randomwalks/dj

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Cult of Mac, Apple

Gallery: Boston Apple Store (Boylston Street)

Our Boston-based buddy, Chad Barraford, sent us in some pics of Apple's new Boylston Street store. Located across the street from The Prudential Center in Boston's upscale Back Bay, this will be the ninth store located in Massachusetts. Apple didn't just create a bland façade to cover the construction, they made it look like Fenway Park's "Green Monster." Now that this is starting to sound like a real estate sales pitch, let's show you some pictures.


Thanks, Chad!

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Originally posted by Cory Bohon from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 26, 2008 9:30 PM

Hillary Clinton is upping the pressure on Barack Obama to hold new debates before the next round of primaries, challenging him to what she referred to as Lincoln-Douglas style debates, sans moderators.

"Just the two of us going for 90 minutes asking and answering questions. We'll set whatever rules seem fair," Clinton said. "I think it would give the people of Indiana -- and I assume a few Americans will tune in because nearly 11 million watched the Philadelphia debate, and I think they would like seeing that discussion. Remember that's what happened during the Lincoln and Douglas debates."

Meanwhile, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the campaign is reluctant hold any more debates before the next primaries: "Over the next 10 days we believe it's important to talk directly to the voters of Indiana and North Carolina."

(Ed. Note: This is not in fact the format used by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas -- which in turn would be anathema to a modern viewing audience. In those famous debates, one candidate would speak for a solid hour, the opponent would go for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate would make a half-hour rebuttal. In this format, there was simply no active role for a moderator to play.

A better term for Clinton's proposed format might be "Santos-Vinick," after the fictional West Wing debate acted out by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda.)

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on April 26, 2008 7:22 PM

In our reader blogs, TPM Reader GC has a post up entitled "Where is Barack Obama" which he kicks off by writing "These last few weeks, he seems to be missing. Not literally, but his presence in the national dialogue has receded." As I wrote in the comments section, that's been my sense too. His voice seems silent and has for a few weeks. Of course, he's out in the field campaigning, not focusing on national media and catering to political junkies around the country. But what I really think this is is that he's not controlling the agenda. Hillary's controlling the agenda, defining the race at the moment. And that's made him recede into the background, even as he's a constant topic of conversation.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 26, 2008 7:04 PM

The Journal today has a dark and curdled portrait of Bill Clinton's growing role in Sen. Clinton's campaign ...

Dubbed the "Billification" of Sen. Clinton's campaign by some insiders, Mr. Clinton has become something of a strategist-in-chief in recent weeks. He has been pushing for harder and sharper attacks on Sen. Obama. While she has jabbed her opponent over his "elitist" tone and controversial statements by his former pastor, Mr. Clinton delivers his own slams on the stump, calling Obama ads misleading.

...

Mr. Clinton has placed several of his own aides at headquarters, including his former lawyer and a bevy of strategists. Known as a bad loser, Mr. Clinton privately buttresses his wife's drive to push on, telling her, according to aides: "We're not quitters."

On his own daily message calls, advisers say, he implores: "We've got to take him on every time." At the Clintons' Washington, D.C., home recently, these people say, he reviewed possible TV spots and told ad makers to be more hard-hitting, faster and harsher.

...

Mr. Clinton's influence is evident in pollster Mark Penn's continuing role in the campaign. Sen. Clinton recently demoted Mr. Penn as her chief strategist after he took part in talks with Colombia's U.S. ambassador over promoting a free-trade pact with the U.S. that she opposes.

However, Mr. Penn has helped in recent debate preparation, and proposed Sen. Clinton's last-minute negative ad in Pennsylvania questioning whether Sen. Obama has "what it takes."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 26, 2008 6:22 PM

This is so dumb.

Schweddy Eagle is an application I just wrote that yanks your location from Fire Eagle and tells you what NPR stations are in your area. You could use it with a jesus phone, perhaps in a rental car, to find quality radio wherever you happen to be.

It uses the excellent OAuth protocol to safely ask for your current location.

Comments

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on April 26, 2008 6:06 PM

Photograph of protesters in Jamaica, Queens by Jason DeCrow/AP
Last night, hundreds of people marched from the Queens courthouse to the Kalua Lounge, the strip club where Sean Bell was killed on his wedding day, yelling, "Fifty shots equal murder," to protest yesterday's not guilty verdict for three police officers charged in the shooting.

Bell's mother, Valerie, fainted when Judge Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict, amid tears from Bell's fiance Nicole Paultre Bell and angry words from supporters (outside the courthouse, they yelled "Murderers!" and "KKK!"). His father, William Bell, said, "The judge spit in my damn face, but I knew it was coming," and told WABC 7, "It's a slap in the face and a kick in the ass."

The three detectives--who spoke publicly for the first time after the verdict--are now relegated to desk jobs without their guns as the NYPD will examine their actions--and any case from the U.S. Attorney's office would probably precede that. Many legal experts think their decision to opt for a bench trial, versus a jury trial, helped them--as did the issues with the prosecutions' witnesses' testimonies.

The city's three big papers weighed in with editorials: The Daily News accepts the verdict as "a fair exercise in the law" but feels that Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper and their supervisors should be dismissed from the NYPD. The Post thinks it was the "right verdict," especially given the evidence. And the NY Times found the verdict "stunning in its thorough absolution of the officers" and suggests "carelessness and incompetence in the behavior of the police officers...must be corrected as a matter of public policy."

The Reverend Al Sharpton promised to engage in "nonviolent civil disobedience," and said, "They expect us to react in traditional ways; they will not get that. We are going to engage in economic withdrawal. We are going to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience." Sharpton, though, also encouraged people to protest and get arrested, "whether it is on Wall Street, the judge’s house or at 1 Police Plaza.”

But Sharpton also pointed out, “People with records do not lose their right to not be shot by police," and feels a federal case should proceed. Detectives Endowment Association head Michael Palladino still criticized Bell's friends who were wounded in the shooting and testified in the trial and said, "We have been portrayed as insensitive murderers. And I can tell you that we are not.”

Bell's fiancee and the mother of his two children, Nicole Paultre Bell, had fled the courtroom in tears after the verdict. She later said, "April 25, 2008: They killed Sean all over again," and added, "I’m still praying for justice."

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 26, 2008 4:17 PM

You're in the East Village and you want a Grizzly Peak Marzen on draft. Think fast. Wandering in Midtown West, thirsty for a Brooklyn Pilsner. Where to turn? A few clicks later, BeerMenus.com has the answers. (Hop Devil Grill and St. Andrews, respectively). While MenuPages is strictly food and BeerAdvocate has a grasp on beer-focused web forums, this beer 2.0 site combines the two and includes prices, specific alcohol by volume and the beer medium (tap, casket, bottle, can). It's like Ask Jeeves for the boozer, but unfortunately only in New York for now. [via Webware]

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats: Main, on April 26, 2008 11:00 AM

"Literate Programming interleaves the documentation (written in TeX, naturally) and code into a single document. You then run that (Web) document through one of two processors (Tangle or Weave) to produce code or documentation respectively. The code is then compiled, and the documentation built with your TeX distribution. The documentation includes the nicely formatted source code within."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 26, 2008 9:57 AM

he did the same for Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, and Donkey Kong, too  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 26, 2008 9:00 AM

fig. a: what, no keyboardist?

I wanna destroy you
I wanna destroy you
I wanna destroy you
I wanna destroy you
--"I Wanna Destroy You," The Soft Boys

Skeedle Lee Doo
That's all I do
--"Skeedle Lee Doo," Blind Blake

Then listen now to what I say:

Our friend C. once threw the travelin'-band meal to end all travelin'-band meals. A certain band she was fond of was coming to town. She wrote to them and invited them to stop by pre-gig and enjoy a meal at her place. They accepted. She cooked for an entire week. The prep filled two refrigerators. I know because one of them was mine. Then something happened and things didn't quite work out. Some of us still managed to enjoy the meal. A year or two later the band returned. C. had moved into this very apartment by that time. She got back in contact with said band and reinvited them. They reaccepted. She cooked for another entire week. This time things came off without a hitch. You shoulda seen the looks on the faces of said band. Awestruck. I'd tell you more, but it's a great story and I'm hoping that C. posts it herself on her blog. I'm picturing the menus. Both of them.

Anyway, inspired by our friend C. we devised a simplified three-point plan for entertaining a visiting rock 'n' roll band.

1. Drinks

Beer, wine, water, and peppermint tea. The first three are self-explanatory. You won't find any mention of that last substance in the pages of Hammer of the Gods (at least, I don't think you will--it's been a while), but it pays to have some on-hand (along with some honey) in case the lead singer shows up having lost his or her voice. Throat lozenges are a good idea too. Thayer's Slippery Elm, for instance. Although apparently Jonathan Richman uses Zand HerbaLozenges and, after 40 years in show business, he ought to know.

2. Home-cooked meal

Two words: comfort food. Two more words: spicy goodness. I've been all about the roux recently. I just can't wait to mix flour and fat and whip up some Cajun magic. So when I tried to imagine what kind of meal I might want to find if I was on the road, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo came to mind. It seemed like some pretty comforting comfort food for a hard-workin' band to arrive to.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

1 3-lb chicken, cut into pieces
salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper
1/4-lb smoky bacon
cooking oil
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 medium onions, chopped
1 cubanelle or Italian frying pepper, seeded and chopped
2 stalks celery (including the leaf), minced
1 pound Cajun andouille, kielbasa, or chorizo sausage, sliced thin (we used chorizo because that's the neighborhood specialty and Cajun cuisine is nothing if not pragmatic)
1 bunch scallions, minced
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
several sprigs fresh parsley
1/2 tbsp smoky chili powder
1 tbsp filé powder

hot boiled rice

Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a large, heavy-duty cast-iron skillet, cook the bacon over medium to medium-high heat until the fat has been rendered and the bacon is crispy. Remove the bacon, set aside, mince when cool enough to handle, and reserve. Brown the chicken pieces in the fat for a few minutes on each side, until you've crisped the skin and given it a nice color. Remove the chicken and set it on paper towels to cool. Eyeball the amount of fat in the skillet, and the combined bacon fat and chicken fat doesn't appear to be about 1/2 cup's worth, add cooking oil to bring the amount of fat in the skillet to 1/2 cup and bring to temperature. Add the flour and make a true Cajun roux, taking the time so that it becomes mahogany (or darker) and taking the care to make sure it doesn't get scorched. When the roux is to your liking, add the chopped onion, cubanelle pepper, and celery, and simmer until the onion is translucent, stirring occasionally. After this stage, transfer the roux mixture to a large pot, bring to temperature, add the sausage and cook for a minute or two before adding the chicken pieces and the minced bacon. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile bring 4 cups of water to simmer in a pot or kettle.

When the chicken and sausage combo has simmered for 15 minutes, pour the simmering water into the pot and stir in the scallions, garlic, parsley, and chili powder. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil, then turn the heat down low and simmer the gumbo gently for about 1 1/2 hours, or until the chicken slips easily from the bone. Remove the chicken pieces, debone them, discard the skin, and shred coarsely, then return the meat to the pot. Just before serving sprinkle the filé powder in and stir in gently. Remove from the heat and let rest for 5 minutes. Serve in deep bowls with hot boiled rice.

Serves an entire band and then some generously.

[recipe inspired by John Thorne's Chicken-Andouille Gumbo from Serious Pig]

You're going to need rice to go along with the gumbo anyway, so it makes sense to cook up a rice-friendly vegetarian option that has a similar warmth to it, just in case. Take Mexican Lentil Soup, for instance, a keeper of a recipe that we first featured in 2005.

Throw in a batch of cole slaw, and you've got yourself a complete meal.

3. Cookies

Go behind the scenes in the high-end restaurant world and you'll find that there's this whole annihilation fantasy that's a big part of the biz. Basically, some VIP party shows up, the kitchen finds out, and, led by the chef, they set out to "destroy" them. When the VIP party includes other restaurant biz people the stakes go higher. Way higher. It's kind of a combination punch. You're trying to slay these VIPs with the quality of your gastronomy. You're also trying to slay them with sheer quantity. Again, if the VIPs are restaurant people, especially fellow chefs, we're talking an all-out potlatch of destruction. Or so Michelle tells me.

Michelle designed these cookies with this annihilation fantasy in mind. She wanted the cookies to "give [a rock band] energy," but, let's fact it, she also wanted them to be killer.

fig. b: peanut-butter destroyers just waiting to do what they do best

Peanut Butter Destroyers

3 sticks butter
2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
100 g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350º F.

Melt one stick of butter in a saucepan, add the oats, and toast them until golden and fragrant. Set aside to cool. Cream the remaining butter with the sugar and the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and peanut butter and mix well. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix. Finally, add the chocolate and the oats and mix until the dough comes together.

Drop the dough by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake 12-14 minutes until the bottoms are lightly golden. Cool on a rack.

Makes approximately four dozen cookies.

As it happens, some rock 'n' roll band friends of ours rocked and rolled through town just recently, so we tried out the menu on them.

Later, with bellies full, we headed down to a local rock 'n' roll club just in time to catch the last few songs by opening band #2, and not long before the headliners took the stage.

Having arrived late, we didn't exactly have the best view in the house,

fig. c: mirror-ball madness

but the meal seemed to have worked because the band sure sounded great. And every once in a while, with the help of a high-powered lens, we caught a glimpse of the theatrics on stage.

fig. d: rip this joint!

aj

Originally posted by aj kinik from ...an endless banquet, on April 26, 2008 8:37 AM

Photograph of Detectives Marc Cooper, Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver by Dima Gavrysh/AP

Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper, who were acquitted of all charges in the Sean Bell shooting trial, spoke at a press conference this afternoon. Detectives Oliver and Isnora thanked Judge Cooperman for his "fair" decision (Isnora also, per City Room, "thanked God, his family, his lawyers"). Detective Cooper, who was only charged with reckless endangerment, said, "I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy." None of the detectives testified during the trial, as their grand jury testimony had been read aloud by the prosecution.

However, the verdict was denounced by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who said, "This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over. What we saw in court today was not a miscarriage of justice. Justice didn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice."

Mayor Bloomberg said, "There are no winners in a trial like this. An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief that those who knew and loved Sean Bell suffer. Judge Cooperman’s responsibility, however, was to decide the case based on the evidence presented in the courtroom. America is a nation of laws, and though not everyone will agree with the verdicts and opinions issued by the courts, we accept their authority." You can read the full text of Cooperman's remarks here.

Here are some other reactions:

• "Today's verdict should be bitterly disappointing to every New Yorker of goodwill. Justice Arthur Cooperman s decision clearly points the finger at the lackluster case presented by the Queens district attorney s office and it is also an indictment of New York City Police Department procedure, with respect to training and management." - City Councilman Leroy Comrie
  
• "An ugly pattern is emerging in New York. This was a massacre, this was not a shootout. And the U.S. attorney general must give America the assurance that we all have equal protection under the law. This is a travesty of justice today, but it is a pattern that deserves attention." - The Reverend Jesse Jackson
  
• "We ask people to be calm as they protest, if that's what they choose to do.... On the same token, though, we ask police to be calm as people protest.... We have not heard what these men did that caused police to act as though they were America's most wanted, yet still we hear a verdict of not guilty. We will go to the next level, whatever that might be, to seek justice." - Leroy Gadsden, president of NAACP's Jamaica, Queens branch
  
• "I am disappointed and absolutely stunned by today's verdict. This incident clearly involved an excessive use of force by the police. All New Yorkers should be similarly disappointed by today's decision." - City Comptroller William Thompson
  
• "We’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down." - Barack Obama

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 26, 2008 4:25 AM

Prince's appearance on Jay Leno last night, singing "Turn Me Loose".. enjoy while you can, cuz this video may not live 2 C the dawn if you know what I'm saying. (I see you Londell!) The lyrics are below,...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on April 26, 2008 1:17 AM

I didn’t make it to the keynote to see our new CTO speak (meetings that morning), but it was very strange, bordering on deeply surreal to watch the video of it.

1. Interesting to see my “Flickr is the 2nd largest API ” meme work its way up the tree. I didn’t make that factoid up per se, and I’d probably stand behind it if pushed, but I did reason from very limited data. (also AWS screws up the story, is utility computing an API?)

2. Still haven’t quite adjusted to the transition of OAuth from being a personal project that the “Paranoids” (official title of Yahoo’s internal security experts) were angry at me for working on (against Yahoo policy for Yahoos to work on security related projects), to a the company wide standard, at least on paper.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on April 25, 2008 10:15 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on April 25, 2008 7:45 PM

Standard Operating Procedure is a gorgeous, pulsing stopwatch of a movie, and like all of Morris's best work, its structure is based on a rhythmic series of revelations.

Originally posted by Guest Observer from Design Observer: Main Posts, on April 25, 2008 7:04 PM

The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the sun to display a poem one line at a time over the course of an entire day. (via stingy kids)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 25, 2008 at 09:41 PM

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 25, 2008 6:41 PM

OpenStreetMap adds an export feature that, as you might expect, goes beyond embedding a map on your site: Want a static map for your blog, without having to spend hours fiddling with JavaScript? No problem - just export in PNG...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on April 25, 2008 4:35 PM

The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the sun to display a poem one line at a time over the course of an entire day. (via stingy kids)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 25, 2008 4:31 PM

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: (a) Most developers suck. Apple doesn’t care if they “can’t” or “won’t” write iPhone apps because they can’t or won’t learn Objective-C, because any developer who would say that is unlikely to write a worthwhile iPhone app. Picking up a new programming language is not hard. Picking up a language like Objective-C, which is only slightly expanded from regular old C, is even easier. I have never once met a good programmer who wasn’t willing and able to learn new languages. (b) Apple didn’t choose Objective-C for the iPhone arbitrarily; it’s inextricably tied to Cocoa Touch, and Cocoa is the entire foundation of the iPhone UI. (c) Apple doesn’t want existing “mobile” apps written in other languages recompiled for the iPhone any more than they wanted command-line DOS apps recompiled for the original Mac.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 25, 2008 4:30 PM

Ah, so that’s what the invisible Sphere .gif was for. I did wonder. Isn’t calling these extra links ‘possibly related’ a really weaselly way of avoiding criticism about the inevitable crapness of their algorithms, much as calling the blog surfer ‘beta’ neatly sidesteps any obligation to make it work properly? Obviously I will be switching off this [...]

Originally posted by that girl again from wordpress™ wank, on April 25, 2008 3:49 PM

This season, baseball managers are being a bit more experimental in how they construct their batting and pitching lineups. For instance, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers started relief pitchers in games that they suspected might be shortened by rain in order to save the scheduled starter for the next game. The Braves shifted their pitcher to the outfield for one at-bat then brought him back to the mound for the next one.

The article is also notable for this quote from an Angels spokesperson, who said that Angels star Vladimir Guerrero is "somebody who's not affected by things". !!

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 25, 2008 2:58 PM

by Eric de Place

There was some hubbub a couple of weeks ago when researchers produced a carbon emissions map of the US. Using direct CO2 emissions, we saw this first-of-its-kind map:

Unfortunately, the map looks a lot like a population density map. That's for obvious reasons, since the larger share of cars, buildings, and industry tend to be where the people are. But by turning major cities red, it leads one to the wrong conclusion. Looking at the map, you might think that the northeast was the nation's big carbon problem, while the dessert West and the Rockies were doing something really right. And I suppose that's true on one level: there's not a lot of carbon being emitted in the wide open spaces of the West.

But check out what happens when the researchers added population density to calculate per capita carbon emissions. It's a completely different perspective:

On this reading, the real problem is the West. The nation's cool spots are the relatively densely-settled eastern areas.

Now, we all know that per capita emissions don't matter a whit to the atmosphere. All that matters is the total amount of carbon. But without understanding the population-based side of the equation, we're unlikely to understand how to fix our emissions problem. The key, as it turns out, is not for our economy to function like it does in West Texas or Wyoming, but more like it does in cities.

Links to bigger version and explanations are here

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 2:56 PM)

Originally posted by WorldChanging Team from WorldChanging, on April 25, 2008 2:56 PM

That's right - your favorite film blog is off to where the the movie action is right now - New York City. A Girl & A Gun has been given her shiney new press pass and is off to explore. The Tribeca fest is screening a massive 121 feature films and 79 short films from 41 countries. Obviously I'm not going to be able to take them all in, and I'll be missing a couple of the opening parties (boo!), and some of the press screenings I did really want to catch, due to work commitments. But I'll be on the scene from Sunday, enjoying films until my eyes bleed.

What are my top tips/wanna sees?

Savage Grace (Tom Kalin)                                   
The disintegrating psyche of '60s socialite Barbara Baekeland, staring the fabulous Julianne Moore.  

Baghead (Jay Duplass)          
Comedy-horror with of four young actors, a cabin, and something in the woods.

Toby Dammit ( Federico Fellini)     
Restored 1968 Fellini adaptation of a Poe short story, with Terence Stamp as a booze and drug riddled celeb in Rome.

The Caller (Richard Ledes)                              
Film Noir with Frank Langella as a whistle-blowing energy exec.
 
The Cottage (Paul Andrew Williams)
Violent comedy horror with a kidnapping that goes terribly wrong plot.
 
My Winnipeg (Girl & A Gun favorite Guy Maddin)
Maddin's hometown "docufantasia".
   
Elite Squad (José Padilha)                                             
Golden Bear winner and (another) one of Brazil's most controversial films, Elite Squad covers a corrupt special police force operating in Rio.

War, Inc. (Joshua Seftel)                    
 John Cusack back playing a comedy hit man in a fictional Middle Easter country were the US is running its first fully outsourced war. Has to be better than Grace is Gone.

Somers Town (Girl & A Gun loves Shane Meadows)
Comedy about a 16 year old running away from the lovely Midlands for the gold paved streets of London and making friends with a lad from Poland.
          

Originally posted by Josie Fraser from A Girl & A Gun, on April 25, 2008 2:31 PM

CARROLL GARDENS— Schnack finally closed down to the public two weeks ago, but it was just today that someone sent in a picture of their curious signage. Says the tipster: "I walked by Schnack in Carroll Gardens West, and it is shuttered. The chiars and tables are stacked up, and a sign in the window says 'FOR SALE. Turn Key. Cute Joint. Call...'." [EaterWire]

LOS ANGELES— Those of you who frequent LA or are familiar with the food scene there already know about the bacon-hot dog controversy. For the rest of you, Drew Carey has an incredible video on reason.tv where he interviews a women who was put in jail for 45 for selling the delicacy. Especially heartbreaking is the footage of police offivers throwing bacon dogs and the food carts themselves in the garbage. At least our DOH only has those orange stickers. [reason.tv via Eater LA]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 25, 2008 2:15 PM

Gar, I missed another one of Tobias Frere-Jones' NYC Typographic Walking Tours but luckily Jason Santa Maria -- a fellow so nice they named him thrice -- has photos. Photos from his first tour here. (via airbag)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 25, 2008 2:08 PM

Metropolis has a great piece where some of the country's best chefs -- including Alice Waters, Grant Achatz and Wylie Dufresne -- talk about their kitchens. Here's a snippet from Waters on Chez Panisse...

Architects really need to think about all the waste a restaurant creates. That relates completely to an important part of the restaurant -- welcoming the suppliers into the kitchen. I'm obsessed with the fact that the back of the house has to be as beautiful as the front.

And Achatz on the process of designing the Alinea kitchen...

When I had the opportunity to build my own kitchen, I thought, Hey, let's wipe our heads clean of conventional kitchen design. I'd worked at the French Laundry, Charlie Trotter's, Trio, so of course I grew up in kitchens, and it shocked me that they were all kind of designed the same. Everyone followed each other.

I felt like nobody really looked at the food, which was a great irony of kitchen design. No one really looked at the style of cooking they were going to do and designed the kitchen around that. We were like, "Let's really look at the food and decide, based on the style of cooking, what we need. What do we need as far as equipment? What do we need as far as space?"

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on April 25, 2008 11:54 AM

Cindy Sherman disavows any association with Guest of Cindy Sherman screening at the Tribeca Film Festival that was directed by her ex Paul H-O. Here's her statement: Regarding Guest of Cindy Sherman… "As my name is in the title and my work and self are so abundantly represented, I would like to counter any assumption that I am or wish to be personally associated with it. I am not a participant in any events related to the film's screenings in this festival or future presentations. I apologize to all those who participated, thinking they were doing me a favor in giving interviews and otherwise assisting in the fabrication of this film. Against my better judgment, it was clearly unwise to cooperate with the project at it's inception." Paul's movie covers his years documenting the art world for his cable TV show Gallery Beat. He eventually became Cindy Sherman's +1. Which he apparently didn't like very much. He made a movie about it. And now she doesn't want to be a part of it. Convoluted!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 25, 2008 11:29 AM

TODAY, FRIDAY, APRIL 25th at 5:30 pm

All three cops who murdered Sean Bell were found NOT GUILTY this morning by Judge Arthur Cooperman. Join us in protesting this outrageous verdict! Demand justice for Sean Bell and an end to police violence now! People's Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability is calling for a rally and community speak-out in front of the Queens DA's office TODAY.

Queens DA's Office
125-01 Queens Blvd. (between Hoover Ave & 82nd Ave.)
E or F train to Union Turnpike

Rally will include performers & speakers who have been directly affected by police brutality.

Speakers include: Juanita Young (founder of Parents Against Police Brutality, and mother of Malcolm Ferguson who was killed by the NYPD plainclothes officer in March 2000); City Councilperson Charles Barron; Margarita Rosario, activist & mother of Anthony Rosario & aunt of Hilton Vega who were killed by 2 NYPD detectives in 1995 (the detectives were former bodyguards of Giuliani); Jesus Gonzalez from Make The Road NY & the Bushwick 32 case; Nicholas Heyward Sr, whose son Nicholas Heyward Jr was killed by the NYPD in 1994 when he was 13; Allene Person, mother of Timur Person, who was killed by NYPD 2 days before his 19th bday; JoAnn Mickins, mother of Corey Mickins killed after being shot 27 times by plainclothes officers; family member of Fermin Arzu, Honduran immigrant worker & father of 3 who was killed by an off-duty cop; Lisa Claudio, fiancée of Jayson Tirado, who was killed by off-duty NYPD officer in road rage case; Ryan Nunez's mother, whose 16 year old son Ryan was attacked by NYPD while eating at McDonalds exactly 1 year after Sean Bell was murdered.

Performers include: Rebel Diaz & Spiritchild of Movement in Motion

Peoples’ Justice was initiated by the NYC Coalition Against Police Brutality (CAPB) and allies. They are a coalition of NYC-based grassroots organizations that have joined forces to win community control and police accountability.

Endorsers (list in formation): Allianza Dominicana, Audre Lorde Project, Black Radical Congress-NY, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, Center for Constitutional Rights, Congress for Korean Reunification, Critical Resistance, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), DJ Chela, Domestic Workers United (DWU), El Puente, FIERCE, Fr. Luis Barrios – St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (West Harlem, Manhattan), Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), Hasan Salaam, Hip Hop Caucus, Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas, International Action Center, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ), Justice Committee, Lynne Stewart Organization, Make the Road by Walking, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Mano a Mano, May 1st Coalition, National Hip Hop Political Convention, New Abolitionists, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, October 22nd Coalition, Parents Against Police Brutality, Party for the People, Rebel Diaz, Regeneracion, Revolting in Pink (R.I.P), Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities (RIPPD), Sylvia Rivera Law Project, VAMOS Unidos. War Resisters League, Where We Live Radio Program/WBAI-FM NY.

For more information about the April 25th rally/community speak-out, Peoples' Justice, and other cases of police violence go to: peoplesjustice.org and myspace.com/peoplesjustice or email info@peoplesjustice.org.

In Nov. 2006, Sean Bell was murdered by the NYPD in a hail of 50 bullets. His friends - Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman - were seriously injured. After a two-month-long trial of his killer, three detectives, the judge has announced his verdict of NOT GUILTY on all charges. The NYPD's murder of Bell and attempted murders of Benefield and Guzman are NOT isolated or random events. They represent the continued targeting of communities of color by the police and the lack of accountability for police misconduct and abuse.

Originally posted by Molly Fair from Just Seeds: Blog, on April 25, 2008 10:50 AM

Obama spokesperson Bill Burton just confirmed to me that the campaign has set up a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee, a development that was first reported today by Mark Halperin.

The move is unusual in the sense that it's typically the sort of thing that's done once there is a nominee.

That the DNC has done this with Obama before the contest is settled reflects two realities: First, that Obama is the likely the nominee; and second, that McCain is forging ahead with the building of a campaign apparatus while the two Dems continue to pour resources into an intra-Dem contest with no immediate end in sight.

"This is an effort to be a team player and make sure we have the resources we need," Burton says.

The joint committee can raise cash in far larger chunks than candidates -- they can take in $28,500 from individuals, more than 10 times the $2,300 contribution limit for candidates.

Similar discussions are ongoing between Hillary and the DNC, but no deal has been struck yet, Halperin reports.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 25, 2008 10:15 AM

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Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED | TEDBlog, on April 25, 2008 10:00 AM

Here is Hillary's long-shot best-case-scenario game plan, as best as I can understand it:

1) Make North Carolina unexpectedly close, showing that she can compete on his turf and using this to try to make the "Obama is weak" argument stick -- and use any future revelations about Obama or gaffes by him to feed that argument as aggressively as possible

2) Eke out a win in Indiana, partly offsetting Obama's popular vote gain from North Carolina, and making it possible to continue arguing that he can't win over blue-collar whites in big industrial states

3) Rack up huge popular-vote gains in Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico, and keep it unexpectedly close in Oregon -- making it not completely out of the question that she wins the popular vote, or that she gets within one percent of Obama, when you include Florida

4) Push hard for Michigan to be included in the popular vote count, so that including just Florida in the tally looks like a reasonable fall-back position

5) Turn the argument over who won into a two-front spin war

6) The first spin war: Get into an argument over whether Florida should count in the popular vote tally, making the case that not including the state disenfranchises its voters and that Obama's refusal to count those votes is imperiling his general-election chances there

7) The second spin war: Argue that the fact that she "won" the popular vote with Florida "included," or basically tied it, shows that the Democratic primary electorate didn't really deliver a clear verdict on its choice as nominee -- and that the "will of the people" has not been clearly established

8) Argue that the fact that the electorate allegedly didn't deliver a clear verdict frees the super-delegates to use their own judgment -- and that if they do, they will not be bucking the "will of the people"

9) Argue that the fact that she kept it close in the popular vote, despite having been counted out multiple times, shows that she has the tenacity and staying power to take on the GOP -- and that Obama lacks the toughness and killer instinct necessary to finish off a tough opponent for good

So there you have it.

Is this likely? Of course not. Is it absolutely impossible? Of course not.

Outstanding question: If Obama emerges as the clear victor in the pledged del count and the popular vote even with Florida included -- which is far and away the most likely conclusion -- will she continue to press the case to the super-dels that they should follow her, even though not one, but two metrics showed him to be the Dem primary electorate's clear choice?

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 25, 2008 8:20 AM

If only the aisles of my local Shop Rite could be filled with such simple and appealing food packaging. Check out more designs from Swiss food retailer Migros at package design blog, TheDieLine.com

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats: Main, on April 25, 2008 7:30 AM

The Expedition One crew, consisting of one American and two Russian astronauts, spent 136 days in space aboard the International Space Station. Their logs include a record of the movies they watched while on their mission.

6 Feb 2001: We ate some dinner and watched the last part of "City of Angels". Shep did his best to explain to Yuri and Sergei what the phrase "chick flick" means.

24 Feb 2001 We put some chow and the DVD player in the Soyuz and close the hatch about 0530. It takes 2 orbits to get the first set of hooks off and the docking tunnel pressure checked. We get the "Austin Powers" sequel in while all this is taking place. (Maybe a Soyuz first here).

Update: The Expedition One crew also documented their many computer problems.

Sergei notices that the Russian PCS laptop has locked up. He tries to reboot, but the Sun application software won't load. Lots of messages on the screen noting data errors. Sergei thinks that it may be the hard drive. He boots up windows to see if the windows partition runs OK--it does. So at least some of the hardware is functional.

Maybe they need Macs?

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 25, 2008 6:19 AM

Hey, just a quick housekeeping reminder to readers:

You can subscribe to TPM Election Central's RSS feed right here!

And that's not all.

You can get a TPM Election Central Widget for your site right here!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 25, 2008 6:13 AM

Confession: I love Lindsay Lohan.

I know. It's bad. I can't help it.

I love her and her leggings and her comedic timing and her oh-so-cool bad girl ways and I can't help but worry about her desperately failing career.

So I was thrilled to read in WWD that she's landed herself a job.

Unfortunately, the job description made even me, a true Lindsay lover, cringe. The troubled starlet's "turned her attention to ethical fashion," a cause she's failed to mention in the past twenty-something years.

The campaign in which she stars aims to encourage clothing donations to an outpost in London's Covent Garden in exchange for credit card points.

We love the idea, the cause and the reward, but why is Lindsay posing in vintage clothes for its promotion?

And will she really encourage people to get fashionably green?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on April 25, 2008 6:00 AM

Click the image above to view the full photogallery.

In early May the Minetta Tavern will close and fall into the hands of Keith McNally. We went by for a last visit and to hear the thoughts of owner Taka Becovic. Originally from Montenegro, near Albania, Taka first worked as a busboy at the Minetta Tavern. Thirteen years ago, he bought the place and kept every inch of it intact, including the Italian menu, which will change to French bistro food under McNally.

“I like old-fashioned places,” Taka said, “family-style Italian.” The music he had playing was Frank Sinatra, Keely Smith, Eydie Gorme, the music that must have been loved by the first owner, Eddie “Minetta” Sieveri, a fan of boxers, wrestlers, and starlets.

Sieveri returned to the Tavern every year for his birthday until his death. When the landlord raised the rent too high for Taka, Sieveri’s son tried to buy the place, but it was out of his reach too.

“I’ve got a regular customer in his 80s,” Taka told me, “When he heard I was selling he asked, How much do you need? A million? Two million? He was ready to give it to me.” Taka didn't disclose the new rent, but he bemoaned that prices in the area were all $50,000 a month and up, so we can imagine.

When asked what his hopes are for the future of the place, Taka looked off into the distance. “It’s very hard,” he said, to think of saying goodbye. He hopes McNally won’t change the place too much. The wooden bar, with its stained-glass shelving, dates back to the Tavern’s opening in 1937. The walls are covered with priceless art and photographs. Taka’s favorite is the painting of legendary Village eccentric Joe Gould, but he won’t be taking it with him. McNally bought the whole lot, every last item, down to the hand-cut paper silhouettes that trim the top of the bar.

McNally has claimed he’s not going to change much, but Taka told me the tavern will be shut down from May until October, which means McNally will probably be doing a thorough renovation. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn this Village landmark into another Pastis.

--Jeremiah Moss
· McNally Closer to Minetta Tavern Deal [~E~]
· Unconfirmed Rumormongering: Keith McNally to Buy Minetta Tavern? [~E~]

Originally posted by BL from Eater, on April 25, 2008 5:30 AM

• Beginning Monday, April 28th, I will be posting over on Examiner.com as their National Baseball Card Examiner. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I'll be updating three to five times a week.

• A Pack A Day has hit 500 posts and 71,400 visits (over 117,000 page views) since we started back in September. That deserves a big Way To Go to our great stable of APAD contributors.

• Sometime next week The Baseball Card Blog will welcome its 300,000th visitor and 450,000th page view. Not bad for two and a quarter years.

• I've been on vacation for the past month. Those of you who have been waiting on me to complete a trade, my apologies. If you have sent me cards and haven't heard or got anything from me in return, send me an email with your shipping address.

Originally posted by Ben Henry from The Baseball Card Blog, on April 24, 2008 8:52 PM

Spoilers for "Lost" coming up just as soon as I get my dry cleaner to remove the blood and sand from my parka......

Originally posted by Alan Sepinwall from NJ.com: All TV, on April 24, 2008 8:30 PM

• Gothamist: Schwarzman Gets Name on NYPL 5 Times
  As the commenters on Gothamist note, if this were truly a selfless donation, there'd be no need to rename (or deface) anything
  (tags: nyc news)

Originally posted by David Wertheimer from Ideapad, on April 24, 2008 5:46 PM

In the wake of the Nature survey that found that 20% of scientists admit to using brain enhancing drugs, Wired has just published an article detailing what drugs their scientist readers use to keep on keepin' on.

Although the drugs issue is obviously the headline-grabber, the publication also has a great feature on cognitive enhancement that largely covers tips, tricks and techniques to boost your mental skills that aren't drug-related.

The article itself is anecdotally interesting, but has a curious tone throughout:

Surprisingly large numbers of people appear to be using brain-enhancing drugs to work harder, longer and better. They're popping pills normally prescribed for narcolepsy or attention-deficit disorder to improve their performance at work and school.

"We aren't the teen clubbers popping uppers to get through a hard day running a cash register after binge drinking," wrote a Ph.D. research scientist who regularly takes a wakefulness drug called Provigil, normally prescribed for narcolepsy. "We are responsible humans."

Whenever people talk about using drugs, they're always keen to distance themselves from that sort of drug user. You know, the ones that aren't responsible.

This belies the fact that most people use most drugs with few problems. Even teen clubbers popping uppers.

While all drugs have risks and illicit street drugs increase the health risks and definitely have an impact on body and brain function, it's only a minority of drug users who have problems that interfere with their daily lives.

For example, a recent study found that 4% of Australian workers use the (fairly nasty) drug methamphetamine. The figure rises to over 11% for 18-29 year olds. That more than 1 in 10.

While the study found that using methamphetamine significantly increases chances of a range of health problems, it's still the minority of users that report significant problems. This is the typical pattern for studies on drug use.

In other words, drugs are bad for you but most people manage the risks. A small minority, of course, don't, and die instantly or suffer long-term consequences.

The benefit and using and abusing prescription drugs for 'brain doping' is largely in the fact that you can be sure of the purity of the product and that probably (depending on how you acquire them) you're not funding a vicious criminal network.

At the end of the day though, the process is the same, whether you're using legal drugs, illegal drugs, for recreation or for performance.

Just make sure you're educated about the risks and know the consequences. Just like everything else in life.

Link to Wired.com Readers' Brain-Enhancing Drug Regimens.
Link to Wired 'Give Your Intellect a Boost' techniques.

Originally posted by vaughan from Mind Hacks, on April 24, 2008 1:12 PM

(via catbird)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org Tumblelog, on April 24, 2008 12:36 PM

Driving is already frustrating enough: $4/gallon gas, collapsing bridges, the screaming kids in the back. The last thing humanity needs is the difficulty in simply enjoying french fries from behind the wheel... and failing. It's only inevitable that errant fries will spread their grease and salt all over your car's interior. There are containers for gum, chips, and nuts that fit in a cup holder, but the standard french fry container just won't fit.

However, thanks to Improvements®, purveyor of "Quick and Clever Problem-Solvers," you can get a French Fry Holder for your car! Kind of. It's sold out right now, but if it weren't, you too could indulge in the convenience of a container whose no-slip rubberized base fits into your standard cup holder and holds one order of fries. There's even a clip-on ketchup cup for easy dipping! And if you're not eating fries, you can use it to hold other snacks. With so many uses, you can't afford not to have one.

Related
The Col-Pop, an All-in-One Chicken Nugget and Soda Cup
I Am Tired of Spreading Cream Cheese on a Bagel for Myself

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats: Main, on April 24, 2008 12:30 PM

Streetfilms' Elizabeth Press kicks off a series of videos about livable streets in Paris with this look at the city's two weekly romps on skates -- roller-versions of Critical Mass that attract up to 15,000 participants. Notice that the police are an essential part of the proceedings (and they seem to have fun doing it -- check out the cops on blades at the 1:35 mark).

Says Elizabeth:

Every Friday night and Sunday afternoon Parisians can take the streets and see their city on skates. And they do, by the thousands! Both mass rides, which are sponsored by different associations, started small and now are institutions of public street life in Paris.

In this video you hear from both Tanao Terra, VP of Pari Roller, organizers of the Friday night skate and Philippe Moulié, President of Rollers & Coquillages, sponsors of the Sunday afternoon Skate.

A little history: The Friday night skates were started by a small group of friends. After the transit strikes in 1995, which forced Parisians to find a new way to get around town, thousands of people began to show up on Friday evenings just to practice moving through the city on roller blades. The numbers inspired Pari Roller to form an official association working with Paris’, and the world’s, first roller blade national police unit.

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 24, 2008 12:24 PM

Honestly I was getting a little burned out on Errol Morris. I've been reading his Times blog, reading and listening to interviews with him about Standard Operating Procedure, and went to see him at the Apple Store last night. (I was most intrigued by his observation that photographs both reveal and conceal at the same time.) But this (relatively) short interview with him on the AV Club site is worth reading and got me unburned out. One of the many choice quotes:

I wish they'd just get it over with and make [Iraq] the 51st state, because I think it's the perfect red state: religious fundamentalists, lots of weaponry. How could you go wrong? We're already spending a significant fraction of our gross national product on the infrastructure; such as it is, on Iraq. Make it the 51st state and get it over with.

The interviewer, Scott Tobias, makes an interesting observation toward the end.

It seems like there's been plenty of instances in which big guys [i.e. Bush, Cheney, etc.] could have and should have been held accountable. Yet it's not as if they've slipped a noose. It's as if they deny that there's even a noose to be slipped.

And Morris replies:

That's what's so bizarre. You know, there are smoking guns everywhere, and people are being constantly hit over the head with smoking guns, and people simply don't act on them.

For me, this is the central mystery of the Bush administration. There has been demonstrable legal wrongdoing on the part of this administration and through some magical process, they've charmed the country and managed to sidestep not only legal action (including impeachment) but even the threat of legal action and -- this is the best part -- get fucking reelected in the process. With Bush's disapproval rating at an all-time high (for any President since Gallup began polling), it's not like people aren't aware and the 2006 elections clearly show the country's disapproval with Bush et al. Maddening and fascinating at the same time.

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 24, 2008 12:08 PM

I don't know if a lot of HuffPost commenters are getting banned, for one reason or another, or if a tiny minority is expressing itself on this site. I wrote a post nearly three years ago about the logical troubles the then-new Huffington Post was having approving thousands of comments. Apparently, that post is popping up on Google searchers. And now a stream of commenters is complaining (here) that they're banned from HuffPost. Is this true? Is this a problem?

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on April 24, 2008 11:20 AM

The view of Gansevoort Plaza looking west.

Looks like the Meatpacking District's livable streets makeover is progressing quickly. Less than a month ago, Gansevoort Plaza was a chaotic free-for-all for vehicles. Now it sports a large pedestrian-only space lined with planters. Two weeks after capturing the construction phase, The Open Planning Project's Lily Bernheimer snapped these photos showing the new seating and street furniture in action. In terms of getting a good bang for the livable streets buck, this project seems like a real winner -- a quick and inexpensive reallocation of space. (We have a request in to DOT to find out how much it cost.)

More pictures after the jump.

(more...)

Originally posted by Jason Varone from Streetsblog, on April 24, 2008 11:14 AM

Joe M sent in the following e-mail, which read:

“I have a suggestion that I believe will resolve the issues Carlos Delgado is having at the plate this year. He needs to stop dyeing his goatee. When a man starts to do silly things to appear younger, it gets in his head and the negative effects may surface in many ways. Either let the facial hair come in gray, or better yet, shave it off completely. Santana has the best-looking goatee on the team anyway, so its not doing him any good.”

…i want to believe this guy is joking, and i suspect that he is…i mean, i hope that he is…either way, this is one of the more funny e-mails i have been sent, amidst a deep sea of anger and negativity…thank you, joe, for the laugh…

…what’s not at all funny is the following:

Yesterday, during his Mike and the Maddog show on WFAN, host Chris Russo talked about how the Mets have no possible way of dealing with Delgado’s slump, adding:

“There’s not a solution in sight first half of the season … Maybe there is in July, maybe in July they can get a first baseman, they could kill him, they could bench him, they can do a million things then.”

…thanks to Peter Wade at Hot Foot for the quote…

…ummm, kill him, chris…is that necessary…good thing there is a Mets voice on that show to help balance him, oh, wait, that’s right, there isn’t…oh well…

For more on Delgado switching spots in the batting order, read Newsday, the New York Times, and Journal News.

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 24, 2008 10:31 AM

Why is New York-style pizza so difficult to replicate in other areas of the world? Perhaps the answer lies with NYC's legendary tap water.

"Water," Batali says. "Water is huge. It's probably one of California's biggest problems with pizza." Water binds the dough's few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. "So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes."

Update: That legendary tap water was supposedly responsible for NYC-style bagels as well until Finagle A Bagel founder Larry Smith drove some Boston tap water to NYC and compared bagels made with the water from the two cities.

"There was absolutely no difference between them," Smith reported. "What makes the difference is equipment, process and ingredients."

Well, ingredients except water. (thx, darrin)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 24, 2008 10:04 AM

After boxing podcasting soundly about the ears...

The stylistic arena of text and images is so exponentially more vast, and so much easier to negotiate a rewarding path through, it's hard not to think of the [podcasting] format as broken, a dead end. Perhaps that's why many come and go so quickly.

...Dean Allen lists some of his favorite podcasts. Many of which I'd immediately subscribe to except that I don't exercise, drive, or cook. (I will also add that I am so happy to have Textism back in my life. It's the perfect up-yours to the Web 2.0 hype machinery/chicanery.)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 24, 2008 9:24 AM

Gawker nails it: Is Top Chef Just One Big Lesbianic Morality Play?

Originally posted by Raphael from Serious Eats: Main, on April 24, 2008 9:15 AM

Jared Diamond wrote a fascinating article in last week's New Yorker about vengence. On one of his trips to Papua New Guinea, he met a man named Daniel who had been responsible for "organizing the revenge" against the man who killed his paternal uncle Soll. (Incidentally, Soll's killer was also an uncle of Daniel's.)

Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle's life began, he answered, "The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden." Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeper lying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig.

The process of vengence is very important to the people living in this region of New Guinea; people there speak openly of revenge killings as Americans might speak of friendships and family. Diamond argues that the New Guineans' everyday open embrace of such a strong emotion is not necessarily a bad thing and that modern society can circumvent people's need for vengence, resulting in feelings of dissatisfaction that can create unbalanced emotional lives. At the end of WWII, Diamond's father-in-law had a chance to take his revenge on someone who had killed his mother, sister, and niece but was persuaded to turn the man over to the new Polish government for punishment. The man was never charged with the crime and Diamond's father-in-law was never the same.

One day, he took out a sheaf of photographs and showed [his daughter] Marie a picture of three shallow excavations in a forest: the photo that he had taken of the graves of his mother, sister, and niece. Then, for the first time, he told Marie the story of how he discovered what had happened to them, and of his release of their killer. Once, when he was about ninety years old, he recounted the story to Marie and me together. I recall his talking in an emotionally flat, distant, storytelling way, as if he no longer attached feelings to the story. In fact, his distanced manner must have been a tightly controlled act, a way of preserving his sanity while living with his memories.

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

Always wait for the fine print.

We've been hearing for several days now that the White House was poised to released new videotape showing incontrovertible evidence of North Korean helping the Syrians build the alleged nuclear facilities the Israeli air force destroyed last September.

Well. Read down in the details. Now it appears there's actually no videotape -- only still photos. The 'videotape' is a videotape of the still photos.

As one "US official" told AFP, "There are still photographs of the facility as part of the video, but it's a video presentation, like a Powerpoint presentation. It's not a video of the facility."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 24, 2008 8:16 AM

On having a black name

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on April 24, 2008 8:14 AM

Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on April 24, 2008 8:07 AM

Say what you will about the quality of Dissent’s new piece arguing that bloggers are the new New Left, hopefully they’ve learned a key lesson of publishing in the online world. The best way to get bloggers to link to you is to write about them. Works every time.

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 24, 2008 7:57 AM

…because so many of you keep asking, while making up your own conspiracy theories: i removed the Willie Randolph Job Approval Rating because it was not shaping up as a direct reflection of the overall fan base’s opinion…

…instead, it was a direct reflection of the standings, which is probably because of the way i phrased the question…

…i am considering a more effective way of doing a similar poll…

…by the way, SNY has ZERO editorial control of this site, as i repeatedly point out…it’s all mine…

…as i have said before, i never would have agreed to partner with SNY had this not been the case…also, they have ZERO say over how the site looks, functions or what goes on in the comments section…those decisions are all on me…

…that said, people at the network seem to love these polls, whether positive or not…i, however, prefer the polling to be as close to relevant and accurate as possible…and when they are not, as with any other aspect of this site, i stop and adjust…on my own accord, because i feel i owe that to my readers…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 24, 2008 7:40 AM

Lolcats hiring; spelling skillz optional - msnbc.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on April 24, 2008 6:55 AM

A new version of Buzzfeed launched late last night. It's not exactly a 2.0 release, but it's a major step toward that near-future event. Disclosure: I'm an advisor to Buzzfeed.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 24, 2008 6:29 AM

Carrie Underwood looks absolutely glowy and gorgeous on the cover of the new InStyle, but this singing sensation says she often isn't thrilled with what's staring back at her in the mirror.

"I think about what I look like probably more than I should. But I think everybody is her own worst critic," she tells the mag. "Some days I step out of the shower, put my lotion on, and I'll be like 'Ugh, ew, ew.' "

I so can relate.

Carrie, who recently split from boyfriend Chace Crawford, admits she's been cheated on and says that the reason for her not-so-perfect-spots probably has to do with how she deals with heartache. 

"I'm a 'let it go, move on' kind of person. And ice cream is my friend. If anybody sees me eating a sundae and I look unhappy, something bad has happened," the American Idol winner admits. "I am drowning my sorrows in fudge and caramel and whipped cream."

The beauty seems, sadly, super hard on herself. "If I put on five pounds, it's noticed immediately," Carrie says. But, in the same breath she laments, "I'm content with 90 percent of me. I like my teeth. Sometimes I wonder if my orthodontist realizes how important he was." 

It bothers me so much when beautiful girls don't see themselves as such.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on April 24, 2008 6:12 AM

"I have not been to one other restaurant anywhere in the world where I feel the same energy that I do at Babbo."

Like most serious eaters, I've been searching for deliciousness my whole life, but sometimes, in more reflective moments, even I acknowledge there's often more to eating out than great food. Obviously for me the food is paramount, but there are other factors that go into judging great restaurants. How welcome do I feel? Do I feel well taken care of? Am I having a good time? Does the restaurant make my dining companions and me feel special? Can I easily hear what the people I am with are saying? Is the service personal without being intrusive? Does the energy in a restaurant match or even elevate my own? How does the restaurant's look and feel affect how its customers look and feel?

New York's five best dining experiences, this way »

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats: Main, on April 24, 2008 6:00 AM

It's not an official opening date, but we take what we can get when it comes to the Red Hook food vendors. Per an email from ringleader Cesar Fuentes: "We are still clearing some compliance issues with Parks, but we do hope to be able to open for business by Memorial Day weekend. As soon as we have an official date, we'll let you know." [EaterWire]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 24, 2008 5:29 AM

• Clinton Would Consider Gas Tax Holiday; Obama Opposes (WSJ)
• Bloomberg: Biofuel-Friendly Energy Bill Is a Disgrace (Sun)
• Roger Cohen: Blaming Biofuels Is 'Hogwash' (NYT)
  
• Feds Offer LA County $213M to Implement Pricing on Freeways (LAT)
  
• Times Profiles Brodsky
  
• Council Considers Bill to Change Parade Rules (Gotham Gazette)
• Queens Bus Riders Get Their Chance to Grade Service (NY1)
• In Newark, 50 Percent of Devils Fans Take the Train to the Game (NYT)
• Bike Theft on Earth Day (Bike Blog)
• Dutch Cyclists Request External Air Bags (Jalopnik)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 24, 2008 4:58 AM

Here's a quick round-up of super-delegate-related news:

* After Pennsylvania, many super-dels are accepting the fact that the contest won't end until the voting is over, and some even say that's a good thing for the party.

* Hillary's Pennsylvania win has persuaded many super-dels to remain neutral for the time being -- in hopes that the voters will render a clear verdict and relieve them of the burden of having to pick sides.

* A Hillary adviser says that her Pennsylvania win was what persuaded Tennessee Rep. John Tanner to come out for her yesterday.

* Fifteen House Dems gathered at Hillary headquarters yesterday to strategize about how to corral more super-dels for her -- the goal being to erase the sense of inevitability that surrounds Obama's candidacy.

* Howard Dean reiterated his call for the super-dels to make up their minds promptly after the voting ends.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 24, 2008 4:50 AM

Hua put me up on this new experiment in social music networking: muxtape.com.

I've gone ahead and created my first Soul Sides Muxtape, filled with a bunch of goodies, a few songs I've written about but most of them I've yet to yap about here. Consider it the preview.

I like the lo-tech quality of the site and its basic concept but seriously, would it kill them to throw in a search function? Random play is not a bad idea in principle but I still like some level of organization. And while we're whining, it'd be nice to be able to FF and RW on a track. But really, we like it otherwise.

In any case, be sure to peep the other muxtapes in rotation, including Hua's (both of them), Sasha Frere Jones' and Tony Phrone. Sasha just blew my mind a bit by including a cover of "Crumbs Off the Table" by Dusty Springfield.

Originally posted by O.W. from soul sides, on April 23, 2008 11:41 PM

I stay generic when blogging, but I had an interesting problem today that I thought I’d share. I’ve got a Ganglia rollout thats constantly growing. Some time ago Gmetad start struggling to keep up and would report nodes down (oddly, if you refreshed the page over and over you’d see the number of nodes roll up and down, 8 down, 7, 6, 4, 2, 0, 8…). The temporary fix was to simply reduce the number of monitored clusters. But this irritated me because gmetad really is pretty light on CPU and memory usage… Ganglia is synonimous with “scale”, so why won’t it scale?

# iostat -xn sd3 1
                    extended device statistics              
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
   92.1  158.2 5460.8 2075.6  0.0  9.8    0.0   39.0   0  71 sd3
                    extended device statistics              
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
  207.0  244.8 12990.2  509.0  0.0 15.2    0.0   33.5   0 100 sd3
                    extended device statistics              
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
   64.0  330.8 4076.2 1083.7  0.0 19.2    0.0   48.7   0 100 sd3

I had noticed via iostat that disk IO was excessive for what the system was doing. Thats were I started. I could write some D script to explore, but Brendan Gregg’s DTrace Toolkit already contains useful scripts like iotop and iosnoop, so decided to save some time and use those. Here’s a snapshot from iotop:

2008 Apr 23 21:48:47,  load: 0.32,  disk_r:  34909 KB,  disk_w:  20108 KB

  UID    PID   PPID CMD              DEVICE  MAJ MIN D            BYTES
    0      3      0 fsflush          sd3      31 192 W           744448
  100  24277  24180 mysqld           sd3      31 196 W          3801088
  100  24277  24180 mysqld           sd3      31 196 R          4358144
    0      0      0 sched            sd3      31 196 W         16045056
    0      0      0 sched            sd3      31 196 R         31389188

MySQL is doing a lot more IO than it ought to be. I know that Zabbix is using MySQL but I’ve got several other apps that may be using it as well, so I’ll keep that on my hit list. The “sched” IO is actually cache flushing, typically from the ZFS ARC (ZFS’s buffers). So I need to look at what MySQL is doing and then at file IO but this time at the POSIX layer so that I can see which files are being touched.

MySQL first… I like my my_qcache.d script because I can see queries, execution time, and whether or not its being served from the query cache (Qcache). Here is the script:

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s
/* 
 *   Query Cache Viewer; benr@joyent.com
 */ 
#pragma D option quiet

BEGIN
{ 
        printf("Waiting for queries... hit ^c to quit.n");
}
pid$target:mysqld:*dispatch_command*:entry
{
        self->query = copyinstr(arg2);
        self->start = timestamp;
}
pid$target:mysqld:*send_result_to_client*:entry
{
        self->cache = "Yes";
}
pid$target:mysqld:*do_select*:entry
{
        self->cache = "No";
}
pid$target:mysqld:*dispatch_command*:return
{
        this->end = timestamp;
        this->elapsed = (this->end - self->start)/1000000;
        printf("From Query Cache?: %s in %d ms t| Query: %sn", self->cache, this->elapsed, self->query);
        self->start = 0;
        self->query = 0;        
}

Here is a sample of what I got…

$ ./my_qcache.d -p `pgrep -x mysqld`
Waiting for queries... hit ^c to quit.
From Query Cache?: Yes in 0 ms  | Query: begin;
From Query Cache?: No in 0 ms   | Query: select httptestid,name,applicationid,nextcheck,status,delay,macros,agent from httptest where status=0 and nextcheck<=1208987526 and mod(httptestid,5)=1 and  httptestid>=100000000000000*0 and httptestid<=(100000000000000*0+99999999999999) 
From Query Cache?: No in 0 ms   | Query: select httptestid,name,applicationid,nextcheck,status,delay,macros,agent from httptest where status=0 and nextcheck<=1208987526 and mod(httptestid,5)=0 and  httptestid>=100000000000000*0 and httptestid<=(100000000000000*0+99999999999999) 
From Query Cache?: No in 0 ms   | Query: select httptestid,name,applicationid,nextcheck,status,delay,macros,agent from httptest where status=0 and nextcheck<=1208987526 and mod(httptestid,5)=3 and  httptestid>=100000000000000*0 and httptestid<=(100000000000000*0+99999999999999) 
From Query Cache?: Yes in 0 ms  | Query: select count(*),min(nextcheck) from httptest t where t.status=0 and mod(t.httptestid,5)=3 and  t.httptestid>=100000000000000*0 and t.httptestid<=(100000000000000*0+99999999999999) 
From Query Cache?: Yes in 0 ms  | Query: select count(*),min(nextcheck) from httptest t where t.status=0 and mod(t.httptestid,5)=1 and  t.httptestid>=100000000000000*0 and t.httptestid<=(100000000000000*0+99999999999999) 
From Query Cache?: Yes in 0 ms  | Query: update items set nextcheck=1208988127, lastclock=1208987527 where itemid=20837
From Query Cache?: Yes in 10 ms         | Query: commit;

After looking at queries fly by its clear that all this is happening by Zabbix. A lot of data is being written, thats gonna happen, but there is also a lot of disk read that calls for some tuning. I’ll set that aside for now and given that Zabbix is an auxilary monitoring solution I’ll just shut it down for now to concentrate on Ganglia. After shutting down Zabbix I check the MySQL query activity again:

root@ev2-admin tmp$ ./my_qcache.d -p `pgrep -x mysqld`
Waiting for queries... hit ^c to quit.                
^C          

Ok, MySQL is quiet. Now I can dig into Ganglia without auxiliary noise.

I looked back at iostat and things didn’t look drastically different. How can this be? For a second I though that perhaps that Ganglia might simply be running out of File Descriptors, perhaps its opening lots of files (RRDs in this case) simultaneously and thats my cap? So I’ll check the resource controls (rctl’s) with a sepecial eye on the FD limit:

# prctl -i process `pgrep gmetad`
NAME    PRIVILEGE       VALUE    FLAG   ACTION                       RECIPIENT
...
process.max-file-descriptor
        basic             256       -   deny                             12528
        privileged      65.5K       -   deny                                 -
        system          2.15G     max   deny                                 -
...

So the “basic” limit is still in place limiting the process to 256 (POSIX standard) limit. The “recipient” is the PID, not a counter. Now, I can increase that threshold or simply dump the “basic” limit to allow the full “privileged” limit, but do I need to? Using pfiles I’ll check the number of open file descriptors… I run it over a couple times to see how much the number is changing over time:

# pfiles `pgrep gmetad`
12528:  /opt/ganglia/sbin/gmetad
  Current rlimit: 256 file descriptors
   0: S_IFREG mode:0444 dev:278,4 ino:5705 uid:60001 gid:0 size:336
      O_RDONLY
      /proc/12528/psinfo
   1: S_IFSOCK mode:0666 dev:283,0 ino:8706 uid:0 gid:0 size:0
      O_RDWR
        SOCK_STREAM
        SO_REUSEADDR,SO_KEEPALIVE,SO_SNDBUF(49152),SO_RCVBUF(49152)
        sockname: AF_INET 0.0.0.0  port: 8651
   2: S_IFSOCK mode:0666 dev:283,0 ino:57377 uid:0 gid:0 size:0
      O_RDWR
        SOCK_STREAM
        SO_REUSEADDR,SO_KEEPALIVE,SO_SNDBUF(49152),SO_RCVBUF(49152)
        sockname: AF_INET 0.0.0.0  port: 8652
   3: S_IFDOOR mode:0444 dev:286,0 ino:35 uid:0 gid:0 size:0
      O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE FD_CLOEXEC  door to nscd[24142]
      /var/run/name_service_door

Well, ok, so clearly the number of file descriptors isn’t the issue…. but just in case I wanted to rule out the issue completely. While I could use DTrace, this isn’t a production impacting application so I did a quick naughty look with truss:

# truss -p  `pgrep gmetad`
...
/125:   mkdir("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx", 0755)     Err#17 EEXIST
/125:   mkdir("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy", 0755) Err#17 EEXIST
/125:   xstat(2, "/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy/load_fifteen.rrd", 0xF6F3B874) = 0
/125:   open64("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy/load_fifteen.rrd", O_RDWR) = 7
/125:   fstat64(7, 0xF6F3B200)                          = 0
/125:   fstat64(7, 0xF6F3B130)                          = 0
/125:   ioctl(7, TCGETA, 0xF6F3B1CC)                    Err#25 ENOTTY
/125:   read(7, " R R D? 0 0 0 3????".., 4096)     = 4096
/125:   llseek(7, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 4096
/125:   lseek(7, 0, SEEK_END)                           = 12112
/125:   llseek(7, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 12112
/125:   llseek(7, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 12112
/125:   lseek(7, 1312, SEEK_SET)                        = 1312
/125:   fcntl(7, F_SETLK64, 0xF6F3B314)                 = 0
/125:   mmap64(0x00000000, 12112, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, 7, 0) = 0xF6B30000
/125:   munmap(0xF6B30000, 12112)                       = 0
/125:   llseek(7, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 1312
/125:   lseek(7, 772, SEEK_SET)                         = 772
/125:   write(7, "9DCC0F H???? 1 . 5 5".., 540)     = 540
/125:   close(7)                                        = 0
/125:   mkdir("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx", 0755)     Err#17 EEXIST
/125:   mkdir("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy", 0755) Err#17 EEXIST
/125:   xstat(2, "/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy/proc_total.rrd", 0xF6F3B874) = 0
/125:   open64("/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyy/proc_total.rrd", O_RDWR) = 7
/125:   fstat64(7, 0xF6F3B200)                          = 0
/125:   fstat64(7, 0xF6F3B130)                          = 0
/125:   ioctl(7, TCGETA, 0xF6F3B1CC)                    Err#25 ENOTTY
/125:   read(7, " R R D? 0 0 0 3????".., 4096)     = 4096
/125:   llseek(7, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 4096
/125:   lseek(7, 0, SEEK_END)                           = 12112
^C/125: ioctl(7, TCGETA, 0xF6F3B1CC)                    Err#25 ENOTTY
...

So its doing a lot of IO and its happening sequentially. A file is opened, worked on, closed, next… so clearly this shows that file descriptor limits are not an issue here.

Truss is a quick and dirty tool, but I want a little more percision. Lets try something out of Brendan’s bag of tricks:

$ ./fsrw.d  
Event            Device RW     Size Offset Path
sc-read               .  R     4096      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.disk_total.rrd.Imbi4x
  fop_read            .  R     4096      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.disk_total.rrd.Imbi4x
sc-write              .  W      540      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.disk_total.rrd.Imbi4x
  fop_write           .  W      540      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.disk_total.rrd.Imbi4x
sc-read               .  R     4096      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.cpu_speed.rrd.Dmbi4x
  fop_read            .  R     4096      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.cpu_speed.rrd.Dmbi4x
sc-write              .  W      540      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.cpu_speed.rrd.Dmbi4x
  fop_write           .  W      540      0 /zones/z000000AA/root/opt/ganglia/data/xxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyy/.cpu_speed.rrd.Dmbi4x

So fsrw.d from the DTrace Toolkit spits lines flying by… we’re doing a lot more IO that I realized and we’re doing it small chunks. Looking back at my iostat output from earlier I notice that the number of ops shown was low, but we’re doing a ton of IO… ZFS is clearly doing a good job of grouping and caching IO for me. The disk just can’t seem to keep up, and I’ve still got more than half of my Ganglia nodes unmonitored meaning that I need to at least double the IO load to solve my problem.

Lets look at that iostat output again:

   r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
   ...
   92.1  158.2 5460.8 2075.6  0.0  9.8    0.0   39.0   0  71 sd3
  207.0  244.8 12990.2  509.0  0.0 15.2    0.0   33.5   0 100 sd3
   64.0  330.8 4076.2 1083.7  0.0 19.2    0.0   48.7   0 100 sd3

These are 1 second intervals. The throughput is low, the IO size (kw/s divided by w/s) isn’t terrible, but my asvc_t (average service time in ms) is higher than I’d expect on local 10K SAS drives, combined with the 100% busy. Combine those two facts, 100% busy and asvc_t thats significantly higher than average latency (~10ms) on the drive and I know that the drive is moving that disk head way more than it should, we’re dealing with a lot of scattered blocks on disk clearly. I could use DTrace to look at the LBA on IO’s but I don’t think I need to go that far. The problem is clear, the disk just can’t keep up with the flood of IO from Ganglia. Normally this is where I’d go looking for a new RAID controller or tuning any kernel parameter I can find… but we’re not talking about a lot of data here, these are RRD files, the total size of my Ganglia data/ directory is less than 50MB!

One way to solve this problem would be to get a really big RAID controller, but thats expensive. Besides, how does it really speed things up? Caches! Well, hell, I’ve already got a lot of free memory on this system and I’m not dealing with gigs of data… why not just store Ganglia data file in system memory? If I did that I’d provide more IO speed to Ganglia than it could exceed and free up my disks to do something more useful.

Enter tmpfs. Rather than code some nifty caching mechanism into gmetad, I could just mount a tmpfs segment as its data directory. Seems silly at first, but it would be fast and looking at Web 2.0 scalability apps like Varnish, Memcached, etc, they’ll store anything in memory… why not this? So the only trick is sync’ing the data in memory to disk periodically in case of a crash.

So I wrote up a startup wrapper for gmetad (which is invoked as an SMF method) that looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/bash
## SMF Start method for Gmetad
## -benr

if ( mount | grep "/opt/ganglia/data on swap" >/dev/null )
then
         echo "Tmpfs already mounted."
else
         echo "Mounting tmpfs..."
         chown nobody /opt/ganglia/data
         mount -F tmpfs -o size=100m,noxattr swap /opt/ganglia/data
fi

## Now sync the data in if its empty:

if [ -d /opt/ganglia/data/__SummaryInfo__/ ]
then
         echo "Cache primed, ready to start."
         chown -R nobody /opt/ganglia/data
else
         echo "Priming the cache..."
         /opt/csw/bin/rsync -at /opt/ganglia/data-disk/ /opt/ganglia/data/
         chown -R nobody /opt/ganglia/data
fi

## Finally, start ganglia:
/opt/ganglia/sbin/gmetad

Now I just add a cronjob to rsync the tmpfs data every 5 minutes:

# Sync gmetad ram-disk to physical-disk
#
5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55,0 * * * * /opt/csw/bin/rsync -at /opt/ganglia/data/ /opt/ganglia/data-disk/

After about 20 minutes of tinkering I get things right, stop and restart Ganglia, but this time with all the clusters enabled. To my delight the disk was getting a much needed vacation, the system performance was smoothed significantly because the IO system wasn’t busy all the time, Ganglia was working perfectly and faster than ever, and on top of it all I’ve increased the life of my disk because it’s not pounding the heads 24 hours a day.

After sharing my solution a bit I found that a lot of people are using tmpfs for RDD storage for the same reason I am. Wish they’d told me before. :)

We’ve seen here how powerful the observability capabilities of Solaris are, how DTrace helped us to understand both IO activity and even peek into a MySQL database, how iostat helped us understand what my hard drives were doing as well as how truss, rctls and the Solaris ptools (pfiles in this case) helped us investigate and rule out some hutches along the way. Furthermore, we’ve seen how we can exploit ‘tmpfs’ to trade a little memory for some big wins in terms of both longevity and performance, without having to write a line of code, just a couple of commands in a shell script combined with a cron job.

Solaris for the win. ;)

Originally posted by Ben Rockwood from Joyeur, on April 23, 2008 9:14 PM

The betas are coming quickly, and there are a bunch of improvements already over what was released initially last month.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 23, 2008 6:59 PM

I think I've said this a hundred times, as have many others. But this article in Thursday's Times is a good moment to revisit the point. As Patrick Healy explains, it is simply a fallacy to claim that winning a state's Democratic primary means you're more likely to win that state in the general election or that your opponent can't win it.

The dynamics are simply different between general elections and primaries. You have on the one hand patterns and preferences that Democratic voters show for different candidates in Democratic primaries. Then you have the separate question of whether these same voters will vote for the Democratic or the Republican nominee in the general. One is simply not predictive of the other. It could be -- if one candidate's voters simply refuse to vote for the other candidate. But who wins a primary doesn't tell you that.

And it's really not a big mystery that the argument doesn't hold up because it wasn't devised or conceived as an electoral argument. It's a political argument -- one that only really came into operation at the point at which the Clinton campaign realized that it was far enough behind that it's path to the nomination required making the argument to superdelegates that she's elected and Obama is not.

That's not to say there isn't a difference between the two as general election candidates -- at least in their current incarnations. There is. It's just not this big state nonsense. Peter Hart who, for what it's worth is actually part of the same polling firm as Hillary's new pollster/strategist Geoff Garin (though himself not working with either candidate), comes much closer to the mark when he says in the Times article, "Hillary goes deeper and stronger in the Democratic base than Obama, but her challenge is that she doesn't go as wide. Obama goes much further reaching into the independent and Republican vote, and has a greater chance of creating a new electoral map for the Democrats."

That's the essence of it. But there's actually a little more than that too when you combine that partisan analysis with a geographical one.

There's not a lot of good or consistent polling state by state yet. But we were looking today at what polling data is out there. Clinton is running a bit better against McCain in the rustbelt states that sit just above the Mason-Dixon line. That's principally Ohio (see Ohio polls) and Pennsylvania (see PA polls). The state where you see this pattern more wildly than anywhere is in Kentucky. (See KY polls). Clinton loses to McCain there but respectably, whereas Obama simply gets slaughtered. SurveyUSA has polled the state three times in the last eight weeks and the last two times McCain beats Obama better than two to one.

Kentucky isn't really an issue in itself. It's highly unlikely either Democrat would win it. But it's the best example I've seen where Clinton appears to run dramatically stronger than Obama.

But this isn't the whole story.

In a whole arc of territory stretching from the Great Lakes through the upper Midwest down into the inter-mountain West Obama consistently runs stronger than Hillary. Some of these states are ones Democrats really must win in order to win a general election -- states like Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Others are states red states that have been trending blue but which Obama appears able to put in play while Hillary can't. Colorado is a good example. The last four polls of the state show Obama tied or ahead of McCain while McCain beats Hillary handily. The most recent poll -- April 21st -- has Obama beating McCain by 3 points while McCain is beating Hillary by 14 points.

Given the spottiness of state by state polls, for now it's best to watch the national popular vote polls, which show the two Democrats basically even in how they'd face McCain. But there are differences. They run better in different parts of the country. But the 'big state' argument is just malarkey, an artifact of the spin necessities of the post-Super Tuesday campaign.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 23, 2008 6:53 PM

A suggestion from the inbox: watch the fascinatingly disturbing eagle vs. goats video with a soundtrack of Juan Diego Flórez's encore-inducing tenor solo. Two great links that taste great together. (thx, andrew & rueben)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 23, 2008 6:43 PM

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

Apple released the fourth version of the iPhone SDK beta today. The iPhone SDK now includes OpenGL ES support for the iPhone (Aspen) simulator. Here's what Apple's developer website says about the update:

The fourth beta version of the iPhone SDK includes Xcode IDE, iPhone simulator with Open GL ES support, Interface Builder, Instruments, frameworks and samples, compilers, and Shark analysis tool.

You can download the SDK update by logging into the iPhone Dev center and clicking the download link.


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

9:31p New beta build is called 5A258f

9:31p SDK download is 1.15 GBs

9:32p No word yet as to whether pwnage will work with the new firmware--probably not. The last time it took almost a week for pwnage release to catch up (that was version 1.1).

9:34p We're getting tips that Apple is sending out e-mails to developers enrolled in the SDK beta. The e-mails include the same message as above,

9:35p Firmware sizes about 200+MB each for iPhone and iPod touch

9:36p Apple continues with its beta pre-installation advisory. Testing devices may be locked permanently into testing mode.

9:37p If you're new to the SDK program, make sure you phone has been pre-activated with AT&T before you attempt to load the beta software. Once the beta firmware is loaded, you may not be able to activate with AT&T's network.

9:38p No word yet on any other changes, other than those mentioned in the e-mail / website.

9:39p Apple just put the release notes on their website. You can find them here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/navigation/index.html

9:40p Code signing is now ENFORCED by Apple.

9:41p SDK no longer uses the Aspen code name for the simulator.

9:42p Audio Toolbox got a big load of new stuff

9:42p NSXMLParser support

9:43p UIFont is re-done with ascender and other professional font support that has been long missing.

9:46p Please keep sending in info as you find it out everyone! We really appreciate your tips. If you need anonymity, check out our tip line. Thank you to everyone for the great feedback so far!

Update: A blue and green birdie sang in our ear about the UIApplication delegate class: "There are definitely some very interesting methods added to UIApplication's delegate, including methods for badging the Springboard icon, and methods related to gaining and resigning "active" status - seems like background apps may be permitted somehow."

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Originally posted by Cory Bohon from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 23, 2008 6:12 PM

Two hours now, since I spoke with Twitter's Alex Payne on API design and development to a weirdly wide room at Moscone West. I think we were well received ... some excellent questions toward the end of our two-part talk. I'm exploring the idea of RESTfulness as a physical metaphor for the movement of objects to help better explain why it's winning the headspace competition against SOAP and XML-RPC.

We put our slides and notes up on Slideshare. The notes may even represent some of what came out of my mouth while I dropped into auto-pilot up there...

Comments

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on April 23, 2008 4:52 PM

This week I am in the Bay Area. I gave a talk at UC Davis yesterday and will be visiting some interesting people in Silicon Valley the rest of the week. While driving on I-80 and approaching Berkeley, I turned to the KQED program "Forum". The guest today was Marissa Mayer of Google. She tends to do most of the high-profile media stuff for the company. And she has a broad sense of what's going on. She also is very disciplined, never revealing more than she should. In fact, her tone is a bit too reserved and her diction too precise to generate the sort of intimacy that engenders trust. But no matter. This interview is a great summary of what Google has been up to lately:

Recently on Forum Wed, Apr 23, 2008 -- 10:00 AM Google's Marissa Mayer Listen Listen (RealMedia stream) Listen Download (MP3) (Windows: right-click and choose "Save Target As." Mac: hold Ctrl, click link, and choose "Save As.") In an annual ranking of the world's top brands announced this week, Mountain View-based Google topped the list with a brand value of $86 billion. We welcome Google vice president Marissa Mayer - the first female engineer hired by the company - for a conversation on Google's rapid growth and on her response to critics who say the company has become too powerful. Host: Michael Krasny

Originally posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan from The Googlization of Everything, on April 23, 2008 4:13 PM

• Al Gore Readies Sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” : TreeHugger
  Excellent
  (tags: gore global.warming movies)
• Obama Uses YouTube To Lobby The Public After Losing Pennsylvania | Threat Level from Wired.com
  Youtube vids as spin.
  (tags: new.politics new.media youtube obama)
• True Confessions of a Superdelegate | The American Prospect
  There’s a super delegate listserve! I’ve I could get on there for 5 minutes…
  (tags: new.politics email super.delegates 08)
• Tuesday Map: Africa’s Internet drought | FP Passport
  Digital divide in Africa shown by mapping network performance.
  (tags: africa digital.divide mapping video new.media)
• Earnings: McClatchy Q1 Revs Drop 13.8 Percent; Online Up 10.6 Percent | paidContent.org
  And, triple ouch.
  (tags: newspaper mcclatchy finance new.media msm)
• Michelle Malkin » Which terrorists support which Democratic presidential candidate?
  Sometimes it’s hard to keep track, I know. Thank god for Malkin, I say, thank God.
  (tags: race terrorism conservative.movement michelle.malkin hate obama hillary)
• e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » Homework Assignment: Google “Barack Obama Muslim”
  Did the Obama campaign quietly help coordinate a proBama google bomb to kill smears?
  (tags: obama google new.politics new.media 08)
• The Millennial Generation- The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
  “Millennials are inclined to favor conclusions reached by decentralized decision making, and multilateral rather than unilateral policy making.” Sounds about right.
  (tags: generational.politics youth new.politics)
• Kay Steiger: The ‘New’ New Left is White, Male
  Anyone else think it’s kind of hilarious that a generation and a “new” later, Dissent still doesn’t get the whole “women” and “people of color” thing?
  (tags: dissent race gender new.media blogging kay.steiger)

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 23, 2008 3:52 PM

Last month came the video of an inflatable polar bear set over subway grates would rise and fall as trains passed underneath. The shopping bag art came from Joshua Allen Harris, and he's at it again with a subway monster that you won't need a Subivor kit to survive.

Looks like Nessie has found herself a new 'nabe right here in New York; this one was up at 21st between 6th and 7th Avenues.

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 23, 2008 3:21 PM

Five years ago, I said I work for Six Apart. At the time, that sort of thing was a big deal, not because of me, but because so few of us who loved blogging could get a job doing what we loved.

Since then, amazingly, it's become downright common to work in the blogging business. I have literally dozens of friends who work on creating tools and technology for blogs, and dozens more who blog for a living as part or all of their job. I even get to work with the best of them, from San Francisco to Paris to Tokyo. And now I can celebrate the company and industry I support in the city that I love, since we have an office in New York City.

As always, I'm immensely proud of working at Six Apart, even more proud to count such amazing coworkers as peers and friends, and proudest of all of what our community of bloggers has accomplished. When I started working at this company, my hopes were that we'd be able to teach more people about blogs, and that we'd be able to build a sustainable, ethical company that gave a bunch of talented people a great place to work. But in retrospect, I find it almost impossible to believe the role we've played in helping blogs become so common that they're taken for granted.

That's not to say it's been easy. At Six Apart, we've made a number of mistakes, and learned from them. We've all been through a lot of stress, both personal and professional. But even after all we've been through, Mena wrote a beautiful post in my honor, and last Friday offered one of the kindest compliments to me that I've ever gotten, recognition in front of all of my coworkers, a group of people whom I hold in the highest esteem.

But one point that she highlighted last week was that all acts of entrepreneurship are really acts of faith. My title these days (though I often cringe when I say it), is "Chief Evangelist". I've always been uncomfortable with the religious implications of it, but I've become comfortable with the fact that it reflects a bit of faith. This goes back to why I started doing this work in the beginning:

So I make tools that help people communicate. Mostly because I love technology, mostly because I love to try and build things and to get other people to think these things are cool, too. And certainly because I'm hoping to impress my friends and family with the end results. But some small, central part of the effort is because I know I'm privileged to be able to talk to anyone in my family at any time. In the span of a few decades, my father went from not being able to even send a letter to his father for a few years to being able to instant message me frequently enough to pester me.

Our letters to each other used to be the documentation of the lives we'd lived, the entirety of our correspondence forming memoirs for those who weren't accomplished or pretentious enough to formally write out a memoir. I think that, among many other functions, this is one of the key roles that personal publishing can play in our lives. Weblogs and other social media document the lives we live and let us connect in ways that are, despite the cliché, genuinely new.

This is more true than ever. I am glad to have stuck with a company, and with blogging, through both points of ceaseless hype and endless criticism. Well past any point of blogging being "cool" to the insular world of tech geeks, blogs have become enough of the fundamental infrastructure of communication to actually become interesting to the world at large.

And of course, I had some personal goals, too. I wanted to work with good friends, with people I know and trust. I wanted to show people that New York City is, and will be, one of the centers for real, hardcore technology innovation and invention. (We're hiring!) I wanted to bring together the worlds of the two things I have always been passionate about, technology and media.

As is likely obvious from our announcements this week, we're close to being all of the things I'd hoped a company like Six Apart might become. In just the past year, we've damn near reinvented the company, with Ben and Mena and our CEO Chris Alden have been leading some brave efforts to do what few have the courage to do: Reimagine a company that's already successful and growing, and picture it honoring its innovative roots in a way that's actually new. We've invented, launched, and promoted more things that make the web better in the past year than at any time since the beginning of the company.

That kind of creative destruction, the willingness to take apart something that's working in order to make it something truly inspiring, is actually even more ambitious than I'd imagined Six Apart being when I'd joined. And it's the reason that, after five years, the milestone for me is that it feels much more like I'm starting a new job than that I've been at one for half a decade. I can't ask for much more than that.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 23, 2008 1:09 PM

I'd be remiss if I let the anniversary of Anil's five years [1] at Six Apart pass without a post here on Dollarshort. Especially since Valleywag already mentioned his dedication in their own special way. 

Whether you like Anil Dash or not, few can honestly doubt his passion for blogging and for our company. Even the fine folks who like to accidentally misspell his first name in comments will have to admit he has a zealousness to his craft of evangelism that very few in our industry possess. Even if he drives you crazy with his desire to play devil's advocate or his need for a little exaggeration here or there, Anil does so with such sincerity it's difficult to truly fault him. 

Anil is Six Apart -- as much so as Ben or I am. And it's been a pleasure to work with him and learn from him. We were friends before we were ever co-workers and this friendship began as a result of this pathetic post that Anil wrote in 2001. Even if Anil now takes pleasure in mocking his tendencies to bloviate, he is, deep down a person who can still be humbled by some praise or a sincere gesture by a friend. 

Since Anil isn't dead and I'm not writing his obituary, I should probably wrap this up. What better way to end a post about his commitment to blogging and Six Apart than with a photo that shows the dedication writ large?. Here is a photo from the week five years ago when he became an "official" employee. He's crashing on the couch in our office -- aka the spare bedroom in the Trott apartment -- after a long night of work. 

 

[1] Today is also the five-year anniversary of our first funding announcement and our intentions to launch TypePad.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 23, 2008 12:46 PM

In this Variety puff piece on Tom Colicchio—who makes both "to-die-for braised short ribs and People Magazine's list of sexiest men alive"—we learn a few things: He's surprised that he has so many fans (from 8-year-olds to grown men), knows he made some big mistakes at Craftbar, and: "He admits to a 'constant pull' dictating where he has to be and when. Still, he finds time to play guitar daily, fish on weekends and hang out with his son Dante and wife, filmmaker Lori Silverbush." What a guy. [Variety via Eater LA]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 23, 2008 12:37 PM

Jeff Atwood on the out-of-the-box performance of WordPress:

I’m not alone; just do a web search on WordPress CPU usage or WordPress Digg Effect and you’ll find page after page of horror stories, most (all?) of which are solved by the swift and judicious application of the WP-Cache plugins.

It’s not like this a new issue. Personally, I think it’s absolutely irresponsible that WP-Cache like functionality isn’t already built into WordPress. I would not even consider deploying WordPress anywhere without it. And yet, according to a recent podcast, Matt Mullenweg dismisses it out of hand and hand-wavingly alludes to vague TechCrunch server reconfigurations.

It’s baffling that a default WordPress installation doesn’t offer any caching. Almost every time I knock a site offline by linking to it from DF, it’s a WordPress site without caching.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on April 23, 2008 11:25 AM

I've said this a number of times in conversations with friends and I'm not sure if I've written it up on TPM or not. But while there a lot of downsides for the Democrats about the current primary campaign (regrettably, so many self-inflicted), there is one thing that I think bodes well for the Democrats -- or at least shows a problem for John McCain.

That is this: right now McCain is enjoying his post-nomination-clinching honeymoon. He's also got the field completely clear. No one's out there whacking him everyday, which means the press has no McCain-whacking stories to churn through. On the other hand, the Democrats are beating each other senseless. They daily hit on each others' weaknesses, which not only airs their dirty laundry, and gets the press to talk about it. It also breeds resentment between the supporters of the Democratic candidates, thus pushing up the number Democrats saying they're unwilling to vote for the possible nominee. Put that all together and John McCain is enjoying the most favorable environment he's going to get right now and the Democrat (whoever is the nominee) is probably suffering the worst. And with all that, the race appears to be essentially tied.

I don't want to be Polyannish. With all the terrible news Republicans are getting these days and with an incumbent Republican president who is now more unpopular than any president in modern history, the fact that the Republicans have a nominee who is very much in the race is little short of astounding and very disheartening for any Democrat. With all that said, though, this simple fact should not be forgotten. I assure you smart Republican strategists are not.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 23, 2008 10:44 AM

Beginning May 5, the original Iron Chef is back on TV in the US. Set your DVRs for 11pm every weeknight on the Fine Living channel. (via eater)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 23, 2008 9:58 AM

* via BuzzFeed.

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on April 23, 2008 9:38 AM

Ferran Adrià tells Restaurant magazine that while he is not closing his impossible-to-get-into restaurant El Bulli, he does plan on reducing the covers in about five years: "It’s possible we will become a place of investigation. A place where people can sometimes come to eat so that we can get feedback and have a relationship with the consumer. We would have just eight or ten people in the staff here. And two or three tables." [Big Hospitality]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on April 23, 2008 9:26 AM

Photograph from entitee on Flickr

One of my favorite parts of doing a sandwich column is that now all my family members send me photos of ridiculous sandwiches from all around the country. Take this one, for example, which my brother in law sent me from Sacramento. The Squeeze Burger with Cheese Skirt, as it is widely known in and around California's capital, is clearly a feat of modern engineering. And while the actual burger that is hidden underneath there (somewhere) is not necessarily anything to write home about, this sandwich has many other secrets that make it quite the serious sandwich.

The burger at the Squeeze Inn in Sacramento starts off innocently enough. A 1/3-pound ground beef patty (80/20 meat to fat ratio) gets grilled on a flat top, and turned once. After that, if you ask for the cheese skirt (and you do have to ask in order to get it), things start to get crazy. The burger gets blanketed in a mess of shredded mild cheddar cheese, and covered (partially) with the top of the hamburger bun. Then—and this is where the engineering comes in—a few ice cubes are tossed onto the flat top, and the whole thing is covered for 4-5 minutes, steaming and crisping up the cheese into what could be considered a skirt-like shape.

Surprisingly, the real secret ingredient is the bread. A normal hamburger bun would fall apart when creating the skirt, so they use a sourdough bun from Muzio Baking Co—the only roll that can stand up to the steam! The only question now is, what's your eating strategy?

Squeeze Inn

Address: 7916 Fruitridge Road, Sacramento, CA 95820 (map); 3383 Solano Ave, Napa, CA 94558 (map); and a new location opening in July in Dalton, CA
Phone: 916-386-8599, 707-257-6880
Website: thesqueezeinn.com

Muzio's Baking Co.

Address: 1708 34th St, Sacramento, CA 95816 (map)
Phone: 916-457-1451

Originally posted by Zach Brooks from Serious Eats: Main, on April 23, 2008 9:15 AM

maura:

a note to any self-styled internet pundits reading this: the next time you get the idea to call a tweaked-by-the-internet form “[form] 2.0,” stop and think. is the history of this form sufficiently short for this nomenclature to make sense? has journalism really only reached its second major evolutionary point because of the dawning era of tag-based taxonomy? is music that nascent of a medium? the answer in pretty much all these cases (save *maybe* the web, and i’d actually argue that “version 2.0” of the web actually came up when graphical browsing was first introduced) is “no, you nitwit, there was actually a pretty nicely functioning society going on before the internet came along, and you maybe should get your head out of your ass and, like, read a book. no, not an ebook. a book, preferably one that’s filed in the ‘history’ section.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 23, 2008 9:06 AM

(via chetgulland)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on April 23, 2008 8:57 AM

We launched a new sixapart.com a couple of days ago, and I'm so proud to work with the team that built and implemented such a beautiful and useful site!

(Oh, and we also made some other exciting announcements, which as Mena says, bring back some memories of how we evolved.)

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on April 23, 2008 8:18 AM

A recent study of 740 first-time pregnant mothers in the UK shows that a mother's diet at conception can affect the gender of the baby.

The researchers found 56% of women with the highest energy intake around the time of conception had boys, compared to just 45% among women with the lowest energy intake. The average calorie intake for women who had sons was 2,413 a day, compared to 2,283 calories a day for women who had girls. Women who had sons were also more likely to have eaten a higher quantity and wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12. They were also more likely to have eaten breakfast cereals.

The evolutionary guess is that when times are lean, a daughter will more consistently yield descendants than a son. (thx, meg)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 23, 2008 7:31 AM

The Cheese Steak Primary: Photographs of Clinton with a cheese steak in Conshohocken (above) and Obama at a Pittsburgh cheese steak eatery (below) from the AP

Brace yourself for more Democratic party infighting: Hillary Clinton is projected to win today's Pennsylvania primary. Now everyone, including the Clinton and rival Barack Obama campaigns, are waiting for what her margin of victory will be and how many of the state's 158 delegates she'll be able to pick up.

CNN political analyst Bill Schneider explained, "If Clinton wins by more than 10 points, which was her margin in neighboring Ohio and New Jersey, her campaign will have new momentum and she will soldier on...If Clinton wins by single digits, we're in a political twilight zone. Nothing changes." Clinton's camp is looking for a big win, hoping to gain ground on Obama's popular vote and delegate count.

Earlier today, Clinton told reporters, "I think a win is a win. Maybe I'm old-fashioned about that. I think maybe the question ought to be, why can't he close the deal with his extraordinary financial advantage? Why can't he win a state like this one, if that's the way it turns out ... big states, states that Democrats have to win." And the win probably feels good, as her campaign is $10 million in debt.

With 49% of the votes in, Clinton is projected to have 54% of the vote, Obama 46%. On the NYTimes.com homepage, there's a cool map feature where you can see how counties in Pennsylvania voted by certain demographics (college graduates, more than 5% black, etc.).

The next primary is May 6--North Carolina (where Clinton is headed after Philadelphia) and Indiana (where Obama is now).

Update: During her victory speech, Clinton asked supporters to visit her website and donate money. NBC's Tim Russert noted that he received an e-mail from the Clinton campaign (sent to everyone) bragging about the Pennsylvania win and asking for $5.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 23, 2008 6:48 AM

Golden Eagles can be up to three feet long with a wingspan of over 7 feet. Here's a video of a Golden Eagle hunting for food, a process that involves throwing live goats off of cliffs and then scavenging the carcass. If you're at all sensitive about seeing animals die, you really shouldn't watch this. For everyone else, the only way this could be more fascinating is if David Attenborough were narrating. (via waxy)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 23, 2008 6:47 AM

Perl 5 has come a long way in the past few years. The newest version, Perl 5.10, added several new features to make your programs shorter, easier to maintain, easier to write, and more powerful. Here's how to start using modern Perl productively.

Originally posted by chromatic, Doug Sheppard from Perl.com, on April 23, 2008 6:45 AM

Given Twitter's erratic performance, it's little surprise that the company's chief architect, Blaine Cook, is leaving. I focused on the immigration section of his note:

I am moving to the UK so that my partner can pursue her career. We're Canadian and her visa makes it impossible for her to work in the US, and at the same time there are rich web communities emerging outside of the Bay Area.

With each case like that, the chances rise that coming Web sensations will spring outside the U.S. That's no tragedy. Silly public policy though. We have immigration rules more focused on protecting jobs, which is near impossible, than creating them, which is vital.

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on April 23, 2008 5:29 AM

In March, the Mets announced that Shea Stadium would be a smoke-free environment in its final season, meaning Braves manager Bobby Cox may be unable to light up his traditional post-game cigar.

There is a designated smoking area outside of the stadium.

According to the Associated Press, the Mets will meet with Cox to discuss where and when he can smoke.

…i can’t stop laughing at this image of cox, in his uniform, standing outside of Shea Stadium puffing on a cigar with regular Mets fans, who are all outside smoking as well…hilarious…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matt Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 23, 2008 5:26 AM

So here I am watching Obama's speech post-Clinton's Pennsylvania win, and I noticed a very blatant Abercrombie & Fitch product placement behind him. Three dudes sporting some serious A&F gear. Check it out. How'd they get there?? Photo by Jon Boschetto

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 22, 2008 8:08 PM

Yesterday I observed a pretty significant memory leak occurring on movabletype.org when the run-periodic-tasks framework was being used in daemon mode to initiate background publishing. Reed and Su reminded me of Ogawa-san bootstrapping script which uses Devel::Leak::Object to monitor all objects for memory leaks. So, I used the same methodology^[1] on run-periodic-tasks and MT::TheSchwartz as Hirotaka did on mt.cgi. What I found was not what I expected: The source of the leak was not Movable Type, but instead the DBI Perl module.

I immediately checked the version and found it to be the same one available to yum: 1.48 Unfortunately, that is not the latest in CPAN (1.604) and in fact v1.48 was released more than THREE YEARS AGO.

Once I installed the new version, RPT worked perfectly without a single memory leak. Looking back over the changelog, it loks like the last release to mention a fix for a memory leak was v1.52 so you should make sure that you are running AT LEAST version.

Along the way, I found additional modules which were outdated on yum and upgraded those as well. It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: Keeping your infrastructure upgraded will pay off major short-term and long-term gains. Do not ignore it. But DO ignore yum.

^[1] - Although not the same code since the boostrapping script was different and the loop was in a different place.

Originally posted by Jay Allen from Hacking Movable Type, on April 22, 2008 2:42 PM

Filed under: Flickr Find, iPhone

Like it or not, unboxing is a ritual for many Apple users, and when there's a new product on the streets, Flickr is home to many Mac users' latest acquisitions. We don't feature unboxing photosets for no-longer-new products all that often here at TUAW, but upon seeing a photoset on Flickr from user ntr23 this morning we couldn't help but share these frankly incredible unboxing shots of an iPhone.

Lego men abound in the set, with precision unboxing being captured (including ladders to help scale those heights) in a truly amazing set of shots. Yes, it's Apple unboxing shots. But of all the unboxing shots we've seen here at TUAW, these have quite possibly captured our hearts as the best we've seen to date.

Be sure to check out ntr23's full set on Flickr and admire these works of art.

[Via]

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Originally posted by Nik Fletcher from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 22, 2008 2:00 PM

There's been a bit of confusion out there about supposed "ballots" that have been popping up in Pennsylvania today bearing the name of only one candidate.

Some alarmed readers have written in about them, suggesting voting irregularities. Others have made similar points in the blogosphere.

But these aren't irregularities at all, it turns out.

First, the visuals. Here's one that was sent to us by the Clinton campaign that only has Obama's name on it (click to enlarge)...

...and here's one, courtesy of Wonkette, with only Hillary's name on it (click to enlarge)...

Philly-resident Atrios has an explanation of what this is all about. These are not actual ballots. Rather, they are "sample ballots," handed out by a given candidate's supporters, basically telling voters who to vote for and how to vote for him or her.

To be clear, the Hillary campaign is not alleging irregularities around this. The Hillary camp sent over the Obama-only sample ballot only to clarify that this is happening on both sides and that it isn't irregular. The Obama campaign is not alleging irregularities around the Hillary-only sample ballot, either.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on April 22, 2008 12:22 PM

If all languages have a universal structure, we could understand the speech and mathematical ideas of extraterrestrial civilisations

Originally from New Scientist - Latest Headlines, ReBlogged by GOOD on Apr 22, 2008 at 03:09 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Eyebeam reBlog, on April 22, 2008 12:09 PM

1. When the Hotel Chelsea's management changed hands recently, the hotel's blog started complaining about the takeover and the transformation to a dreaded "boutique hotel." Now they're even going after the planned, but unrelated, Atlantic City Chelsea: "I know hipsters have a reputation as airheads, but are any of them so stupid that they are going to confuse that piece of crap with the Chelsea Hotel? Maybe we can just stomp some chewing gum into their carpet or rub a wad in poster boy Paul Sevigny's hair." 2. Listen to Fiest and the Constantine's cover version of the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton/Bee Gees hit "Islands in the Stream" here. 3. Mega-manager Irving Azoff (Eagles, Neil Diamond, Van Halen etc.) recently started working with Guns N' Roses and may have finally made some headway for the release of Chinese Democracy. 4. According to Business Week, popular music website Pitchfork grosses around $5 million a year in ad revenue. 5. The Fifth Annual Brooklyn Peace Fair takes place on Saturday, April 26. Running from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb, the free event features Abiodun (Last Poets), Dragons of Zynth, Stephanie Rooker and lots more. 6. The producer of Cloverfield tells the BBC that the film is better watched at home than in a theater. "The movie is like a videotape. It lives on your TV. In many ways it is supposed to be viewed on a monitor." So, can we have our money back?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on April 22, 2008 12:09 PM

Last week, the plight of production manager Nicholas White's 41-hour elevator ordeal at the McGraw-Hill building was detailed in the New Yorker. After a time-lapse video of his near-two days trapped in an elevator was put online, thousands of people have watched and shuddered at the thought of being in a similar situation, allowing media outlets to call it an "Internet sensation."

White was interviewed by Good Morning America and he explained he still takes elevators: "Living in Manhattan I'd be seriously limiting my life if I didn't take elevators."

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 22, 2008 12:05 PM

The Health Department launched its annual effort to get New Yorkers to stop smoking by rolling out another provocative ad. This one shows a woman whose smoking habit led to 20 amputations:

Like most smokers, Marie started smoking as a teenager. She developed Buerger’s disease, a condition that narrows arteries, reducing blood flow to the arms and legs. She has lost portions of most fingers, as well as a leg and a part of one foot. In the ads, Marie describes the pain she has endured and explains how her disability keeps her from doing even simple tasks. She also recounts how it affected her relationships with loved ones. “The light burned out in my kitchen and I can’t even change it,” she says. “My daughters might even have been embarrassed [by] what I was starting to look like. At one point, I wasn’t even living. I was just alive.”

You can see the TV spots here. Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said, "Not only do cigarettes kill 8,000 New Yorkers a year, they disable and disfigure many times that number. Thousands of New Yorkers suffer strokes, heart attacks, and amputations that cause irreversible damage every year."

The Health Department is giving away free nicotine patches and gum through May 1--just call 311. Apparently Marie was able to quit after calling 311 for patches in 2006; she said, "If telling my story to the public helps one person quit smoking, it’s worth it." And the Health Department's has said its previous anti-smoking ad effort, using a smoker whose larynx was removed, has been successful.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 22, 2008 12:05 PM

Here's what Professor Charles Franklin, who does the polling charts at pollster.com says about the final numbers ...

Clinton has increased her lead in the trend estimates over the course of the last polls to 6.6 points using the standard estimator, and to 8.4 points using the sensitive estimate. Last minute polls have given her bigger margins.

Now the key question is whether undecideds push her over a 10 point win, or whether increases in turnout by new "unlikely" voters raises Obama's total.

But remember, since the polls don't allocate undecided, both they and the trend estimates are leaving some 8 percent of voters on the table. They will go somewhere, and if they break disproportionately for Clinton you have a "huge win", while if they go overwhelmingly for Obama you have a nail biter or a dramatic come-from-behind win. In previous primaries, the "winner" has usually enjoyed a significant increase in support beyond what the last polls showed.

This last point is the key one. The final polls show Clinton with anywhere from mid-single digits to a ten point margin. But that's still with a decent number of undecideds. If the late trend is toward Hillary (which it seems to be) and those undecideds break toward her (which they seem to have over the last few days) it's likely more like a significant double digit win for her.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 22, 2008 9:39 AM

S. Pellegrino released its annual list of the world's 50 best restaurants last night in Paris. And it's a threepeat in a couple different ways: The top three, El Bulli (Spain), The Fat Duck (U.K.), and Pierre Gagnaire (France), haven't changed for the past three years. The complete list, after the jump.

1. El Bulli, Spain
2. The Fat Duck, U.K.
3. Pierre Gagnaire, France
4. Mugaritz, Spain
5. The French Laundry, U.S.
6. Per Se, U.S.
7. Bras, France
8. Arzak, Spain
9. Tetsuya's, Australia
10. Noma, Denmark
11. L'Astrance, France
12. Gambero Rosso, Italy
13. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, U.K.
14. L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, France
15. Le Louis XV, Monaco
16. St John, U.K.
17. Jean Georges, U.S.
18. Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenée, France
19. Hakkasan, U.K.
20. Le Bernardin, U.S.
21. Alinea, U.S.
22. Le Gavroche, U.K.
23. Dal Pescatore, Italy
24. Le Cinq, France
25. Troisgros, France
26. El Celler de Can Roca, Spain
27. Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville, Switzerland (new to the list)
28. Hof van Cleve, Belgium
29. Martin Berasategui, Spain
30. Nobu London, U.K.
31. Can Fabes, Spain
32. Enoteca Pinchiorri, Italy
33. Le Meurice, France (new to the list)
34. Vendome, Germany (new to the list)
35. Die Schwarzwaldstube Germany (new to the list)
36. Le Calandre, Italy
37. Chez Panisse, U.S.
38. Charlie Trotter's, U.S.
39. Chez Dominique, Finland
40. DOM, Brazil
41. Daniel, U.S.
42. Oud Sluis, The Netherlands
43. Cracco Peck, Italy
44. Asador Etxebarri, Spain (new to the list)
45. Les Ambassadeurs, France
46. L'Arpege, France
47. Tantris, Germany (new to the list)
48. Oaxen Skaergaardskrog, Sweden
49. Rockpool (Fish), Australia
50. Le Quartier Francais, South Africa

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: Main, on April 22, 2008 9:00 AM

MLB tracks every pitch thrown in a game using a system called PITCHf/x. You may have seen this system in action during televised games; it's used to show the viewer where the pitch was located when it crossed the plate relative to the strike zone. On his baseball statistics blog, Josh Kalk takes these stats and lets you slice and dice them however you want.

One of the most interesting statistics measured is the break of a pitch...how much up-and-down and side-to-side motion a pitched ball goes through after leaving the pitcher's hand. The break demonstrates why the knuckleball is such a difficult pitch to hit, particularly when used in conjunction with other pitch types. Here's a graph showing the break on knuckleballer Tim Wakefield's pitches so far this season:

The ball is all over the place...the hitter doesn't know where it's going. Compare that to the break on the three different pitches thrown by fellow Red Sox player Daisuke Matsuzaka:

Now take a look at the graphs on the player cards for Wakefield and Matsuzaka. Wakefield's pitches also have a wider range of velocities...Matsuzaka's pitches range in speed from about 77 to 95 mph while Wakefield's pitches range from 65 to 95 mph. And the graphs don't even account for the multiple breaks that a knuckleball can make during a single pitch. The uncertainties of speed and break of a knuckleballer's pitches combine to create a lot of trouble for batters...they neither know where the ball's going nor when it's going to arrive. (thx, fred)

P.S. So why is Wakefield not as effective as many other major league pitchers (his career stats aren't that impressive), none of whom throw the knuckleball? One guess is that sometimes the knuckleball doesn't break and essentially becomes a 60-65 mph meatball right down the middle of the plate, a pitch any decent hitter can put anywhere he wants.

Update: I thought that Wakefield's upper velocity range was a little high. I'm getting a lot of feedback saying that Wakefield's fastball is in the low 80s, not the mid-90s. Looks like we've got some screwy data here.

Also, another reason why knuckleballers are of limited effectiveness: it's difficult to throw a strike on command, which can be a problem when you're behind in the count and you have to throw your 80 mph fastball for a strike. (thx, jonathan & steve)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 22, 2008 8:38 AM

Video of real-life Transformers costumes that actually work. The Optimus Prime even rolls! (thx, dianne (sorry dens, she beat you by 13 seconds))

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 22, 2008 7:50 AM

One Day Poem Pavilion by Jiyeon Song

As the sun passes over the sky, light filters through strategically placed holes in the "pavilion," casting lines of a poem on the ground.  If you watch the time lapse video, you'll notice that the lines of the poem also move, becoming clearer and then fading.  The poem, which Gizmodo describes as "cheesy," is a Sijo written by the eighteenth-century Korean poet Kim Ch'on-taek.  Song is a student at the Art Center College of Design in California. (via Monster-Munch with thanks to Jennifer13)   

Two Portraits: Bia de' Medici and A Child with a Drawing

The first portrait is by the sixteenth century Italian painter Agnolo Bronzino.  It was commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici after the death of Bia, his illegitimate daughter.  Cosimo I never revealed her mother's name but he was very devoted to his daughter and greatly mourned her when she died of a fever at the age of six.  This is one of my favorite paintings, and I had the chance to see it at the Uffizi several years ago.  The light appears to emanate from her face, a kind of "halo" effect, which is due in part to the fact that Bronzino produced her likeness from her death mask.  This portrait became one Bronzino's most celebrated paintings and inspired Joseph Cornell's "Medici Princess."

The second portrait is by the sixteenth-century Italians painter Giovanni Francesco Caroto.  The child isn't identified but the stick-figure drawing that the child holds proudly feels timeless.  Is the drawing a self-portrait? The child's parent?  Or the child's depiction of Caroto?  The painting is in the permanent collection of the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona. The museum features the painting on its website and gives its title as "Giovane con disegno di pupazzo."  "Disegno di pupazzo" means, I think, "doll design" (in this seventeenth century Italian-English dictionary "púpa" is defined as "a baby or puppet like a girle") but the title may have come later. 

Neck Dimples

"If your listener protrudes the tip of the tongue through closed lips, take heed. Humans are like other primates in which this expression has been studied. It's always a negative. Think misunderstanding. Uncertainty. Disagreement." ("Body language in the office speaks louder than words")

*throws hands in the air*  In this context, that means "this article has problems."  The one problem I'll note is that it rests on the assumptions that body language means the same thing in all work places and that all work places are the same.  In this day and age, I think that the one thing that we can assume is that business interactions are likely to be cross-cultural and multilingual, so the author's generalizations of the scholarship cited are unfortunate. I actually know one of the scholars quoted in the article and I can bet that he or she had no idea it was going to be this silly.  What made reading this worthwhile was a link to The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs & and Body Language Cues.

Originally posted by Adriana from Stingy Kids, on April 22, 2008 7:40 AM

So, Sean Avery, player of both hockey and women, is going to spend his summer interning at 4 Times Square.

Apparently, the 28-year old Ranger loves all things fashion and hopes to hone his sartorial skills "making copies" under Anna Wintour's watchful eye.

And he doesn't just shop for his girlfriends, WWD says. "He prizes his black patent leather Yves Saint Laurent high-tops," which obviously means Vogue's the next best place for him after the Madison Square Garden ice rink.

For those of you always asking how to get a foot in the fashion industry, take note, signing a $2 million contract that leaves your summers free for interning is probably a good bet.

And for those of you already lucky enough to have landed a summer internship in Vogue's closet, let us know which editor he throws against a wall first.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on April 22, 2008 6:30 AM

• Nokia Debuts Conversations with the Blogosphere | mobilejones
  We have lift off.
  (tags: news nokiaconversations SocialMedia)
• allAfrica.com: Africa: Rising Global Food Prices Worry World Bank
  (tags: africa business earth emergingmarkets environment food industry mobile people trend)
• Photoblog: And Paradise was Nice
  Amazing photographs with an N95
  (tags: photography photos n95 phone camera cool)
• Nokia Conversations
  (tags: SocialMedia conversations nokiaconversations nokia blog corporate 2008)
• Power Shirt Generates Electricity from Physical Motion : TreeHugger
  (tags: cool tech energy batteries device mobile mobility)
• The Press Release Page A New Approach
  "And therein lies one of my biggest gripes with focusing so much energy on the release format. There’s been too much fuss over the wrapper, not enough focus on the package."
  (tags: media press communications pr socialmedia interesting)

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on April 22, 2008 4:32 AM

As noted yesterday, Moises Alou was 3 for 3 in a minor-league rehab game over the weekend. 

He will play again today for Single-A St. Lucie.

Team officials told reporters yesterday that Alou could return as early as this weekend against the Braves.

…for what it’s worth, last weekend, it sounded nearly certain that he would be back by friday…now, it’s as soon as this weekend…which sounds like a bit of a back track…not that it matters…it’s probably better spoken this way…

…when alou returns, it will bump Angel Pagan from the starting lineup…and understandably so…however, if willie is wise, he gets Carlos Beltran and Ryan Church some time off, while keeping pagan’s .300–hitting bat in the lineup…he has at least one hit in seven of their last 10 games…i understand that alou must get his job back…i mean, he’s alou, and he hit .341 last season…but, pagan is hitting too and that should not be buried…

Pagan did not play yesterday, in his return to Chicago.  However, Randolph told reporters that Pagan will be in today’s lineup.

In a post to his blog for the Daily News, Adam Rubin transcribed a Q&A Pagan had with reporters prior to last night’s game.

For more on Pagan, read David Lennon in Newsday.

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matt Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 22, 2008 4:27 AM

To improve the experience for our readers on Panda’s Thumb, I’ve been working a while on revolutionizing the comment experience with Web 2.0 technology. An early version of the technology is already running the Bathroom Wall, and I’ve deployed it on this site. Note that I’ll deploy it fully on PT once MT 4.15 gets out of beta.

I’m very proud of the technology and have released it to the Movable Type blogging community as Xomment. What makes Xomment special is that it Ajaxifies the comments, providing four new features.

1. Comment paneling. It’s like pagination, only better.
2. Comment submission without redirect.
3. Comment preview without redirect.
4. Comment quotation.

Cool, huh?

For download and installation instructions, see Xomment documentation.

Originally posted by Reed A. Cartwright from De Rerum Natura, on April 22, 2008 4:00 AM

The first few paragraphs of our news post about the launch of Six Apart Services and Six Apart Media do quite a nice job of connecting the work we did in the early years to the direction we're going in today. While Six Apart has come a long way since our core business model was all about "recently updated" keys[1] and installations by Ben, these new additional services are clearly evolved from those roots (plus the addition of tons of talented people -- a nice change from just the two of us).

We're incredibly happy to have the Apperceptive folks join Six Apart. You may not have heard about them prior to the announcement, but you most likely have seen and admired their work. A warm welcome to the entire team, especially co-founder David Jacobs. They're quite a talented team who understand what a good blog (and good blogging) is all about.

[1] In the early days -- from October 2001 to about January 2004 -- I sent out all the recently updated keys personally. There was a little script I'd run that would generate a random key after I entered the donor's email address (which I got from PayPal). Then, I would send an email to the person with the key(s). Even though I used a form letter, I'd always make sure to greet them by name -- which required me to check out their blog. This, of course, didn't scale well but I refused to automate it further -- I liked the personal connection to these folks. Even though the task became a bit overwhelming, I now look back at it with much fondness.

And, I still remember who the first donor was -- Dawn M (from a life uncommon). It's great to see she's an accomplished photographer and powers her site with Movable Type 4. And she had a daughter too!

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on April 21, 2008 11:10 PM

• Who Did Six Apart Acquire?
  One person in 300+ comments. C'mon people. Many congratulations David, John and crew.
  (tags: business blogging)

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on April 21, 2008 9:35 PM

1. I still don't understand how Twitter is in any way superior to posting one-liners to Livejournal.
2. I'm also not clear on how it's any better (or even any different) than idling on IM.
3. I barely use the thing, but @rstevens said my name the other day, and I immediately got 50+ new followers. Then I mentioned it here in passing and I got 150+ more. I think half of them signed up an account 30 seconds before that. Who the hell are you people? No, don't answer that, I don't really care. Jesus.
4. Those of you who post daily dumps of your twitter messages: fucking knock that shit off. It's annoying.
5. In re point #1, I will now make a policy of posting more one liners to LJ. Possibly even from my phone.

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on April 21, 2008 4:49 PM

• TwittEarth :: Live Twitts all over the world
  Global twittage. Nice
  (tags: twitter mapping mashup visualization globalization)
• New York Times Company Posts Loss - New York Times
  Ouch.
  (tags: newspaper nyt finance advertising)
• Blogging Software Firm SixApart Buys Social Media Agency Apperceptive | paidContent.org
  TPM partners merge.
  (tags: tpm blogging six.apart apperceptive paid.content)
• Earnings: Gannett Q1 Revs Fall 8.4 Percent; Income Falls 8.9 Percent | paidContent.org
  Double ouch.
  (tags: newspaper new.media paid.content)

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 21, 2008 3:49 PM

Tree photography by Stuart Franklin. There's more photography by Franklin on his site and on Magnum's site. Franklin took the iconic photo of the man staring down the tanks in Tiananmen Square. (via snarkmarket)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 21, 2008 3:08 PM

If you are in NYC you should come out these rare screenings of the 70's documentaries Ain't Gonna Eat My Mind (dir. Tony Batten, 1972) and 80 Blocks from Tiffany's (dir. Gary Weiss, 1979) depicting the Ghetto Brothers and Savage Skulls- legendary gangs that originated in the South Bronx.
The Ghetto Brothers were founded around 1967 by Benjamin "Yellow Benjy" Melendez and his brothers. They were infamous for transforming from a gang into a an organization that lead community service initiatives and helped organize the pivotal 1971 Bronx truce among all other prominent gangs following the murder of their peacekeeper Black Benjie. The Savage Skulls were one of the most notorious gangs at the time, and headed by Filipe "Blackie" Mercado. Despite their scorn for revolutionary politics, they once fought alongside neighbors and members of the Young Lords in an epic street battle against the Fort Apache cops in retaliation for beating a Savage Skull member.

Friday, April 25th, 7:30pm:
Special Guest Benjy Melendez, founder of the Ghetto Brothers presents Ain't Gonna East My Mind & 80 Blocks from Tiffany's

Saturday, April 26th:
The 51st State, 7pm
Original TV program featuring Ain't Gonna East My Mind and studio debate with Benjy Melendez and filmmaker Tony Batten
80 Blocks from Tiffany's, 8:30pm

Sunday, April 27th, 7:30:
Special Guest Filipe "Blackie" Mercado, former president of the Savage Skulls presents 80 Blocks from Tiffany's & Benjy Melendez presents Ain't Gonna Eat My Mind

Maysles Cinema
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd.
Between 127th and 128th Streets
$7 Suggested Admission (Limited Seating Available)
Box office opens 1 hour before showtime

Originally posted by Molly Fair from Just Seeds: Blog, on April 21, 2008 1:53 PM

OMFG.

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on April 21, 2008 1:07 PM

The big news in the blogging world today is Six Apart’s expansion out of the software and blog hosting provider fields with their announcement of a new line client services. With the purchase of Apperceptive, Six Apart gets the benefit of some of the most experienced Movable Type site builders out there, and with its new partnership with ad network Adify, presents the possibility of a complete money-making ecosystem for bloggers of every level. It’s an ambitious move, and could be very good for both Six Apart and the people who use its entire range of products, from Vox to Movable Type Enterprise.

It remains to be seen, though, exactly what shape the new services branch will take. Some smaller Movable Type developers are wondering if the provider of their software is going to be taking away their customers. I don’t see that happening because, frankly, the market is still huge, and there are plenty of other software vendors with their own client services departments that also support a thriving market of smaller client services companies. In the best-case scenario the experience of the client services department will benefit the smaller developers directly: When a Six Apart client requires some custom functionality, that functionality will make it into the developer community’s hands in some way, even if it becomes a paid plug-in and not part of the core product.

It could be quite a trick for Six Apart to juggle its related but distinct products and communities: Vox, TypePad, and Movable Type all have their target markets. And now there are the side-by-side commercial and open source versions of Movable Type, both of which are dependent on having a healthy developer community. There’s still a huge need for plug-in developers who know Perl, especially as more people move to MT4, whether the commercial version or the OS one, and find that some key plug-ins don’t work. If Six Apart shares the wealth of knowledge that they’ve gained by bringing in Apperceptive, their developer community could flourish, which would benefit everyone.

See also: An interview with 6A’s Anil Dash.

Mule Design is hiring!

Originally posted by mccreath from Mule Design : Off the Hoof, on April 21, 2008 12:46 PM

At last season's Marc party, Faran found out that Lydia Hearst and Michelle Tractenberg were BFF. She took that photo at left to prove it, air kissed, and moved on.

But it seems Lydia and Michelle do more than just fashion shows together - they also do TV.

Today, at this very second, Lydia Hearst is filming one of her first scenes for Gossip Girl, the show that Michelle Tractenberg will soon enter.

According to one of her reps, Lydia will be playing a "socialite," which is obviously quite a stretch for the model / actress / activist / workout fiend.

When will her episodes air? Will she torture Serena or Blair? Will Nate or Chuck fall victim to her charms?

Or is she... gasp... THE REAL GOSSIP GIRL?

Sit tight, little preppies.

xoxo Gossip Girl... oh, who are we kidding.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on April 21, 2008 12:38 PM

Originally posted by Krissy from art is the new religion, on April 21, 2008 12:22 PM

Was there something you wanted to ask me about my day job as design director at NYTimes.com? If so, you should head on over to the site — or just send an email to askthetimes@nytimes.com — and pose your query, because all week long I’ll be answering reader questions in our regular “Talk to the Newsroom” series. I’m going to try my best to come across competently, but if you really want insight into the way The Times works, be sure to peruse the previous installments in this Q & A series in the archives, too.

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on April 21, 2008 10:17 AM

Filed under: Rumors, iPhone

Euro-iPhone purchasers note: there's something in the wind that says a 3G, revenue-sharing-absent and exclusivity-free iPhone may be on the way shortly for Italian (or iTalian) buyers. An article at La Repubblica indicates that the iPhone's arrival in Rome may be accompanied by a new sales model: no revenue kickback from subscriptions for Apple, but a higher selling price on the phone, and a very limited or nonexistent exclusivity period for the telecom partner (Telecom Italia at launch during summer 2008, with other carriers onboard probably by the holiday season).

Sadly, my Italian is basically as nonexistent as the exclusivity for the iTPhone, so I'm depending on the machine translation here. If any of our readers can distill and inform based on the original, please do!

[via Engadget]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Michael Rose from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on April 21, 2008 10:00 AM

Four chefs talk about how their kitchens are laid out in this month's Metropolis. Here's Dan Barber talking about his role at Blue Hill at Stone Barns:

At the same time, I don't think the cooks look at me as a real community member. I'm not that cozy paternal figure. I'm always doing different things, and it creates this atmosphere where the cooks are on the balls of their feet. They're thinking, Where's he going next, what's happening next? There's a little bit of confusion. I think that's good. It's hard to articulate, because you think of the kitchen as very organized; and, like I said, the more control you have, the better. But a little bit of chaos creates tension. And that creates energy and passion, and it tends to make you season something the right way or reach for something that would add this, that, or the other thing.

The other chefs are Alice Waters, Grant Achatz, and Wylie Dufresne. The one thing they all talked about is the importance of open sight lines, both between the dining room and kitchen and among the chefs in the kitchen.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 21, 2008 9:33 AM

CBS News report from 1975 detailing the last World Airways flight out of Da Nang near the end of the Vietnam War.

The flight was supposed be for stranded women and children but as soon as the plane landed in Da Nang, it was swamped by South Vietnamese soldiers attempting to flee the oncoming North Vietnamese forces.

There were 260 people aboard a plane which is designed to carry 105. The plane was overloaded by 20,000 pounds. The baggage compartments were loaded with people. Some of the problems during the flight included, the rear stairway remained partially extended for the entire flight, the main wheels would not retract, a hand grenade damage to one of the wings causing fuel loss, and the lower cargo doors were open. The plane had to fly at 10,000 feet because of lack of pressurization thus fuel consumption was three times greater than normal.

In the end, only 5 women and 2 or 3 children made it onboard. That's some powerful journalism. (thx, brandon)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 21, 2008 8:45 AM

I must confess that I don't get this new 'can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen' line from the Clinton campaign. This is supposed to be a dig at complaints from the Obama and his supporters about the questions from last week's ABC debate. But didn't Sen. Clinton's camp spend like a month complaining that the press, particularly debate questioners were being harder on her than Obama? She even complained about it during one of the debates.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on April 21, 2008 8:17 AM

I subscribe to a newsletter called Sports Business Daily, which emails me its top headlines both in the morning and at the close of the business day. Each morning newsletter has the previous night's final Jeopardy! question - the point of which, I assume, is to get you to click through to their webpage to find the answer, at which point you might actually be tempted to read the stories themselves.

Today's final Jeopardy! question is: "They're the only two trilogies in which all three of the films were nominated for Best Picture Oscars.”

The answer kind of surprised me. I'll put it in the comments.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on April 21, 2008 7:43 AM

It's been a long slog, but the site is now as tweaked as it can get, so we removed the password protection and we're off on a new journey.

As with any site, we'll be adding and removing things as folks give us feedback. And I know you all will have plenty to say.

I want to thank everyone involved and those who laid the ground work for me.

Now I need to get dinner ready.

Link: Nokia Conversations: Welcome to the conversation

ESPOO, Finland - Welcome to the Conversation. This one, though, is unlike any you'll have seen before. It's being written, presented and hosted by people in and around Nokia and pulls together all the conversations going on around the Nokia neighbourhood.

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on April 21, 2008 7:28 AM

I like Good magazine. Really, I’m a subscriber. (You might consider subscribing, too. It’s only $20 and it goes directly to a charity of your choice, and one of the options is Slow Food.) But when I read Good’s piece on the tastiest streets in America and saw my beloved Ninth Street—Philadelphia’s treasured Italian Market—left off the list, I wondered how the author could have been so asleep behind the keyboard.

I know I’m somewhat biased. When my husband and I bought our house, proximity to the market was the single nonnegotiable factor. Walking the market, loaded-down shopping bag over my shoulder, is like my Paxil, a moving (and eating) meditation on what makes life worth living. This is my completely personal tour of what I believe is the tastiest street on earth.

About the author: Joy Manning is the restaurant critic for Philadelphia magazine.

View Larger Map

Sarcone's

Address: 734 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-922-1717
Website: weblaunchsolutions.com/sarconesbakery/deli_page.html

Sarcone’s fresh baked seeded Italian loaf is the secret behind many of the city’s best sandwiches. With a brown, crunchy crust and a soft airy interior this bread makes anything you put on it taste amazing. A hunk torn off the loaf drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper is the height of simple pleasures.

Fiorella’s

Address: 817 Christian Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-922-0506

This shop has been making sausage the old fashioned way for the past 115 plus years—they really know how to turn out the perfect Italian hot sausage with fennel. The pork comes from local farms and is butchered on the premises.

Anthony’s

Address: 903 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 800-833-5030
Website: italiancoffeehouse.com/anthonysitaliancoffee/home.php

Anthony’s own Italian Market Reserve beans have been fueling my existence for the past 3 years. Whenever I stop by for my regular two pounds, I also pick up a cup to go. Recently I’ve switched from wintertime hot to summery iced, which comes with ice cubes made from frozen joe. Brilliant.

Lorenzo’s Pizza

Address: 900 Christian Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-922-2540
Website: phillyitalianmarket.com/market/lorenzos_pizza

The giant, floppy, cheese, greasy wedges passed through the sidewalk takeout window are guaranteed to cure a hangover, lift a funk, moisturize your cuticles, inspire a jog, remind you of the boardwalk and, if you are me, transport you back to 1983. A heavy shower of red pepper flakes amplifies most of the above mentioned effects.

Claudio's

Address: 926 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-627-1873
Website: claudiofood.com

Claudio’s is where I buy olive oil, risotto rice and fresh mozzarella. The cheese is made in an adjacent storefront in a huge machine imported from Italy. It’s extremely perishable, but don’t worry, you won’t be able to stop eating it. It’s perfect on pizza or just drizzled with a touch of aged balsamic.

Los Taquitos de Puebla

Address: 1149 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-334-0664

It surprises a lot of people, but part of the Italian market isn’t so Italian anymore. A run of stores along the southern stretch are now run by Mexican merchants. Thankfully, they are carrying on the proud tradition of deliciousness. Here, order tacos al pastor, pork roasted on a pineapple crowned spit and sliced to order.

Rim Cafe

Address: 1172 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia PA 19147
Phone: 215-465-3515
Website: pbase.com/rimcafe

Another newcomer, Rim Café owes its success to the passion and personality of its owner, René. A flatscreen shows scenes of the French Riviera while he creates his signature liquid desserts like the Volcano, his extra-rich take on hot chocolate.

Originally posted by Joy Manning from Serious Eats: Main, on April 21, 2008 7:00 AM

According to Mets VP of Biz Ops Dave Howard, as quoted in the Daily News, “There will be some sort of apple at Citi Field…Whether it’s the same one or not, that’s something we’re still weighing.”

Darryl Strawberry, when asked if likes the the Apple, as quoted in the rpeort:

“Love it…It’s the Big Apple, you know?…That Apple has always been special to me - it means you’ve done something good.”

…like i have said before, though, speaking only for myself, i don’t want AN apple, i want THE apple…otherwise, what’s the point…also, for what it’s worth, Citi Field has constructed a massive, concrete canister to house the new apple, and i have heard people in television, from a few places, complain that this structure will kill any chance for the standard, center field camera angle we are all used to…

…also, Save the Apple loves the apple, as well, as they continue thier effort to, well, save the apple…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matt Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on April 21, 2008 6:30 AM

Six Apart buys Apperceptive and announces an advertising network for bloggers in order to diversify their offerings.

The idea for SA is to move beyond an increasingly commoditized blog publishing software business, and into adding advertising, design, implementation, development and site optimization services to bloggers and companies.

Update: Here's more from Six Apart on the changes.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on April 21, 2008 5:22 AM

• Congestion Pricing May Make a Comeback (NY1, WNYC)
• Newsday: Dysfunction in Albany, Not Accountability
• The Promise of Pay-as-You-Drive Insurance (Freakonomics)
  
• Record Oil Prices Signal Uncertainty About Supply (NYT)
• Paul Krugman on Resource Scarcity (NYT)
• Say Goodbye to Cheap Airfare (AMNY)
• Traffic Strangles Transit-Poor Sao Paulo (IHT via Planetizen)
  
• Brooklyn Minister Killed By Drunk Driver (News)
• Disabled Straphangers Have Limited Access to Subway System (2nd Ave Sagas)
  
• Fresh Direct Expands Brooklyn Service (Bklyn Eagle)
  
• How to Get a 'No Honking' Sign Installed (NYT)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on April 21, 2008 5:00 AM

Oh, yes. The links are too good, and just keep coming. You all spoil me, you know?

First off, I don't know how many of you ARE fans of Simon Winchester, but I know how many of you SHOULD BE fans of Simon Winchester (that would be "all"). He just sent me a link to him talking about his new book on YouTube, and that link would be here. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak in person, grab it (and if you need help figuring out when Simon's coming to your neck of the woods, you can sign up to stalk, I mean track, his readings here). He's tremendously entertaining (and so are his books).

Rita sends me this perplexing novelty-print dress:



Where do you think would be an appropriate place to wear this? I'm thinking either the Kentucky Derby (if you're clueless about what to wear to the Derby, i.e., you think "The Derby's in the South ... this has Southern belles on it ... perfect!") or perhaps the funeral of your hated ex-husband Rhett. ("What? It's black!") I'm happy to entertain your theories in the comments (and if you think "It's perfect! I must have it! Now if only Rhett would die!" click on the image to visit the ebay auction.)

And remember those Liberty-print Jack Purcells? Ronnie sent me a kind email letting me know that they're on sale now, online at the Converse store. You have to click on the "online outlet store" image to get to them, as they don't seem to come up in the search. But now they're only $57, instead of $100. (I got a pair from my lovely husband for Christmas, and plan to wear them constantly now that it's not friggin' SNOWING all the time.)

Cherie at Shrimpton Couture is hoping to get your feedback to improve her site ... and if you give her some, you'll be in the running for a $100 gift certificate ...

Stephanie asked if there was a dressaday tag on Flickr, and there is. My Dress A Day Flickr stream is here, although I've been lazy about uploading stuff to it. If you want to tag photos "dressaday", please do so and I'll set up a feed to see them! I also set up a Dress A Day group. Go nuts. (And if you want to send me pictures, sending me Flickr links is a great way to do that! Especially if you license them under the Creative Commons!)

Have I linked to the COPA (Commercial Pattern Archive) yet? It's at the University of Rhode Island. There are some broken links AND their CDs don't work on Macs (!) ... but it's still pretty neat. I wish there was a way we could hook them up with the wiki ... the wiki right now is about 25% of the size of COPA, which has 25,000 patterns dating to 1868.

Kristy (at Lower Your Presser Foot) sent this marvelous link to some Ikea dressers that fit patterns perfectly ... so perfectly that her husband thought that she had GOTTEN RID OF SOME PATTERNS. (Ha! Never!)

Eva made a gorgeous dress of Liberty babycord. And she's says it's all my fault. (Who, me?)

Also, Eirlys points out that there's a new exhibition coming to the V&A in May: Story of the Supremes - performance costumes from the Mary Wilson Collection, which means all the sequins your little hearts desire. There's ALSO a good chance I'll be in London the weekend after this exhibit opens -- Saturday May 24 -- would anyone want to do a Dress A Day meetup at the V&A? And possibly go either fabric-shopping or to tea afterwards? Leave a comment, let me know ...

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on April 21, 2008 3:58 AM

>OPEN CAN OF WORMS

Opened.

Milliways: Infocom’s Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Waxy.org

Originally posted by Adam from randomWalks, on April 20, 2008 9:16 PM

Skyscrapers with lantern Toronto
Originally uploaded by swisscan

I am here for a shoot for the Asexuals movie and luckily the shoot coincides with The Hot Docs Film Festival, a documentary film festival. The first shoot went really well. I interviewed Elizabeth Abbott who wrote A History of Celibacy. She was really smart, well spoken and got me thinking about a lot of different things. Next up is Anthony Boegart who did a major study on asexuality. He is based two hours away from Toronto so we are in for a long drive manana.

I am having some more conflict with a work situation and on Wednesday we are going to have another “talk”. I work a bunch of different projects at my job and this is the one that has taken up a majority of my time. I just don’t know how badly I want to resolve this situation. I am unhappy and tired of being unhappy on this project. I don’t want to walk away because that's not who I am. But I may have to. Can’t get too much more into it than that.

I’ve seen a lot of films while here. It has been pretty great. So far I’ve seen:

-Emoticons (dir by Heddy Honigmann): I love her but this film, about Dutch teenagers who spend a lot of time on the internet, felt slight somehow. Her films are pretty heady and focus on many people engaging in the same seemingly mundane task that, after the film moves along, grows in significance. This concept works usually but not this time. Not sure why.
-Kids + Money (dir by Lauren Greenfield): This was a ½ hour short before Emoticons. I love Greenfield’s photography. Though this film, which will show on HBO at some point, was entertaining, it seemed like she was making fun of some of her subjects in a way that felt kind of glib. Still, it is pretty entertaining.
-Beyond the Frey (dir. Luke Walker and Melissa Maclean): I am obsessed with cult movies and this one is about a cult in Australia. It was great and juicy.
-Life.Support.Music (dir Eric Daniel Metzgar): This was my favorite film that I have seen here. It was about a guitar player who has a brain hemmorage and his incredible road to recovery. At the Q and A, the filmmaker said that this is a film about optomism and that is really true. It was so moving and gives you faith in the human spirit. You should see this when it comes to a theater near you. It is coming to Boston next. I think I want to see this director's first movie, The Chances of The World Changing.

Some random facts about my time here:

-Boy Toronto is multi culti. It is great!
-There are a lot of couples that consist of hot women of color and ok white men.
-Toronto has it all over New York when it comes to being a green city.
-I am staying at an amazing Super 8 and I was put in a suite because the regular rooms were taken. It is a pretty hot room.

That’s all for now.

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on April 20, 2008 6:17 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally posted by Stewart from Sylloge, on April 20, 2008 5:19 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally posted by Stewart from Sylloge, on April 20, 2008 5:10 PM

Michael Pollan poses a question that I'd assume a lot of people have about how to fight climate change on an individual basis--"Why bother?". For my part, I was (again) inspired by the thought of planting a garden:

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction.

Now, to actually do it.

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on April 20, 2008 4:29 PM

Next week is the Web2.0Expo is San Francisco, an event for just about anyone who is participating in the creation of the next-generation of the Web. Six Apart is a sponsor of the event and you can find us there in a number of different capacities:

• Come visit us at our booth on the Expo floor - free passes still available!
• See Six Aparter's and some our esteemed Alumni speak:
  • David Recordon - Comparing Social Platforms, OpenID, OAuth, Data Portability, and the Enterprise, Open Platforms in Web 2.0
  • Artur Bergman - Failure Happens: What Broke Since Last Year (and What We Learned from It)
  • David Hornik - Launch Pad

But you don't have to be a registered conference member to come chat. We will be holding Open Movable Type Office Hours on the 2nd floor mezzanine of Moscone West Wednesday and Thursday from 3:30pm to 5:00pm. The area is open to the public so come by to meet with a number of Movable Type Open Source Ninjas, including Byrne Reese, Beau Smith, Jim Ramsey and others from Six Apart as well (look for all the people wearing Six Apart t-shirts and the Movable Type sign!). We look forward to talking to folks about:

• Upgrading to the latest Movable Type
• Designing and Developing for Movable Type Open Source
• Innovating for Movable Type: OpenID 2.0, OAuth, Fire Eagle, Action Streams and more!

We may even have some free t-shirts, stickers and all manner of goodies to give out, so even if you don't have time to chat, you should at least drop by.

Originally posted by Byrne Reese from MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community, on April 20, 2008 12:46 PM

From the blog of TED's musical director, Thomas Dolby:

I’ve done a remix of Radiohead’s gorgeous ‘Nude’ from the Rainbows album. This was not solicited by the band. They are running a remix contest for their single, and I just went to iTunes and bought the ’stems’ to the song for $5 just like everybody else. ...

Visit the remix site to hear (and vote for!) the Thomas Dolby's remix, or use the widget below >>

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED | TEDBlog, on April 20, 2008 12:00 PM

Last fall, Will Carroll and I had the opportunity to work with the folks at MLB.com on their postseason coverage. In doing so, we got to know former major leaguer John Marzano, a Baseball Channel co-host and a key part of the studio shows MLB put together for the NLCS. Working with John was a highlight of that assignment for me; he brought a sense of humor and a gregariousness that immediately put those around him at ease. He didn’t come off as anything but a guy who loved baseball, loved talking about the game and having fun doing it. Whether sharing stories about his catching days on air, or showing pictures of his new grandchild off of it, Marzano made the world around him a brighter place.

Marzano died Saturday morning at the age of 45, leaving a hole in the lives of his family, his many friends within the game and at MLB Advanced Media. To those people, especially Marzano’s co-host and close friend Vinny Micucci, all of us at Baseball Prospectus offer our sympathy and our prayers.

Originally posted by Joe Sheehan from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on April 20, 2008 11:58 AM

At least in my opinion...

Many friends ask me to recommend Japanese joints in the big city, so here I go: New York is fortunate to have a sizeable Japanese expat community - and real deal restaurants to serve them. I'm talking about Japanese cuisine beyond sushi, which is just a tiny part of the food culture there, despite its popularity here. Check out the half-dozen restaurants below (listed alphabetically) to discover a world of Japanese cooking from sophisticated cuisine to tapas-like pub food to home style chow. And what about your favorite places? Any Japanese restaurants you want to add? (And not just in New York) Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Aburiya Kinnosuke, 213 E 45th Street, 212-867-5454
What I love about this restaurant is that it feels like stepping into a smart and stylish spot in Tokyo. And then there's the cooking: Aburiya specializes in robata grilling, where meat and fish are skewered and stood upright to slowly caramelize before a neat tower of red-hot Japanese charcoal. Chef Jiro Iida compliments his grilling with a slew of seasonal dishes he prepares in an open kitchen behind a dining counter (which is where you should sit). Besides any and all sublime grilled fish, make sure to try the tsukune, robata-grilled chicken meatball and yakisoba, fried soba noodles with pork in a delicious broth.

En Japanese Brasserie, 435 Hudson Street, 212-647-9196
My friend Reika Yo's restaurant is a hip and beautiful downtown place that serves a sophisticated take on izakaya cooking, the Japanese pub-style dining that centers on a procession of small plates. Chef Honma's knocks out fantastic dishes. Some of my favorites: red perch simmered in soy sauce, natto and ground pork wrapped in lettuce and soy milk hotpot with slices of Kobe beef (outstanding). Also, you must, repeat, must try the freshly made tofu and tofu skin. If you've never tasted real tofu, not the packaged stuff from stores, it's a life-altering experience. Really.

Matsuri, 363 West 16th Street, 212-242-4300
This is the amazing restaurant in whose kitchen I volunteer every week under the tutelage of my friend Chef Tadashi Ono. Chef Ono's deep, deep passion for Japanese cuisine is reflected in his cooking, an incredible seasonal menu with ingredients flown in daily from Japan, from fresh fish to wagyu beef. Try the black cod cured in sakekasu (sake lees), grilled yellowtail collar, duck, octopus sashimi, sakura ebi tempura (tiny seasonal pink shrimp) and on an on. "Matsuri" means festival in Japanese and the restaurant lives up to its name: A cool crowd dining in a huge and dramatic subterranean space with massive paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Riki, 141 East 45th Street, 212-986-1109
Many authentic Japanese restaurants in New York are clustered in the East 40s not far from the United Nations. Why? Well, guess where most offices of the Japanese multinational companies are located? Riki, for instance, is directly across the street from the US headquarters of the trading giant Itochu. It's a down and dirty izakaya that's open late, late (I think until 4am), filled with Japanese office workers knocking back nama biru ("raw" beer, or draft) and plate after tapas-style plate of seasonal comfort food. Ask your server to translate the daily menu they have written on the back of their order pads. The food is terrific. I especially enjoy the Japanafied Western dishes, like "om rice" -- rice mixed with ketchup and wrapped in a crepe-like omelet (!). Sit back and soak up the scene, especially the boisterous "salarymen" in the midst of an enkai, or drinking party.

Sakagura, 211 East 43rd Street, 212-953-7253
Hidden in the basement of a nondescript office building, Sakagura has a long bar running the length of the restaurant, and behind it, rows and rows of sake bottles -- it boasts one of largest sake collections in America. ("Sakagura" means sake brewery in Japanese) Ask my friend Chizuko, their talented sake sommelier, to help you navigate their notebook-sized sake list and find one or two or three for you. Chizuko hails from the heart of Akita sake country and has an amazing knowledge and palette. Sakagura serves a extensive, sophisticated dinner menu of small plates to compliment their sake, include pristine sashimi. Lunch is also a treat, by the way, when Sakagura offers a menu of soba dishes, all with authentic hand rolled and cut noodles.

Tsukushi, 300 East 41st Street, 212-599-8888
Push open a plain black door on sleepy sidestreet enter another restaurant that seems directly transported from Japan: Tsukushi is small, unadorned, brightly and as real as it gets. This place specializes in katei-ryori, home style cooking. There's no menu here; instead the Chef Manabe serves his cooking omakase -- his choice -- a procession of delicious seasonal dishes. They're wonderfully homey and simple, simmered ingredients, stews, grilled fish and sashimi. On my last visit there, this past winter, the chef treated me and my girlfriend to hearty and comforting bowls of motsunabe, tripe hotpot. Talk about soul food! And after 10pm (Tsukushi is open until at least 2am, I believe -- it's an afterwork hangout for Japanese chefs), you can order authentic shoyu ramen, soy sauce ramen, easily the best ramen in New York.

Originally posted by Harris Salat from The Japanese Food Report, on April 20, 2008 8:42 AM