randomwalks/dj

thoughtful piece addresses the seeming insignificance of lifestyle changes  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 19, 2008 11:10 PM

Animated display of organic food company acquisitions.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 19, 2008 10:26 PM

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 19, 2008 8:50 AM

How To Win: A Practical Guide to Defeating The Radical Right. Activist toolkit text from 1994: “A one-stop, do-it-yourself guide to fighting the Radical Right at the local level. In it you will find hands-on information on a range of practical matters, including how to organize coalitions, how to run an election campaign, how to work with the media, how to use polling, and how to intrepret and put to good use the relevant body of law.” See the Table of Contents. (Posted on The WELL via Gopher!)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on April 18, 2008 4:21 PM

I’m loving this theme, called Damino. Its gorgeous.

Originally posted by Liz from Lather Rinse Repeat, on April 18, 2008 3:06 PM

Puckey Puckey: Jams and Outtakes, 1970-71 is very much the companion compilation to Live at the Haunted House. The latter captures Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band at the beginning of their career - Puckey Puckey follows the group at the beginning of their end.

As with Haunted House, I'm making an excerpt of my liner notes for Puckey Puckey available to ya'll but just keep in mind - this is barely a quarter of the total notes so please do pick up the CD (5000 copies only, then they're permanently gone). I touch a little bit on what makes this compilation so interesting in that excerpt but here's the basics:

The Watts Band recorded. A lot. A. Lot. Maybe it's because they had Warner Bros. dollars behind them but Wright took the band into the studio often and had them jam for hours. As a result, the amount of unreleased music - much of its rehearsal jams and the like - is beyond expectation. We're talking hours upon hours. Reissue producer Andy Zax went through and culled what he thought were the best parts.

Here's two I pulled off this two-disc set:
CONTINUE READING...



Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band: Express Yourself (alternate version) (snippet) + Jam #3 (snippet)
From Puckey Puckey: Jams and Outtakes, 1970-71 (Rhino Handmade, 2008)

Yeah folks - there's an alternate version of "Express Yourself." My face melted just a lil when I learned about that. If for no other reason, it's worth copping the comp just for this. We're not talking about, "alternate version with an extra horn." We're talking about basically a wholly different flavored recording. It's the same song, sure, but it's so much more laid-back and languid - you can feel the band just riding in that pocket on this one. Normally, I'd give you the whole song to enjoy but in this case, there's enough to tease you.

"Jam #3" is an example of the long, flowing grooves that Wright would have the band work on in rehearsal. When I say long, I mean long - this total song is over 20 min (hence why I snipped it). On the one hand, you can hear all kinds of ideas being worked on here, really ambitious long-form ideas that the Watts Band wasn't able to put out on record but you can see some connections between them, James Brown in the past, and looking forward to Clinton's P-Funk experiments.

These long sessions were a point of considerable tension within the group, certainly not the only one, but it didn't help matters and it was during this phase that the group was churning out some of their best work but also beginning to fall apart, especially as the group's success grew. By '72, with the departure of drummer James Gadson and most of the rhythm section, the Watts Band was no more.

Next in the Watts 103rd series: a monster overview of the recent Rhino UK series of Wright & Watts 103rd, Warner Bros. reissues.



And, oh yeah - there will be a giveaway at the end of all this and the mother-of-all giveaways it shall be!

Originally posted by O.W. from soul sides, on April 18, 2008 10:15 AM

We're all for Sex and the City spoilers, but MySpace comments?

Not so much.

So imagine our "oh ick" moment this morning, when the official Sex and the City MySpace left us a comment - a giant photo of SJP eating pizza that said, "Hey, it's Carrie. Need to talk about Big. Maybe over pizza?"

Maybe over our puking bodies?

Of course we'd expect a major motion picture to have its own MySpace. It's just the pretending-they're-Carrie and the leaving-pizza-comments that gets a little out of hand.

So although we're thrilled to see the movie when it finally premieres, here's what we're going to tell this silly MySpace campaign:

We're just not that into you.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on April 18, 2008 9:30 AM

After 10 years, kottke.org favorite New Green Bo (still the best soup dumplings in town, IMO) has changed its name to Nice Green Bo.

We're 10 years old, and we have so many nice customers, so we made it Nice Green Bo.

(via eater)

Update: My officemate Scott snapped a photo of the new signage during lunch.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 18, 2008 9:21 AM

La Chaim! Stock Up Now!

Photograph courtesy of mhaithaca

While bread gets cracker-ified during Passover, chosen bottles of soda get stripped of their high-fructose corn syrup and are sweetened instead with the real deal. No need to hunt for imported Mexican colas or hitch a ride south of the border for the cane sugar cola that tastes so great.

That's right: Passover Coke is here! (Or Passover Pepsi, if you're on that side of the Cola War.)

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi make a real-sugar version around this time of year, and you can find it by looking for yellow caps on Coke bottles or white caps on Pepsi. But to be sure you really have a sweet, sweet sugariffic cola in your hands, check the cap for a "P" next to whatever kosher symbol appears (see photo).

Back Story

Because corn syrup is made from one of the five no-no grains, it's considered chametz and is therefore forbidden during Passover (along with anything made from wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt). The grain constraints are, of course, a nod to the Jewish exodus from Egypt; the Israelites fled in such a hurry that they didn't have time for baked bread to rise.

Enjoying Kosher-for-Passover pop of course doesn't require being Jewish. It requires a love for more refreshing, crisper cola. The eight-day pop-slurping fest—er, commemoration of the liberated Israelite slaves—starts tomorrow at sundown, but the kosher sugar-high is already available in grocery stores.

According to a forum on the beverage industry site BevNet, it's been spotted at Gelson's and Ralph's in California, Kroger in the Midwest, and a variety of Eastern European markets in Chicago and Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Related

Costco Is Selling Mexican Coke

About the author: Erin Zimmer, our Washington, D.C., correspondent, is a new media analyst and frequently writes for Washingtonian, DCist, and other local publications. While Georgetown's food columnist, she investigated the cafeteria's omelet station, Hoya coffeeshop's cultish pumpkin muffins, and what exactly the basketball players ate.

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats: Main, on April 18, 2008 7:30 AM

In the Daily News, Adam Rubin explains how the Mets contacted MLB last season to investigate the Phillies for what was perceived to be stealing signs and relaying them to hitters.

…i’m betting this has everything to do with the Philly Phanatic, who looks guilty of every crime known to man…jerk…

Rubin writes, “Randolph confirmed the Mets would be on guard during this weekend’s three-game series in Philly, but surmised that last year’s attention probably has resulted in an end to any questionable tactics.”

Speaking of the Phillies, according to MLB.com, Jimmy Rollins will not play tonight against the Mets while he attends his uncle’s funeral.

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 18, 2008 5:45 AM

According to Hollyscoop, Mets RHP John Maine has a crush on Jennifer Aniston, saying:

“I just love her soft and natural, girl-next-door looks and the way she carries herself, her whole demeanor…Oh, yes, the hair.  The hair is unbelievable!  I think she just gets better looking as she gets older.”

…oh, johnny…don’t ever change, buddy…i mean, did he really say, “Oh, yes, the hair.”…dear god, i hope not…nevertheless, i totally understand the crush…who doesn’t…

On what he would do if he meets her, Maine says:

“”I’d probably be so nervous, I would trip over my feet. I guess I would take some pictures with her and give her a hug. Maybe she’ll contact me somehow and it will actually happen. Wow, how cool would that be?”

…thanks to maura for the link…i think…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 18, 2008 5:09 AM

I fixed this post for you, jkottke.

(via kottke)

Originally posted by jeb from Modcult, on April 18, 2008 4:55 AM

Here's a very useful roundup of today's super-delegate news.

Many super-dels are unswayed either by Hillary's arguments about Obama's supposed electability problem -- but some also are unswayed by the Obama camp's argument that her high unfavorables render her problematic, too.

And despite Howard Dean's demand that the super-dels start picking sides right now, dozens of them say they feel no rush to pick sides before the voting is over.

More super-del tidbits here.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 18, 2008 4:51 AM

In celebration of its 30th birthday a few weeks ago Ben & Jerry's released Cake Batter ice cream. The flavor, which is a mixture of vanilla ice cream, yellow cake batter, and chocolate frosting, joins the ranks of more than 200 others the company has produced over the past three decades. From the simple (Strawberry, Butter Pecan, Chocolate Fudge Brownie) to the sensational (Bananas on the Rum, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Coconut Seven Layer Bar), there's no denying that Ben & Jerry's makes some great scoops. But I must admit, while I love ice cream, cake, and ice cream cake, I'm not a fan of cake ice cream.

Are you?

Once relegated to specialty shops like Cold Stone Creamery and Maggie Moo's, lately cake batter ice cream has been popping up everywhere from supermarket freezer sections to soft serve shacks like Smoochie's and Tasti D-Lite, the later of which has gone far beyond plain yellow to include Carrot, Red Velvet, German Chocolate, and even Angel Food Cake flavors.

I think my dislike of cake batter ice cream stems from its inherently artificial nature: not only is it ice cream flavored like cake, it is ice cream flavored like fake cake; something you might get out of a box as opposed to actually baking yourself. An ice cream cake is not a cake meant to taste like ice cream; it is a marriage of the two ingredients. Why shouldn't it work the same way the other way around? Ice cream with chunks of real cake in it sounds pretty delicious to me.

But perhaps I'm being a food snobbish grouch. There's a reason that these days the flavor is as common as Cookie Dough: people adore it. I'm curious to know how Serious Eaters feel: when it comes to cake ice cream, do you love it or leave it?

Originally posted by Lucy Baker from Serious Eats: Main, on April 18, 2008 4:45 AM

Remember that woman from the debate last night who the moderators showed videotape of asking whether Barack Obama "believes in the flag"? Her name is Nash McCabe.

I remember thinking it was sort of odd to have a couple one-off uses of ordinary voter question when it didn't really seem like it was part of the format. But I was too distracted by the general inanity of the debate to focus on this issue too closely.

Well, it turns out TPM Reader JL did give some thought. And he came up with something very interesting (see JL's post at the DrexelDems blog). He did a little googling and found out Nash is pretty popular with the traveling press now in Pennsylvania. It turns out McCabe was featured in an April 4th story in the Times which begins like this ...

Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.

It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

"How can I vote for a president who won't wear a flag pin?" Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.

"I watch him on TV," Mrs. McCabe said. "I keep looking for that lapel pin."

Now, it does seem like McCabe is not a fan of Sen. Obama's. And I think we can assume that it's not a coincidence that McCabe managed to show up featured in the Times and also as the sole outside questioner in the ABC debate. Presumably, a researcher for ABC or Gibson saw the piece in the Times, figured, hey, this lady hates Obama and is seriously ginned up about the lapel issue. Let's send a camera crew Obama and film her slamming Obama to his face. It'll be great in the debate.

Now, as JL noted in his email to TPM, I'm not sure precisely what's any less ethical about finding Nash at random to come on and slam Obama about whether he believes in the flag versus seeing her in the Times and saying, 'Wow, this woman clearly has it in for Obama. Wouldn't that make for great TV giving her a chance to crap on Obama's head in front of a nationwide audience?

I think there's something wrong with it. And part of it is that you usually assume that these citizen questions come from people who are at least partly conflicted about their support if not undecided. But it does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to far, but basically engineered to be crap from the ground up.

(ed.note: Remember, there was also Tom Rooney from Pittsburgh who said he'd been a Clinton supporter up until the Bosnia flap and asked what she could say to get back his vote. In that case, this was at least someone who'd been a Clinton supporter at one point and suggested he could be again. But it's still basically, "Hillary, can you apologize to me for being a liar?" Not exactly a question. Anyone have more details on Rooney?)

Late Update: Turns out McClatchy is on this case and has plenty of details about how ABC tracked McCabe down.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 17, 2008 7:44 PM

Just for laughs, I took a look at the schedule for the "Web Two Dot Oh Expo" that's invading my fair city next week. Oh, the Humanity.

• "Intro to Blogs & Social Media Marketing 101."
• "What's your enterprise mashup strategy?"
• "Strategic Domain Name Selection for Increasing Traffic and Conversion Rates."
  -- I think they mean "typo-squatting".
• "How to take your search engine optimization skillset to the next level, even if you're already a savvy search marketer."
  -- I'm 99.9% certain this is code for "how to MAKE.MONEY.FAST with a fake spam-blog."

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on April 17, 2008 7:40 PM

Third-party applications created with the iPhone SDK will be available for sale in June. Apple has created an incredible platform here — how much will these applications cost?

From a developer’s point of view, let’s see how much potential the market holds. This will determine what a developer needs to charge to make the effort worthwhile.

As of Q1 ‘08, Apple has sold 3.7 million iPhones. I can’t find numbers for the iPod Touch, but I’m sure the iPhone has outsold it many times over, so I’m not expecting it to contribute significantly to these figures yet. Let’s just assume that the Touch will negate the portion of those 3.7 million iPhones that aren’t being legitimately used — some have been lost or broken, some have been unlocked and won’t access the iTunes application store, and some will just never be updated with the 2.0 firmware required to run the applications.

Here comes the rampant speculation. If we assume:

• 1 in 1000 iPhone owners buy your application
• You charge $10
• You pay 28% income tax on the profit, and it’s all profit after Apple’s cut
• Your support costs will be insignificant

…then you will get to keep $18,648 after tax.

Now, those are a lot of assumptions — especially the support cost. But the most important factor, and the biggest unknown, is the sales rate: will 1 in 1000 iPhone owners buy a decent application?

Move the decimal point in either direction, and it becomes very different: if you can convince 1 in 100, you get $186,480! But if you can only convince 1 in 10,000, you only get $1864… that’s not worth most people’s time to write.

And that’s an important factor: consider how long the application took to write. At 3 man-months, the 1-in-1000 figure above gives you $6,216 per man-month. Not bad.

But if you’re making a very complex application that takes two developers and six months to write, that’s only $1,554 per man-month — you’ll need to significantly raise the price or sales rate to make that worthwhile.

Now, over time, the number of iPhone owners is likely to increase significantly. Once Apple hits 10 million iPhone owners, the default scenario above earns $50,400.

The biggest and most important variable is clearly the sales rate. How many iPhone owners will use third-party applications at all? Among them, how many will ever pay money for one? Then, among those, how many will pay money for yours?

Considering this, I’m thinking that $10-20 is probably a fair price for most good, moderately complex, single-developer applications.

But it depends what everyone else does: if the majority of the third-party developers price their apps in the $5 range, and people refuse to pay for anything significantly more, many applications simply won’t be worth making. Conversely, if enough people are willing to spend $20-30 on good applications, they become much more worthwhile to write, and we’ll see more specialization and competition. The numbers could also be skewed if the iPod Touch becomes a major application-sales platform. (I don’t think it will.)

As a developer, I’m hoping people are willing to pay good prices. And I bet they will. I haven’t decided on my application’s price yet, but it will probably be in the $10-15 range. It definitely won’t be less than $10.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on April 17, 2008 7:30 PM

From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" — a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I have to share some of the best parts. It's just too good.

So let's start with the most notorious — Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the unreleased sequel to Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For the first time, here's the full story: with never-before-seen design documents, internal emails, and two playable prototypes. Sit back, this might take a while.

Note: I've pieced together this history from emails and notes from the Infocom Drive. I haven't contacted any of the people mentioned, so if you're a primary source or authority, please get in touch so I can make corrections.

Update: Don't miss the comments section. Infocom alumni Dave Lebling, Steve Meretzky, Amy Briggs, and Tim Anderson all comment on the story, Zork co-author Marc Blank helps correct an error, and writer Michael Bywater provides an alternative view of the events.

Continue reading... 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org, on April 17, 2008 6:40 PM

We love vertical farms, the idea of food being grown right in the city, it doesn't get any more local than this. New York magazine asked four architects to dream up proposals for a lot on Canal Street and Work AC came up with this. “We thought we’d bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically,” says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. “We are interested in urban farming and the notion of trying to make our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles [food travels],” adds his co-principal (and wife) Amale Andraos. Underneath is what appears to be a farmers market, selling what grows ...

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 17, 2008 at 09:35 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 17, 2008 6:35 PM

A hallway at the San Francisco Tennis Club has a bunch of early photographs of San Francisco, including this one (snapped with my iPhone; apologies for the perspective and quality) of the west side of The Embarcadero in 1913.

What I love about this photo (and it's probably hard to see here) is the billboard for Owl Cigars, with the reversed mirror image type. When you quickly walk by the photo of the billboard you do a double take, and I spent a few minutes confirming that this wasn't some weird artifact of the photo itself. (The photo didn't appear to be doctored at all.) The effect of this as a massive billboard must have been something. I'm no student of outdoor advertising, but while I can definitely remember plenty of instances of seeing trompe-l'oeil effects in billboards, I don't think I've seen something as "simply stunning" in a long time.

My colleague Sean Williford pointed out that The Standard Hotels does something related with their logo, turning their simple typeface upside down.

I love both of these -- simple twists that force the casual observer to stop, spend a bit more time processing what they're seeing and become memorable because of their simplicity. That said, if everyone started flipping their type around, everyday life would be more than a bit annoying.

Who else has done this kind of thing well?

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on April 17, 2008 3:53 PM

RealScoop's software analyzes statements made by public figures in audio or video and plots the results on a scale of believability that runs from believable to highly questionable.

RealScoop uses advanced emotion-based voice analysis technology to rate the believability of people's statements.

For instance, here's Michael Vick apologizing for holding dog fights, Eliot Spitzer resigning the governorship of NY, and Bill Clinton's infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" statement. The Clinton audio and associated metering is really pretty good...it spikes in all the right places. (thx, john)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 17, 2008 2:55 PM

Michael Ruhlman, on the potentially best foie gras ever: "Eduardo Sousa, a farmer in the Extremadura region of Spain is, according to chef Dan Barber, raising geese that bear the best foie gras the chef's tasted. The critical part of the story, though, is that Sousa does not force feed the geese. He apparently lets their inclination to gorge themselves, once required for migration, take care of the fattening and simply makes sure they have all they want."

Originally posted by Raphael from Serious Eats: Main, on April 17, 2008 1:45 PM

Eduardo Sousa, a farmer in the Extremadura region of Spain is, according to chef Dan Barber, raising geese that bear the best foie gras the chef's tasted.  The critical part of the story, though, is that Sousa does not force feed the geese.  He apparently lets their inclination to gorge themselves, once required for migration, take care of the fattening and simply makes sure they have all they want—nuts, olives, etc., but no corn.  This suggests of course that farmers who force feed their geese and ducks are simply controlling what the ducks would do naturally and that the folks who want to prohibit the production and sale of foie gras on the grounds of animal cruelty have one less leg to stand on.
    I never thought they had any leg to stand on if they argued only that the practice of gavage were inhumane but were happy to buy boneless skinless chicken breast and beef tenderloin from America’s meat factories.  The foie gras farms in the United States, notably Hudson Valley Foie Gras, tend to be models of humane, safe, small-scale farming. Here’s Bourdain’s excellent account of the no rez trip to the farm.
    But Barber’s story (first reported last week in Lancaster Farming and which I read via A Hunger Artist), is a good one nevertheless.  Barber said this foie gras was the best he’d ever eaten and that the experience was revelatory, “the best culinary experience of my life.”  Repeat: the best culinary experience of his life.  Are we likely to taste any of this at Blue Hill anytime soon?  Not likely.  When Barber asked about buying Sousa’s foie gras, Sousa, clearly a quirky farmer, replied, “Chef’s don’t deserve it.”
    So enough with chefs banning foie from their meat-filled menus (clearly a marketing-driven decision, at best--and nothing wrong with that, but let's call it what it is), and enough with city counsel grandstanding and the like to legislate its ban (most recently defeated in Maryland).  And thanks Dan Barber for another great story.

(Skawt's comment reminded me of this hilarious exercise in human discomfort and stupidity. thanks again to delgrosso.)

Originally posted by michael ruhlman from ruhlman.com, on April 17, 2008 1:10 PM

Great idea for a book. Currently at #64 in Amazon’s bestsellers list.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 17, 2008 12:46 PM

 

Submitted by Eric Britton:

Here's a thought experiment for you. If you and I hate to see lots of parked cars dumped on city streets for which we have other and a lot better uses, should we love it when we see lots of parked bikes? Or might that be a sign of some kind of deeper systemic inefficiency to which we could usefully give a thought or two?

How do you feel when you see hundreds, or thousands, of bikes parked in one place? As a sustainability and bike person I always in the past found it a combination of wonderful, hopeful, and somehow vaguely scary. (And just about always for the very big lots or structures, extremely ugly.)

But now that I know a bit about shared city bikes, I look at them in an entirely different way. Now, above all, they give me a great feeling of waste. Unnecessary waste.

(more...)

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on April 17, 2008 11:34 AM

In a post to The 10 Spot Blog for SI.com, Pete McEntegart lists 10 reasons why Shea Stadium is better than Yankee Stadium, while questioning why Yankee is getting more fanfare in its final season than Shea.

…if the Yankees get more coverage, it isn’t going to make me tear up any less when Shea Stadium gets torn down…if reporters and pop culture are more obsessed with the ground that Babe Ruth stood upon, i can understand…however, i am far more interested in the ground that Tom Seaver and Jesse Orosco stood upon…to each his own…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 17, 2008 10:44 AM

Six Apart continues to break down the walls around social communities.

Yesterday Six Apart announced the availability of a Facebook application (yes you read that correctly) called Blog It. The TypePad-powered service enables Facebook users to make posts in Facebook out to any number of blogging tools.

Here are a couple of links covering it:

• Six Apart launches Blog It, a cross-platform blogging application for Facebook
• Six Apart’s ‘Blog It’ Turns Facebook Into a Fire Hose

Six Apart CEO Chris Alden wrote up a good summary on his blog here.

Of course, there are those who are less than impressed or dismiss it as irrelevant, but then again Six Apart acknowledged there are shortcomings that they will be addressing. After all, this is a 1.0 release

I think it’s still pretty slick though.

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on April 17, 2008 10:41 AM

1. High Times magazine's editors have chosen their favorite spots to counteract the munchies. Included are: Katz's Deli, Two Boots, Doughnut Plant and Veselka. In related news, Sunday is 4/20. (via NY Metromix) 2. It's your Earth Day. Here in New York City we have so many variations (Earth Week, Earth Night, Earth Fair, etc.) that we had to google it to find out the real deal. FYI: It's April 22. 3. Bush to Pope: "Awesome speech!" 4. $5,000 gets you two tickets to the Eric Clapton concert at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, on May 5th plus two nights at their hotel, a Rolls Royce to and from the airport, dinner for two and a bottle of Cristal. 5. Sean Schwartz, the owner of Halcyon Records in DUMBO tells Time Out New York: "I just spent a week in Miami for the annual Winter Music Conference and I did not see a single DJ play a vinyl record." April 19 is National Record Store Day and the few stores that are left will be celebrating with concerts, giveaways, etc. 6. Last date for today: May 8 is the Third Annual Brooklyn Blogfest. Festivities will take place at the Brooklyn Lyceum (270 4th Ave., Park Slope) at 8 p.m.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 17, 2008 10:29 AM

This might be my favorite news article correction ever, from my old school paper, the Columbia Spectator:

CORRECTION: This submission misstates that one Dalai Lama admitted to having sex with hundreds of men and women while knowing that he had AIDS. Additionally, the submission misstates that many monks participated in the dismemberment of female bodies. In fact, there is no factual evidence to substantiate either of these claims. Spectator regrets the error.

I mean, that's just awesome. Nice work there, editors...

Originally posted by Jason from Q Daily News, on April 17, 2008 9:54 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on April 17, 2008 8:42 AM

Photography of Star Wars characters in contemporary urban settings. (Pardon the stupid Flash interface...click on "series" to see the photos.) (via vitamin briefcase)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 17, 2008 7:25 AM

frankie_guasch writes "Finally, it's here and it works with Perl 5.10! http://apache.org/dist/perl/mod_perl-2.0.4.tar.gz"

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by brian_d_foy from use Perl, on April 17, 2008 7:10 AM

We’re putting together the details now for our next Hugga event in Portland, the land of bike culture and Creative Capacity. The event is scheduled for May 21st to coincide with Webvisions. Just like we did at SXSW, we’re going to ride and then meetup at a pub for a reception with a raffle, giveaways, and schwag o’ plenty.

Recommendations on the ride and pub?

Photo uploaded by stop.down.

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on April 17, 2008 6:58 AM

Continuing from yesterday's look at the soundtrack to the creation of Lotus Notes, we can look more at the physical space where it was created. For contrast, I also throught I'd start looking at some of the responses I'd gotten from Jeff Bezos about the same questions.

Interestingly, when it came to the music or movies that were playing while he was first creatiang Amazon.com, Jeff's answer was succinct: "I don't remember." Maybe I might have done better to focus on what books he was reading. But when it came to describing the actual workspace, Jeff remembered a lot more details:

A garage enclosed so it was converted into a room. Whiteboard with long list of priorities -- didn't change much. Door desks. Costco swivel chairs. Big orange extension cords draped across the floor just about everywhere.

That sense of a chaotic but comfortable space is echoed in Ray Ozzie's description of the early offices at Lotus:

it began in a small office (actually an old home converted to an office) we rented in 12/84 in Littleton, MA.  The office was mainly just one big room for the three of us.  I founded it in December, and my co-founders Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell joined me from DEC in January.

We used IBM PC AT's as our dev systems, which were released just as we were starting to work.  Even though our office was Spartan, we bought the best hardware available and tricked it out as best we could:

• a "massive" second monitor ("Genius" I think) - 1024-by-something monochrome portrait mode
• a removable iomega Bernoulli disk drive, so we could do builds, archive things, bring them to Cambridge where our partner lotus was located, etc
• we replaced the crystals on the motherboards to get 8mhz out of the computers, rather than the stock 6mhz
• sytek 2mbps (I think) LAN card
• a state-of-the-art newfangled "laser printer" - an apple laserwriter - that we all shared

You get the idea.

We went to a used furniture store and bought the CHEAPEST crappiest (but strong) fold-out tables, with strong/comfortable chairs.

We spared no expense on massive whiteboards that covered the walls.

Pierre Omidyar's description of the workspace where eBay was created is no less evocative:

Definite clutter. I worked primarily out of our spare bedroom that I used as an office. I had some sort of computer desk that had multiple Macs in various states of use or disrepair. I also used a Mac laptop, a Powerbook Duo among other models I think. Later I very reluctantly switched to a Toshiba laptop and Windows, because the Mac OS wasn't keeping up with the cutting edge back then. (A non-Mac hiatus that lasted until 2001 I think.) I had a wireless internet radio thing hooked up to it so I could access the Internet mobile. I used post-it notes on the monitor of my desktop Mac or in the laptop, but no whiteboards. It wasn't until I got an office that I started using a whiteboard. I like whiteboards, but the markers smell funny.

In each case, it's gratifying how familiar this combination of clutter and creativity feels to any of us who've ever pulled an all-nighter to get a product launched.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 17, 2008 6:26 AM

• Bush Calls for U.S. Carbon Emissions to Plateau by 2025 (Dot Earth)
• Bay Area Businesses May Soon Pay Fee for Producing Greenhouse Gases (NYT)
• Bronx Toddler Hit by Car; Cyclist Killed by Delivery Truck in Manhattan (Post)
• More Delays and Overruns for PA's Lower Manhattan Terminal (News, NY1)
  
• Sander Discusses MTA Sustainability Plan (NPR)
• NYCT Takes Low-Floor Bus Model for a Spin (City Room)
• Red Hook Bike Commuting Plan Gets Hearing at CB6 Tonight (Post)
• Gov Island Advocates Try to Improve Access, Build a Constituency (City Room)
• Silver Won't Release Tax Returns, But His Opponents Have (Daily Politics)
• Car Talk Bros. to Ponder 'Car of the Future' on TV (Wheels)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 17, 2008 4:59 AM

Let me add one more thought before signing off. I don't think this debate will have much effect on the direction of the race. In fact, I've learned from past (often bitter -- yes, his initials are AG) experience that the candidate who wins on points in a debate often doesn't come out with the best result.

What I didn't like about the debate, though, was the debate itself. Not only were most of the questions on partisan gotchas and frivolous points. But more importantly the questions upon which the candidates were pressed the most were ones that presumed the correctness of Republican agenda items, sometimes explicitly so -- on taxes, capital gains taxes, gun rights, Iraq, etc.

There are issues like health care, and whose proposal will achieve universal coverage; some question about the credit crisis; perhaps some question about Iraq that presupposed that getting out is a necessary objective -- like, noting ways that each has hedged on their promises to leave Iraq, rather than a question, the subtext of which was 'what will you do when the serious people tell you we shouldn't leave'; something executive power -- a legitimate questions since presidents are seldom willing to renounce powers grasped by predecessors; the environment; perhaps, what will these candidates actually do -- concretely -- to crack down on executive branch corruption since Democrats have made such political hay of the issue at President's Bush's expense; perhaps a single question on the environment?

Do these questions presuppose concerns and priorities of Democrats? Yes, sure. But then, this was a Democratic debate. If they'd wanted Hannity to moderate, I'm sure he would have made himself available.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 16, 2008 7:44 PM

Jeff Jarvis has published an essay on the new ecosystem for news publishing. He says that too much discussion about the future of news is “press-centric” and that it forgets all the other sources that people draw upon for news including our peers, search, links, original sources, companies and the government. As he looks at the sector, he publishes a new process for news (above) and says:

The notion that news comes in and stories go out — text and photos come in and paper goes out — is an artifact of the means of production and distribution, of course. Now a story never begins and it never ends. But at some point in the life of a story, a journalist (working wherever) may see the idea and then can get all kinds of new input. But the story itself — in whatever medium — is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication.

…In this new ecology, I think newsrooms will need to be organized around topics or tags or stories because the notion of a section is as out of date as the Dewey Decimal System… Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. Who brings that together? It’s not always the reporter or editor anymore. It can just as easily be the reader(s) now.

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The press becomes the press-sphere

Originally posted by Piers Fawkes from PSFK, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 16, 2008 at 09:53 PM

Originally posted by Piers Fawkes from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 16, 2008 6:53 PM

Vanity Fair's third annual Green Issue is currently on newsstands. You've probably noticed the cover—Madonna bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders—which is almost as ridiculous as last year's. Almost. Anyway, our complaint isn't with the cover. No, it's not about the Material Girl per se; it's about the material of the magazine. For the third year in a row, Vanity Fair's Green Issue was not printed on recycled paper. We appreciate the fact that such a massively-distributed, mainstream magazine even does an environmentally-themed issue. But when you consider that none of Condé Nast's publications are printed on recycled paper, and that the singer on the cover of this one has a larger carbon footprint than some cities (offset shmoffset), the gesture feels pretty hollow. Are we overreacting? Or does this seem like the summit of hypocrisy to you as well?

Originally posted by Patrick James from Good Magazine:, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 16, 2008 at 09:50 PM

Originally posted by Patrick James from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 16, 2008 6:50 PM

It appears that ABC is working hard to prove that it's capable of fielding debate moderators who bow to no one in their capacity for inanity, not even Tim Russert. After asking questions about Wright and the "small town" comments, the ABC moderators go on to ask Obama to account for his years-old connection to...

....former Weather Underground member William Ayers.

Obama, offering his explanation, seemed genuinely puzzled to be getting asked about this, saying that Ayers was merely a "guy who lives in my neighborhood," and made a surprise reference to Senator Tom Coburn...

The fact is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried about abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements?

In response, Hillary actually hit Obama over the Ayers connection (with a bonus reference to 9/11 thrown in):

I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the woods foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more....

I know Senator Obama is a good man, and I respect him greatly. But I think this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.

Obama appeared to have a response ready:

President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than me serving on a board with somebody for actions that he did 40 years ago.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 16, 2008 4:52 PM

8:36 PM ... So I'm coming in a bit late here. I was on the Polk panel this evening at Long Island University, which ended at 8 PM. And rushed home to get here. So what'd I miss?

8:44 PM ... Hillary: The Republicans are so bad that I have to become one to save the Democratic party.

8:48 PM ... Can Hillary just come out and embrace a culture-war, swift-boating campaign against Obama? Please? Instead of this gonzo Lee Atwater by proxy stuff? Sigh...

9:01 PM ... She certainly seems more self-assured on the Iran question than Obama did. The question of extending an American security umbrella to Israel is very dicey. And he could clearly see he was on delicate territory. Are we really extending to Israel and Saudi Arabia the nuclear guarantee we made to Europe under NATO? Is it only for nuclear attacks? Conventional attacks?

9:09 PM ... Obama's making a good point on the capital gains tax. But he's making it in a very bedraggled, painful, drawn out way. This is not good at all. All the right points are there but just not put well ... Charlie Gibson's 'history' of the capital gains tax? Please. There's a good answer to that. But he didn't seem to have it.

9:16 PM ... Did someone tell Charlie Gibson that he knows something about economics? There are a heck of a lot of people people who make over $97,000 a year? Really? I think like 12% of the population makes more than $100,000 a year. And his capital gains point is a canard.

9:24 PM ... I was disappointed that Charlie Gibson seems to spout off right-wing bromides as established facts. I was even more disappointed that Obama didn't seem able to knock them down.

9:29 PM ... I don't watch a lot of nightly news. Is Charlie Gibson usually this bad?

9:31 PM ... This is awful.

9:35 PM ... Are there any questions in this debate that aren't based on Republican attacks? Is affirmative action a major issue in this campaign? Did I miss that?

9:40 PM ... I like Stephanopoulos. But using former presidents? Is this a major issue?

9:44 PM ... TPM Reader KB checks in: "Josh, ABC's News' posture tonight makes perfect sense. Don't you get it? In GOP primary debates the media inquisitors take on the role of the true conservative pressing candidates to clearly and unequivocally state their answers on hot button social issues and economic talismans like the capital gains tax. In Democratic primary debates, by contrast, the media inquisitors take on the role of the true conservative pressing candidates to clearly and unequivocally state their answers on hot button social issues and economic talismans like the capital gains tax." Now MB gets in the mix: "When gas hits $4 a gallon will the average American making $250,000 a year be able to afford to drive to work?"

9:46 PM ... No Charlie. It hasn't been a "fascinating debate." It's been genuinely awful.

9:50 PM ... What happened to the League of Women Voters? Can we give the debates back to them? This sort of episode really sickens me. KB's point above is sadly accurate. It's stuff like this that really makes me think that whole big chunks of the established press needs to be swept away.

9:56 PM ... As I noted above, I missed roughly the first half hour of this debate. But from what I heard about those thirty minutes and what I saw of the subsequent ninety minutes was basically debate by gotcha line with basically no discussion of any of the big questions the election is turning on.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 16, 2008 4:36 PM

I've only met Jason Kottke once. A few years ago at SXSW, I said hi, we chatted for a few seconds, and that was that. Although I'm occasionally in his sidebar and he links to Mike Industries every so often, I can't say I'm a "friend". In fact, while I'm on the subject, am I the only one who hates when people on the web say "our friends at ____" or "my good friend ____" when they've never even spoken to the person(s)? Annnnyways...

Originally posted by Mike D. from Mike Industries, on April 16, 2008 4:05 PM

I'm really enjoying M83's new album, Saturdays = Youth; it's somehow both 80s retro and not. The AV Club gave the album an A and Metacritic gives it a rating of 69.

Two unrelated things:

- amazon.com/mp3 is a quick way to get to the Amazon MP3 store.

- The vast majority of the recent album releases rated by Metacritic are in the "generally favorable reviews" category. A few are rated "universal acclaim" or "mixed or average reviews" and only one is "generally negative". Compare that to the ratings for recently released movies, which are much lower on average. Do people demand higher quality from their music than movies? Or is so much music produced (compared to movies) that the only albums worth compiling reviews for are the good ones?

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 16, 2008 3:52 PM

Originally posted by bexta from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 16, 2008 2:16 PM

Keeping up to date on the latest MT community news and happenings is easier then ever.

Our man Arvind Satyanarayan has started authoring a weekly column for Blog Herald summarizing the weekly happenings in the MT community. His first two posts are already up:

• April 9th: Movable Type Weekly News Wrapup
• April 14th: Movable Type Monday: Considering Security and Beta Test Updates

New posts are to be published every Monday, hence “Movable Type Monday.”

Now if we could only get a feed dedicated to his posts.

BTW: When I say “our” I’m speaking as a member of the MT community. Arvind doesn’t work for Appnel Solutions.

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on April 16, 2008 1:56 PM

The Roots doing our Star Spangled Banner for Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report....

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 16, 2008 10:52 AM

Manufactured Landscapes opens with an eight-minute tracking shot of a gigantic factory in China, the camera moving past row after row of workers assembling widgets until you feel like the factory floor circumnavigates the globe. The point of the shot, as with Edward Burtynsky's photography, is to encourage the viewer to do some rudimentary mathematics about the scale of industry in the world:

eight minutes to move across one factory + look at all those employees + how many factories like this are there in China? = wow, that's a lot of widgets

While it's unfair to say that the movie goes downhill from there, the tracking shot packs such a punch that the rest of the film seemed lacking in comparison. It was the only shot in the film that really felt like the cinematic equivalent of Burtynsky's photography...a long photograph, if you will.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 16, 2008 10:38 AM

Look how cute Jon Stewart is (pictured with Robert Smigel) at last week's Night of Too Many Stars benefit! We love his Filson tote bag. It adds a slight "I read the New Yorker on the F train" look to Jon that we appreciate.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 16, 2008 10:23 AM

I'm interrupting my usual stream of music ramblings and dog photos to tell you a little bit about what's going on at my job.

Over here at 6A HQ lots of folks have been hard at work on the creation and launch of the new Facebook application Blog It Powered By TypePad. In fact, I wrote this while I was logged into Facebook, and was able to post it to my Vox, my TypePad and my Twitter all at once. Pretty neat.

Read all about it: http://www.typepad.com/features/blogit.html

Originally posted by Krissy from art is the new religion, on April 16, 2008 10:10 AM

A 36-year-old man who was descending a Shea Stadium escalator fell to his death. Antonio Narainasami fell onto the concrete floor, in the section near the left field stands, and fell at least two stories, possibly four stories (the Times says 30 feet).

While police and Mets officials say the father of two, whose daughters witnessed the fall, was perhaps riding on the escalator's railing, his cousin said they had been walking down a non-working escalator, "He lost his footing somehow and then he went over the railing." Police and relatives also say Narainasami was, per the Daily News, "not intoxicated or engaging in horseplay when he fell."

Besides his daughters, the heating and air-conditioning installer and local cricket club captain leaves behind a pregnant wife. His cousin, who called him the "best guy I've ever known" said Narainasami had been "real excited" for the game "because this is his favorite team." The Mets extended their "deepest and heartfelt condolences" to the family and said, "The Mets, the City Parks Department and the New York Police Department are investigating the incident."

In 1985, another fan fatally fell 100 feet from a Shea escalator while a man fell 90 feet to his death from a Yankee Stadium escalator. In both cases, the Post reported, they "were sitting on the railings of escalators." More recently, a few people were injured when a Giants Stadium escalator malfunctioned.

Photograph of Shea Stadium escalator from the Bridge & Tunnel Club

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 16, 2008 10:04 AM

TONY has some news about the future of the old Galapagos space—it's going to be taken over by the owner of Southpaw: "Southpaw owner Matthew Roff, currently involved in the final stages of opening new Prospect Heights beer garden Franklin Park, plans to sign a lease tomorrow on the old Galapagos space in Williamsburg. The name: Natural Selection. 'We’re all fans of Darwin obviously,' says Roff, who will partner with the owners of popular South Slope watering hole, Bar Four...the transformation could be 'weeks away.'" [TONY]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 16, 2008 9:52 AM

An intersection of two of my great interests: food and politics. Can what you eat predict how you will vote? ([f that link takes you to a registration screen, try one of these Bugmenot registrations] Once you know the code, it's not too hard to match the candidate to the food. (For example, cereal preferences among supporters go like this: Obama supporters: Bear Naked Granola; Clinton supporters: Kashi GoLean; and McCain supporters: Fiber One.) See if you can guess which of these food pairings go with which candidates: Fuddruckers and Hardee's; The Cheesecake Factory and Panera Bread; and Red Lobster and Krispy Kreme.

Originally posted by Rebecca Blood from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 16, 2008 9:38 AM

If chefs were superheroes, who would be Superman, Batman, Wonder Women, and the Green Lantern? A posting on TGI McFunster’s breaks it down, and while we wouldn't classify Giada as Wonder Woman, the Anthony Bourdain as Batman (and Ferran Adria as Martian Manhunter) seems to fit: "Batman- Brooding, dark, fancies himself an outsider despite the fact everyone seems to sort of like him. Also, makes up for his lack of super powers with guile, cunning, and quick wit...Sounds a lot like Anthony Bourdain to me." [TGIM]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 16, 2008 9:30 AM

Jsh Alln explains why the perfect pop song is two minutes and 42 seconds long.

Here's the problem: "More Than a Feeling" is four minutes and 47 fucking seconds long. I don't have time for that kind of nonsense. That's, like, one-seventh of my recreation right there.

Don't get me wrong, slugger. I love "More Than a Feeling." Those who don't are your basic a-holes. But it's like: We get it. The riff, the handclaps, the 10,000 multi-tracked guitars-nice. But then there's another verse and another chorus and infinity more solos and just a really ridiculous amount of balderdash.

If you've got the time, there's a related collection of 2:42 songs to listen to.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 16, 2008 9:20 AM

The President bears the greatest responsibility for the catastrophe of the Iraq war. He was the key decision maker at every point. And he's fundamentally accountable. But if you look into the innards of the process that led to war there is probably no one who was either responsible for or involved with more of the bad decisions, more of the conscious decisions or horrible ideas than Doug Feith.

You'd think someone like that would be keeping a low profile. But in fact he's got a new book out explaining how Iraq was a great idea, how nothing was his fault and sticking it to his enemies. Trainwreck is an overused term, but in today's episode of TPMtv we look at some choice moments from Feith's book release media tour where he explains how you've got the whole thing all wrong ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 16, 2008 8:34 AM

By Katy Chevigny

Katy Chevigny, Executive Director of Arts Engine.

Thoughts on Documentary's Current Heyday Before declaring 2008 "The Year of the Documentary, " let's pause to catch our breath. After all, each of the last several years have been hailed as The Year of the Doc by film pundits, festival heads and bloggers galore. They first held a coronation in year 2004, due to the mainstream exposure gained by the record-breaking box-office hit Fahrenheit 9/11 and films like the super-buzzed-about Super Size Me. But other cultural critics have also called 2003, 2005 and 2006 the Year of the Doc. So as we head into a new year, perhaps it's time to label this the Decade of the Documentary and get it over with. The popular influence of docs doesn't seem to be waning anytime soon. However, some types of documentaries are basking in the glow of this twenty-first century zeitgeist more than others. The Best of Times, The Worst of Times This groundswell of acclaim for docs has been a mixed blessing for filmmakers. On the plus side are many changes for the better. Popular opinion of documentaries has radically shifted. No longer relegated to the obscurity of the classroom or the rare art-house run, documentaries have become proper entertainment, available in "big box" stores, playing at multiplexes and enjoying the praise and even some of the spotlight of the Hollywood establishment. In addition, cheaper camera equipment and non-linear editing systems have enabled many more aspiring filmmakers to enter the field. Finally, there are more venues for distributing documentaries. A wide variety of cable channels now show both standard television-formula documentaries as well as independently produced docs. Moreover, theatrical distribution has become more common and DVD and online video distribution give viewers ready access to formerly hard-to-find material. The downside lies behind the scenes, in the start pragmatic realities of making and showing documentary films within this new paradigm. A major problem has always been the mismatch between the cost to produce professional documentaries (high) and the revenue available to pay for these costs (low). Front-end funds are hard-won, as charitable foundation dollars for documentaries are increasingly scarce and investors are few. Back-end revenue is declining as DVD profits are shrinking, broadcast fees are lowering, marketing costs are up and a theatrical release is more commonly a money-losing proposition than not. In part, these difficulties with film financing have gotten worse because the field is crowded like never before. Now that documentaries are cheaper and more popular, there's a lot more of them. You need to have a sense of humor to appreciate the nostalgia of some doc makers for the good old days, when there were fewer doc fans but also fewer filmmakers competing for those viewers. Politics and Profit Boiled down to its essence, this plus-and-minus analysis can be summed up as the price of success. The financial pressures created by the possibility of commercial success have caused two documentary subgenres to rise to the top of the heap, in terms of exposure: the entertainment documentary and the political documentary. The first broad type of documentary we are seeing more of is the documentary that plays as a piece of entertainment first and foremost. These types of documentaries cover a wide range of topics and stylistic approaches. What they have in common is the distributor's perception of them having a high "entertainment" value, for any number of reasons. Entertainment docs often have one or more of the following: famous people, cute kids, the suspense of a contest, unusual or disturbing hobbies or sensational personal revelations. None of these are recipes for commercial success, but they are often seen as tools to such success. If you read Patricia Aufderheide's brand new book Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2007), you will learn that since the advent of the moving picture, the documentary genre has been shaped by the tension between are (or education) and commerce. In recent years, those who are in the "business" of making documentary film (i.e. the people who make money from docs), are seeking the doc that can vie with a Hollywood film in terms of drawing viewers. And doc makers have been responding. Hits like March of the Penguins, Murderball, and Spellbound have set the bar high for theatrical docs in terms of sheer entertainment. The success--perceived and actual--of this type of documentary has put pressure on independent documentaries to entertain broad audiences and to compete at the box office with mainstream movies. As a result, we see many docs striving to be the next in line with their kid-contest movie, or their dramatic story of real people participating in oddball or salacious activities. The other subgenre of documentary that has gained ascendance is the so-called "political documentary." Without getting too fine in our definitions, the political doc ranges from the rabble-rousing films of Michael Moore to the sober advocacy work of An Inconvenient Truth, and from the community-galvanizing work of Brave New Films (Outfoxed, etc.) to any documentary that illustrates a pressing public policy concern (Participant Productions' Darfur Now being on of the latest to get wide release). With the political documentary, there is a double bottom line to the success sought: to be commercially viable as well as politically hard-hitting or sensational. Part of this is the fall-out from the media juggernaut commonly known as An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore's potent presentation on environmental apocalypse and the possibility for real change nailed the box office and influenced the public conversation far beyond the scope of the average political documentary. While documentarians may try to argue that this film's success is the exception that proves the rule, it has inevitably created a groundswell of filmmakers and investors seeking to produce the next An Inconvenient Truth. What's to Become of the Not-So-Profitable Doc? One unfortunate result of these new trends is that the smaller or artier documentary has become more difficult to get off the ground. Now that it seems less farfetched to imagine a wide release and significant revenue for a doc, the argument for a smaller portrait that doesn't meet any of the new criteria for success (i.e. politically hard-hitting, strong entertainment value, high famous-people quotient) is arguably harder to make. It's more difficult to raise the funds or to make the argument that an audience will want to see it. Films like the Maysles' Salesman (about a bunch of nobodies doing a tedious job) or Marlon Riggs' Black Is...Black Ain't (political, but not advancing a hard-hitting agenda) would have a more difficult time today justifying their existence, waving the flag of art over the subtle ideas they explore. Intimate without being sensational, these films are examples of the work of artists taking a humanist approach to their documentary subject matter. Concrete political advocacy in the form of "next steps" are mostly absent, and the storytelling style does not necessarily cleave religiously to a three-act narrative arc. This year's Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto offered a retrospective of the Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann, including her new film Forever, a meditation on death and mourning through the experiences of visitors to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. It's a poem of a film, not topical, news-y or dramatic. Honigmann's nuanced tough, rooted in confident craftsmanship, reminded me of how unusual it is today to see docs from the U.S. that take the time to muse on the human condition. There are some, for sure, that rise to the top of the heap, but it is not the rule. Perhaps American doc makers and their viewing public feel that in the current cultural and political climate, we don't have the luxury of pausing to wax existential. The demands made of the political film—that it should explicitly inform, educate and galvanize—are not surprising in the light of developments within journalism and the body politic. The decline of investigative television new reporting over the last two decades has created a void in the public affairs-related long-form documentary. With television news offering only minimal coverage of conflicts around the world, viewers increasingly turn to the intrepid documentarian to fill the gap. This is compounded by the fact that we are heading into our eighth year of the Bush Administration, marking also our seventh year at war. Those who are alarmed by White House policies and frustrated by the lack of accountability or transparency in those policies are eager to sink their teeth into an independent documentary that can offer the cathartic experience of presenting "the real deal." The success of last year's Sundance Film Festival Jury Winner No End In Sight is a perfect example of a growing anti-war public seeking films that speak to their pressing concerns. In a political climate when the public feels they have been let down by the Administration and traditional journalism, a film like No End In Sight is an absolutely vital contribution in creating a truer public dialogue. It is also very much a creature of its time. In 2008 and beyond, we are likely to continue to see documentaries that serve a critical democratic function of truth-telling. This could mean that the side stories of life may not gain center state any time soon. But it's worth remembering that no matter what film style is a la mode at a given time, there will always be artists who cannot be pigeonholed and whose beset work goes against market trends. For those of us true believers in documentary as an art form capable of producing films that are profound, beautiful and long-lasting, we should continue to champion those films that are mostly left behind in the marketplace. To the best of our ability, we should strive to keep a spot carved out on the documentary landscape for the humanist doc, the poetic doc, the so-called "smaller" film. Hopefully, artists will continue using the relatively inexpensive tools available to them to work in the voice of their choosing, and festivals and online distribution will offer a sanctuary for their work to flourish. Because in order for the documentary to remain an exciting form in the next decade and beyond, filmmakers need the space to take the artistic risks that will bring us films that truly push the envelope and blow our minds. This article was originally published in the January/February 2008 issue of Film Arts magazine.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MediaRights: News, on April 16, 2008 7:36 AM

Early in my efforts to document the creative environment where great technology projects happen, I reached out to Ray Ozzie. Ray is of course a software industry legend, today the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, in addition to having been the father of Lotus Notes.

Ray very graciously answered some questions about both the physical space and (most important, to me), the soundtrack of a roomful of hackers in 1985:

We went to a used furniture store and bought the CHEAPEST crappiest (but strong) fold-out tables, with strong/comfortable chairs.

We spared no expense on massive whiteboards that covered the walls.

Tim [Halvorsen] & I are messy-desk people - listings and scrawlings everywhere.  Len [Kawell] if I remember was an organized-desk person.

If I remember correctly, soon after we opened the office Sony came out with this amazing new thing called the "CD Player" - the Sony D5.  We bought one, with some awesome speakers.

We bought everything that came out in those early CD days; Dire Straights was big.  Since we all knew each other from college, lots of our college favorites.

But if there were ANY "theme music" for me, it would have been Stevie Ray Vaughan.  Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul, all big big big.  Played over, and over, and over.  Blasting.

It's a terrific, evocative image of a bunch of creators doing what they love in a place that feels comfortable. Some links for background:

• A fond reminiscence of early Sony CD players, including the D5.
• A somewhat-sanitized official history of Lotus Notes from IBM.
• Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits signature album and one of the most popular albums of 1985.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand the Weather and Soul to Soul, the blues guitarist's career-defining releases from 1983, 1984 and 1985.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 16, 2008 7:33 AM

In today's column, Maureen Dowd explains why she's from salt of the earth and Obama's a member of the cozened elite. And you know she's got it bad when she has the bit so firmly in her teeth that she even finds herself saying good things about Hillary.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 16, 2008 7:23 AM

Olympics planners and San Francisco authorities made many attempts (making up the route as it went along) to prevent demonstrators from disrupting the Olympic torch's only North American appearance on Wednesday, they couldn't stop a torch bearer from the Bronx from expressing her pro-Tibet sympathies.

Majora Carter, a 41-year-old environmental activist from the South Bronx, had tucked a small Tibetan flag up her sleeve, with the torch in the other. The NY Times described her 200-meter run, which was cut short.

Five seconds into her run down Van Ness Avenue, Ms. Carter pulled the Tibetan flag from her sleeve and began waving it. There she was, a mole at the head of the procession.

She waved the flag for roughly five seconds, until a Chinese guard saw her. He lunged at her. She dodged him. He lunged again and soon wrested the flag from her hand, saying, “Sorry, I can’t let you do this.”The Daily News quotes Carter, "I was expressing my right as an American citizen using freedom of speech in support of people who don't have it. It just became really clear to me what was going on in Tibet and I wanted to do something. Apparently, I'm not part of the Olympic torch-bearing entourage anymore." While that may be true, later at a pro-Tibet rally, she was welcomed like a rock star, as "people bowed, hugged her, kissed her and cried."

However, another New Yorker in the torch run, a retired FDNY firefighter Richard Doran who wore his helmet in honor of the 343 FDNY members killed on 9/11, said this of Carter's act: "I think it's disgusting, appalling. It violated every paper we signed about the sanctity of the event." Coca-Cola, an Olympics sponsor which nominated Carter to carry the torch, is also unhappy with her actions.

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 16, 2008 6:31 AM

A commentator at the Wall Street Journal blog Buzzwatch posits that congestion pricing would have stood a better chance if it had a better name. After asking branding specialists for a more appealing moniker, here's what rose to the top:

• StreetSmart - Burt Alper, Catchword Branding
• FreeFlow and ClearPass - George Frazier, Idiom Brand Identity
• TrafficEase - Allen Adamson, Landor Associates
• GreenWay and ClearWay - James Bell, Lippincott
• EZ-Zone - Upstate NY Dem, commenter

Even if pricing had been called "Puppies for Orphans," however, the big hurdle wasn't so much popular support. The last Q poll showed public opinion at 2 to 1 in favor, assuming funds went to transit as planned, so it's hard to see how a name alone could have thwarted the deliberate efforts of politicians to misrepresent the plan as regressive, or their timidity in taking a stand on something seen as controversial. Did Sheldon Silver and Richard Brodsky care what it was called?

(more...)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 16, 2008 6:20 AM

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

On the Google Earth team, we're big fans of Earth Day, so much so that we couldn't hold out until it arrives next week to release our latest labor of love: Google Earth 4.3. With this version, we have completely rethought how you might interact with the 3D world. We've redesigned the navigation to make it much easier to fly from the heavens down to the streets of your town. And with all of the great user-created buildings in the 3D Warehouse, we wanted to make it easy for you to get right up close to see the rich detail.



Here's a sample of what you'll find in this release:

• New navigation - We've improved the zoom control so you can swoop down from outer space to street level in a single seamless motion. And with the addition of the "look" joystick, you can look up at buildings or across a mountain range.

• More, faster 3D buildings - It's more fun to navigate through a lot of new 3D content. Besides adding thousands of buildings contributed by people around the world, we've added dozens of photo-textured cities and towns in the U.S. and elsewhere.

• Street View - The popular Google Maps feature makes its Google Earth debut.

• Sunlight feature - Never seen the sunrise over the Alps? Now you can.

• New languages - There are 12 new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Check out the Lat Long blog for all the details, or head over to our website at earth.google.com. And stay tuned for more details about Earth Day coming soon.

Originally posted by Karen from Official Google Blog, on April 16, 2008 6:16 AM

David Fincher, who has a “presented by” credit on the film along with Spike Jonze, describes the film as “what would’ve happened if Andrei Tarkovsky had made ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”

From a piece last year on Tarsem’s The Fall in the LA Times.

The trailer is now online, as the film is being distributed by Roadside Attractions.

via coudal.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on April 16, 2008 5:53 AM

My friend Heather Rogers went on a trip to Brasil a little while back doing research for her new book, and just sent over these great photos of graffiti down there. Check it out!

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on April 16, 2008 5:13 AM

I’ve heard of candidates keeping blogs, but I think this is a first. From the Hindustan Times:

“Malaysia’s political landscape was hit hard from cyberspace last week when a blogger entered Parliament after winning in elections that saw the ruling coalition lose its two-thirds majority in the House. In a country where the mainstream media largely supported the government, Jeff Ooi — a former advertising copywriter — used his political blog to win a seat on an Opposition ticket. He was not the only blogger in the fray.

Elizabeth Wong, a social activist and blogger, won a state assembly election....

Technology destroyed the powerful hold that Abdullah’s Barisan Nasional had over Malaysia, where sex scandals and videos of ministers frolicking with their girlfriends have been posted on YouTube, much to their embarrassment.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on April 16, 2008 4:49 AM

The new ABC/Washington Post poll shows Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton by ten points nationwide. Here are the numbers, compared to about a month and a half ago:

Obama 51% (+1)
Clinton 41% (-2)

The internals have mostly bad news for Hillary Clinton -- for example, only 39% of Americans believe she is honest and trustworthy, with 58% saying the opposite, and her personal ratings are only 44% favorable to 54% unfavorable.

On the other hand, 50% of Dem-leaning respondents said it made no difference for the Democratic primaries to continue on, with 17% saying it was a good thing -- and 55% even said Clinton should stay in the race if she were to lose in Pennsylvania.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on April 16, 2008 4:38 AM

a daily news website that accompanies each news article with an interactive network graph of the relationships between relevant people & organizations. the website also focuses on "online databases, extensive research & old-fashioned journalism". users can search, refine & filter information. solid lines convey current relationships, while dotted lines show former relationships.

[link: muckety.com]

see also:
.news visual
.Yahoo news globe
.silobreaker
.textmap
.libero news network graphs
.cnet news ontology

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on April 16, 2008 1:06 AM

It's been almost exactly 10 years since I wrote this review of Neutral Milk Hotel's album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. 10 years! That album hasn't meant any less to me after all this time. The review could have used a good editor; I'm an incorrigible putter-inner who relies on the help of a strict taker-outer. But it still got halfway to expressing the way music makes you feel like you've just fallen in love, or witnessed a miracle or are living in a poem. Not bad, old self, not bad.

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on April 16, 2008 12:42 AM

Many magazines have been delivered to my mailbox in the last ten years -- hundreds have been read, stacked, boxed and then finally discarded when it's time to move to a new home. In the last eight years (and six moves), my Martha Stewart Living collection has always spared a trip to the recycling bin. In fact, in our home office, I have one shelf reserved for the back issues and each of their white spines reflects the perfect decorative and craft world I aspire to be a part of.

My fondness for the Martha Stewart aesthetic is partly why I'm very proud to have her blog hosted on TypePad.

Today, however, the pride I felt was not because of our association with the Martha Stewart brand of aesthetic perfection, but about our association with Martha Stewart, the blogger.

The post that inspired this pride? Sadly, it was about the passing of her precious Chow, Paw Paw. So much talk about blogging is about blogs with a capital "B," the blogs that are supposed to act as change-the-world media. When the punch line to many a joke about blogging happens to involve a reference to a dog or cat, it's hard to appreciate the impact a post like Martha's could make.

As someone who has written about losing a pet, I know how difficult sharing this sort of news can be. The tribute to Paw Paw's last day was, as a friend put it, "the sort of post that they wanted to write when their own dog passed away." My friends and fellow bloggers who read the Paw Paw post were touched by Martha's candid reflection on the animal that meant so much to her. A few of my friends were even moved to tears.

But the best part about Martha's post was its simplicity. It was a real blog post, not something manufactured for a glossy magazine. It was a chronology of Paw Paw's last day. The captions, as written by Paw Paw, were brief and so not about perfection and good things, but about a good life.

"I went out for one last pee" is a phrase I never imagined would be penned by Stewart's hand, but there it was.

And because this was a blog conversation, we were able to read the comments from well-wishers and see how her post affected them.

So, thank you, Martha Stewart, for demonstrating how a media mogul and household name can use blogging to show such a different side of a person, as well as take the best of media and personal communication and make it completely heartfelt

To Paw Paw, here's to a good life!

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 15, 2008 10:34 PM

Today, Mena and I were talking about this Michael Kinsley piece in a recent New Yorker, the premise of which being that longevity is essentially the last competition that you'll ever have, and that after arriving at sixty years old, it's totally up for grabs whether you'll die tomorrow or live until ninety. Fun!

Oh, and, I certainly wasn't aware of the state of surgery/repair w/r/t Parkinson's:

[The symptoms] got even milder after I had an operation, a couple of years ago, to implant wires in my brain and two pacemaker-type batteries in my chest ... During the operation, your head is screwed into a metal frame and the frame is screwed into the operating table. My surgery lasted nine hours, and for most of it I had to be awake, so that the doctors could test the connection, like asking somebody to go upstairs and see if the light in the bedroom comes back on while you fiddle with the circuit-breaker box in the basement.

It's the future! And it's pretty fascinating.

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on April 15, 2008 9:43 PM

is this the first open-source web-based MMO? [via] 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 15, 2008 9:11 PM

Complete with a half-cake and a half-candle.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 15, 2008 8:57 PM

The Washington Post had a nice, if slightly bemused, article on Meatpaper in the Style section today, about how the magazine believes “that meat, and the endless variety of rituals, symbolism and taboos surrounding it, can tell us a lot about our fellow humans.” (For some reason the Post refers to me as the “author of a ‘food politics blog’” as if those three words had never been strung together before.) In the afternoon I talked to a Canadian reporter for a story she is doing about ethical carnivorism. And then later, we got this email. It’s a question we hear often enough that I thought I would share my reply. Feel free to chime in with your own ethical algorithms.

Dear Bonnie,

I am doing a feature for [Australian magazine] on ethical eating. This weekend I will be doing an experiment on eating ethically for the whole weekend. I was hoping someone would be able to offer advice on what they classify as ethical eating - maybe a list of guidelines I should follow according to the Ethicurean eating movement.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

[Ethicurean n00b]

And here’s what I said:

Hi there:

Sounds like a fun story. It’s not hard to eat ethically, but it does involve doing some legwork. You need to know what your values are, and if you are not buying directly from the farmers, what exactly the labels on food mean. Everyone has their own set of ethics that they may prioritize slightly differently. Maybe you want to help rebuild local-food infrastructure, and support drought-stricken Aussie farmers, so you would choose local non-organic produce over certified organic produce from far away. Or you think it is immoral to treat sentient beings such as pigs as if they are mere protein widgets in a massive factory: you would then eat only pork from pigs raised outside, with room to engage in natural behaviors. Perhaps you think its unethical to eat animals at all: it’s easier than ever to be vegetarian. Maybe you are concerned about the effects of pesticides and herbicides on the environment and on farmworkers’ health, even those far away: you would stick to certified organic produce.

And if you are concerned about ALL those things — like we are — you can start by avoiding processed food, factory meat, genetically modified food, and chemically dependent crops. Then start educating yourself: talk to the people who grow the food you are buying and ask them why they do it the way they do. If you can’t buy direct from the farm, then make sure you understand what supermarket labels like “organic” and “free range” and “natural” mean. They often don’t cover the things you think they do: for example organic beef in the U.S. can be raised in a feedlot on a diet of organic grain, rather than out in pasture eating grass as much as the climate and season allow. Some “humanely raised” labels allow beak clipping for chickens and tail docking for pigs.

I wish there were an easy answer. But if there were, we wouldn’t have felt the need to start this blog in order to chronicle our own thought processes!

Bonnie

ShareThis

Originally posted by Bonnie P. from The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing., on April 15, 2008 8:11 PM

E.J.Dionne in TNR: "But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 15, 2008 7:26 PM

Live well, by EssG at flickr

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an amputation on East End Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on East 178th St. and Clinton Ave. in the Bronx, and a water search in the area of the Whitestone Bridge in Queens.
  
• "You may not have noticed; but we switched your regular Milkbone dog treats with Batch's gourmet concoction." Three out of four dogs bit that man on the hand.
  
• Parks are overrated: developers want a shot at turning Governors Island into a mixed-use development.
  
• Is Rupert Murdoch attempting to suppress a parody issue of the WSJ by The New York Press? Frankly, The New Republic's morphing of Hillary and Obama was way more scary.
  
• Beautiful photographs of clouds over the George Washington Bridge from The Gay Recluse.
  
• A privately operated ferry boat ran aground off Liberty Island.
  
• NYC rents are crazy, but did you know NJ rents are fifth most expensive in the country?
  
• Footage of Marilyn Monroe administering oral sex to a man has surfaced and was purchased by a NYC businessman. It's unclear if Lindsay Lohan will be called upon to re-create that.

Originally posted by Dave Hogarty from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 15, 2008 7:14 PM

While San Francisco is bracing for tomorrow's Olympic torch relay--protesters scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled "Free Tibet" banners yesterday --torchbearers hailing from New York City say they aren't worried about potential disruptions. A retired NYPD cop, James Dolan, told the Daily News, "I've seen enough demonstrations in my career. I'm confident the city will be able to make the event go off smoothly."

The Olympic torch is only visiting San Francisco in the United States, and torchbearers from around the country will be participating. Environmental activist Majora Carter told the News:

"I'm grateful that I live in a country where you can say things like this," said Carter, 41, who heads Sustainable South Bronx and is co-founder of GreenForAll.org, which finds environmentally friendly jobs for poor people.

"I completely understand the whole controversy about China, but I just think that we should look at this in the spirit the Games represent," Carter said. "It's about unity, it's about respect and it's about reaching across boundaries in the spirit of sportsmanship." Yesterday, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom emphasized that the Olympic torch route is "not fixed" and, today, the torch arrived under security usually "reserved for head-of-state visits."

In 2004, the Olympic torch was carried through NYC (P. Diddy and Chuck Close were among the torchbearers). The Olympic Flame went out on while on the Staten Island Ferry, but there's always a standby flame.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 15, 2008 7:14 PM

Even though Tom Otterness, who just installed his newest creation in DUMBO, cheers up commuting New Yorkers underground...he has a dark past that wouldn't make anyone smile. The artist, in short, shot a dog (that he adopted) for the sake of "art" -- something he did, and filmed, 20 years ago.

He's apologized for the unforgivable act, but with each new piece he creates or installs -- it seems his past will always come back to haunt him. Here is one of his latest emails addressing the situation:

"As you must understand this is a very difficult and painful situation for me. Thirty years ago when I was 25 years old, I made a film in which I shot a dog. It was an indefensible act that I am deeply sorry for.

Many of us have experienced profound emotional turmoil and despair. Few have made the mistake I made.

I hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

Tom Otterness"Is the apology enough? The Brooklyn Eagle doubts it was the one many were hoping for. In the meantime, there are still "artists" killing innocent animals; Guillermo Vargas Habacuc tied a dog up, put it on display in a gallery, and starved him to death -- something that will be repeated at the Centroamerican Art Biennial this year.

Photo via bgalberta's flickr.

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 15, 2008 7:12 PM

Extensive series of photographs of a pig being butchered.

The pig is Berkshire, from a small farm in upstate NY. It was slaughtered at a small family slaughterhouse nearby, on the Thursday before the class. So this pig had been dead for less than a week before being butchered.

If you want to know where your bacon or ham-related food comes from, here's your chance. (thx, derrick)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 15, 2008 4:51 PM

I helped a friend today with a seemingly baffling problem: he could see the files and folders on his desktop (i.e. the icons you see when all windows are closed or hidden), but he couldn’t see the “Desktop” folder itself in his home folder. Ends up, somehow, the folder had been made invisible.

There are a two supported ways¹ to mark files as “invisible” on the Mac:

• Start the file or folder name with a dot (i.e. “.like_this”). This is a Unix convention.
• Toggle the HFS+ invisible bit for the file or folder. This is the Mac convention.

The invisible bit is metadata. In the same way that every file and folder has metadata such as created and modified dates, it has a boolean “invisible” bit. Files marked invisible are still readable and writable, they just don’t show up in the Finder or in Open and Save dialogs. Invisibility is not inherited by the contents of an invisible folder, which explains why my friend could see the files on his desktop, but couldn’t see the “Desktop” folder itself in his home folder.

One place where the HFS+ invisible bit is not honored is the terminal — the ls command lists files and folders regardless of the state of their invisible bits. (The ls command does honor the Unix dot-file convention, though; such files are suppressed unless you use the -a or -A options.)

I’m not aware of any software that ships by default with Mac OS X that lets you see or set the HFS+ invisible bit. If you install the (free) developer tools, though, you can use the GetFileInfo and SetFile utilities.

For example, to check your Desktop folder:

$ GetFileInfo ~/Desktop
directory: "/Users/gruber/Desktop"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 03/30/2008 18:25:34
modified: 04/15/2008 18:55:14

(The first line is what you type at the command line in Terminal; the next four lines are the results.) The GetFileInfo man page explains the “attributes” line: each letter represents an HFS+ metadata attribute. A lowercase letter means the attribute is off/false, an uppercase letter means the attribute is on/true. “v” is the letter for the invisible bit, so, because it’s lowercase in the example output, we can see that the “Desktop” folder is not invisible.

To make the file invisible:

$ SetFile -a "V" Desktop/

Then:

$ GetFileInfo ~/Desktop
directory: "/Users/gruber/Desktop"
attributes: aVbstclinmedz
created: 03/30/2008 18:25:34
modified: 04/15/2008 18:55:14

Note that toggling the invisible bit does not change the folder’s modified date.

Better, for must users, is to use a good file info utility such as Bare Bones Software’s Super Get Info. Just drag a file or folder onto Super Get Info’s icon and you get a nice window showing most of the metadata associated with the item. Invisibility is indicated with a checkbox. Invisible items pose an obvious problem, of course, in that if you can’t see them, you can’t drag them. Super Get Info solves this with its File → Open Hidden command, which brings up an Open dialog box that lists every item in the file system.

---

1. There’s also a third way, which is now deprecated. Prior to Mac OS X 10.4, there was a file named “.hidden” (which, because of the leading dot, was itself invisible) at the root level of the boot volume. This file contained a list of files and folders that were to be considered invisible. By default, it included the underpinnings of the OS, like the kernel (/mach_kernel) and the BSD Unix-y directories such as /bin, /usr, etc. Starting with 10.4, these files and folders are instead marked as invisible using the HFS+ invisible bit. But according to this, a /.hidden file, if present, is still honored. ↩

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 15, 2008 4:27 PM

• Fro-yo chain Pinkberry has agreed to settle and pay up $750,000 after being sued last year for bogus health claims and misrepresenting its product as frozen yogurt despite not meeting the legal definition. [NY Times]
• Japan is a market pioneer again: the first industrialized nation with no butter [Times Online]
• As other staples soar, potatoes break new ground [Reuters]
• The new biofuel rule will factor in to driving food prices higher, says Oxfam. [Bloomberg]

Originally posted by Emily Koh from Serious Eats: Main, on April 15, 2008 4:00 PM

Swedish furniture giant Ikea is trying to make inroads in Japan by advertising in one of that country's high-traffic areas: train interiors.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on April 15, 2008 3:45 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on April 15, 2008 3:33 PM

I know it is early in the season and it is a marathon not a sprint, blah, blah, blah. BUT...anyone frustrated? Alyssa Milano, Baseball fan.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 15, 2008 3:09 PM

[Image: Untitled (2001) by Maurizio Cattelan, courtesy of the Marian Goodman Gallery, via the New Yorker].

The New Yorker has a fascinating and somewhat unbelievable article – more like something out of the work of Paul Auster – about a man named Nicholas White who was once trapped inside a stalled New York City elevator for a 41 hours. The experience so traumatized White that his whole life went into free-fall.

He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.

It's an extraordinarily long article, but it's a fantastic read.
Meanwhile, I wonder what sorts of urban myths might exist about lost elevators and the people trapped inside them – perhaps some still moving room deep inside an Upper East Side high-rise where an anonymous woman, long dead, traffics up and down without end, going nowhere. The elevator doors on each floor have been bricked over and the building's residents simply assume the noise is the ventilation at work, or plumbing.
Till they notice a smell...
It's like Edgar Allan Poe meets The Intuitionist meets Dark Water via BLDGBLOG.

(Article spotted at MeFi).

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, on April 15, 2008 1:50 PM

A mom let her 9-year-old son take the NYC subway and bus home from Sunday shopping.

For weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn't want to lose it. And no, I didn't trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."

Upon telling the story to others, she encountered some resistance:

Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating -- for us and for them.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 15, 2008 1:35 PM

This timelapse video of man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours is difficult to watch. The video accompanies an article in the New Yorker about elevators.

White has the security-camera videotape of his time in the McGraw-Hill elevator. He has watched it twice-it was recorded at forty times regular speed, which makes him look like a bug in a box. The most striking thing to him about the tape is that it includes split-screen footage from three other elevators, on which you can see men intermittently performing maintenance work. Apparently, they never wondered about the one he was in. (Eight McGraw-Hill security guards came and went while he was stranded there; nobody seems to have noticed him on the monitor.)

The end of White's story is heartbreaking. On the plus side, the article also discusses a favorite social phenomenon of mine, how strangers space themselves in elevators.

If you draw a tight oval around this figure, with a little bit of slack to account for body sway, clothing, and squeamishness, you get an area of 2.3 square feet, the body space that was used to determine the capacity of New York City subway cars and U.S. Army vehicles. Fruin defines an area of three square feet or less as the "touch zone"; seven square feet as the "no-touch zone"; and ten square feet as the "personal-comfort zone." Edward Hall, who pioneered the study of proxemics, called the smallest range -- less than eighteen inches between people -- "intimate distance," the point at which you can sense another person's odor and temperature. As Fruin wrote, "Involuntary confrontation and contact at this distance is psychologically disturbing for many persons."

(via waxy)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 15, 2008 12:21 PM

Good Housekeeping compares 11 QWERTY keyboard-equipped cell phones, including the iPhone. The testers weren't all that impressed with the iPhone's soft keyboard, though.

Read More...

Originally posted by ars@chrisforesman.com (Chris Foresman) from Infinite Loop, on April 15, 2008 12:15 PM

Yet another perfect use for my Rhapsody subscription: listening to the remixes of Spoon's "Don't You Evah".

The tracklist:

• Don't You Evah
• All I Got Is Me
• Don't You Evah (Ted Leo's I Want It Hotter Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Diplo Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Matthew Dear Mix)
• Don't You Evah (DJ Amaze & Alan Astor Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Doc Delay Fixerupper)
• Don't You Ever (The Natural History Original Version)

The new B-side is pretty cool, but...I don't need to own six new versions of a song I already really like a lot.  Full disclosure: I don't really get the point of remixes.*  Too often they sound like someone created some beat or riff or ambient noise and then graffiti'ed them over the structural beauty of an original song.  Sometimes I can recognize parts of the song that was remixed, sometimes I can't, but rarely does the remix do anything to improve upon the original version.

Speaking of the original, here's the video for "Don't You Evah" by Peter Simonite:

Back to the remixes.  Ted Leo's "I Want It Hotter Mix" made it the kind of hot that's too humid and all you want to do is lay on the couch and not move.  Diplo made some interesting sounds and then mixed in Britt's vocals like he's a noisy nextdoor neighbor echoing in like a non-sequitur.  My vision of a remix is actually re-mixing the tracks of the song, pointing out some interesting parts the listener might not have heard before -- say, drop out the bass and isolate the handclaps, maybe add in some sounds here and there.  Not create a whole new song and paste in some of the vocal track every once in awhile.  In this batch, the version that comes closest to what I envision as a remix is the one by DJ Amaze & Alan Astor.

The Natural History's original version of "Don't You Ever" is great, and an awesome addition to this release.  Apparently The Natural History recorded "Don't You Ever" in 2004 for their second full-length album People That I Meet.  The record was due to be released in 2005, but then the band split from their label and the record wasn't available to the public until they self-released it in 2007.  Spoon obviously heard the song in the meantime and covered it on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.  Spoon is one of the few bands that chooses cover songs in a way that I never would know they didn't write them. 

*I know there are really great remixes, and really talented remixers, out there.  But none of the outfits that "Don't You Evah" has tried on here are very flattering.  My advice: skip the remixes and just get the B-side and The Natural History's original. 

And if you can point me to some great remixes and talented remixers, by all means do. 

• Buy Spoon's "All I Got Is Me" mp3 and The Natural History's "Don't You Ever" mp3 from Amazon.

Originally posted by Krissy from art is the new religion, on April 15, 2008 12:10 PM

I'm not quite sure what to say to this reasoning from TPM Reader PB but I think it nicely captures the thinking of those who think Obama's downfall is nigh ...

I agree, the Wright issue did not have individual effect that I thought it would. But there is beginning to be the appearance of a pattern now, of Obama's remarks and behaviors, that is truly disturbing. Is it anti-white? Or at least not sufficiently "white-sensitive"? I don't know. But, man, if there's a third thing at some point - something else he says, or fails to say, or something that is dredged up from his past that Hillary gets to before McCain gets to it... then everything that came before it -- including "bitter," including Wright - gets re-examined in that new light. If it becomes part of a pattern, the Wright issue may come back with a vengeance.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 15, 2008 11:59 AM

Intricate cover (three bellybands, debossing, and foil) by Jordan Crane for Michael Chabon’s new non-fiction collection Maps and Legends. Published by McSweeneys.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on April 15, 2008 10:31 AM

Is Mario Kart Wii the first of the classic Nintendo franchises to be dumbed down for the new broader gaming audience?

Originally posted by Greg Howson from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on April 15, 2008 10:28 AM

Just kidding. Unless you're you're a tax adviser (congrats, take a vacation), April 15 sucks. But over at Salon, they're making future Tax Days a little less suckier—at least for freelancers. Catherine Price—a veteran self-employed writer—lays out some guidelines that make the devilishly complicated process a little less painful. Among her suggestions: set up a bank account for business cash flow; pay your taxes quarterly (so that you aren't charged interest); open an IRA; and—no matter how much it hurts—get yourself some health insurance (just like we suggested in our November/December issue). No doubt Sara Horowitz and the Freelancers Union—who we profiled in our January /February issue (and who receive an appreciative nod from Price)—are proud. Via Salon

Originally posted by danielriley from Good Magazine:, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 15, 2008 at 12:58 PM

Originally posted by danielriley from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 15, 2008 9:58 AM

Matt Jones argues that short looping videos are the real long photographs.

A loop would be a captured action or situation rather than a narrative, where the duration of the loop is set but the loop goes on forever so you can study the layers, the detail, the figure and the ground in the same way you can a photo. A bottled system not a short story. Think about all the tiny clips you've played again and again on the internet just to see one aspect, one moment, act out -- a goal or a dramatic chipmunk. Not stories, but toy moments.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 15, 2008 7:28 AM

From Torontoist back in December:

"The strange plaques were part of the grand Gestures installation by the 640 480 Video Collective, which aimed to memorialize inconsequential events captured on video at ten spots around the city. Each marker was placed in September and describes the unexciting details of a YouTube-sourced video shot at that particular location (like the ones above at left and at right)....

640 480 takes its name from the original 4:3 aspect ratio of video screens, and the group has an obvious affinity for the rapidly disappearing magnetic tape format. Memorial lapel ribbons made from videotape were also part of the grand Gestures installation, and taped copies of the videos are to be converted into an artificial diamond, signifying the preservation of memories from an increasingly obsolete format into an everlasting state."

More info here.

(Thanks Candice)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 15, 2008 4:30 AM

(photo nicked from here)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 15, 2008 4:25 AM

The early leader for the 2008 Art History Mystery of the Year: Is this a Goya?

We're not just talking about any Goya, we're talking about Goya's famed, even legendary war painting El Coloso, The Colossus. At least I think we are -- The Independent (UK) story quoted above is a bit puzzling. It says that Prado officials have made a determination that El Coloso is not a Goya, and that the Prado has come to this conclusion without cleaning the painting to look for evidence that might support a Goya attribution. Prado officials aren't really confirming or denying anything until they can publish something authoritative. (Which is a fine idea, but why didn't they publish before a show titled "Goya in Times of War?" The exhibition opened today.)

FWIW: Goya's most recent biographer, Robert Hughes, presents the painting as absotively a Goya. Even though the painting's authenticity has been questioned for years, Hughes didn't raise even the possibility that it might not be a Goya.

Related: The most recent Google-discovered Spanish story on the story. (I ran it through Google Translate and, well, don't.)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on April 15, 2008 4:00 AM

"She's like this Tennessee Williams tragic figure. The fatter she gets, the weirder she gets, the more I love her. I found her moderately appealing in the late '90s, but now I would marry her in a heartbeat."

-- Moby, to Britain's The Sun, on his love for Britney Spears

Well, with sweet-talk like that, we bet Brit will be knocking on Moby's door any minute now.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on April 15, 2008 3:05 AM

some recently introduced visual search metaphors. searchme uses an interactive interface resembling Mac's Coverflow in iTunes & Finder, RedZee adopts a similar, but more rudimentary visual metaphor of showing screenshot thumbnails that can be navigated in a seemingly fluid way, while brynsbrain prefers a pseudo-3D interface that known from the 3D tilt viewer.

[link: brynsbrain.com & RedZee.com & SearchMe.com|via searchengineland.com]

see also:
.oskope visual search & shopping
.search crystal
.like image search
.mnemomap visual workflow search
.brainmap hierarchical search
.casual search
.tianamo 3D web search

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on April 15, 2008 1:07 AM

Nice door-closing mechanism at Flat-White, Berwick St.
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones

As you might be aware – Flickr launched video, and amongst much praise for it’s simple, clear implementation there’s been quite a lot of hoo-ha from us wonderful, grateful users, some of whom are afraid the addition of video will lower the tone of the service to that of others, that allow you a tube, if you will.

Part of the differentiating design of Flickr video is that only clips of a maximum 90 seconds duration are possible. In fact, Flickr themselves refer to them as ‘long photos’.

Matt Webb has a wonderful set building at the moment of 11 second video clips. One of them is a mesmerising shot of waves breaking on a beach, that I’ve seen him use to hypnotise his audience as the opening slide of his talks.

So – this led me to wonder if another differentiating design constraint could be set: what if all videos looped automatically as default?

Wouldn’t they then really be long photos?

I’d love to be able to loop the clip posted above, so that you can just see the little door-closing system they’ve erected at Flat White over and over to your hearts content.

A loop would be a captured action or situation rather than a narrative, where the duration of the loop is set but the loop goes on forever so you can study the layers, the detail, the figure and the ground in the same way you can a photo.

A bottled system not a short story.

Think about all the tiny clips you’ve played again and again on the internet just to see one aspect, one moment, act out – a goal or a dramatic chipmunk.

Not stories, but toy moments.

Think about those moving photos imagined in cheesy science fiction films or Harry Potter movies.

Tiny loops of video perhaps are the real long photos…

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on April 14, 2008 11:24 PM

The last meal for the first class passengers on the Titanic. The meal comprised 10 courses in all, paired with wine and as many after-dinner cigars as you could smoke.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 14, 2008 8:44 PM

Now this is funny. The Huffington Post has discovered that at least three (and possibly four) "McCain Family Recipes" from the campaign's site, purportedly coming straight from Cindy McCain and intended to create a down-home image, appear to have actually been lifted from the Food Network's Web site.

The newest recipe on McCain's site: Crow.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on April 14, 2008 8:18 PM

Though I really know little about sailing and have little experience of it I have a recurring fascination with naval vessels and especially the big capital ships. So when I went to Times site just now, even though it was a civilian liner, I started reading this article about a new theory (with some compelling evidence) of why the Titanic sank.

Now, for myself, I don't think I realized there was a mystery. It hit an iceberg. It sank. Tragedy, great melodrama, sure. But what's the mystery?

But apparently one of the things that became clear after the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered in the 1980s (besides the fact that there was no one still living in it like in those corny made-for-TV movies) was that the expected massive gash in the ship's starboard hull actually wasn't there. Instead there were "six narrow slits where bow plates appeared to have parted." And this in turn cast suspicion on the rivets.

The theory has been circulating for a decade. But the authors of What Really Sank the Titanic use a combination of physical evidence obtained from the wreckage (48 recovered rivets) and archival evidence from the archives of the ship's builder, Harland and Wolff, which is still in business, to make the case that the builders were building on such a vast scale and under so much time pressure that they simply couldn't come up with enough high quality rivets or riveters. So they cut corners. The result of which was that the ship's plates split open much more quickly than they might have with better materials. Better construction would have kept the ship afloat long enough for many more passengers and crew to be rescued.

In any case, not everyone believes the authors have made their case. And high on that list is Harland and Wolff, the Titanic's manufacture now accused of faulty or slipshod practices that resulted in the deaths of 1500 people. "There was nothing wrong with the materials," company spokesman Joris Minne said primly, before noting that one of Titanic's sister ships, Olympic, sailed for a quarter century without a hitch.

I suppose this isn't surprising. Corporations don't make a habit of admitting negligence. But there aren't that many corporations that can trace their history back more than a century -- at least not undivided and unmerged. But, more than that, the story of the Titanic seems so embedded in history that there's something oddly incongruous about the thought that there's still an institution, a company, so invested in defending the quality of its workmanship. Not that it's not understandable. A shipbuilding company is probably never going to want to trumpet having built the titanic. But somehow I would have imagined that some sort of emotional or moral statute of limitations had run out.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 14, 2008 8:09 PM

A new website, Subway Crush, could mark the end of romantic quests like the one undertaken by Patrick Moberg last fall, when he created a website to find a cute girl he spotted on the subway. His efforts won him international fame, book and movie offers, and, yes, a date with the young lady. Oh, and plenty of derision.

In the Subway Crush dating scene, no such creativity is required. The site basically takes Craigslist’s Missed Connection section and confines it to the subway. Each desperate entry is designated by the subway line where the crush was born, and there are plenty of ads for Match.com if players want to try their luck beyond mass transit. Heads up, fellas – here’s a sample crush from the L line:

Adult Baby on the L Train Friday night (williamsburg) You got on at 1st Avenue and stood across from me. I thought you had a big butt in your skinny jeans, but then I realized that it was an adult diaper because I saw the white elastic poking out from the top of your jeans. You turned around and I saw a pacifier attached to your necklace...can I change your diaper?

For some reason, the site’s registration confirmation takes forever, so Still in Diapers Casanovas will have to be a little patient. And who knows; maybe serial sex offender Freddie Johnson will register for Subway Crush and be able to move beyond frottage?

Originally posted by John Del Signore from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 14, 2008 7:46 PM

The iconic Birkin bag made by Hermes is supposedly so difficult to find that there's a two-year waiting list. In his book, Bringing Home the Birkin, Michael Tonello says the list is just a marketing ploy and that he was able to buy Birkin bags whenever he wanted.

"I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client," Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I'd ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period -- and you tell me there is a waiting list?"

The Birkin retails for thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars and can be see here in situ, on the arms of celebrity millionaires. Lindsey Lohan looks like she can just about fit into hers. (via clusterflock)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 14, 2008 7:41 PM

I got to know Gail Albert Halaban's work while hanging around Gabe Greenberg's print studio and came to be a big fan of her highly stylized slightly offkilter peeks into the world of upper crusty New Yorkers.

For her new project titled Out My Window NYC she invites New Yorkers who see their neighbors only through the window and have an interest in connecting with them, to contact her. She states, "I would like to photograph you looking into their place and them looking back at you."

She's posted a few early images from the project and the results are promising. Be sure to click on the images to get a nice large version of the image.

Filed under: photographers
Tags: new york, photography, windows

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on April 14, 2008 7:29 PM

Growing up, my two favorite books were the yearly Almanac and The Book of Lists.  That's  why I enjoyed The Age Factor, a very brief piece in the latest issue of Time Magazine, in which Mark Halperin presents a few famous people who share birth years with John McCain and Barack Obama.

I decided to do a little more research and see who else shares the birth year with these two. As with the Time piece, I left out Hilary Clinton because she's almost right in the middle of McCain and Obama, being born in 1946.


Going a bit further, I looked up milestones that happened in 1936 & 1961. Here's a few:

1936

• 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany
• The first edition of Life is published
• King Edward VIII abdicates the throne
• Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term

1961

• John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President
• The Beatles perform for their first Cavern Club gig
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins
• The Vietnam War officially begins

No political analysis here.  Other than the obvious observation that twenty-five years really makes a difference when it's presented with historical events and famous faces  And I may be bias since I'm already an Obama supporter, but anyone born in the same year as George Clooney and Michael J. Fox is alright with me.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 14, 2008 4:54 PM

1. Oh, shut up! Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher thinks it was a bad idea to have Jay-Z play this year's Glastonbury "rock" music festival. Gallagher told the BBC that choosing a rap artist as headliner was the reason tickets didn't sell out immediately and stated, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." 2. A Japanese company has sold over two million bubble-wrap simulators. Called Eternal Poppety-Pop, the two-inch square hand-held device features ten buttons that, when pushed, create a sound similar to squeezing bubble-wrap. The price for driving your friends crazy? $8. 3. Interscope Records is going to start distributing Mark Ronson's four-year-old indie label Alido Records. The first LP under the deal will be DC's MC Wale. (via Billboard) 4. A sign on the door of Artichoke Pizza (328 E. 14 St.) explains why the East Village hot-spot is never open: "Please help us look for an apartment. We can't commute. Reward: a slice a day for a month. -Fran & Sal" (via Eater) 5. Is the art bubble bursting? The Wall Street Journal reports today that the amount of money owed to auction house Sotheby's by art buyers more than doubled to $835 million in 2007. "There seems to be a feeling that the art market will be affected by events in the real world, but for now it is acting like it won't be," a director of Gray Gallery tells the paper. 6. Jon Savage's book Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture, 1875–1945 is now out in paperback.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 14, 2008 11:27 AM

Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism prof who helped create the Huffington Post's "Off the Bus" project, explains how Mayhill Fowler came to break the story of Obama's "bitter" remark.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on April 14, 2008 11:25 AM

Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress team has posted a message about the security of WordPress, which MarsEdit users who run WordPress should take a look at. It’s particularly timely because there are a number of attacks going around that impact older WordPress blogs that haven’t been updated to to the most recent version.

In my customer support for MarsEdit, I have been seeing these security problems pop up quite a bit lately. The so-called “spam injection” attacks often inject spam links at the oblivious expense of how these links might mess up the XMLRPC interface which blog clients such as MarsEdit use to interact with your blog. It’s gotten to the point where error messages from the blog such as “Parse error. Not well formed.” are almost certain to be symptoms of such a spam injection attack. Updating to the latest WordPress almost always fixes the problem immediately.

Matt’s advice is pretty basic: update to the latest WordPress, and check your posts for signs of tampering. But it’s nice to have advice “from the top,” so to speak. I will be glad to see this wave of blog-attacks pass us by as more and more users get updated to the latest release of WordPress.

I commented on the post, suggesting that what WordPress would really benefit from is some kind of automated updater, so that users can easily update without having to worry about whether they’re doing it right or whether they’ll mess up their blog. The great news is Matt replied saying that they are in fact working on such a feature for 2.6.

Looking forward to a built-in automatic updater for WordPress! But in the mean time, be sure to stay current so you avoid the nasty attacks that are going around.

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on April 14, 2008 11:01 AM

Photo series of food that takes the shape of its container. The peas are my favorite.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 14, 2008 10:06 AM

In a post for Sports Illustrated, Arash Markazi profiles Lenny Dykstra’s son, Cutter, who is currently a senior at Westlake High School in California.

Markazi writes:

“Cutter, a speedy sparkplug who is batting .491 through 16 games this season, is projected to be a first- to third-round pick in MLB’s amateur draft this June. Cutter already has shown more potential coming out of high school than his father did when he was selected by the Mets in the 13th round of the 1981 draft.”

“I want people saying that’s Lenny’s son,” says Cutter. “I want people saying, ‘He looks just like his dad. He’s plays just like his dad. He approaches the game just like his dad.’”

…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…this is a great read, and it seems that cutter has even more fire than his father did, if that’s even possible…

…i agree with cutter that there needs to be more players like there were when his father played…hard-nosed, blue-collar, do-whatever-it-takes-to-win types of athletes…i can usually tell how much a player enjoys the game by the way he plays, and if cutter is anything like lenny, he too will exemplify that enjoyment…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Regis Courtemanche from MetsBlog.com, on April 14, 2008 9:52 AM

Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager

HTML has completely transformed our world. Through the web, a previously inconceivable amount of information is now just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away. What makes this possible is the fact that web browsers, web servers, and many other pieces of Internet infrastructure all speak the same language. Because of Internet standards like HTML, any web browser can view any web page. Internet standards are what makes the web a flourishing marketplace.

Today, a new standard was born: The Open Geospatial Consortium has announced its acceptance of KML 2.2 as an official OGC Standard. KML started as a file format for Google Earth, a way to save out the list of restaurants or parks or hiking trails that you might have drawn as a custom map. It's since matured into something much larger, and is supported on a wide variety of mapping platforms produced by a range of companies. You can even view KML on your cell phone! There are tens of millions of KML files available online -- a testament to just how much user-generated content is now map-based information.

Mapping has come a long way from the origami paper creations of the past. Our choice to give KML to the OGC is part of our strong commitment to open standards. It's our belief that KML's standardization will do much to make more geographic-based content accessible online.

There's more on KML's standardization on the Lat Long blog.

Originally posted by Karen from Official Google Blog, on April 14, 2008 9:07 AM

One of the biggest criticisms of Google's App Engine have been cries of lock-in, that the applications developed for the platform won't be portable to any other service. This weekend, Chris Anderson, the Portland-based cofounder of the Grabb.it MP3 blog service, just released AppDrop — an elegant hack proving that's not true.

AppDrop is a container for applications developed with the Google App Engine SDK, running entirely on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure. Just like Google's Appspot, anyone can use a modified SDK to deploy their App Engine apps directly to Amazon EC2 instead of Google, and they work without modification.

This proof-of-concept was built in only four days and can be deployed in virtually any Linux/Unix hosting environment, showing that moving applications off Google's servers isn't as hard as everyone thought.

How does it work? Behind the scenes, AppDrop is simply a remote installation of the App Engine SDK, with the user authentication and identification modified to use a local silo instead of Google Accounts. As a result, any application that works with the App Engine SDK should work flawlessly on AppDrop. For example, here's Anderson's Fug This application running on Google App Engine and the identical code running on EC2 at AppDrop.

Of course, this simple portability comes at the cost of scalability. The App Engine SDK doesn't use BigTable for its datastore, instead relying on a simple flat file on a single server. This means issues with performance and no scalabity to speak of, but for apps with limited resource needs, something as simple as AppDrop would work fine.

I spoke to Chris this morning about his project and where he wants it to go. "AppDrop is open-source just like the Google SDK, so I'm hoping someone will come along and take it to the next level," he said. "It wouldn't be hard for a competent hacker to add real database support. It wouldn't be that hard to write a Python adapter to MySQL that would preserve the BigTable API. And while that wouldn't be quite as scalable as BigTable, we've all seen that MySQL can take you pretty far. On top of that, you could add multiple application machines connecting to the central database, and load-balancing, and all that rigamarole."

While this is only a hack, it demonstrates that App Engine developers don't need to live in fear of Google's reprisal. "The upshot is that if you put a lot of time into an App Engine app, and then run afoul of Google, you have alternatives, even if they are more work."

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 14, 2008 9:03 AM

a massive upgrade, allowing snapshots with a single API call  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 14, 2008 9:00 AM

 

If you're tired of the typical teen reality show, where most of the characters are air-headed bimbo-ish girls and guys, MTV is offering you something different. Their brand new show, The Paper, chronicles the lives of seven students from Cypress Bay High School in Florida, all staffers on the school's newspaper, The Circuit. 

In a nice change from the jocks and the beauty queens, we get to have a closer look at some ambitious, competitive kids -- some of who are vying for the Editor in Chief position -- all who are focused on their futures. And, while this is MTV's attempt at going deeper than your Laguna Beach or Two-A-Days project, the show is still chock full of the tension, meltdowns and the high school antics that appeal to us reality TV lovers. 

So, check out the premiere of The Paper tonight on MTV at 10:30pm -- after The Hills -- and let me know what you thought of it. And, if after you've watched, you're still craving some air-headed bimbo-ish ridiculousness, hang on a bit for the premiere of Paris Hilton's: My New BFF. 

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on April 14, 2008 8:41 AM

Google Earth now displays location-specific news from the NY Times.

I read a lot of news by surfing the Internet, as do many of my colleagues and friends, and I've always dreamed of a way to browse news based on geography. What's happening in Paris today? What are the top headlines in Japan?

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 14, 2008 7:51 AM

Amazon announces beta functionality that will address the biggest hassle for using EC2 servers for running web applications — a file system that won’t vanish if an instance stops running.

Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr explains the issue the Amazon Web Services Blog:

If you have taken a close look at Amazon EC2, you know that the instances are ephemeral. The instances have anywhere from 160 GB to 1.7 TB of attached storage. The storage is there as long as the instance is running, but of course it disappears as soon as the instance is shut down. Applications with a need for persistent storage could store data in Amazon S3 or in Amazon SimpleDB, but they couldn’t readily access either one as if it was an actual file system.

For my experience and those of others, instances expectedly shutting down has been rare so far, the possibility of catastrophic proportions was real. If an instance were to unexpected shut down it would be the equivalent of a traditional server’s drive array catching on fire — the data would be lost forever unless you had a very good backup system in place.

This shortcoming was acceptable in that EC2 was created for computing power and not general usage hosting, but that’s not what a lot of people wanted to do — many wanted to run web apps with SQL databases and other things.

So the ability to hosts sites or applications or run a SQL database server using EC2 instances was possible the onus has been on everyone using an instance to run file and database backups or even (multiple) replicated database servers even if high availability wasn’t a requirement so data wouldn’t be lost in the event of a failure.

Later Barr continues:

…our forthcoming persistent storage feature will give you the ability to create reliable, persistent storage volumes for use with EC2. Once created, these volumes will be part of your account and will have a lifetime independent of any particular EC2 instance.

In addition to being able to create and then mount these volumes of persistent storage from any EC2 instance, Amazon will be releasing functionality that will take snapshots (backups) of volumes and store it in your S3 account.

I also assume that you can mount these persistent storage volumes from multiple EC2 instances.

This is addition is simply huge because it makes Amazon a viable hosting option for web applications by eliminating the biggest technical hurdles. With this shift from compute to more general purpose server resources, I think a seismic shift is certain for how web applications are developed and deployed and Amazon is poised to win big.

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on April 14, 2008 7:44 AM

Wonkette is now employee-owned and operated.

Originally posted by Choire from choire sicha, on April 14, 2008 7:39 AM

I wrote this essay a while back for Punk Planet which sadly is no longer being published as a print magazine. I wanted to put it up here because it relates to some other threads about artists appropriation.
Off with Their Heads By Dara Greenwald
Originally published in Punk Planet, #77
January/February 2007, p 94-98

Off with Their Heads By Dara Greenwald
Originally published in Punk Planet, #77
January/February 2007, p 94-98

In early 2002, a group of eight Chicago-based artists and activists gathered together to form a radical arts collective. They called the collective StreetRec and worked on creating memorable and resistant protest graphics to be disseminated widely for use in public space. Born out of the counter globalization movement and the critically engaged art community, they were interested in making art that would challenge the domination of corporate control and US hegemony. Part of their politics was an embodied critique of the over valuing of individual competition rather than group collaboration. This cultural tendency is particularly prevalent in the art world in which some of them participated. For this reason, they choose to credit all of the art they created to the collective and not to individual artists. They had no funding or sponsorship. They were simply a voluntary association of engaged artists with some graphic design skills and an offer from a sympathetic printer to help them out.

After several meetings and discussions, the group came to a collective decision to attend the protest against the World Economic Forum (WEF) being held in New York City that February in which they would bring their new creations. One member of StreetRec had seen a Vanity Fair photo spread (shot by the famous portrait photographer Annie Leibowitz) of the warmongers themselves: George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. They decided to modify and recontextualize these images and create larger than life cut out heads to be carried at the protest. A member of the group, recalls, “The Annie Liebowitz pictures of Bush and his cabinet were crying out for defacement. We discussed a variety of ways in which we could mutilate these images, from the grotesque to the culturally charged to the satirical . . . and we ended up with a smattering of all three.” Little did they know, that their visual interventions would travel far and wide and raise complex questions about artist appropriation, the free use of culture, and the commodification of dissent.

Since StreetRec was appropriating from a corporate magazine, critically and drastically changing the images for not-for profit dissemination, their use of these images might fall under Fair Use. Fair Use describes conditions under which copyrighted material may be used with out permission and there have been and continue to be long legal battles concerning the specifics of the laws. Regardless of the law, many people in the copyright liberation movement see the ownership of intellectual property for the generation of profits as damaging to the free exchange of ideas. Most copyright laws protect big corporations and other powerful entities. These laws can be stifling to creative development as well as political dissent. In a way, StreetRec and others like them can be seen as information Robin Hoods: taking from the rich (corporate content providers), and giving away to the poor (grassroots activism and free culture) for social benefits and sharing, not for profit.

The group created three heads approximately four-and-a-half feet high by three feet wide for the WEF protest. A member of StreetRec describes the heads this way: “One—Bush with ‘Enron’ sutures: arguably the most ghoulish of all the heads, Bush has a wide cut that splits his mouth well into his cheeks, and has a matching slice across his forehead. These wounds are closed by thick, ugly sutures, the ones on the forehead spelling out ‘Enron.’ Two—Cheney with the ‘Got Oil’ moustache: a sloppy oil moustache dribbling over the man's lips, while on his forehead in looping liquid script are the words ‘Got Oil?’ satirizing a popular ad campaign for milk. Three—Rumsfield with ‘3000 Afghani Civilian Deaths’: Inspired by the infamous ‘Gods of Punk’ 12" by Poison Idea, Rumsfield has the Afghani civilian death toll (at the time of making) carved into his flesh with uneven gashes. It's important to note all of these signs were in lovely grayscale, with the only color being the various wounds and blood.” Each also had a teardrop tattoo; a jailhouse symbol indicating the wearer is a murderer. Graphically, these visual mashups were borrowing from and commenting on the media culture they were immersed in to create new meaning and dialogue.

When StreetRec arrived at the WEF protest in NY, one member recalls, “We were amazed at the initial reception of the heads when we walked to the starting point of the march. About 1000 people just started cheering wildly. It was really overwhelming. We knew at that point we had done something really provocative. We had no idea that they would travel like they did.” These same heads were also brought to a protest against the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue, a Chicago anti-war protest, and to a Milwaukee protest with Illinois Peace Action.

With the reception of the first set of heads, and in preparation for the January 18, 2003 national protest against the War in Iraq being held in DC, the group created a new series. This group of images was called “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse”; this time the heads had the eyes blacked out and one word across their foreheads: Bush had “War”, Rumsfeld had “Death”, Cheney had “Pestilence”, and Wolfowitz was marked with “Famine”. They were also brought to several anti-war protests in Chicago including the International Day of Action against the War, February 15, 2003 (see image) as well as protests in other parts of the US.

At all the protests, the signs were documented by various media outlets and the resistant street spectacle entered the corporate media spectacle. Corporate media coverage is a much-debated arena in activist circles. Activists are at once seeking coverage from corporate media because of the huge audience potential and at the same time activists remain suspicious of corporate media’s tendency to misrepresent or debase subjects. Certainly StreetRec must have discussed these issues before hand, for the sheer size of the heads and their slickness in a protest context were sure to stand out and make for an excellent photo opportunity. In some circles, this is called Tactical Media, using creative tactics to create a spectacle that the media will pay attention to and thus enter your issues into a larger public dialogue. Regardless of this debate, however, these contemporary protest images spread around the world and Bush’s head with the word “War” were intricately linked.

Fellow protestors and the media loved these images more than the artists had ever anticipated. From Newsweek to the Revolutionary Worker to the South China Morning Post and The Times of India—protest photos that included the StreetRec heads proliferated around the globe. Ultimately, StreetRec felt their desire to infuse protest with newer, slicker graphics worked in communicating their visual and political ideas to the world. It was exciting that with so few resources, a small number of people could penetrate the media landscape on this large of a scale.

With the heads’ welcome reception and an intention to spread critical and free culture, the group decided to make the graphics more accessible to other protestors by putting up easily downloadable files on the web. They distributed flyers at the antiwar rally in DC that had a link to a site where anyone could download the heads. At the site visitors were greeted with this information and an email address: “Hello! Please feel free to use any of these images for your own activist/non-profit purposes. If they get any press, we'd love to hear/see about it. All images by the StreetRec collective 2002-03." They also posted the link on activist website www.indymedia.org.

Later the group created a video called Retooling Dissent, which included a booklet with step-by-step instructions on how to make your own high-quality protest graphics. (See sidebar.) Soon, images of the heads (not just in photos from protests) started to appear in all kinds of places. Independent magazines such as Lumpen and AdBusters asked to reprint them. They were spotted on multiple websites, show flyers, and T-shirts. To use a marketing term, these images were sticky. StreetRec’s intention to distribute these images for free cultural use was working.

Then, one photographer made copyrighted postcards of a photo she had taken of the heads from the WEF protest, and it seemed that issues around copyright and attribution could get a little more complicated. Certainly, StreetRec had appropriated the original photos but had both re-imaged them and made them free for public use. Now it seemed, they were getting re-privatized. StreetRec began to see how difficult it can be to in assert and maintain free access to ideas in a culture driven by commodities.

In 2003, New York Times op-ed columnist, Paul Krugman came out with a book entitled The Great Unraveling published by WW Norton and Company. The US edition had a plain red and white cover and the subhead Losing Our Way in the New Century. The UK edition, however, had a collage of images including prominent placement of StreetRec’s Bush/Enron head and the Cheney/Got Oil? as well as a different subtitle: From Boom to Bust in Three Scandalous Years. Clearly, these different covers were a developed strategy on the part of the marketing department to sell books to different demographics.

StreetRec was surprised to find out about the book cover especially since it was so clearly a marketing move. The images on the cover of the book had not been re-done at all and were being used for profit however critical the book may have been. One member of StreetRec contacted the publishing company to discuss a possible honorarium or credit and asked for at least a few copies of the book for their files. If this book had been a not-for-profit venture, than it would have been another of the exciting re-printings of StreetRec’s work.

StreetRec weren’t the only people concerned with Krugman’s cover. Regardless of the books’ exclusion from the US market, right-wing journalist Donald Luskin at the National Review choose to highlight the cover images in his column as a way to discredit Krugman’s ideas. In a November 24, 2003 piece called “Running From Cover” at www.nationalreview.com, Luskin writes, “It took a simple picture for the New York Times to finally distance itself from America’s most dangerous liberal pundit…It’s a photomontage showing the face of President George W Bush with huge Frankenstein sutures across his mouth and brow, and the word ‘Enron’ stitched into his forehead. Vice President Dick Cheney’s face sports a Hitleresque mustache; the words “Got Oil?” are scrawled on his forehead. It is a hateful, shocking, and disturbing image.”

Even the Republican National Committee weighed in on this cover. Spokesperson Christine Iverson stated in the New York Times (“One Book, Two Very Different Covers,” Nov 23, 2003, Books p 2) that, “The fact that they are using a much different cover here in the United States is proof that his tactics are offensive to mainstream Americans.” The New York Times also attempted to distance themselves from it, spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis stated, “ . . .we were never even shown the cover.” And finally Krugman himself, in the same Times story said, “It is a marketing thing, not a statement…I should have taken a look at that and said ‘What are you doing marketing me as if I’m Michael Moore?’”

Certainly if Krugman only was to benefit from the images as a marketing device, perhaps the company could have done some research about who to attribute the art to. But, protest art and underground culture is constantly appropriated wholesale by the market. If he planned to reprint the original photos by Annie Leibowitz, certainly he would have paid for rights, but grassroots art functioning in public space is easy for corporations to use without fear of repercussion. Regardless, the images had reached higher places of power and controversy than any of the artists could have imagined.

The heads brought out for the protests against the war three years earlier resurfaced in November 2005 in a review in the “Arts” section of, you guessed it, the New York Times. This time, they were not in a street protest, nor on the cover of a book, but appeared in perhaps an unlikely place, the Museum of Modern Art’s PS 1 in New York as part of an artist installation. The artist, Jon Kessler, had included the Bush “War,” Cheney “Pestilence,” and Wolfowitz “Famine” heads to cover an entire wall of his installation room. And although his installation was quite elaborate with multiple components including video, electronics, media photos, and sound, the image of the wall with the heads was what critics in both The New York Times and the Village Voice chose to include in their positive reviews. Members of StreetRec were receiving emails from friends asking if they had a show at PS 1 and/or wondering if they had been credited. None of the artists in StreetRec had had any contact with Jon Kessler.

Jon Kessler found the images in a book called The War in Iraq: A Photo History. The book is a pro-war book published in 2003 with an unfortunate introduction stating, “This new war of liberation lasted only 41-days.” Of the over 300 pages of photos, only three have images of protest against the war and it is there, on page 46, that the heads show up. Jason Turner, a photographer with AP Wide World Photos took the picture at the Washington, DC, January 18, 2003 Antiwar Rally that StreetRec had originally made the heads for. Kessler said, “I bought the image directly from the agency that represents the photographer who took the picture that I saw in the book. I was told that he, the photographer came to see the show…I cropped the photo and just used the posters.” He chose that image because, “There are other pictures of Bush in my show. That one had the power and energy that would have deserved the size that I was planning on blowing it up to.” Kessler paid Corbis for other images in the show. Kessler stated that he had no personal position on appropriation. If Kessler had paid a photojournalist who took a photo of a public art piece by a more well known artist such as Jeff Koons, would he have felt as at ease using the images? Perhaps there is something about the way protest art is valued by the gallery art world that excludes even asking this question.

One member of StreetRec responded to the Kessler installation in this way: “There was some exchange via e-mail (with members of StreetRec) about it for a few days but people actually seemed less inclined to do anything than any of the previous instances. This can be attributed to a real distance from the graphics and the group no longer being together. It can also be attributed to the fact that it was a pretty confusing situation as far as it being a critical art installation that was not apparently for profit (though I think we know that his work was actually for sale) . . . I thought it was more interesting and controversial that his work said more about the limits and responsibilities of appropriating radical aesthetics meant for street contexts for art-world contexts. Of course, there are also limits to appropriating Vanity Fair aesthetics for protest contexts, and they mainly are that you cannot really (legally) complain much when your shit gets jacked.”

People in StreetRec have had a mixture of feelings about the re-appropriation and re-use of their appropriated graphics. One member felt, “It was my impression that that project specifically was created for use without copyright or expectation for reward. If someone wanted to misuse a head with a bloody Enron stitched into the forehead, well then I'd like to see that.” Another member, on the other hand, felt, “I think it is always fine if someone takes them and reconfigures them, but to use them to sell your book or as your own unmodified ‘original’ art work, that’s bullshit and really damn lazy. Yeah, we took the photos from a famous photographer in the first place, but really modified them and changed them into something hideously new . . . “ And another felt that when free, open culture meant for the commons, is taken and copyrighted for the benefit of an individual or a corporation, it is unethical. S/He didn’t want credit or money, s/he just wanted the images to remain in the context of a free and open culture. The anarchist sentiment that property is theft extends to intellectual property as well. Not only does StreetRec not own the images the sentiment goes, nobody should.

As the heads continue to have relevance, they have continued to be used in ways that StreetRec intended: by protestors as a means of powerful, visual, public, political expression. Others have taken the images out of the commons and privatized them back into the world of copyright and ownership without changing the design in the least. Appropriation is both an important and inevitable part of a vibrant and living culture. The context and intention of use of appropriated culture raises difficult questions about renumeration for the labor of creativity, the nature and value of credit for work, and the means that one has to have a say in its use. In today’s world certainly corporations charge heavily for the use of their propriety material and grassroots culture continues to be robbed not merely of their labor and production, but of their intentions for how a free culture might function.

Special thanks to Josh MacPhee, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Blithe Riley, and Heather Rogers for engaging with me about this piece as well as the artists who contributed their thoughts.

SIDEBAR
Instructions from the StreetRec Retooling Dissent DIY Booklet

"Large scale signs for protest are often either hand-painted banners or professionally created by a print shop. Large-scale computer output could be seen as a middle ground between purely handmade and professionally done protest graphics. If you're familiar with graphics software at all, make a striking sign that will last through several actions can be relatively easy.

The prices for large-scale output can vary widely, so ask around. Copy shops are going to be the main places with these big printers, but some art schools and universities will also have them. They usually take a low-res but large- size file for output. The advantages of computer design and output are:

• You can use photographic images and they will reproduce well in color or black and white.
• The lettering or typography is clear and easily readable.
• The images you create will be able to be reproduced across different media (video, print, web), at different sizes, as much as you want.

So get the file specs (i.e. what document size, what resolution, what file type) from whoever is going to print your file (hopefully for cheap), make a powerful image (defenselink.mil on the web is good for hi-res images of US heads of state and military hardware begging to be purposed), include type if you want, and print away.

Once your sign is printed, you need to mount it on some kind of backing. If it's going to be a long action/march, you'll want to mount it on something light so you can hold it up all day. The best but most expensive lightweight board is corrugated plastic, also called gatorboard. You can get this at an art supply store - the good thing about this stuff is if the cops start to get violent, it can double as a sturdy shield. However, gatorboard is almost prohibitively expensive, and the next best thing is thick foam core. Also available at art supply stores, foam core is lightweight but substantial, and has a good texture for mounting paper onto. If foam core is still too rich for your blood, I have also had some good results from mounting signs onto thick styrofoam insulation, which has a good strength to weight ratio and comes in huge uninterrupted sheets. It can be a little hard to work with, and you might need to test some various adhesives on it, to make sure they won't melt it.

With this printout/backing board setup, I have experimented with a few different ways to mount the sign to a pole of some kind. The most successful that I’ve found is to put nylon cord through the backing board and then glue the print on top of it. You drill holes in the board, then poke the cord through with a screwdriver. Remember to cut the cord longer then you think you'll need, you can always trim it later. With these ties, you will be able tie the sign to a pole of any kind (some cities will only let you take in cardboard tubes rather than pvc pipe or wood). See diagram below:

(Diagram here)

To glue your print to the board, I find the best glue is a heavy-duty spray adhesive. Spray 77 is a good one, but there are plenty. You'll get a much better price on adhesives at a hardware store than at an art store. Spray down your mounting board with the adhesive, getting a good coat especially at the edges. Once your board has a good coat of adhesive on it, slowly lay your print onto it while someone else smoothes it out, being careful the press out bubbles; this usually takes 2 or 3 people to do effectively - two lowering while one smoothes.

After you have your ties through the board and the print glued on, for added durability/waterproofing, you should coat the print in spray acrylic clear coat. There are a wide variety of clear acrylics available at the hardware and art store, with the cheaper ones being available at the hardware store. This way if your print gets rained on, the dyes won't run.

Though this process sounds elaborate, once you have the materials you can mount a sign like this in an hour. Good luck and keep up the fight!

StreetRec
These heads and other examples of the defacement of powerful people have been used in protest throughout the US, and we have set up a website with multiple download options for the further dissemination of such graphics initiatives. www.appliedsemiotics.com/heads.

As we have presented workshops and screened this video, it has become increasingly clear that we need to produce diagrams for the StreetRec projects. Although the StreetRec projects are some of the simplest to produce there are many technical issued which could be encountered in the design and material decisions when attempting to appropriate these technologies. Feel free to contact us about any great successes or failures with these projects.

Street.rec@counterproductiveindustries.com

Originally posted by Lil' Dawa from Just Seeds: Blog, on April 14, 2008 7:35 AM

A wonderful (and wonderfully long) post by Dan Hill on how he and his team thought about and executed the Monocle web site.

None of what follows is rocket science, and it's not the place to look for thoughts on 2.0/3.0, social software, or urban informatics. That would be in the accounts of different projects. But if you're interested in the honest craft of website work, almost deliberately old-fashioned 'classical' web design -- and how to ally this with innovation in magazine publishing -- the following should provide a decent account of several of the key decisions in this particular project.

Dan's thoughtful approach should be required reading for anyone building media web sites.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 14, 2008 6:29 AM

in grad school my friend steve had one of those minivans with the band of faux wood down the side. he always wanted to get his hands on some brick con-tact paper and cover up the wood grain. his idea may have been slightly ahead of its time. 

photo by mareen

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 14, 2008 6:20 AM

The Times reported Saturday that vehicle traffic on Port Authority bridges and tunnels declined by 2.9% in March, in the wake of toll increases that took effect on March 2. In typical bizarre fashion, the Times' lede asks, “Who needs congestion pricing when plain old toll increases seem to do the job?”

Why not this instead: "Dip in traffic after toll hike shows missed promise of congestion pricing"?

After all, the Hudson River portal accounts for just 18% of CBD-bound auto trips, according to traffic guru Brian Ketcham. So a 3% dip in traffic through that portal yields a measly one-half of one percent dip in total traffic into the Manhattan charging zone.

Message: just raising tolls on already-tolled facilities won’t do much to bust traffic. Who needs congestion pricing? NYC, obviously.

But there's value in the story nevertheless: the PA datum offers a means to estimate the price-elasticity of car travel into Manhattan, and thus to validate (or not) the congestion pricing plan that didn't make it, as well as alternatives like the Kheel Plan.

So put your math hats on boys and girls. Here goes.

(more...)

Originally posted by Charles Komanoff from Streetsblog, on April 14, 2008 6:12 AM

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise

A little less than a year ago, we partnered with Salesforce.com to create Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords. It combines Salesforce.com’s CRM applications with AdWords to make it easier for businesses to generate leads, track, and close them.

Since then, people have offered up a constant stream of requests to streamline even more of the CRM process. At the top of list are everyday tasks like improved efficiency sending and sharing account emails, easier ways to create and share documents and presentations, and simpler ways to schedule meetings and events.

To address these requests, we set out to collaborate on another product integration. Live today, we're happy to unveil Salesforce for Google Apps, a new product for all of those using Salesforce.com available at no additional charge. It brings the collaboration and communications features of Google Apps directly into the user experience of Salesforce.com, and is focused on streamlining the activities most frequently requested by our users. (There's more detail on our Enterprise Blog.)

Here's a quick look at the problems we're trying to solve with Salesforce for Google Apps:



Regarding improvements, we'd like to remind developers that these new features -- as well as those announced today by our partners Astadia and Appirio -- were created using our respective open APIs. We share with Salesforce.com a commitment to make the web the best platform for application innovation.

Thanks to everyone for your good ideas so far. We hope you'll continue to share your thoughts about what you like and what can be improved.

Originally posted by A Googler from Official Google Blog, on April 14, 2008 5:55 AM

…nice job by the small group of fans at Shea Stadium the last few days, who have been doing the angel wave, like was featured in the movie Angels in the Outfield, i.e., flapping their hands off their shoulders, as though they are wings, in honor of Angel Pagan…

…several fans e-mailed me this weekend, all of whom were in favor of this, wishing it will catch on over time…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 14, 2008 5:37 AM

In the world of business, and especially the world of technology, we have some archetypical stories of entrepreneurs in the garage, working to create new products and new companies. But too many of those stories seem to neglect the creative environment in which great ideas and inventions happen.

This is especially unfortunate because inspiration for this type of work doesn't seem to come from being surrounded by market analysis data, or charts and graphs about return on investment, but instead happens like so much creativity does, with a blaring soundtrack while sitting on a folding chair, inspired by the music, movies, books and art that surround us.

Worse, we hear about things like Celebrity Playlists and the artworks that people appreciate long after they've been successful, after they've already proven they have the ability to achieve, but seldom with a focus on what was playing at the time when they did the first work they were recognized for.

So, some time ago, I began a project to start to document some of these environments, inspired by the entrepreneurs and creative talents that I've had the chance to work with or be inspired by. Among others, I've gotten some great responses from Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (and of course Lotus); Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Pierre Omidyar of eBay; Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, and some more contributors along the way. As I start to share what I've found, I'd like to ask the same questions of you that I've asked of these people already.

1. What music, books or movies do you remember paying attention to at the time when you did your signature work? (This can be your "best" project, or merely your best-known, or the one you're most proud of.)
2. What do you remember of your physical workspace -- clutter on the desk, notes on the walls, whiteboards or blackboards, etc.?

The goal is to evoke a sense of what more subtle things may have been influencing the work that's created. There have, of course, been many similar or related efforts over the years, and I'll be trying to share and document of number of fantastic responses to these questions that I've collected.

If you'd like to participate yourself, you can answer the questions here in the comments, or post a reply on your own blog using the tag "createnv" (since it seems that's not taken yet) and/or embed this post on your own site with the code below. I'll be collecting responses from the blogosphere along with my own research and posting it all here in the days to come. (Thanks to Travis Isaacs for the image.)

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 14, 2008 4:43 AM

Nora *and* Theresa sent me links to some robot fabric that I *must have*:




It's at CraftyPlanet -- click the image to visit their store. I haven't bought any yet, though, because I don't know what it wants to be, and thus don't know how much I need. (I would normally just suck it up and buy five yards, but this fabric is EXPENSIVE.) I'm hoping it decides it wants to be a skirt, so I can get away with buying two and a half yards.

If you already know what you'd like to sew out of robot fabric, maybe you need twill robot trim from SuperBuzzy:





And while I'm talking about robots -- I "collect" songs that have the word "robot" in the title or that are sung/played by bands with "robot" in their name. (What can I say? I like music made by happy machines.) If you want to subscribe to the Yahoo! Pipes feed I made (which looks on Hype Machine for songs fitting those criteria) I think that link will let you do so.

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on April 14, 2008 4:14 AM

So Nokia thought it could sneak another new handset through the Federal Comms Commission without us hearing about it? How very dare you! 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from NokNok.tv, on April 14, 2008 12:59 AM

I just posted a new tutorial at Cocoa Dev Central. This one is called simply, Learn Objective-C. This tutorial is aimed at programmers who already have some basic experience with C and are looking to jump right into Objective-C...

Originally posted by scott from Theobroma Cacao, on April 14, 2008 12:03 AM

Alexy Titarenko is best known for his long exposures of Russian commuters like the one above. The grim loveliness of that project speaks to both photography's early history and to more recent Soviet reality. ( You can here Titarenko speak about this series on the lens culture website).

Titarenko has a new show at the Nailya Alexander Gallery titled simply Venice. The photos are a nostalgic look at Venice. The images are as pretty as all of his photography is, but I found them to be misleading in the way tourist board postcards are misleading. They hide the ugly overcrowded overtouristed reality of the city today. This seems to be a missed opportunity as Titarenko's technique would have lended itself well to both showing Venice's teeming tourist masses and commenting on the nature of the city itself, instead we get images that evoke an empty romantic Venice that exists primarily as fantasy. This comes off as fluff.

Filed under: photographers
Tags: black and white, exhibitions, long exposure, russian photography, time photography

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on April 14, 2008 12:03 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on April 13, 2008 10:57 PM

Barack Obama fired back at Hillary Clinton today, telling the United Steelworkers Union in Pennsylvania that Hillary is the one who is "out of touch," not him and his "bitter" comments:

(Key moment starts at around the 3:45 mark.)

"She knows better -- shame on her," Obama said, before launching into a heckling routine about Hillary's remembrances of being taught to shoot by her father. "She's talking like she's Annie Oakley."

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on April 13, 2008 8:11 PM

Impending obsolescence adds a veil of wistfulness to aging media forms: just look at what video has done for 16mm, or digital photography for Polaroids (may they rest in peace!) So our hubbub of electronic messaging, texting and twittering in all its various permutations, now invites contemplation of its paper-based, postage-stamped ancestor: mail art in an email age. Brooklyn-based artist David Horvitz recently closed a show in San Francisco, entitled "I Will Go Somewhere and Mail You Something From There," comprised of photos snail-mailed every day for a month from New York to the gallery, exhibited alongside print-outs of daily emails heralding their arrivals. This is only one of Horovitz's correspondence projects: for "Things For Sale That I Will Mail You," he sets prices on various travel-based artifacts he promises to send generous PayPallers: sand from the beaches of Okinawa or Coney Island; photos from trips to Perth, the island of St. Helena, or just down the street; documentation of a reading of The Little Prince at the New York Stock Exchange. (St. Exupery is a pitch-perfect mirror to Horovitz's often all-caps texts: conceptualism done cute with an unwavering little-boyish sincerity.) More vibrantly material pleasures can be found in an online exhibition of Anne McGuire's painted postcards, altered with inks, watercolors and postage stamps, then sent through the mail. Some offer delicately extended landscapes behind moose and birds, expanding stamp-art beyond its frames; others bear cartoon zaniness along the lines of McGuire's past animation, giving Queen Elizabeth's head a nude sunbathers’ body or adding an imperative below Mister Donut's logo: "he’s hot EAT HIM." - Ed Halter

Image Credit: Anne McGuire, "From Anne McGuire" Postcard, 2008

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rhizome News, on April 13, 2008 8:00 PM

I just went back and read all these old book reviews I wrote 3-5 years ago, and the rest going back to 2000. I'm in New York and sad and broken and missing my bed and my dogs and my friends and my library and so I went to the bookstore and bought paperback copies of three of my favorite books, Invisible Cities, Jesus' Son, and Autobiography of Red. A cup of tea plus words I'd read so many times before and my soul felt warm and wooly and home, even without the dogs and slippers, and housed as it is in this banal IKEA-furnished apartment on the Upper West Side.

I started photographing the books I've read, but realize now I should take the time to write them up again, if only because the palest ink is better than the strongest memory, a Chinese proverb I'm fond of. To have read a book, and to have gained something from it, and to be able recover that something years later is like sending gifts to your future self. So I'll start with a brief blurb about In The Woods, while it's still clear in my memory.

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on April 13, 2008 7:24 PM

I love witnessing the transition to spring. We were in the park Saturday and Sunday, running and enjoying the warmer weather and green and flowering things.

Cherry Blossoms

Originally posted on alaina.vox.com

Originally posted by Alaina from alaina browne lives here, on April 13, 2008 6:26 PM

• Delightful news: Homosexual Geneticists have discovered the cause of Christianity
  Pretty funny as politically charged satires on the horrors of anti-gay rhetoric go. It's not quite as clever as I think it thinks it is. Some of the analogies are a bit forced and hurt their own message. Still, enjoyable.
  (tags: gay gaypolitics genetics christianity lunatices antigay homosexuality science satire politics)
• Really useful article on creating software installer disk images on Panther. Unfortunately I need a similar article for Leopard.
  Surprisingly fun making disk images and putting in background images and aliases and stuff. You can see our finished work for Leopard users if you're a Fire Eagle user when you download the widgets.
  (tags: fireeagle dmg diskimages diskimage installers leopard panther)
• Another one for Fire Eagle users - iamnear.net has added megaliths to its nearby pub-tracker
  This one could just grow and grow - particularly given all the geocoded information in Wikipedia.
  (tags: wikipedia fireeagle iamnear megaliths)

Originally posted by Tom Coates from plasticbag.org, on April 13, 2008 5:56 PM

An Atlas of Radical Cartography, edited by artists Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat (Amazon USA and UK)

The editors say: An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political-- and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves.

An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.

New York City Garbage Machine, by the Center for Urban Pedagogy

The slipcase contains a set of ten maps and a collection of essays by artists, architects, designers, and writers who illuminate the maps and explore their role as political agent. An Atlas is one of the most intelligent, thought-provoking and original publications i've read in a long long time.

First there is a purely aesthetic pleasure of unfolding the maps and discovering the careful, unique and innovative design of each one.

Then the essays are engrossing. They are written by people who have a story to tell you, they are passionate about it, they are angry or worried by the current state of affair but they are also smart enough to know that the best way to solve a problem is to adopt a pro-active attitude.

Right from the cover, showing an "upside-down"map, we are faced with the fact that even the most banal and innocent-looking map has its own agenda, that it is extremely difficult to separate cartography from politics and ideology. Far from being neutral accessories which would merely help you go from point A to point B, maps are often used as instruments for controlling and shaping beliefs. Conversely, maps can also be at the service of protest and social change. That's what the contributors of the Atlas demonstrate. Deliberately, openly and quite convincingly.

Unnayan | Chetla Lock Gate, Marginal Land Settlement in Calcutta, 1984 (detail)

The first map transports you a few decades ago in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Formed in the mid-late 70s, Unnayan was a civil activist groups which campaigned on dwelling, health, labour, schooling and various rights-related issues met by communities in urban and rural areas of eastern India. Unnayan was involved in projects that including preparing maps that identified settlements which existed in Calcutta at the time but were blanked out in officila maps. Elaborated in collaboration with the communities, the maps helped them locate water pumps, roads, but it also made these communities visible on a space which official maps would otherwise define as "vacant land." The vast majority of these maps are destroyed by floods or stolen. Jai Sen, a member of Unnayan, reconstructs fragments of these experiments and puts them on record in Other Worlds, Other Maps: Mapping the Unintended City, his contribution for An Atlas of Radical Cartography.

Institute for Applied Autonomy, iSee

All the other maps are contemporary.

The Institute for Applied Autonomy discusses tactical cartography and how locative media technology can be used by activists as cold and precise weapons to foster critical social engagement. They illustrate the concept by detailing their project iSee, a web-based application developed in collaboration with NYCLU and the Surveillance Camera Players to chart the locations of CCTV cameras in Manhattan. By checking iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras ("paths of least surveillance") allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being "caught on tape" by unregulated security monitors. Their essay explains how stories about the iSee application spread all over the media and generated a series of discussions and debates amongst a -so far- unsuspecting audience. The work also extended to camera-mapping workshops which assumed the double role of rendering the proliferation of surveillance cameras tangible to a general audience and creating an empirical basis for challenging policing and public safety policy.

Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaimen interviews Trevor Paglen about his investigation into extraordinary rendition flights, the tension between art and activism as exemplified by a look at Mark Lombardi's drawings and Ashley Hunt's maps, the reasons why cartography shouldn't be confused with geography, etc.

Olivier Clochard and Philippe Rekacewicz, Death at Europe frontiers

I found An Architektur's contribution to the book illuminating. Because of what i read in the media and because of the intense pleasure i experience when i am treated like a delinquent by the "immigration" officers each time my plane land in the U.S., i often have this vision that the U.S. is the evil one in the quest of security and border control. An Architektur, a collective that applies sociopolitical questions to space and architecture, proves me wrong by exposing the European Union's efforts to tighten its borders against asylum seekers and people looking for a better life. Hence, the need to close hermetically the access to EU and to park inside a migration camp anyone managing to jump above the wired fences. An Architektur points to several maps which illustrate the issue such as Migreurop' s From European Migration and Asylum Policies. to Camps for Foreigners map (PDF), - Hackitectura's map that rethinks the frontier between Morocco and Spain, replacing the concept of border as space of separation with site of connection and reciprocal flow, etc. A striking example is the article and map called Death at Europe frontiers where Olivier Clochard and Philippe Rekacewicz document the death occurred while trying to reach the territory of the European Union. Only documented death are taken into account but their number goes way beyond the 7 000 between 1993 and 2006 (3 000 from December 2003 to 2006). The map shows that danger doesn't stop when the border is crossed. Once inside the EU, migrants have to face racist attacks, unsafe working conditions for the illegals, police repression, internment camps, etc.

Pedro Lasch, Guías de Ruta / Route Guides, 2003/2006,

These were just a few lines about 4 of the maps and essays you'll find in An Atlas of Radical Cartography. There's also Pedro Lasch's beautifully symbolic map of the America/Latin America relationships, Lize Mogel's politically heavy re-lecture of the map of the San Francisco Bay Area, Jane Tsong's children science textbook-style drawings which reveal what it takes to be able to turn on the tap in her bathroom, the Center for Urban Pedagogy's well-documented New York City Garbage Machine describes the fight for power over the bins, Brooke Singer's The US Oil Fix demonstrates the impact that the US addiction to fossil fuels has on the rest of the world and Ashley Hunt's A World Map tackles the world capitalist system.

An Atlas takes also the form of a touring exhibition which is making a stop over unitl May 6, 2008 at Dowd Fine Art Gallery, SUNY Cortland, NY.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Planet at 3:11 PM)

Originally posted by Regine Debatty from WorldChanging, on April 13, 2008 3:11 PM

Little girl, adorably: So, this hand is right and this one is left?
Mom: No, it's the other way around.
Little girl: But you said before! You said this was the right and this was the left!
Mom: Well, if I'm facing you -
Little girl, exasperated : Mother, I really don't want to talk to you about this anymore.

--LIRR

Overheard by: Marissa

Alsome | Thumbs up | Thumbs down |
Link · Email · Quote this! · Del.icio.us · Posted 2008-04-13

Originally posted by Djlindee from Overheard in New York, on April 13, 2008 1:00 PM