blog, on April 11, 2008 11:35 AM

Items you may have missed from the Serious Eats universe ...

• I must confess... I had a naughty dream about Mario Batali
  "YOU think you all have strange dreams? I have this recurring dream where Tony Bourdain is feeding me something unidentifiable!!!" – RichardCrystal (This thread is a real gem for some, uh, interesting insights into all of your food fantasies...)
• A change of heart concerning Sandra Lee
  "After watching her Chefography episode, I've had a change of heart. [...] I had no idea that she had such a difficult upbringing and that she was forced to overcome so much. Sandy may not be a chef, but she's trying to make eating well easier for busy parents on a budget. I still think her food sucks, but there's something kind of noble about that." – PumpkinBear

• "Drop It Like It's Hot"
  "Just last night I dropped raw chicken breast on the little rug in front of my sink. I scooped it up before the dogs caught wind of it, rinsed off the fuzzies and proceeded like nothing had ever happened. It is sort of like the whole tree-falling-in-the-woods puzzle... if no one sees you drop it, did it really fall?" – AuntJone
• Surely there is more to Canadian cuisine than poutine and nanaimo bars?
• What one famous chef would you choose to emulate?
  "Julia for her talents and knowledge, Rachel Ray for her energy and smile, Giada for her looks (who cares if she can cook...), Bobby Flay for his BBQ secrets, Anthony Bourdain for his humor, gut and courage, Ina for her kitchen and life without a husband during the week, Nigella for her beauty..." – Hunnyoil
• Take a break from the kitchen and check out these suggestions for food-related books that aren't cookbooks.
• Lobster rolls at a McDonald's in Maine, McLaks (salmon) sandwich at the one in Oslo, McCroques in France... any other fast food regional items that you've discovered?

Originally posted by Emily Koh from Serious Eats: Main, on April 11, 2008 11:00 AM

Good advice about whining:

Whining should be telling you something. Whining is the white smoke in your tailpipe that lets you know you're burning mental oil. It means you're unconsciously devoting cycles to something that you can't, won't, or shouldn't be spending time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You'd be either extricated or done with it.

This jibes nicely with one of Stefan Sagmeister's Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far:

Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

(via bbj)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 11, 2008 10:56 AM

During an epic bike tour of the city yesterday that stretched from the Bronx to Brooklyn, StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson, Jr. took these shots of the future site of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Brooklyn Greenway, which received a vote of confidence from Community Board 1 on Tuesday, will run through the park along the edge of the pier. The demolished structures on the right were still standing when Clarence shot this video last year, documenting a tour of the Greenway's path.

Says Clarence: "Made me realize with all the sadness of congestion pricing failing, there IS plenty of great stuff going on in the city."

A tighter shot comes after the jump.

(more...)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 11, 2008 10:16 AM

What an eventful week! I feel like talking about it.

First the torch thing here in SF. Two interesting things came out of that: my Twitter friends who were near the torch kept me updated throughout the day on what was going on, and second, Greg Knauss summed it up nicely.

Then there's Flickr video! What a bunch of hoo-ha about nothing. It seems a large group of people think Flickr is going to turn into YouTube—whatever that means. Anyway, here is why Flickr is no YouTube. Eleanor is easily the face that sold a thousand Flips (mine arrives today!).

Per my New Year's Resolution: I still haven't bought a single book. I only bought one CD in an emergency situation where I had to drive 600 miles and forgot to burn a CD-R. No DVDs. No video games.

Originally posted by torrez from Andre's Notes, on April 11, 2008 9:18 AM

A few years ago at a family meal my dad randomly launched into a lengthy panegyric to rice. He does this sometimes—proclaims a deep but previously unvoiced passion—and my mother, sister, and I roll our eyes at the poor outnumbered guy in our family and keep talking about shoes or Martha Stewart or whatever. At the time I thought, How can anyone get excited about rice? It doesn’t taste like anything.

Now I’ve come to see the wisdom of my father’s palate, and if I weren't scared of getting fat I’d eat white rice several times a week, with Indian food, soy sauce and vegetables, or naked but for a pat of butter. Why didn’t dad eat a lot of rice in college, I wonder now. One of his stock stories is how he could subsist for weeks at a time on canned tomato soup when he was putting himself through school, when he would have to sit at a bar and watch his buddies drink beer because he couldn’t afford to buy one for himself. Sometimes for a treat he would eat jelly. So why didn’t he buy himself a big old bag of rice and feast on that? Is it possible that he was scared to cook it?

In my experience, fear of rice cookery is a surprisingly common affliction. A friend of mine, one of the most accomplished and confident cooks I know, refuses to make white rice. When I was first feeding myself, I didn’t even try to make it because I had heard was complicated; I relied on parboiled, plastic-bagged rice in a box. Once I got my confidence up and made a pot of regular, long-grain white rice, I discovered that…it isn’t hard at all. In fact, it was perfect every time. What was everyone talking about? I puffed up a little. I got cocky.

Eventually, my future husband and I began one of those great New York love affairs in which real estate plays a disproportionately large role. Soon—much sooner than I would have been anywhere else in the country—I was living and cooking in his apartment, where, I was chagrined to discover, I was incapable of cooking rice. It was as if I had forgotten how to ride a bicycle. I mean, I made perfectly serviceable dinners, moan-inducing desserts, and my first cinnamon rolls in that kitchen, but I never made a successful pot of rice, a fact that inspired merciless teasing. This was all the more maddening because Andrew’s rice was perfect every time, even though he just eyeballed the quantities and frequently forgot that it was on the stove until well past the point at which it should have been ruined.

Did my success reside in the cheap saucepan, now in storage, that I had bought at a grocery store during college? Was I cursed by performance anxiety after the first few failures? The mystery was never solved. But when we moved into a new apartment, I got my rice mojo back immediately.

Are you scared of cooking rice? And do you have a foolproof method for brown rice? Because my brown rice is still pretty hit or miss, and I could use some advice. Sometimes it’s perfectly cooked, chewy and delicious; sometimes it’s half mushy and half raw, or unpleasantly crispy. Help!

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Long-Grain White Rice

- serves 3-4 as a side -

I can’t remember where I learned this method, but it works every time, unless someone has put a rice curse on you. There’s only one trick to this in my kitchen, which is that the simmering must happen on one of the less powerful burners. The most powerful burner is too hot even at the lowest setting.

Ingredients

1 cup long-grain white rice
1 3/4 cup water
Pinch of salt
Glug of olive oil

Procedure

Combine all ingredients (I don’t bother to rinse the rice) in a 2-quart saucepan and bring to a simmer. As soon as the water reaches a lively simmer, give everything a good stir, cover the pot, and lower the heat as much as possible. After 15 minutes, turn off the burner, remove the pot from the heat, and let it sit for at least 5 minutes before fluffing with a fork and serving.

Originally posted by Robin Bellinger from Serious Eats: Main, on April 11, 2008 8:30 AM

Yesterday on the stump Hillary reiterated her opposition to the Colombia trade agreement -- and in the process, she laughed.

This, naturally, pricked up the ears of lots of folks in our political press corps, who derive great enjoyment from taking note of Hillary's laugh...

MSNBC:

Hillary's Laugh Is Back

PITTSBURGH -- Clinton can't shake questions surrounding her stance on trade and her husband's differing views on the matter. Today, she responded with a hearty laugh -- the kind once criticized and mocked by pundits and the media.

CNN:

Clinton laughs off Colombia questions

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) – Hillary Clinton used her trademark laugh Thursday to deflect a question about the $800,000 her husband earned in 2005 giving speeches for a Bogota-based group that supports the Colombia free trade agreement — the same trade deal she currently opposes.

The Washington Post:

Questions on Trade Agreement Bring Back the Laugh

PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- Asked about her husband's receipt of almost $1 million from a group that backs a trade deal with Colombia that she opposes, Sen. Hillary Clinton turned to a tactic she had used often early in her campaign, though not recently: laughing off the question.

Great minds...

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 11, 2008 6:18 AM

[Image: Walking an "ancient road" in Vermont; photo by Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times].

Half-forgotten slashes of land, cutting through, around, and over the hills of Vermont, might actually be "ancient roads," dating back to colonial times – and a 2006 state law has given the residents of nearby towns a strong incentive for uncovering these buried throughways.
According to The New York Times, "citizen volunteers are poring over record books with a common, increasingly urgent purpose: finding evidence of every road ever legally created in their towns, including many that are now impassable and all but unobservable." These "elusive roads" – many of them "now all but unrecognizable as byways" – are lost routes, connecting equally erased destinations.
In almost all cases, they've barely even left terrestrial traces; in fact, as we'll see, their presence is almost entirely textual.
If these roads can be re-discovered, however, then they can be added to official town lands. Accordingly:

Some towns, content to abandon the overgrown roads that crisscross their valleys and hills, are forgoing the project. But many more have recruited teams to comb through old documents, make lists of whatever roads they find evidence of, plot them on maps and set out to locate them.

And, in what is surely one of the most interesting geographical subplots in recent newspaper publishing, we read: "Even for history buffs, the challenge is steep: evidence of ancient roads may be scattered through antique record books, incomplete or hard to make sense of."
Indeed, like something out of the poetry of Paul Metcalf, or even William Carlos Williams, the descriptions found in these old documents are narrative, impressionistic, and vague. They "might be, 'Starting at Abel Turner’s front door and going to so-and-so’s sawmill,' said Aaron Worthley, a member of the ancient roads committee in Huntington, southeast of Burlington. 'But the house might have burned down 100 years ago. And even if not, is the front door still where it was in 1815? These are the kinds of questions we’re dealing with.'"

[Image: A hand-written inventory of Vermont's ancient routes; photo by Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times].

While making sense of cryptic references to lost byways is fascinating in and of itself, these acts of perambulatory interpretation are part of a much larger, fairly mundane attempt to end "fights between towns and landowners whose property abuts or even intersects ancient roads."

In the most infamous legal battle, the town of Chittenden blocked a couple from adding on to their house, saying the addition would encroach on an ancient road laid out in 1793. Town officials forced a showdown when they arrived on the property with chain saws one day in 2004, intending to cut down trees and bushes on the road until the police intervened.

The article refers to one local, a lawyer, who explains that "he loved getting out and looking for hints of ancient roads: parallel stone walls or rows of old-growth trees about 50 feet apart. Old culverts are clues, too, as are cellar holes that suggest people lived there; if so, a road probably passed nearby."
Think of it as landscape hermeneutics: hunting down traces of a disappeared landscape.
So what would happen, then, if you discovered that an ancient road actually passes through your house – that your living room is a former throughway, and old paths knot and twirl off to every side, one leading right through the guest bedroom? And then another road pops up, and another – and you realize that you live on the intersecting scars of a lost built environment, some old village that disappeared or was destroyed in some H.P. Lovecraft-like enigmatic disaster.
I'm also curious, though, to see what might happen if such a law was passed in a city like London. In an old but interesting review of London: City of Disappearances, a book edited by Iain Sinclair, we're told that London "is a city of the forgotten." It is where anyone "can still disappear without trace." Indeed, London is a city "built upon lost things"; it "towers above forgotten underground rivers and discarded tunnels. It is built upon old graveyards and burial pits."
More to the point here, entire streets have disappeared: "Catherine Street, Jewin Street, Golden Place are just three of the vanished thoroughfares named in a litany of sorrowful mysteries," our reviewer points out. "Other streets have been curtailed. Swallow Street has been swallowed by burgeoning London. Grub Street has been renamed Milton Street."
So what if someone who liked "getting out and looking for hints of ancient roads" were to set about such a task elsewhere? I'm reminded here of China Miéville's short story "Reports of Certain Events in London" – a perennial reference on BLDGBLOG – in which "unstable" streets appear and disappear throughout the city. One night they're there, the next night they're not.

[Image: An old Roman road in Britain; photo via Historic UK].

But what to make of entire unstable geographies that flash in and out of county land registers, with distant echoes appearing in the hand-written captions of family albums and in old, yellowing letters between loved ones? Could you re-trace ancient roads based on such sources? What if the county's land archivist was Borges?
Perhaps it'd be a bit like reconstructing all of postwar Berlin, or Dresden, or Hiroshima, based only on geographical descriptions found in the journals of former residents.
How piece together a whole city from a position of extreme textual remove?
I suppose the answer to that question might be found in Vermont over the next few months, with people jogging up and down hillsides, and in and out of archives, tracking down the specters of an older terrain – territorial marks of a vanished world on top of which they've been living all along.

(Of interest, earlier on BLDGBLOG: Ancient Lights and Z).

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, on April 11, 2008 6:07 AM

The Guardian reports this morning that Donna Vassar, "part of the Vassar education dynasty, has launched plans to build a $300m (£150m) private getaway for stressed-out presidents and prime ministers who want to 'reconnect with their unique purpose in life'."
And it might look like this.

[Image: Design by Chetwoods Architects, via the Architects' Journal].

Referred to as the Universitas Leadership Sanctuary – or Destination Universitas – Vassar's desert complex, if built, will be "part monastery and part conference centre," and it will take the shape "of a four-storey globe on the shores of Lake Las Vegas, a privately-owned lake in the south Nevada desert."
The site will then be nothing less than the place "where the most powerful men and women on the planet can get away from it all with a combination of reading, contemplation and even a spot of gardening."

The main globe building will be on four levels. The ground floor will house a library and the first floor a debating chamber, while on the second floor will be technology to help make the building energy efficient. At the top, under a dome of glass, will be the spiritual heart of the development – the contemplation space where leaders will be encouraged to sit in silence.

And sit in silence, I'm sure they will.
The design is by Chetwoods Architects – though they are apparently working with artist and architect Doug Patterson, whose earlier House Mustique supplied Vassar with a spot of inspiration.
More at the Guardian.

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, on April 11, 2008 5:33 AM

Shortly after, Bodhi's tail snapped in half but fortunately cat's tails grow back...

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on April 10, 2008 7:34 PM

Awesome collection of folk graphics and photography protesting Flickr's decision to let members post short videos. But without the video, we'd miss out on stuff like this. (via waxy)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 10, 2008 12:12 PM

novids
Originally uploaded by fotokropf.

Every once in a while the internet stretches the definition of nonsense.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 10, 2008 11:48 AM

The Mets have signed Claudio Vargas to a minor-league deal.

Vargas will report to extended spring training in Port St. Lucie, before joining Triple-A New Orleans.

…i like this, since it is a minor-league deal…he can reach the upper 90s with his fastball, he has a decent curve ball and a ton of potential…if nothing else, he could provide a decent option in the bullpen as the season moves on, should things shake out well for others in the rotation…the point is, it gives the team options with little risk and no guarentee…and i’m all for that, no matter who it is…

Vargas, 29, went 11-6 with one save and a 5.09 ERA in 29 games, including 23 starts, last year for the Brewers.

In 134.1 innings, he allowed 153 hits, 80 runs, with 54 walks and 107 strikeouts.

Vargas is 43-38 in his career, with a 4.95 ERA.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 10, 2008 11:06 AM

Star Trek statistics: just how likely are you to die if you beam down to the planet's surface wearing a red shirt?

You don't know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you're gonna die. That's the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn't seen any definitive proof; it's just what people said.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 10, 2008 10:52 AM

Checking out google trends today, interested to find one of the top searches is the word "misogynist." Not sure whether to take that as a positive development or a depressing one. I guess a lot of people had actually never...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 10, 2008 10:12 AM

Twitter Profile Page Ideas

My thumbnail ideas for useful information to display on an advanced, public Twitter profile page, per user. I.E.: Stats and heuristics to help me decide if this person will be interesting/unannoying to follow on Twitter.

• Average and highest daily post volume
• %age of total posts that are “@” responses
• %age of total posts that include a link
• Five most favorited posts by this person
• Five posts by this person that attracted the most “@” responses
• (up to) Five people this person follows who I also follow
  • (SORT BY least number of followers ASC)
  • [tells me more than if they follow CNN or Jason Calicacacainis]
• Five most followed people who follow this person
• Ratio of
  • Number of posts to number of people Followed (“The ‘Are You Really Using This?’ Index”)
  • Favorited posts to number of people they follow (“The Joy Index”)
  • Followers to Followed people (“The Reciprocation Index”)
• Bonus: percentage of total links that point to the same domain name. (“DoucheFilter”)
  Yeah it requires decrypting shorturls; that’s why we have computers.

So, yeah. Unpack those left joins, and have at it, boffins.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kung fu grippe, on April 10, 2008 10:00 AM

And I’m ok with that.  Solana Larsen of Global Voices explains:

How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what’s going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what “the Green zone” in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?

Not for long, is what I think. There are too many alternatives, and I’m not even referring to bloggers around the world. The type of thing we do at Global Voices is meant to be a service to professional journalists.

The founder of Alive in Baghdad, a fantastic video website that broadcasts weekly reports by Iraqi journalists, once told me in New York that he has a hell of a time getting news media organizations to recognize that his crew aren’t “citizen journalists” but actually, real, professional journalists who just happen to be Iraqi.

Sooner or later, qualified local perspectives will become what people prefer to hear, rather than what editors defer to when a situation becomes too dangerous for Western journalists to report from.

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 10, 2008 9:50 AM

I've really been enjoying Hulu lately; popular episodes today and newly-added feature films [via] 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 10, 2008 9:21 AM

This passed unnoticed, but John Edwards popped up and spoke out publicly the other day -- he penned a letter to the editor of The New York Times, demanding that the paper and other media be more accurate when it comes to counting our wounded in Iraq.

In his letter, he pointed out that the Pentagon has two sets of numbers for counting the wounded -- a weekly stat, which is incomplete because it leaves out those who became ill and required air transport from the war zone, and another monthly report that has complete numbers.

"After five years, it is time for respected news organizations to use the complete number," Edwards wrote. "And every day we should honor those who have been hurt. That number is 60,645 and rising."

Edwards was hitting on an issue that few are aware of but has great importance to veterans and some Capitol Hill staffers working on their behalf.

Whoever you back for president, and whatever you thought of Edwards' candidacy, something was undeniably lost when Edwards called it quits. These days, the only talk you hear about Edwards in political circles is about whether he'll endorse, but he's still out there, plugging away on the issues he cares about.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 10, 2008 9:19 AM

in reykjavík there is a wonderful little cafe called grai kötturin full of books they have arranged by color.  it’s a nice visual effect, but i’m not sure if it’s organizationally effective.  upon returning home from a trip to iceland, my boyfriend took to reorganizing my 200+ CDs by color.  it was OK, but i liked it better when they were arranged in the order in which i purchased them.

photo via jennyc

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 10, 2008 8:51 AM

Posted by Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager

The Google Base data API is used to manage and publish all kinds of data. Some of this data is particularly time-sensitive, like news or events that will expire in a matter of hours. Other data has more value over the long term, such as recipes that are intended to be used and shared indefinitely.

To streamline the publishing process and make sure that time-sensitive items appear in the snippets feed as quickly as possible, Google Base now differentiates between high- and low-priority items. High-priority items are published immediately. Low-priority items are published to the snippets feed within a day, and are still instantly available on the items feed.

For now, the default priority is "high." On May 8, we'll set the default priority to "low" and set quotas for high-priority items to ensure fairness. We'll provide more information about quotas in an upcoming blog post, so keep your eyes peeled.

For detailed information about how the new priorities work, refer to the documentation. As always, if you have questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for your participation in Google Base.

Originally posted by Google Base Blog from Official Google Base Blog, on April 10, 2008 8:47 AM

It's safe to say the only people who could really appreciate Top Chef, The Cookbook are rabid Top Chef fans, which the LA Times reviewer is not: "The charts (a handy elimination bracket that even a kindergartner would appreciate), the quotes ('I've got a false testicle, and I'm ready to cook'), the trivia (the second-season winner's favorite piece of equipment is the short plancha spatula) and graphics ("Top Coif") are ridiculously hilarious (emphasis on the ridiculous). But can you actually cook from it? Would anyone want to?" One recipe she tried, the vending machine veggie loaf from season 2's Carlos Fernandez, "was wretched." True fans probably wouldn't get passed the Top Coif page (which is absolutely brill, btw) anyway. [LAT via Eater LA]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 10, 2008 8:40 AM

Photograph of fog rolling over the East River by Stelmaria on Flickr

It's simply a lovely photograph of fog meeting the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. And today looks like it'll be beautiful.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 10, 2008 8:35 AM

Written by Anthony Burch

The title is all the intro you should need.

Indestructibility

It almost goes without saying, but if your hero cannot possibly be killed in any instance which does not somehow involve an incredibly rare space-rock, then you’ve got one boring-ass hero. It’s sort of like watching Neo fight all the agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded: we know our hero can’t possibly die, and he doesn’t act like he’s in any danger whatsoever, so the entire fight is a foregone conclusion and the audience becomes bored out of their skulls.

I mean, yeah - we obviously go into most superhero stories more or less positive that the hero won’t die, but they still entertain us because the hero doesn’t know that. Spidey is always scared, even if only a little, that one of the Green Goblin’s pumpkin bombs will be the end of him; Daredevil is fully aware that a well-placed projectile from Bullseye could kill him. As a result, these characters act with restraint and forethought; since Superman knows nothing bad can happen to him no matter what, he acts with no such subtlety. He flies headlong into every conflict, fists thrust forward, because he knows he’s in no immediate danger. Thus, we know he’s in no immediate danger, and we get bored out of our fucking skulls.

Moral absolutism

Superman sez: all criminals are bad. All lawbreakers deserve punishment. If Superman were in charge of the DEA, roughly 70% of college students across the country would be serving time in prison right now.

Superman has no values of his own, so he’s content to just uphold the values of the ruling class; this prevents him from becoming a dangerous vigilante a la Frank Castle, but it also means he has no legitimate opinions of his own where crime is concerned. In Paul Dini’s storybook series on DC superheroes, Batman had to deal with gangland violence, Wonder Woman fights terrorism, and Superman tries to end world hunger. This is no accident - Superman is way too morally simplistic to deal with complex things like the “wars” on drugs or terror. In Batman: War on Crime, Bats comes up against a young boy holding a gun on him. Batman, understanding the complexity of crime and the reasons for its existence, talks the kid into dropping the gun and giving up a life of violence.

Superman would probably just use his heat-vision to melt the gun, then put the kid in prison where he’d become a hard-bitten thug who’d murder somebody a few months after getting out.

Truth, justice, and the Kryptonian way

While Superman represents and upholds the values of right-wing America, he never really earned the right to do so. The dude’s a foreigner who took it upon himself to act as mankind’s savior when, generally, mankind shouldn’t need him (note, of course, that a significant number of the catastrophes which assault Metropolis on a weekly basis are initiated with the intent of fighting Superman - if Supes wasn’t around, a lot of the criminal bullshit wouldn’t be, either).

In the movie Superman Returns, Lois Lane writes an article explaining why mankind doesn’t need Superman because we should be able to take care of ourselves, and the presence of an omnipotent superhero basically takes all responsibility off the human race and turns us into a bunch of helpless sheep, powerless to do anything but scream for help from our savior in times of crisis. She eventually decides this viewpoint is incorrect if only because she wants to bone Superman so badly, but the argument remains relevant no matter what.

Really, what lessons do the Superman comics teach? It says that mankind is full of dull, pointless weaklings and evildoers who can only be stopped by a white ubermensch from another planet, who didn’t work a day in his life in order to achieve his powers. Yeah, you could say he’s a symbol of “hope,” but not hope in human nature - hope in an all-powerful alien who saves the world daily so you don’t have to get off your butt and act like a moral person. What sort of message is that?

Powers given < powers earned

What’s the virtue in acting like a badass hero if you were born with the ability to be a badass hero? What’s more impressive: the football player who trains for years and years just to play one game of pro football, or the guy who was born with innate athletic talent?

The answer is obvious, of course - powers earned are infinitely more impressive than intrinsic superpowers. Even though many superheroes do not “choose” their powers - from Spider-Man to Green Lantern, it’s usually just happy accident that these normal schlubs get turned into superheroes - it’s still a hell of a boring cop-out to simply be born with the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s just not terribly impressive, and requires zero effort. If Superman is capable of catching bullets with his teeth mere moments after landing on Earth, isn’t that a lot more boring than Bruce Wayne training for years and years, and using most of his fortune, to become Batman?

Hell, for that matter:

Batman > Superman

Batman had a much more tragic childhood (watching your parents die is infinitely worse than hearing your biological parents died without ever having met them), his crimefighting style is based more on intelligence and planning that Superman’s brute force, and he’s actually kicked the living shit out of Superman at least twice. Batman exhibits more moral maturity than Superman: Superman always upholds the status quo, but in Year One Batman goes on a crusade against Gotham’s corrupt elite. Batman is a detective, a scientist, a master of disguise, and a martial arts expert; Superman is a burly asshole in a red cape with big muscles.

And it’s not even a matter of Batman being a necessarily darker character than Superman, at least where it really counts. Both characters steadfastly refuse to kill their enemies under any circumstances; it’s just a hell of a lot harder for Batman, which makes his attitude toward mercy all the more admirable. It’s no problem at all for Superman to fly into the air holding a criminal by the scruff of their neck as their bullets bounce off him, but Batman has to disarm his baddies, then incapacitate them, then give them to the police, all while avoiding their knives and gunfire and explosives. It’s five times harder for Batman to do anything which Superman takes for granted on a daily basis, yet he often does it a hell of a lot better.

And let’s not forget The Dark Knight Returns, wherein Batman brilliantly beat Clark Kent almost to death (pausing only to fake his own) by using a mixture of planning and ingenuity that even Lex Luthor isn’t really capable of. Even if we were to judge superhero quality solely by who could beat who in a fight, then Batman still wins, hands down.

To fix these problems is to turn him into another superhero altogether

I used to be okay with Superman, if only because I believed that, one day, a writer might come along and turn Superman into a complex, three-dimensional being with flaws. A superhero with legitimate, kryptonite-unrelated weaknesses. A superhero who, every once in a while, actually loses.

Then I read the above strip from Dinosaur Comics and realized the futility of it all.

Superman represents hope and indefatigable strength, and any attempt to complicate these issues would no longer make him Superman. By definition, Superman has to be boring and morally absolute because if he isn’t, he ain’t Superman. I mean, in Kingdom Come he’s momentarily called to task for getting angry at the UN and threatening to kill the world leaders for killing Captain Marvel, but he’s talked down from doing anything irrational within, like, two pages of initially getting the idea to fuck up the United Nations. Heck, Superman’s arc in Kingdom Come isn’t even anything deeper than “America has forgotten me and I them, and we need to restore faith in one another.” Wow - real interesting. While you’re doing that, Batman will be over in the corner, contemplating suicide.

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Originally posted by bspcn from The Best Article Every day, on April 10, 2008 8:31 AM

A nice appreciation of Primer, one of my favorite movies.

At bottom, Primer is a movie about morals and ethics, about how science is able to accomplish extraordinary things without regard to their consequences. On the breathless (and terrific) DVD commentary track, Carruth calls Abe and Aaron "kids in a clubhouse" and mocks their habit of strutting around in crisp dress shirts and ties. As the film progresses, the sheer enormity of their creation throws their very human flaws into sharp relief; they reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, greedy, and often narrowly self-serving and diabolical in how they use the machine.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 10, 2008 8:08 AM

sarahschneider:

You know how we get snow days when it snows a lot? I think we should get perfect day days. Today is one of those days.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 10, 2008 6:12 AM

In what can only be described as classic, Shepard Fairey is suing another artist for stealing from him! After decades of pillaging other people's work wholesale, I guess Fairey thinks he's special, and should be protected from people just like him? Here's the full story on Animal New York. Texas-based artist Baxter Orr has put a medical mask over Andre's face, and gotten a cease and desist letter for his troubles.

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on April 10, 2008 5:46 AM

Hello,

Please join us at Barcade this Thursday, April 10th as we host Guinness World Records for a very special event. To celebrate the release of their latest book “Guinness World Records: Gamers Edition 2008” official judges from Guinness will be in attendance to witness and record any world records set in the following games/categories:

Fastest time to beat 5 boards on Ms. Pac Man
Fastest time to beat 5 boards on Tapper
Highest score in Out Run
Highest score in Ghosts N Goblins
Highest score in Donkey Kong (without using the hammer)

Gaming begins at 7:30pm. The competition and games will be open to anyone. There will also be a raffle and giveaways so come on out and take a shot at a world record.

Hope to see you there,

Barcade
388 Union Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
11211
718-302-6464
barcadebrooklyn.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 10, 2008 5:40 AM

She’s pro-choice.  Do we really have to keep talking about it?

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 10, 2008 5:37 AM

"Ever see that picture of Fifty Cent hugging Bill Gates? Fifty Cent's friends split evenly down the line between ghetto fabulous and corporate thieves. In either case there's massive value for someone like Fifty Cent if he can get always-on near-instant micro-blogging via SMS with all his most crucial associates, but that value *only* exists if the network is private. Being able to make your updates private is not enough. The entire conversation needs to be contained. Yeah but how much money could there be in building a Twitter for Fifty Cent? How much money? How much fucking *money*? Have you seen MTV Cribs?"

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 9, 2008 10:20 PM

An interesting take on Google's App Engine I hadn't considered. Doesn't mitigate the lock-in, or address the fact that Ning was also supposed to be Hypercard for the web.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 9, 2008 10:18 PM

I’m an unabashed Norman Rockwell fan. My family had a couple books about Norman Rockwell in our home when I was growing up and I spent a good amount of time (probably more than the average kid in 1986 did) staring at Rockwell’s illustrations.

In my Ted Talk from 2006, I mentioned this fascination with Rockwell and how I viewed blogs as a sort of equivalent to his illustrations. Just as Norman Rockwell’s work is mocked for its sentimentality, commercial and pop culture appeal (and so not considered high art), blogs are often mocked for their mundaneness and far too personal touches. Especially when contrasted with pure journalism or published writings.

That’s why I was pretty excited to go and see Rockwell's America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell at Charlotte’s Discovery Place Museum. Even though it was created for children and their fun little imaginations, my parents and I (and Penelope) had way too much of a good time walking around within the recreations of 20th century living and Rockwell’s covers.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 9, 2008 7:16 PM

Accidental Angel writes "Google recently launched a preview release of App Engine, an environment for building web applications using Google's infrastructure. Currently Python is the only server-side language supported, though they have stated that they look forward to supporting more languages. To that end, I've added an issue requesting Perl support to the GAE issue tracker. To vote for this support, click the 'star' icon on the issue tracker web page."

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by brian_d_foy from use Perl, on April 9, 2008 5:49 PM

A) Engraving of a twin-tailed siren (15th century); B) First Starbucks logo (1971 - 1987); C) Il Giornale logo; D) Merging of Starbucks and Il Giornale (1987 - 1992); E) Redesigned Starbucks logo (1992 - today); F) Current Starbucks logo, a revival of the original

If you stopped by Starbucks the other day to try their new Pike Place Roast brewed coffee, you may have noticed the cup looked a little different, with the siren's tails displayed more prominently. Actually, this "new" design is a throwback to the original Starbucks logo, which is in line with CEO Howard Schulz's call for the coffee empire to return to its roots.

Brand Autopsy and Brand New both examine elements of the evolution of the logo. Here we present the entirety of the logo's history, from 15th century engraving, to its initial rendering, to the logo following the merger of Starbucks and Il Giornale, and finally, to its present-day return back to the original.

Originally posted by Emily Koh from Serious Eats: Main, on April 9, 2008 2:45 PM

Florent, the beloved Meatpacking District hangout set to close this summer after almost twenty three years in business, will at least be going out in style, according to Frank Bruni, who spoke with owner Florent Morellet yesterday. The bistro's long goodbye will last five weeks, with each week dedicated to one of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Week One, starting Monday, May 26, will be Denial, with the remaining four weeks themed as Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

Each theme week will have special dishes, decor and performances by familiar faces like burlesque star Dirty Martini, all leading up to a big sad send-off on June 29th, Gay Pride Day. The Post also mentions a writing contest in which entrants would share their favorite Florent memory, with the winner getting a free dinner on the last night. Morellet tells Bruni:

So many of our customers are either at the stage of Anger or Denial. Some are just in a state of shock. We’re going to gather together to go through those stages and celebrate those stages, and end with a bang, and with irony, which we’ve always done.

The quirky French bistro – housed in an old diner that was a speakeasy in the ‘20s and a favorite greasy spoon for longshoremen and meatpackers in the ‘50s – has become even more cherished in recent years as a corrective to the fratastic Bridge and Tunnel scene dominating the neighborhood. The closure is caused by the increasingly repetitive groove in New York’s broken record: obscene real estate prices. Once Morellet vacates, the lease will jump from $6,000 to $50,000 per month; odds are the new tenant won’t be operating an idiosyncratic bistro.

Photo: Michael Dillingham.

Originally posted by John Del Signore from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 9, 2008 1:43 PM

Amazon's Simple Storage Service provides a simple, flexible, and inexpensive way to manage online data storage. Amazon's S3 modules for Perl make storing and retrieving data in your own programs almost trivial, leaving Amazon to worry about hosting, scaling, and backups. Abel Lin shows how to store, retrieve, and store data with Amazon S3.

Originally posted by Abel Lin from Perl.com, on April 9, 2008 1:15 PM

holy cow. via difft ktchn (via lorna). anyone got episodes of Goldie's Hot Raps to post up? How about that public access show that KRS One did in 87 or so? I know I remember seeing that....

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 9, 2008 12:56 PM

Now that Hillary's fired Mark Penn, can she now fire Lanny Davis? Please? Or ask that he be put under some sort of house arrest?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 9, 2008 12:27 PM

Monk star Stanley Kamel has died. The actor, who played Dr. Charles Kroeger on the Tony Shaloub series, was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday, says Access Hollywood. The cause of death is unknown. He was 65.

A rep for the USA network released this statement regarding the sad news:

“USA is deeply saddened by the news of Stanley Kamel’s passing. Stanley was an amazingly talented and extremely kind man, and an important member of the USA family. He will be sorely missed.”

I didn't recognize the name, but when I saw the photo of him, I realized I totally know of him! He played Dylan's wife's dad, Anthony Marchette, on 90210.

So sad.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on April 9, 2008 12:09 PM

Tired of counting delegates? Try some campaign astrology

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Radar Online Features, on April 9, 2008 11:35 AM

One of the most contentious posts we've ever had was written about the current Vogue cover featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen. PAPER managing editor Rebecca Carroll, jumping off comments by Harry Allen, opined that she believed the cover to be racist because it succumbed to sterotypes that have been plaguing African Americans for centuries. Though she made many valid points and I never expected everyone to agree with her, I was surprised by the vehemence of many of the comments expressed by those whom I know or assume to be not African Americans. What I took away from this is that there is a longing among many otherwise liberal people for the race issue to be put behind us. Call it fatigue with advocates who are perceived to have been playing the race card for too long. Barack Obama, himself, has worked hard to make distance between his brand of African Americanism and the old school Civil Rights movement's breed of leaders like Jessee Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton. Be that as it may, race continues to be a hot button issue. The reactions to Jeremiah Wright's histrionic preachings is an example of white folks feeling sterotyped by blacks just as blacks feel stereotyped by whites. (BTW: all the comments on Allen's blog -- except one -- agree with him.) Similarly, Spike Lee was honored with Chrysler's sixth annual Behind the Lens award at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel which was covered by the Hollywood Reporter. Again, Lee's comments, nothing he hasn't really expressed repeatedly over his 20 years as a filmmaker, have pushed some buttons among people who would otherwise think of themselves as enlightened liberals. Bottom line: sorry to all the non African-Americans among us. This ain't going away. In fact, it looks like it's going to be the issue of the election should Obama even get the nod. Spike Lee's comments in video above.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 9, 2008 9:38 AM

Filed under: OS, Portables, Switchers

What madness is this, a post about installing Windows? Well, actually, the folks over at VMware's Team Fusion link to this handy Lifehacker guide to trimming down Windows XP to the bare essentials. Obviously this is of interest to anybody running Windows on a Mac, particularly on a portable with limited hard drive space. So if you should find yourself needing to tread on the dark side (whether in Boot Camp, Parallels or Fusion), it's worth a look. Besides, as I always say, the less Windows the better. It's just a shame you have to build it yourself on a machine running Windows with the Windows utility nLite and can't simply download a pre-built virtual machine.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 9, 2008 9:30 AM

Elizabeth Edwards praised Hillary Clinton's health plan this morning on ABC News, saying bluntly: "I just have more confidence in Senator Clinton's policy than Senator Obama's on this particular issue."

This statement from Elizabeth Edwards — done on the record, as opposed to background sources putting out the message — could be yet a further sign that the lack of a health mandate in Obama's plan is what is leading John Edwards to not endorse anybody.

Late Update: Here's the video:

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on April 9, 2008 5:19 AM

• Paterson Panel to Examine MTA Finances (NYT, Post, Sun)
• Russianoff on What Can Be Done Instead of Pricing (NYT)
• Komanoff's 10 Reasons Pricing Failed -- And Brodsky's Reply (Gristmill)
• Bloomberg on Silver: "That's Not Leadership" (City Room)
  
• Post: "Blame Mike, Not Shelly"; Juan Gonzalez: "Silver Is a Hero"
• The Speaker Takes Care of His Own (News)
• Defeat Provokes Questions About Carbon Taxing Strategy (Carbon Tax Blog)
  
• If Drivers Don't Pay Congestion Fee, At Least Charge SUVs Higher Tolls (NYT)
• City Council Accuses MTA of Neglecting G Riders (AMNY)
• Community Liaison for Atlantic Yards Is a No-Show (News)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 9, 2008 5:00 AM

• Boston Red Sox - Red Sox - Boston.com
  "The 2007 championship banner was unfurled, the Red Sox got their rings, and an emotional Bill Buckner tossed out the first pitch to a rousing ovation at Fenway Park." Play ball!
  (tags: baseball boston newengland sport sports teams Sox redsox mlb redsoxnation)
• Are social media jobs just a dodge? :: BtoB Magazine
  [via alexdc]
  (tags: social SocialMedia marketing business jobs)
• Boston Red Sox - Red Sox' home opener a success all around - The Boston Globe
  "Red Sox games have morphed into kaleidoscopic carnivals. No moment is wasted or unsponsored. NASCAR without the crashes. Tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Lugo in the sky with Neil Diamonds."
  (tags: redsox sox redsoxnation baseball sports boston)

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on April 9, 2008 4:33 AM

You can see more work from Faith47 here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 9, 2008 4:24 AM

(Thanks, Keith)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 9, 2008 4:19 AM

I am incredibly excited about the launch of Flickr's new video uploading abilities -- what a welcome addition to an already-awesome online service! (I also love Heather Champ's silly little intro video to the service... nice work, that.) With the new kiddo at home, we find that we're taking a slew of both pictures and videos; we've shared all the photos with our people via Flickr, but have had to do a bit of custom work to get the videos online in a way that let us exercise a bit of control over who could see and reuse them. No longer!

Originally posted by Jason from Q Daily News, on April 9, 2008 4:14 AM

Taking a moment to remember the B-Boy pioneer Wayne "Frosty Freeze" Frost, who introduced breaking to the masses in Flashdance (though I remember him best for Style Wars)...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 9, 2008 3:47 AM

Fossil Fools. This April 1st saw a host of organized pranks, hoaxes and actions on climate change, oil and coal in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand. April Fool’s Day is a hard context to punch through, but could this be the start of a May Day-like tradition? A more direct-action Earth Day?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on April 8, 2008 8:57 PM

Hi. I’ve just updated to Wordpress 2.5 and while I find the admin interface horrible, the web site seems to look okay. This upgrade fixes some pretty nasty vulnerabilities that the 2.3-ish version of Wordpress had. Do yourself a favor and take the time to update. If you notice anything gone kablooey about the blog post-update, please leave a comment here or drop me an email. Thanks!

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on April 8, 2008 7:51 PM

Karen Tumulty remembers how Mark Penn almost sunk Gore too. Before Gore canned him.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 8, 2008 6:21 PM

Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and “soon” is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr. If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream.

90 seconds? While this might seem like an arbitrary limit, we thought long and hard about how video would complement the flickrverse. If you’ve memorized the Community Guidelines, you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share.

    

         

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been hosting a super secret beta group to work out the kinks. Check out some of our favourites in Video on Flickr. And speaking of the beta group, we’d like to thank our members who helped us out (and entertained us) with their uploads. The rock stars include: Brenda Anderson, zyrcster, striatic, Lú_, werewegian, matt, Silly Luis, The Searcher, emdot, GustavoG, Lunasooz, and ♥ shhexycorin ♥.

Not sure where to begin? You can participate in our first meme, Fridgets:

         

Questions? There’s lots of great info in the Video FAQs, and if you’ve got feedback (or need help or find bugs), you’ll find us in the Help Forum.

Hey group admins! The launch of video on Flickr brings additional moderation tools to your group. In addition to specifying what kind of content you’d like to see in your group (”photos”, “video”, or “photos + video”), you can also have a say in the safety level of what people can contribute to your group pool. There’s more info in this revised group FAQ.

Bonus (for those who’ve read this far): We’re doubling the size of photos that can be uploaded — 20MB per photo for pro members and 10MB per photo for members with free accounts.

Originally posted by Heather Champ from Flickr Blog, on April 8, 2008 5:31 PM

Flickr users can now upload video to their accounts. I uploaded a video during the beta test but since I'm not a pro user, I can't show it to anyone now that Flickr's gone public with the video uploading. :(

Update: Ok, Flickr Pro is back in effect. Still can't mark the video unprivate. Maybe the video stuff isn't truly live yet? (thx, heather & adam)

Update: Yep, the video stuff goes live "starting late Tuesday or early Wednesday".

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 8, 2008 5:18 PM

Classifying My Criticism

After reading all the feedback regarding my Safari 3/Firefox 3 comparison from over the weekend, it occurred to me that I should have clearly organized my criticism of Firefox 3 into two separate categories: those issues where Firefox is clearly wrong, and those which are subjective issues where I just happen to prefer the way Safari works.

Things where Firefox is wrong:

• Background windows don’t have Leopard’s light gray “disabled” appearance.

• Text editing shortcuts don’t follow Mac standards.

• No Services menu or system-wide Dictionary support.

• The “New Tab” command only works when a browser window is frontmost.

• No AppleScript support.

• Tabs can’t be dragged to create a new window.

• Inline PDF viewing.

Subjective design issues:

• Firefox’s location field auto-completion requires you to use Down Arrow (or Tab) to select one of the suggestions; Safari lets you just hit Return to choose the first one. Some people strongly prefer Firefox’s method because Safari’s method gets in their way when they really do want to go to the “example.com” homepage, but Safari unhelpfully auto-completes to a page within the example.com domain. With Firefox’s method you have to hit an extra key (Down Arrow) to get any auto-completion at all. With Safari’s method you have to hit an extra key (Delete) to reject auto-completion when you really just want the URL you’ve typed into the field. I simply prefer Safari’s behavior.¹

• I prefer Safari’s “inside the location field” progress indicator. There is, however, a Firefox extension called Fission that mimics this, and it works in the current Firefox 3 beta.

In case it wasn’t clear, I certainly wasn’t pushing for Firefox to clone Safari’s UI and behavior. In fact, that would be foolish — Firefox can’t be better than Safari if it isn’t different.

Mike Beltzner’s Response

Mozilla developer Mike Beltzner wrote a thoughtful weblog post responding to mine. The best news is that two of my top complaints, the lack of a proper “background” window appearance and the text editing behavior of arrow keys, are set to be addressed before Firefox 3.0 ships. Regarding the text editing bug:

Gruber’s not alone. A non-scientific survey of Mac users showed that 8% believed this to be the most significant problem with Firefox on the Mac. There’s a bug on file which has had some activity, and it looks like Josh Aas would be willing to review a patch if one came along.

Beltzner also expressed interest in some of the other issues, like dragging a tab to create a new window. His whole piece is worth reading, and shows why Firefox 3 is already such an improvement in Mac-specific ways.

Development Versus Daily Browsing

The point of my comparison was to explain why I went back to Safari for daily browsing, but I mentioned in my review that many web developers might use Safari for browsing, but Firefox for web development testing. Dozens of readers wrote in to say they do just that, and most of them pointed out that I neglected to mention Joe Hewitt’s acclaimed Firebug extension for web developers.

Safari 3 has beefed up its own web developer tools — its new Develop menu includes a slew of useful tools, including a Web Inspector window that’s comparable to the Firefox Web Developer plugin. Plus there’s Drosera, the JavaScript debugger for WebKit. But I didn’t get a single email from anyone who prefers Safari developer tools over Firebug and Firefox.

Here’s an oddity I forgot to mention, though: Safari 3.1’s View Source window still doesn’t offer HTML syntax highlighting — but it’s clearly capable of it, because the source view in the Web Inspector window has it.

Counting Clicks

Complaining about Firefox’s “just click in the location field and the whole URL will be selected automatically” behavior, I wrote:

When I click the mouse in the middle of a URL, I just want to place the insertion point. I don’t want to select the entire URL. If I wanted to select the entire URL, I’d double-click. Click to place, double-click to select — just like any other text field.

Clearly that was wrong. Double-clicking should select “word” within the URL, and triple-clicking should Select All. That’s standard Mac text field behavior, and that’s how Safari works. The only excuse I can offer is that I never triple-click in Safari because I know that there’s a convenient shortcut to select the entire URL if that’s what I want: just single-click on the favicon on the left side of the location field. (You can also drag this favicon, even from a Safari window in the background.)

Benchmarks

I didn’t bother with benchmarks because I don’t care. Both Safari 3 and Firefox 3 feel “fast enough” to me, and I didn’t notice any sites where one performed significantly better than the other. Your mileage may vary; a few readers claim, for example, that Gmail works a lot faster in Firefox.

FlashBlock and Other Extensions

I was under the impression that the FlashBlock Firefox extension didn’t yet work with Firefox 3, because it doesn’t appear in the Get Add-Ons tab of Firefox’s Add-Ons window. It does work, though — you just have to go to the FlashBlock web page to install it. What FlashBlock does is very cool: it disables all Flash elements on a page until you click on them. If you’re as annoyed by obnoxious animation as I am, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

It’s also the case that you can disable the version checking that keeps not-yet-certified-for-Firefox-3 add-ons from loading; apparently many of them work just fine.

And a bunch of people suggested input manager hacks for Safari that attempt some of these same things. I know these things exist, and I’ve used some in the past, but they are not equivalent to Firefox extensions based on supported, official APIs.

---

1. And as I linked the other day, it’s possible to get this behavior in Firefox via a hidden preference. ↩

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 8, 2008 5:06 PM

Starbucks unveiled its new everyday coffee brew--the Pike Place Roast--in stores today. The Seattle-based chain's press release explains the new brew has "Starbucks signature bold flavor with a smoother finish balanced by soft acidity and subtle, rich flavors of cocoa and toasted nuts." Additionally, the stores indicate when the coffee was roasted and will "brew smaller batches with a hold time of no more than 30 minutes."

A store in Chicago actually ran out of the old roast earlier this week and starting selling the new two days early, allowing a Tribune reporter to file this review:

Pike Place delivers a pretty great cup of joe. It's got a light fruity and nutty aroma, a smooth feel on the tongue but nice body and no wimpy finish. This lighter roast (clearly a response to widespread complaints about Starbucks's penchant for over-roasting) allows a broader spectrum of flavors and aromatics to emerge, things that can sometimes be burnt away in a darker roast. Starbucks might not like this, but it kind of reminds me of Dunkin' Donuts' house coffee.

There's also a new logo on the coffee cups: Replacing the tradition green logo is a brown one, proclaiming "Fresh Roasted Coffee." A barista was happy with the new cups; he hoped the staff would be getting new hats with the brown logo. Another barista chimed in, "We need new aprons, too."

CEO Howard Schultz, who feels the new roast changes the coffee paradigm, ushered in the new java era by appearing in Bryant Park, where a replica of the Pike Place Starbucks location was constructed (Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris was the city official on hand) and bags of the roast were given away.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 8, 2008 5:03 PM

You probably remember that a month ago today Democrat Bill Foster won a special election to fill Denny Hastert's old seat in Illinois 14, what had been a reliably Republican district. Foster beat dairy kingpin Jim Oberweis and it seems one of the statements that helped Foster pull this seat out of Republican hands was Oberweis's declaration that we need to stay in Iraq for another ten years. (Think about it: in McCain terms, that's practically cut and run.) Here's the ad the Foster campaign ran about Oberweis and his pledge of ten more years in Iraq ...

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 8, 2008 4:42 PM

I required redemption. When I arrived home two weeks ago after work, I was informed by my wife that I'd forgotten our anniversary. Eep. To partially make up for my cliched gaffe, I put my efforts towards getting a reservation at Momofuku Ko...the notoriously hard-to-get-into Momofuku Ko.¹ We're big fans of the other two Momofukus, so I logged into their online reservation system and happened to get something for last Friday night.

But this isn't a story about their reservation system; too many of those have been written already. Bottom line: the food is wonderful and should be the focus of any Ko tale. Two dishes in particular were the equal of any I've had at other more expensive restaurants. The first was a pea soup with the most tender langoustine. The second dish, the superstar of the restaurant, was a coddled egg with caviar, onion soubise, and tiny potato chips (photo). Didn't want that one to end. And I didn't even mention the shaved foie gras (with Reisling built right in!) or the English muffins amuse or the nice wine pairings.

For the full food porn treatment, check out Kathryn's photoset, a review at Goodies First, Ed Levine's preview, Ruth Reichl's first look, and a review by The Wandering Eater.

[1] Two quick notes on the reservation process.

1. I spent all of five minutes on a Saturday morning making the reservation on the Ko web site. It can be done.

2. Chang and co. are serious about the web site being the only way to get into the restaurant. As we were leaving after our meal, a friend of Chang's and bona fide celebrity stopped in to say hi. After some chit chat, the fellow asked if he could get a reservation at Ko for the next evening. Chang laughed, apologized, and told him that he had to go through the web site. They're not kidding around, folks. ↩

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 8, 2008 4:24 PM

First Salesforce, now Google. When will these companies get it through their heads that proprietary, single-source platforms are ridiculous? I mean, why in the world would I lock myself into one software platform AND one hosting provider when I there are so many high-quality, low-cost, portable alternatives out there? Silly.

— Charlie Wood

As we as an industry build out various cloud computing offerings, the issue is becoming clear, as in computing paradigms before, who wins? Open or Closed? Google’s App Engine and Force.com are at one extreme. You must use their storage system. You must use their (choice of) language. Beyond that, you are locked into their authentication systems, their email systems and most importantly, their specific approach to scaling. Google App Engine implies a certain way of scaling. Google has scaled search (a single tenant application). They have had a little more trouble scaling Gmail, for example (also single tenant).

App Engine is certainly convenient for Google because it maps exactly to what they have already built for internal use. But does it mean that Google has solved the hard problem of how to manage a cloud computing offering while simultaneously giving developers the freedom of full root control? And is root access important?

Amazon has taken a less closed approach. EC2 is open. The down side to EC2 is that it is fully virtual, meaning that if it goes down you loose your files, your DB, everything on your EC2 instance. Amazon’s solution to this has been the “closed” or proprietary S3 storage offering.

The bottom line is that if you build your application on App Engine, Force or EC2/S3, you are locked into those platforms. Moving off will require a substantial re-engineering effort.

At Joyent, we believe Open Wins.

Developers get root on Joyent. You can run any DB, any application stack. Any storage. The fact that Twitter grew up on Joyent and then graduated is actually proof that we really do run an open-standards-based cloud. Try to leave App Engine. Or AWS. When you move can you install Bigtable? S3?

Jonathan Schwartz is right when he says computing is becoming a utility that can be monetized like any other commodity: when there are standards. There aren’t standards for cloud computing today beyond building on open protocol, open source stacks, and being willing to give customers control (i.e. “root”), and pick up their applications and move to other clouds, without a rewrite.

You want root.

Originally posted by David Young from Joyeur, on April 8, 2008 3:22 PM

Video of the top 50 soccer goals. A dubbed-from-VCR YouTube video is probably not the best way to watch these, but that's the hand we've been dealt.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 8, 2008 1:22 PM

Filed under: iTS, iTunes

iTunes U, Apple's program to host multimedia files and podcasts for various institutes of learning in the iTunes Store, has a brand new member -- a big one. The New York Public Library has just launched its iTunes U page. Included are lots of audio programs broken up into several sections, as well as some archival material. The best part, of course, is that all of this content is free.

[via NYPL Labs]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Scott McNulty from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 8, 2008 1:00 PM

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The previous data as a sparkline:

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on April 8, 2008 11:37 AM

My wife is a bit of a statistics nut. A few years ago, she hooked herself up to a heart rate monitor during a playoff football game and graphed the results. Sometimes I think she does things just so she's got an excuse to open up Excel. So I wasn't really surprised when she showed me this graph yesterday afternoon:

That's a record of Meg's weight from when she got pregnant with Ollie to the present, 80 weeks of data in all...40 weeks with Ollie on the inside and 40 on the outside.

Charles Joseph Minard may get all the accolades for his graphic of Napolean's march to Moscow, but for me, the above chart is the most beautiful ever created. When I look at it, I see Ollie. The graph is a portrait of him, as sure as this photo is. It's also a record of an intense time for our family. I'm reminded of Meg, happy and pregnant but also struggling with her changing body. Trips we took, doctor visits, the growing belly and anticipation, the birth itself, and then falling off the cliff into the giddy, difficult unknown of new parenthood. And then you can see Meg slowly but surely getting back into shape while being a full-time stay-at-home mom (and managing an architecture project to boot), and achieving her goal of getting back to her pre-baby fitness level in a scant 8 months. You can't really see it, but there's a happy father and proud husband in there somewhere as well.

That's a lot of emotional impact for a simple black and white line graph with few labels. Imagine if it were in color and isometric 3-D! ;)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 8, 2008 11:02 AM

Natalie: Either something's gone horribly wrong at my Starbuck's, or their cups got new outfits.

Britt: That's Starbuck's? It looks so sterile.

Natalie: I know! Why isn't everyone talking about this?

Britt: Um, I'm off coffee, so I'm not sure. But I did hear they have a new blend so maybe they're just coordinating? Or maybe it's a sign they're using more recycled paper?

Natalie: Oh. Well, I do like a monochromatic look and I'm all for recycling. But I'm kind of worried. I mean, will we still be able to recognize Mary-Kate?

Britt: Don't worry - the white cup will be totally easy to spot in front of all the new black Balenciaga.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on April 8, 2008 10:57 AM

Every google account just became an OpenID point

Originally posted by mathowie from A Whole Lotta Nothing, on April 8, 2008 10:49 AM

Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, talks to Streetsblog about the future of transit funding without congestion pricing. Direct quotes are in quotation marks.

Streetsblog: Without pricing, how will the MTA get funded?
Russianoff: They currently have a proposed $29.5 capital plan. The vast majority is for stuff that absolutely has to be done -- rehabbing 44 stations, buying buses, signal and track work, and so on. There is a $9B projected deficit plus $4.5B that will not be coming from pricing bonds, plus $4B that won't be coming in additional city and state money that was promised if pricing passed.

"Traditionally the MTA has raised funds from broad-based taxes -- corporate income tax, mortgage recording tax, real estate transaction tax, sales tax, gas tax -- and through fares and tolls. With tolls, excess from upkeep of bridges and tunnels is given to the MTA, and a large chunk of that is used for capital projects. Now [without pricing], we can do what [former MTA chief Peter] Kalikow said five years ago and increase all of them a little bit."

But these are all subject to fluctuation, as we're seeing now with the dip in real estate tax revenues, which had previously allowed the MTA to run surpluses.

"So one solution is the traditional one, which is to raise one or more of those taxes." Richard Brodsky has said relying on a broad-based tax is what he prefers.

(more...)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 8, 2008 9:15 AM

As expected, Google opens up its cloud to host software applications and services--and developers quickly complain that it is too restrictive. They say it offers less than Amazon's similar service. Check out the comments on Techcrunch. But I think a few of the commenters on Techcrunch have it right. This is a first step. Google will figure out what works and broaden the offering.

What does this mean? It's a big step toward turning Google's cloud, the biggest distributed computing system on earth, into the world's preeminent computer. Think of computing like its first cousin, energy. (Computing, if you think about it, is just a highly processed form of electricity.) If Google can offer cheaper and more efficient computing than anyone else, the company could position itself as the Saudi Arabia of the information economy. It could add capacity and drive down prices, punishing competitors, or take capacity offline, driving prices up. That said, with every giant data center it adds to its cloud, Google is betting on its status quo. If someone comes along and develops a more efficient cloud architecture, Google's computing empire could become a crushing legacy. Not that I see that coming anytime soon. Here's Eric Schmidt talking about clouds in November.

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on April 8, 2008 6:46 AM

According to the Star-Telegram, Rangers RHP Robinson Tejeda, who was designated for assignment before the season started, is still available in a trade, “although there’s been little interest in him.”

Last week in Newsday, David Lennon wrote that the Mets have interest in Tejeda.

However, the same at ESPN.com, Jayson Stark wrote that the team had no interest in Tejada, nor David Wells or Jeff Weaver for that matter.

59 career starts for the Phillies and Rangers, the 25–year-old Tejeda is 14–17 with a 4.91 ERA.

He ended his rookie year with a 3.57 ERA in 26 starts for the Phillies, but has seen his ERA rise every season since.

…i think tejada would be a good pick up for the Mets, to add to Triple-A New Orleans…i don’t typically advocate acquiring these sorts of players, mostly because there are so many, and it would dominate my thought and blog…so i avoid it…tejeda, though, like Claudio Vargas, is just boiling over with raw talent…he has good command of his fastball, which can reach the high 90s…it’s his secondary pitches he struggles with…to me, he has hard-throwing reliever written all over him…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 8, 2008 4:32 AM

How can we use the Web to drive social change? Learn from the story of Architecture for Humanity, which leveraged a 2006 TED Prize to build the Open Architecture Network, linking communities around the globe with architects and designers who can help them solve problems. Tomorrow night, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, a few major players in the effort will talk about how it happened and what they learned: Amy Novogratz, the director of the TED Prize; Kate Stohr of Architecture for Humanity (whose cofounder, Cameron Sinclair, was awarded the TED Prize in 2006); Scott Mattoon of Sun Microsystems, a key partner; and Maria Giudice of Hot Studio, which built the OAN site and is now working on Dave Eggers' 2008 TED Prize wish, OnceUponASchool.org.

The panel happens at 6 pm at the Commonwealth Club on Market Street, Wednesday, April 9. There's a reception beforehand, at 5:30 pm.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED | TEDBlog, on April 8, 2008 3:53 AM

Google launched their app engine today, and I'd like to be the 10,000,000th pundit to comment on it. First, it's clearly a nod to Amazon's thing, a direct competitor for developers looking to host projects on proper servers without incurring proper hardware costs.

Everyone else is already describing what this is, but I'm interested in the ethical and motivational implications. Most of what I'm reading about the GAE is some variation of "joy, now I have to learn Python", which I think is an accurate stand-in for Google's entire stance on this project. A quick initial read of their documentation suggests that there's a lot more than "learn Python" here - there's also "learn Django" and "learn BigTable". GAE is as much an architectural, moral, and stylistic project as it is a technical one. Where Amazon gives you shiny rack of tools to play with, Google gives you the Tao.

At the moment, Google seems to have tuned their project towards the world of web applications, not the kind of general purpose computing offered by Amazon. I expect this to change. AWS is pushing a menu of services like SQS that provide specific pieces of a distributed infrastructure. GAE is giving you the whole shooting match in one go, but telling you approximately how it should be used. I've heard a bunch of conjectures on why this is: some people think it's a way to smooth the entry path for startups looking to get bought by Google ("hey, we already use all your stuff"), while Tom sneakily suggests it's a golden parachute for soon-to-be vested ex-employees who'd still like a bit of the old infrastructure to play with.

My own initial take on both projects has been like night and day. Amazon's services were like a breath of fresh air while so far, Google's has filled me a dread I dare not name, in spite of proudly using Python as my "thinking language" of choice. AWS exists happily as a component set for other applications, and I use S3 extensively to serve map tiles and listen to music while Crimespotting runs on EC2. I think that in this case, Google is commoditizing the wrong end of the stack. They seem to be providing the equivalent of single-language shared hosting without really opening up the benefits of a massive computing infrastructure that a tiny minority of applications need or want. I take my own initial preemptive exhaustion as a sign that they are expecting too much of their prospective users. Kiss the ring.

That said, both of these services have an ethical dimension that I appreciate. I trust that machine instances and running applications not seeing a lot of activity are swapped out in favor of those that are, a form of carbon footprint minimization impossible to achieve with your billed-monthly colocated server. In this case, scale does matter as long as the two companies keep their prying eyes out of the data and processes entrusted to them. I'm looking forward to seeing greater commoditization in this area, and I happen to think that Amazon is doing a significantly better job moving us in that direction.

Comments

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on April 7, 2008 10:04 PM

As you might have heard, Google AppEngine launched tonight, with Python as its initial (and only) programming language to interface with its services. I started switching over to Python (from Perl) a few years ago for general processing and daemon tasks (mostly for its sweet RPC bindings and its comprehensive, if still somewhat convoluted Unicode handling). Over time, as the libraries matured, I started moving more and more over - some things were long overdue, like a CPAN equivalent (pypi and EasyInstall have finally stepped up to the plate), but in some areas, like with cross-platform GUI toolkits, things like py2app/pyexe, or with libraries like Twisted, and SciPy, and Beautiful Soup, Python has long since blown past the competition.

Earlier this year, as I was wrapping up at Yahoo!, I knew I wanted a clean start, and after reviewing what was out there decided on switching to Python as my primary language and making a go of writing my new web apps in Django (deployment, performance, and decoupling being among the primary factors; less wankery in the development community was also a big part of it). I've been somewhat sidetracked by a slew of other projects, but so far it's been a good experience (and I hope to have some stuff to publish soon).

Anyway, all this is a very, very, long setup for a list of resources that may help those who are looking to get started working w/ Python. I'm still not as proficient as I'd like, so here are the references that I typically reach for:

• PLEAC Python - PLEAC (Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook) is a project that aims to port the Perl Cookbook to other languages. The Python port has been at 85% for years, but is invaluable when looking at basic constructs.
• (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library - although a bit out of date and not comprehensive, it offers short and useful examples for most of the modules in Python. This is great because often times the official library docs while technically complete are also at times completely opaque. If I were to give any advice to people writing API docs, it would be to 1) have some simple real-world usage examples and to 2) allow user annotations (PHP was (and remains!) way ahead of the curve on this one. It's amazing how primitive the core language/library docs are.)
• Dive Into Python - I waffle back and forth on how much I like Mark Pilgrim's book - it's oftentimes just short of useful and not organized so well (I'm still looking for a good language reference), but it also has really useful tidbits, like when I forget how to append the system import path
• Python-by-example - this is a new one, and I haven't used it much (inline-search would do wonders for this) but I wholly approve of the intent: "This guide aims to show examples of use of all Python Library Reference functions, methods and classes."
• Otherwise, I've found that doing a web search almost always turns up something on ASPN or on a mailing list somewhere.
• Lastly, there are some interactive shells that are useful, specifically IPython. Reinteract is less of a tool that I use everyday and more of something that's damn cool. The same w/ Nodebox.

Of course, one of the biggest benefits of Python is how readable the source code is - it's definitely a big help for seeing how things works. Have any of your own favorite Python resources? Please post 'em up on the comments.

Getting up to speed on Django probably deserves its own post...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from random($foo), on April 7, 2008 10:03 PM

Ten ideas for making NYC streets a more friendly place for those not in automobiles, including the woonerf, bicycle boulevards, and the green grid.

A woonerf, which is surfaced with paving blocks to signal a pedestrian-priority zone, is, in effect, an outdoor living room, with furniture to encourage the social use of the street. Surprisingly, it results in drastically slower traffic, since the woonerf is a people-first zone and cars enter it more warily. "The idea is that people shall look each other in the eye and maneuver in respect of each other," Mr. Gehl said.

Pedestrian, cyclists, and motorists looking each other in the eye reminded me of a passage that Tyler Cowen pulled from Peter Moskos' Cop in the Hood:

Car patrol eliminated the neighborhood police officer. Police were pulled off neighborhood beats to fill cars. But motorized patrol -- the cornerstone of urban policing -- has no effect on crime rates, victimization, or public satisfaction. Lawrence Sherman was an early critic of telephone dispatch and motorized patrol, noted, "The rise of telephone dispatch transformed both the method and purpose of patrol. Instead of watching to prevent crime, motorized police patrol became a process of merely waiting to respond to crime."

Officers traveling in high speeds in cars apart from pedestrian and living areas makes it difficult for them to look potential criminals in the eye. (thx, meg)

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Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 7, 2008 9:36 PM

New web app platform from Google: “Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.” In part this is a competitor to Amazon services like S3 and SimpleDB, but at first glance it seems more cohesive and more focused — Google is offering to host your entire web app, not just the storage. It lets you use Google Checkout for commerce and Google Accounts for user accounts.

“Additional runtime environments and languages may be supported in the future”, but for now it’s entirely Python-based, and includes support for Django. The “SDK” is a Python staging server that you can run on Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. Google App Engine is currently in “preview release” and new sign-ups are limited, but when it ships it’s going to offer fairly generous limits for free accounts. A new app shouldn’t cost a penny to host until it’s somewhat popular.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 7, 2008 9:13 PM

Some great photos of Americans commuting by Vincent Laforet using a tilt shift lens. (via dryden is home)

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Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 7, 2008 8:21 PM

Posted by Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead, Google App Engine

We just launched a preview release of Google App Engine, a way for developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure. In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run web applications.

With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There's more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)

Google App Engine is free to use during the preview release, but the amount of computing resources any app can use is limited. In the future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing resources as needed, but Google App Engine will always be free to get started.

Today's launch is a preview release. We've got a lot left to do, and there are a lot of features we still want to add to the system. What we'd really like is to get your feedback on it, so we know which features are most important to you. We'll use your suggestions to keep improving the system.

This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please sign up, download the SDK, and start your engines.

Originally posted by Karen from Official Google Blog, on April 7, 2008 8:21 PM

their cloud computing platform; all apps must be written in Python, and it's free for limited usage  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 7, 2008 7:55 PM

Following an evening closed-door meeting in which state leaders discussed congestion pricing one last time today, legislators emerged announcing no deal had been reached. Here is a statement from Mayor Bloomberg:

"Today is a sad day for New Yorkers and a sad day for New York City.  Not only won't we see the realization of a plan that would have cut traffic, spurred our economy, reduced pollution and improved public health, we will also lose out on nearly $500 million annually for mass transit improvements and $354 million in immediate federal funds.

"I will be speaking with Secretary Peters and will express my thanks for her commitment to innovative solutions to real problems facing large cities today.  I will also express my deep disappointment that, sadly, even Washington, which most Americans agree is completely dysfunctional, is more willing to try new approaches to longstanding problems than our elected officials in the State Assembly.  It takes true leadership and courage to embrace new concepts and ideas and to be willing to try something.  Unfortunately, both are lacking in the Assembly today.

"If that wasn't shameful enough, it takes a special type of cowardice for elected officials to refuse to stand up and vote their conscience– on an issue that has been debated, and amended significantly to resolve many outstanding issues, for more than a year.  Every New Yorker has a right to know if the person they send to Albany was for or against better transit and cleaner air.  People know where I stood, and where members of the City Council stood.  They deserved at least that from Albany.

(more...)

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on April 7, 2008 4:19 PM

Yesterday Jonathan Butler unleashed the Brooklyn Flea upon the borough, and even Marty Markowitz showed up (perhaps to find replacement placemats for his wife?). Butler tells us that "While we could have asked for better weather, we couldn't have asked for a better turnout or better vibes from all the visitors and vendors."

Those good "vibes" radiated out towards the local establishments as well, Andrew Tarlow tells us his Fort Greene Bonita fared well yesterday: "From my standpoint we had an amazing day at the restaurant. It was busier than usual." The trickle down is in effect! And it's good to see the subway problems didn't hinder the fleasters from scooping up goods at the market; but expect some bigger crowds as the weather warms up!

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 7, 2008 3:54 PM

Over at the Daily Politics, Liz Benjamin reports that state leaders are negotiating behind closed doors and congestion pricing is still on the table. City Room is also reporting that Governor Paterson called an emergency meeting and the plan was still under discussion as of 5:45 pm.

Streetsblog readers will recall that congestion pricing looked to be dead and gone last July 17 and then a couple of days later, after the federal deadline had been missed, the mayor's political people pulled off the deal that created the Congestion Mitigation Commission process. A dig through Streetsblog's July 2007 archives tells the story.

So, who knows? The state Legislature still has to produce a budget. They still need to address a multi-billion dollar transit deficit. They still want pay raises.

Originally posted by Aaron Naparstek from Streetsblog, on April 7, 2008 3:00 PM

1. Florida lawmakers are re-considering their strict "abstinence only" sex-education stance in light of a survey that revealed a high number of the state's teens believe: -drinking a cup of bleach will prevent HIV -a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy -smoking marijuana will prevent pregnancy 2. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but the speculators that bought Murakami merchandise at last week's Brooklyn Museum opening might want to hold off a bit on the resale. The eBay bids on the limited edition prints (retail $1,000) and framed "denim" samples (retail $6,000) are currently only in the $75 to $100 range. Or maybe they should try Sotheby's new website. According to the Wall Street Journal, it's has been "re-configured for beginner clients." 3. New Kids vs. Jonas Brothers? We're betting on the Brothers. 4. We checked out the new Brooklyn flea market on Sunday (every week @ 176 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene) and we are happy to report that it was slammin'. 5. Several restaurants in San Francisco have started adding a "health tax" to customer's tabs. The flat fee or percent of the total is in response to a new law that requires employers to pay for employee health insurance or put money into a pool that will cover them. 6. We ran into Conrad Ventur at our Beautiful People party last week and he gave us the latest copy of his Useless newspaper (#7) featuring Brendan Sexton III on the cover shot by Marcelo Krasilcic. FYI: Krasilcic just shot Mary-Louise Parker for the May issue of PAPER.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 7, 2008 1:24 PM

This just in: Junot Diaz, author of one of the best books we've read in quite some time, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Congrats, JD! Click here for the list of winners.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 7, 2008 12:28 PM

Speaker Sheldon Silver, as quoted in the Daily Politics:

"The conference has decided that they are not prepared to do congestion pricing," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver after emerging from behind closed doors where he was closested with members of his Democratic majority. "I think you can speak to the members of the conferene who have made that determination."

"Many of them just don't believe in the concept," the speaker continued. "Many of them think this bill is flawed. So an overwhelming majority of the conference that opposes congestion pricing, and for that reason, the congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly."

"They made a decision," Silver said of his members. "If I were making the decision alone, I might have made a different decision."

Assuming this is truly the end and not an exercise in brinkmanship, Streetsblog will post a more complete post-mortem soon.

If you're feeling outraged at this news, may we suggest a constructive way to vent?

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 7, 2008 11:10 AM

Christian Schwartz sent us this great example of Tuscan Kanji from his travels in Japan. Seven Samurai anyone?

Originally posted by Ben Kiel from House Industries Show and Tell, on April 7, 2008 9:57 AM

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Congestion pricing is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enact progressive transportation policy for New York City.

With the midnight deadline to receive $354 million in federal aid approaching in a matter of hours, now is the last chance to call your representatives in Albany to express your support, no matter where they may stand on the issue. And don't forget, when you call you can have these handy fact sheets at your disposal.

As we learned from reader reports last week, several representatives who seem to be leaning against pricing in the press are in fact uncommitted. Your phone calls today will make a difference.

(more...)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 7, 2008 9:09 AM

The airplane on a conveyor belt question was just recently settled and we're confronted with a related question: will a helicopter on a turntable take off? The image is short on details and likely a joke, but let's assume that the turntable will match the speed of the helicopter's rotor (and further that the rotor's speed is measured relative to the helicopter and the turntable's speed is relative to the ground, otherwise it doesn't make much sense). Will the helicopter take off? Does it matter which way the turntable is spinning relative to the rotor? (thx, daniel)

(Comment on this)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 7, 2008 6:30 AM

Is Penn really out? Completely, positively out?

Here's the statement ...

Statement from Maggie Williams

After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.

Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign's strategic message team going forward.

The campaign statement says Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson are taking over strategy and message. But Garin's a pollster. So the logic of the situation says he's taking over the polling. But it doesn't actually say that. Meanwhile the statement does conspicuously go out of its way to say that Penn and his firm will not only keep doing polling but also keep advising the campaign.

I'm going to have to wait to hear from some of my DC Dem consultant/polling community friends to get more of a feel for what happened here. Because if he was really sacked, the sacking announcement sort of reads like he helped draft it.

When you figure how much grief this swaggering oaf has caused the Clinton campaign, if you're going to can him you'd think you would want to present it as something of a clean break, even if in the background some ties might actually remain. Yet the statement seems to have been massaged in such a way as to leave the murkiest of impressions.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 6, 2008 7:00 PM

• Civil Rights Groups Seeing Gradual End of Their Era - washingtonpost.com
  “What would happen if W.E.B. Du Bois or Marcus Garvey had a laptop?” [...] “As you know with the African American community, we got to this stuff late.”
  (tags: race new.politics inequality civil.rights wapo)

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 6, 2008 3:43 PM

Fall-out from his work on behalf of the Colombia trade deal Sen. Clinton opposes, Mark Penn is 'stepping down' from his role as "chief strategist" but will remain as chief pollster.

Note to self: Write separate post on the craziness of having Mark Penn both run message and polling when his polling is so legendary for cherry picking data to confirm his preferred political strategies and messages.

Note to self, two: Make effort to work in fact that Penn earlier tried to argue that he was never part of the Clinton campaign in the first place.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 6, 2008 3:04 PM

“If you’d ask me to describe the state of the newspaper industry based on the scary coverage about it alone, I would have guessed that it had fallen by half and that we were back to 1970s levels. Instead, it’s a US$45 billion business, which is twice as big as Google and Yahoo combined.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Elsewhere, on April 6, 2008 2:55 PM

A cold day to inaugurate what will be a great thing. A wonderful mix
of vintage and smartly designed things. Bags made from old sails, hip
onesies galore and the promise of shorter lines for waffles will make
this a destination for us on Sundays.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on April 6, 2008 1:24 PM

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who rang the first alarm bells over the ozone hole issued a warming about climate change on Saturday, saying there could be "almost irreversible consequences" if the Earth warmed 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees F) above what it ought to be. "Things are changing and there's no doubt that it's as a result of human activities," said Mario Molina, a Mexican who shared a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1995 for groundbreaking work on chlorofluorocarbon gases and their threat to the Earth's ozone layer.

Originally from ENN: Top Stories, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Apr 6, 2008 at 10:31 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 6, 2008 7:31 AM

Examiner column for April 7.

   When have you ever heard of a writing contest that flies winning students, teachers, and parents to Washington D.C. from all over the nation, houses them at The Mayflower Hotel, treats them to a gala dinner and an awards breakfast, takes students on tours of the White House, Supreme Court, and the Capitol, then gives checks to every student and teacher as they leave?

   

    April 3-5, all that occurred at the “Being an American” writing contest Awards Weekend. 30 students, 30 teachers, and 30 parents from ten different states were the guests of the Bill of Rights Institute, and I was lucky enough to be one of them.   

    This came about because Eliot Waxman, my team teacher and a participant in Bill of Rights constitutional seminars, suggested we design an interdisciplinary assignment with the goal of asking all students to write the contest essay on civic values. Although each teacher can only officially submit five essays, every one of our seniors put effort into the final product.

    The “hook” for the kids was the promise of ten awards from each of three regions of the country, ranging from $250 for honorable mention to $5000 for first place. The ten winners from each region comprised the 30 winners feted in Washington.

    The contest question asked students to reflect on how they exemplify an American civic value in their own lives, linking that value with an historical figure and founding document.

     Our students picked patriotism, independence, perseverance, creativity, thriftiness, competitiveness, and many other values, underscoring how easy it was for each student to individualize the question—essential in producing good pieces of writing. Our winning student, Andy Rys, picked compromise as a “lost” American civic value. His first-place essay attributes to compromise America’s ability to adapt to conflict and diversity, but regrets that often we confuse compromise with weakness and feel we must impose our will on others.

    The two days were an interesting mixture of large-scale civic pride, and simple joy in being treated so well. Few organizations pamper students or teachers, no matter how great the honor or distinction. The Bill of Rights Institute and their corporate sponsors made every student, teacher, and parent feel proud to be part of this contest, as well as proud to be an American.

    By treating all of us so well, with such lavish appreciative gestures, the Institute showed its own pride in its mission to revive an awareness of the Constitution and the values that helped found our nation. Next year, students in all fifty states will be able to participate in the contest, and the Awards Weekend will include 50 student winners, 50 teachers, and 50 parents—no small undertaking!

    I hope many teachers will encourage their classes to write this essay next year, not only for the possibility of a cash award and fabulous weekend, but also for the opportunity to have students reflect on what makes us unique as a nation, and how we can reinforce or revive some of the qualities that were part of our founding. The organization’s website, www.billofrightsinstitute.org, has many resources for teachers and students. Andy, Eliot, and I thank you!

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on April 6, 2008 4:49 AM