So Many Coincidences
Women's Voices Women's Votes has another "unfortunate coincidence" in the timing of its voter registration mailings, this time in West Virginia.
« April 27, 2008 - May 3, 2008 | Main | May 11, 2008 - May 17, 2008 »
May 10, 2008
Electronics Recycling by Mail
Electronics Recycling by Mail.On March 18, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the Clover Technologies Group would provide postage paid envelopes to mail them expired inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods or MP3 players to be reused, refurbished or recycled. Envelops will be available at U.S. Post Offices at no cost to the public. Only a pilot project for now, but could expand nationally. (via)
Obama Gains More Super-Delegates, AP Says He Now Leads
Today was another good day Barack Obama on the super-delegate front, with a net gain of five over Hillary Clinton. According to the Associated Press count, he now leads in super-delegate support by a margin of 276-271.5.
The Obama campaign today announced the support of add-on delegates Kristi Cumming of Utah and Dave Regan of Ohio, Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), and DNC member Carole Burke of the Virgin Islands.
Clinton meanwhile picked up add-on delegate Arthur Powell of Massachusetts. But that gain was offset when she lost the support of DNC member Kevin Rodriquez of the Virgin Islands, who defected from Clinton to Obama.
Clinton-backing super-del Don Fowler of South Carolina bluntly told the AP, "The trickle is going to become an avalanche."
According to the Obama campaign's numbers, he is 156 delegates away from clinching the nomination.
Advice for 1985: how to survive a nuclear blast. (via...
Advice for 1985: how to survive a nuclear blast. (via delicious ghost)
(link)
What Happens After the Test?
Examiner column for May 12.
Starting in March, students in Advanced Placement classes with May exams begin to ask, “What are we doing with the five weeks after the test?” Often it’s phrased more bluntly: “Are we doing anything after the test?”
My mental reaction to that question always follows the poetic paradoxes presented in a poem by Tom Wayman, capturing the disconnect between student and teacher perception of what’s important. For teachers, the course is about so much more than the test!
To the question “Did I Miss Anything?” asked by a student who has missed a class, the teacher in the poem offers a series of “nothing/ everything” responses that include:
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning…Everything. Contained in this classroom is a microcosm of human existence
Assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gatheredbut it was one place
and you weren't here (Wayman, 1994)Like this teacher, I find myself wanting to tell students, “No--we are doing nothing after the test--if you define this course in terms of that three hour goal.”
But simultaneously, I want to tell them, “Yes—we will continue to look at language as a mirror reflecting man’s humanity, and think of this class as a lens through which to understand others, and appreciate their efforts to communicate.”
But I do not say any of the above. Instead, I mumble something about doing “fun things” that won’t seem too painful for seniors about to graduate.
I can see them mentally yawn.
What does happen after the test? The absentee rate, steadily climbing throughout the year, continues to climb. Students fall asleep during the day because they are staying up later, often chatting online with friends about college or summer plans.
Occasionally, I can coax students into doing some real thinking: placing their educations in a larger context, and predicting what skills will be useful to them in college and the workplace.
Often those contemplative meditations on their learning are quite revealing and moving. Sometimes, they are burnt-out and cynical. Either way, students gain a valuable perspective on how school might move beyond the four walls of the classroom.
But most of the time, teachers give into the cynical end-of-the-year blahs, and think of the last several weeks as redundant to the heart of the course.
Do students understand the larger message you hope your course conveys? Do they see that what you are doing in reading, social studies, physics, or math class is really about the world and not about textbooks and quizzes? And that doing “fun things” is not the goal of the course?
Perhaps some do. Meanwhile, I want my students to know that after the test, we will be doing nothing and everything--so don’t tune out yet.
TinyDB
Fun little Google App Engine project: store arbitrary variable data in a short URL, get the data back in XML or JSON. (Via Andy Baio.)
Anna T. Szabó
During the PEN World Voices panel "Rewriting Family," Hungarian author György Dragomán mentioned that his wife was a poet and frequently collaborated with translators. Dragomán blew me away with his generous and gracious comments on translation and translators, so I was interested to learn more about his wife and her translation background. Her name, I learned, is Anna T. Szabó. and she has published several books of poetry. Her website is in Hungarian but her author page on HunLit provides some biographical and biographical information in English and German translation (the English page is more comprehensive than the German).
In October 2004, Szabó and other Hungarian poets visited the UK and participated in Converging Lines, a program sponsored by the British Council Arts Group, which teams up writers and translators from the UK with poets from other countries. It works both ways--first the UK writers toured Hungary and later the Hungarian poets came to the UK for reading tours and to participate in translation workshops. Szabó was paired with Clare Pollard, a poet, educator and translator. In creating her translations, Pollard, who doesn't know Hungarian, maintained an ongoing conversation with Szabó. She had a literal translation to work with but the final translation also reflected how she interpreted and incorporated Szabó's comments on variant meanings, word play, sound and structure. The program invited those who attended the public readings to participate in this translation enterprise.
Antony Dunn, who participated in this program, recounts:
We've created a leaflet for every audience member, which contains four literal translations of poems by the Hungarians€“ the very same literal translations that some of the Brits worked from at Lake Balaton. These literal (or plain text) translations contain a range of alternatives, notes and suggestions, to reflect the shades of meaning carried by the Hungarian words or phrases. Some are annotated with details of the rhyme scheme, or the rhythm, or with explanations of the Hungarian colloquialisms employed in the poems. The audience is invited to take these leaflets home and have a go at translation for themselves.
In some ways, it'€™s been rather easier for us, with access to the poets themselves. To be able to ask, What did you mean, exactly? and get an answer.
You can download from Dunn's website a pdf file that contains some of the translations put together by the group, including one of Pollard's translations of Szabó's poem "Around the Tree" (from a longer poem "Winter Diary"). It's a fantastic poem--here's the first stanza:
In the ice-storm these cats now mate,
light frozen on their soft, black skins.
They stage their hot, furred winter show,
wild things.Reading this translation out loud, I'm struck by the cadence and the rhyme between "skins" and "things," as well as the internal rhyme between "soft" and "hot." Also, most of the words are monosyllabic which can't be incidental. A great deal of attention has been given to the sound of this translation, which makes me wonder how its sounds in Hungarian. Hungarian sounds nothing like English so the translation isn't necessarily striving for aural equivalence, but perhaps there is something interesting about the original poem's prosody that the English poem is trying to evoke.
In an on line interview, Szabó, who translates from English to Hungarian, acknowledged that she prefers not to self-translate. "I have tried, but what comes out is not what I had intended." This is an incredible admission and, in a way, contradicts Dunn's comment that having the original authors on hand gave the UK translators an advantage. There is a prevailing assumption (that even translators tend to perpetuate) that original authors always know what their work means. And, frankly, speaking as a translator, I'd rather have a range of meanings and possibilities to work with.
For Szabó, translation is not only a creative exchange (that is more productive when the translator is someone else) but also a way to assess the merits of a work, to go beyond first impressions:
I used to think that mutuality in translation was some sort of a gesture of respect. In fact it is nothing of the kind. It is extremely useful. While you work on the translation you are also in contact with the author. During these conversations you find your place into their world and their vision, and it becomes much easier to get an understanding of their poetry. When you place yourself in the other's poetic world you really get in tune with them. This can be mutual, which is really a very exciting process. It was during translation that I grew to like Pollard's poems a lot. There were poets I started to translate convinced that they were great, and found out during the translation process that they were not. You come to stumble upon subtle shifts more easily, and find that things which look graceful from the outside may not be all that well put together, after all.
This has happened to me on several occasions. I'll start translating a poem I really like in Hebrew or Spanish and, in the process, certain flaws or missteps are revealed. In this way, translation serves as a mode of critical reading. I'm looking forward to reading more work by Szabó and Dragomán. It's been very exciting to encounter their ideas on writing and translation and to find in them something "mutual."
Links:
Two Poems by Anna Szabó, Translated by David Hill
"Poetry in the NIght" (prose) and "This Day" (poem), Translated by George Szirtes
Poems from "The Labour Ward," Translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri
Guess That's A Bad Thing?
TPM Reader EW sent in this little snippet from that DOD document dump about the Times military analysts story ...
(ed.note: This would appear to be the post in question. And this is Dan Senor's WaPo Oped. Senor, you'll remember, originally didn't exist but (living out the old adage) was later created by critics of the administration's Iraq policy because of the felt need for a living caricature of the Bush White House political operatives and hacks sent to mismanage the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq.)
Hillary Holds Private Conference Call With Her Super-Dels: "I Know This Is Not Easy"
Hillary held a private rally-the-troops conference call with her super-delegate supporters this afternoon, urging them to believe that "this race is not over," vowing to them she'd promote Dem unity after the primary, and conceding that she knows what they and the party are going through "is not easy."
Somewhat tantalizingly, Hillary also claimed that there were back-channel talks of some kind going on between the two campaigns, possibly about how to maintain Democratic unity after the primary. Asked by a super-delegate whether there were discussions going on between the two camps about what would happen after the voting concluded, she said:
"There's a lot of communication between both of the campaigns all the time. I don't know how specific it is, but we have very open lines of communication...I know that both Senator Obama and I are committed, and the campaigns are as well, to making sure that when this is resolved" we will do everything we can to "unify the party." She didn't elaborate further.
The call -- convened for super-dels committed to supporting her -- provided a glimpse into the campaign's behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent supporters from bolting even as her prospects grow bleaker by the day.
I was able to listen to the call in its entirety.
Hillary projected a surprisingly cheerful tone despite recent events, and if she is having doubts about what's going to happen, she didn't show it on the call. "Despite what some in the media are saying, this race is not over," she said.
Hillary top adviser Harold Ickes was on the call, too. Some noteworthy tidbits from the call:
* Ickes claimed that there was no discussion internally on the campaign of the possibility that she would angle for a veep slot. "There's no talk within the Hillary campaign about that," Ickes said in response to a questioner.
* Ickes came under questioning from a super-delegate who said he would have "a problem" if she didn't win the pledged del count or the popular vote, and declined to say what she would do. Indeed, he repeatedly maintained that she would still be ahead in the popular vote at the end of the contest, Florida and Michigan included, and predicted flatly that she would be behind by less than 100 delegates at the end of the voting.
* Hillary sought to persuade supporters to hold the line by vowing to them that she would do everything she could to make sure the party unified behind the eventual nominee. "I know this is not easy," Hillary said. She added: "We will close ranks and I know we will be totally unified going forward."
"I just want to underscore my gratitude," she concluded. "This is bigger than me...it's about standing firm [behind] the values we share."
Shearwater
May 5, 2008 - Shearwater performs Rook, joined by a string quartet, woodwinds, trumpets, and a harpist, with projections by Kahn & Selesnick, at the Florence Gould Hall Theatre, French Institute Alliance Française in New York, NY.
The full set on Flickr. Shearwater just keeps getting better and better. Their upcoming album, Rook, is amazing, otherworldly, eerie, and beautiful. Rook performed live is amazing, especially in an intimate theatre in New York City, on a warm spring night.
© 2008 Kathryn Yu. All rights reserved. Use without prior written consent is prohibited. Don't post this on your blog without asking.
How this whole When Obama wins thing got started: some...
How this whole When Obama wins thing got started: some Adaptive Path folk musing about state name changes if Obama won:
Dan was twittering something about Alabama, but wrote "Alambama". He joked that when Barack Obama wins the election, certain states will probably be renamed - Alobama, Califobama, Nevama, Massabama, New Yobama. Of course, I thought that was hilarious and started thinking about other things that would change once Obama wins. So, a few of us started twittering silly little things, thinking of it as an inside joke.
Overnight, a few people caught on giving it a life of its own.
And if you're so inclined, you could Digg When Obama wins and help melt my web server.
Update: It's on Reddit as well.
(link)
May 9, 2008
Omar Wasow on the digital divide
On The Media: Transcript of "Search is the New Black" (May 2, 2008)
And what we’ve seen with the Internet is that the digital divide was really, I think, more about a moment in time where there was a lag between early adopters and mass America. It’s become something that’s much more part of the fabric of everyday America, including black America.
Where we do see a divide on the Internet continues to be around sort of class and education, less so about race.
Omar Wasow spoke with On the Media’s Bob Garfield about African-American media.
On MT Feed Support
The next version of Movable Type, version 4.15 (aka “Cal”), will remove the RSS feed template from the defaults. This touched off a thread recently was spread across the mtos-dev and ProNet mailing lists discussing the reasoning and potential drawbacks to this decision.
Feeds is a topic near and dear to my heart that I have a long history with. Seems we as a whole have never gotten over all FUD and misinformation of the “syndication wars” that some clarity is needed. Here is the most important takeaway from this post:
There is no longer any practical reason to have multiple feed formats of the same information.
It seems this issue comes up every so often.
Any feed reader or software the consumes feeds worth anything can handle both RSS or Atom feeds. Every modern programming language I know of also have libraries from processing both. Not all take advantage of the more specialized and esoteric features of either — some do, but for most uses either if fine.
Choosing one or the other isn’t choosing sides. It’s a matter of usability and practicality. Having the same feed information in multiple formats forces a user to make a choice that they probably don’t understand and one that is ultimately unnecessary. Dean Allen recently wrote about it and before that Nick Bradbury.
But why did Six Apart choose Atom instead of RSS? MT Product Manager, Byrne Reese posted:
This decision was never about standards politics or what format is better than the other, this release is about performance, and in this day and age, there is no need to publish feeds in multiple formats when they are supported equally[1].
We selected Atom because all things being equal, Atom is an Internet standard and RSS is not, and that is more closely aligned with MTOS’ stated project goals.
[1] Here Byrne asked a post to identify which tools do not support Atom.
It’s also worth mentioning that MT (and other Six Apart tools) are standardizing on the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) for remote clients to interact with the system. AtomPub uses the same format. RSS does not have an equivalent web services API option. Besides that, there are numerous flaws in the design of RSS that can and often does confuse news readers. The RSS specification is frozen with these flaws; however, there are groups attempting to address them in other ways.
From a software architecture and engineering perspective, to me, it’s quite logical that Atom be used. Popularity, as some as cited, is irrelevant given the circumstances and does not make the tool better.
This decision will only effect new blogs created in MT 4.15 and future versions. It does not stop you from using and creating your own RSS feeds nor will it delete, remove or disable them from your current blog templates.
That said, if you are producing feeds in multiple formats, I recommend you pick one and redirect the traffic to the others to that one. Doing so will help improve performance as Byrne suggests in his reply, means one or more less files to generate when a new post in made.
Have a software product that can’t read Atom files? Post them in the comments.
All text is not created equal.
I randomly had lunch recently with an old media business guy. We were talking, as is often the case, about the news business and the different ways in which newspapers and magazines are moving online. As I was describing TPM and our different distribution channels he asked me if we’d ever thought about repackaging our content and and putting it out as a physical TPM paper product. We hadn’t, I explained, both for business reasons (printing is expensive!) and because our content wouldn’t make a bit of sense in that context.
I was reminded all of this while watching the video that CJR made to accompany Ezra Klein’s piece on the Kindle. While I wasn’t 100% clear what he thinks about the Kindle (I’ll have to go read the article, I suppose), he makes an essential point about web native writing at about the second minute:
One of the first blogs I ever read was by a guy named Demosthenes. And he was writing about some political subject and he said “you know, props to him. Props to Bill Clinton.” And I was struck, like someone had slapped me. I was a poltico, I was into it, but I never thought that you could talk about politics in the language I used in every day life. It shocked me. Now I can’t figure out why it was so shocking. Now I do it every day.
Web natives just write differently. They write like people talk.
You produce a different product online. Hyperlinks, tone, form (shorter post that assume readers have read previous posts, etc.). It makes for a fundamentally different product that simply doesn’t translate back onto the printed page.
And the same is true for the common transition of print to online. Newspaper products, moved online unchanged, just don’t translate. That’s why they get chewed up and repackaged by blogs and aggregators (see my post on the so-called “unbundling” of news).
All of which is just to say that what we’re dealing with is not just a transition in medium. We’re in the process of not just radically re-organizing the media business, but media culture. The language is becoming more accessible and the product more interactive. The pretensions are falling and the author is reemerging from behind the barriers of form.
And once you’re there, you can never go home again. All text just isn’t created equal.
Eight Items or Less: Adidas Is on the Offensive, Moss Goes All Out for Design Week and Cut Copy Takes on NY
1. A penny costs 1.26 cents to manufacture and a nickel costs 7.7 cents. Yesterday the House voted to change the materials used to make both coins and that should save over $100 million a year. BTW: Pennies are still made with copper, though not 100 percent. 2. Watch out Kswiss! Adidas has scored another victory against "stripe" thieves. Now they've won a $305 million award in the US against Payless shoes for trademark infringement because Payless sold shoes with two and four stripes. 3. We'd love to see the marketing ideas that hotels reject. The Wyndham in Cosa Mesa is trying to attract dogs (and their owners) with a "Paws and Claws" package that features a "pet care manager" and "brunch buffet." (via hotelchatter.com) 4. One of our favorite stores, Moss (150 Greene Street), is showcasing three incredible artists during May Design Week. You can see new pieces by Studio Job, Hella Jongerius and honeycomb vases made by bees created by Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny. 5. How fast can you type? On your mark. Get set. Go here. 6. Don't forget: Aussie band Cut Copy is in NYC next week opening for newly-signed Columbia recording artists the Black Kids at Studio B on Tuesday and headlining at the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday. "Prepare to swoon." - New York Times
Pangea Day: 5 films win grants from Participant Productions
(Above: Scenes from the filmmakers' reception Thursday night in Los Angeles. We were asked: "Raise your hand if you came from outside the United States to be here.")
Last night in Los Angeles, Participant Productions honored 5 films from around the world by giving their filmmakers $5,000 grants. The grants are awarded by Participant, makers of Charlie Wilson's War and the new Standard Operating Procedure and other amazing films, as part of its Outstanding Filmmakers Awards Program. Learn more about the 5 grant winners -- each film links to a page on PangeaDay.org >>
From Africa, DEAR MANDELA (documentary) by Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza (South Africa)
From Asia/Australia, I REMEMBER LEBANON (documentary) by Zeina Aboul Hosn (Lebanon)
From Europe, MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER (documentary) by Saleyha Ashan (UK); pictured left.
From North America, MOVING WINDMILLS (documentary) by Ari Kushnir (US)
From South America, PAPIROFLEXIA (animated) by Joaquin Baldwin (Paraguay)
Tea Leaf Reading
One of Hillary's most prominent independent backers -- the American Leadership Project -- is not spending any money on Tuesday's West Virginia primary. There's an ostensible reason for it: Hillary has a commanding lead in the polls, and Obama has all but conceded the state. But it will be interesting to see whether the indy groups who have been supporting Hillary continue to plow money into her race. We'll keep an eye out.
● When Obama wins microsite
Last night, folks on Twitter began to contemplate what will happen if Barack Obama wins the nomination. The meme seems to have begun with Andrew Crow's vision for the future:
When Obama wins... unicorns will crap ice cream and pastries.
I collected a bunch of the best ones and made a page that cycles through them: When Obama wins.
Do we really need science to tell us that the...
Do we really need science to tell us that the DNA of an egg-laying, no nippled, duck-billed mammal is unusual?
(link)
Anil Dash's Paste to Win
random sampling of 150 people's clipboards, categorized
Look Who's Talkin': Recent Comments We Have Known And Loved
The useful, thoughtful, and funny discussions in Talk keep us clicking, reading, and grinning. Looking back at the week past, here's just a handful of our favorite threads and comments.
Tuna. In a Can. Love it or Hate it?
"Every year I mix up a wonderful tuna salad that everyone I make it for loves, and every year I eat about 2 bites before I swear I will never do this again! So in answer, NO CANNED TUNA!!! thank you" – huney_bumperFavorite Food Network Show and Chef
"I used to have a crush on Tyler [Florence] until he got puffy in the face." — charm city cupcakeEmotional attachments to kitchen appliances
"Tonight I parted company with my electric range... The family who got it will certainly love it as much as I did, and it will be cared for. And I'm doing it no fever by hanging onto it without using it. It needs to be used. But that still doesn't help the fact that I'll miss it." — beth1Frog Legs?
"Are you insinuating that the senior citizen frogs, like their human counterparts, are fattier and crabbier - hence more fishy tasting, and thus undesirable? Where's Gomer Pyle when I need him?" — PerkyMacIs there a such thing as too much fried potato?
"I'm not so much a fan of french fries, but if it's normal fried potato, I believe there is no such thing as too much. Kind of like friends, the more, the merrier." — Schnauzer_Mama
PEN Worlds Voices 2008
I just got around to organizing my notes on the PEN Worlds Voices Literary festival, which took place last week in NYC. It's an amazing gathering of writers, publishers, translators and readers. The only drawback: there was just too much to do and so many good things overlapped! Here are my notes from the panels and readings that I attended--my notes on the panel "Short Stories" will appear in a separate post:
Wednesday, April 30
Rewriting Family
Housing Works Bookstore Café
Participants: P.F. Thomése, Gyögy Dragomán, Yael Hedaya (Moderator: Stacey D'Erasmo)Dragomán is a Hungarian novelist and translator who was born in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureş, Romania in 1973. As a literary translator, he's aware of the limits of translation but doesn't let them become an excuse for not translating. So let's say you can only get 90%, he said, that's something! He also conceded that the kinds of limits or problems that one translator faces may be entirely different for another. If you can't find the solution, someone else will. This is a very generous and optimistic approach to translation and I thank Dragomán for it. An audience member asked about the different between translating poetry and prose and remarked that poetry, in particular, tends to be untranslatable. Dragomán smiled and told us that his wife is a poet and frequently works with translators. "First, the rhyme goes, second, some of the meter....but it's ok! Something stays and that's what's important." I really wish more readers and critics would focus on how much remains in translation rather than fixating on "losses," which I put in quotes becomes often those who assert that something has been lost in translation 1) haven't read the original or 2) haven't/won't read the translation.
He has a fantastic author website (authors, take note!), where he's posted excerpts from and links to a number of interviews. I recommend highly his interview with James Smith in which he discusses at length his relationship with his translators and how he approaches the task of translation.
Thursday, May 1
Burma: A Land at a Crossroads
Instituto Cervantes New York
Participants: Thant Myint-U and Ian Buruma (Moderator: Dedi Felman)Dedi Felman, who is a founding editor of Words Without Borders, did a tremendous job moderating this panel. Thant Myint-U is the grandson of a former U.N. Secretary-General U Thant and author of The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma and The Making of Modern Burma. Buruma is the author of God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989), in which he discussed Burma. Felman asked wonderful questions--there is no way to cram a hundred years of history into a one hour talk but Felman, Buruma and Thant Myint-U impressively contextualized Burma's current political climate through a discussion of key events that have shaped modern Burmese history.
Thant Myint-U's 2007 article "What to do about Burma" is a more expansive summary of the points he raised in this talk.
A Few Notes:
1885--British India occupies and annexes "what was left of Burma"--gentry, aristocracy fall apart
--the occupiers were not prepared for a long term occupation--the Burmese response was swift, intense and violent
--mass displacement
1920s/30s--a lot of economic growth
WWII causes a new upheaval, crisis
January 4, 1948--the British leave
Aung San's coalition falls apart
ethnic groups rise up demanding territorial independence
Burmese army grows--"huge army machine develops"
"The solutions create their own problems"--Ian BurumaSince this a literature festival, I wish that there had been some discussion of the kind of literary culture that currently exists in Burma. My understanding is that much of it is heavily censored. In 1993, PEN American published Anna J. Allott's monograph Inked Over, Ripped Out: Burmese Storytellers and the Censors but I've had trouble locating more recent information on Burmese literature. I'm particularly interested in poetry, which was very popular in Burma until the 1960s (shorts stories are easier to censor?). I've come across English translations of poems by Tin Moe, a Burmese poet who was imprisoned in the 1990s for his support of the pro-democracy movement. He left Burma after his release and died in Los Angeles in 2007 at the age of 73. Allott wrote a tribute to him and included a couple of her translations of his work. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Ravi Shankar and Nathalie Handal, apparently includes some work from Burma.
(Update: Since I started transcribing these notes, Cyclone Nargis has devastated much of Burma, particularly the areas along the Irrawaddy Delta.)
Kyi May Kaung's poem "Mother Rape"
Thursday, May 1
Publishers Weekly: On Translation
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate CenterParticipants: Morgan Entrekin (Grove, NY), Michael Krüger (Hanser Verlag, Germany), Edwin Frank (NYRB, US), Halfdan Freihow (Font, Norway) (Moderator: Sarah Nelson, Publishers Weekly)
In this panel, four publishers discussed the status and marketability of translation and the place of translation in their respective publishing houses.
Krüger: Martin Luther's translation of the Bible inaugurated modern literature in German--we are going on almost 250 years of translation copyright--asserting the authorship of the translator
Entrekin: publishing literature in translation generates "psychic equity"--continues a conversation across cultures and languages that draws in readers, critics and authors
There was a lot of discussion about the fact that translation only makes up 3% of U.S. publications, a number that is much, much higher in other countries.
Freihow: Your (meaning the U.S.) homegrown writers are writing about the same subjects generally (as in other places)--what if you didn't tell the reader that it was a translation--would they notice?
Freihow also noted that despite the large number of translations that his publishing house brings out, the number of translations of U.S. literature has gone down. One reason is that English has become almost a second language for many Europeans, so many readers have access to the English original well before the translation comes out. Another factor is that U.S. agents charge very hight rates--this and the lack of translation support from the U.S. means that it makes more financial sense to publish an unknown European writer than a well-known U.S. writer.
Krüger: in our generation things are happening at the same time--so translation has to happen at the same time
Nelson pointed out that about 300, 000 books in English are published every year (the number is higher, I think). In Germany, for example, the number is between 70-100,000, of which 10-20, 000 are works of fiction. (not sure if I understood that correctly--I think the point was that the U.S. publishes a smaller percentage of works of fiction)
"How Many Books are Too Many" (a 2004 NYT article)
"The Non English Patient" (a 2006 panel at the Frankfurt Book Fair, scroll down for a discussion on the number of books published)
Wikipedia tries to keep track.
Krüger: "trash novels" come out very quickly, "non trash" is slow--in a world with so much trash "it is not so bad to have some things that are slow"
Frank: In France, many bookstores categorize books by country--in Italy, by publisher, which means that readers are attracted to a curatorial edge/taste
The panel came to a close with the observation (made by Frank and supported by Entrekin) that U.S. translators are not able to make a living on translation alone. In Norway and Germany, on the other hand, the government and publishing houses offer subsidies to translators and in support of translation.
Transparent Post-Its
It's about flippin' time
Northern Virginia Locked In to Congested Roads
Suburbanites in northern Virginia are finding their streets more clogged with traffic than ever, and, as the Washington Post reported earlier this week, they aren't about to get bailed out by road-widening projects. Here's the crux of the problem, told from the Post reporter's decidedly windshield perspective:
Thoroughfares like Rolling Road are the blood vessels that connect suburbia, the secondary roads that carry commuters to interstates, residents to supermarkets and children to school. They include Braddock Road in Fairfax County, Colesville Road in Montgomery, and even such larger highways as routes 7 and 50. They are the roads that Washington area residents traverse every day, sometimes several times a day.
Just months ago, Northern Virginia residents and elected officials were expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to such roads. Now, because of budget cuts and state lawmakers' failure to reach a deal on regional transportation funding, drivers can expect only more misery.
The Virginia Department of Transportation recently announced a 51 percent cut in the region's road-building program. Dozens of projects have been eliminated or postponed indefinitely. And rising maintenance costs are eating away at what little remains.
The Post assumes that expanding road capacity is the only answer, and casts the problem as purely a budgetary shortfall. It neglects to mention the role of land use in bringing about this state of affairs. The pattern described in the article is similar to what regions all over the country are facing, as past decisions to separate housing from other land uses come back to haunt them in the form of ever-mounting traffic.
(more...)
PAPER TV: Catching up with Dita Von Teese
PAPER's Whitney Spaner talks beauty, fashion and feathers with former cover girl Dita Von Teese.
Muxtape works on iPhone
Filed under: iPod Family, Internet, iPhone
If you are a Web 2.0 fanatic (which, come on, who isn't these days?) then you probably know about Muxtape. For those of you who aren't religiously reading the latest Web application news at DownloadSquad, Muxtape is basically a way to share your personalized mp3 mixtape. Not only can you subscribe to the tape's RSS via iTunes, but it turns out that you can also listen to Muxtapes on your iPhone!
Just navigate over to the Muxtape page of your choosing and select a song. Mobile Safari will then load the file and begin to play it like normal mp3 audio. How cool is that?
Thanks for the info, Craig!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
More folding proteins.. but this time a game too
Folding@home runs on idle time, as I understand it, as does rosetta@home. I haven't got a PS3 yet which runs the former - waiting for LittleBigPlanet before I splurge (and have to remove the gamecube to make room). But this, Foldit, is a game, designed to get players to develop actually-useful proteins for use in designing new vaccines.
Solve Puzzles for Science! is the strapline. How can you resist?
Technology Review says:The game, called Foldit, is part of Baker's vision for the future of protein engineering. His algorithms are good at the nitty-gritty of generating completely novel protein sequences for a particular purpose. But humans, who are better at seeing the big picture than computers are, could improve computer-designed proteins by playing the game.
Some of the proteins could go towards helping to design a vaccine for HIV, even. This is double plus good.
(Thanks to Kim!)
Rahm: Obama Is "Presumptive Nominee." Rahm Flack: That's Not News!
Rahm Emanuel said today that Obama is the "presumptive nominee." Sounds like news, no?
Not according to Rahm's spokesperson. Ben Smith gets the following from Rahm flack Sarah Feinberg:
Easy. Everyone is getting a little over their ski tips. It must be a slow news day. All Rahm said was that Sen. Obama is now the front-runner, which by and large means, because of the calendar, he is the presumptive nominee, at this point. He was stating the obvious.Don't know about this. Rahm also said that "Hillary can't win." For a party leader like Rahm to declare the race effectively over seems like news to us.
Beirut Blogging
A little bit of on-the-ground blogging from Beirut, where things today are still very much in flux.
Late Update: A reader points me to another Beirut blog.
Hillary Campaign Emails Out "Electability" Power-Point To All House Dems
Stepping up its efforts to push her case with super-dels and party leaders, the Hillary campaign is emailing out a Power-Point presentation to all Dems in the House touting her electability and her ability to carry tough swing districts.
You can view the Power-Point in our TPM Document Collection.
The gist of the argument is that Hillary has beaten Obama in the vast majority of tough red-leaning House districts, and has consistently outperformed him among key demographics -- seniors, Hispanics, and rural voters.
You've heard similar stuff in the past, to be sure, albeit not framed in terms of individual House districts, an argument designed to resonate with members of Congress.
The fact that this has been blasted out to every Dem in the House suggests that the Hillary campaign is ratcheting up its behind-the-scenes campaign to win over uncommitted super-dels in the campaign's final days, even as a loss in the a popular vote, in addition to the pledged del count, looms as a likely possibility.
It's unclear how effective this will be, given that the Hillary camp has been making electability arguments for months even as Obama has consistently won over these super-dels at a greater rate.
Dig in and let us know what you find.
May 8, 2008
● NYer Conference, other day one notables
British architect David Adjaye observed that not only are public buildings built for "the public" but they also create "the public" by establishing a space for it to exist. I guess by the same token, buildings built for private citizens also create private citizens...hence, eventually, gated communities and the like.
Adjaye also described his native Africa as layered combination of its different eras: colonialism + nation building + European + Islam + urabn/capitalist.
The chefs panel, with Bill Buford interviewing Daniel Humm, Marc Taxiera, and David Chang, was the most entertaining of the day. Right at the end, David Chang told a short anecdote about a customer who complained to him about the amount of fat in the Momofuku pork bun...pork as in pork belly and pork belly as in mostly fat. Chang told him that's the way it came and that he wasn't getting a replacement. Shrugging, he told the audience he had a different idea about hospitality than most restauranteurs..."the customer is not always right".
Michael Ovogratz, the 317th richest American, explained the current financial crisis. Goes something like this. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening up of China and India for both trade and labor laid the groundwork for globalization. Lots and lots of cheap labor available made made for cheap goods and and low inflation. Between early 2003 and late 2007, globalization kicked into high gear and people thought, this is it, this is the end of inflation forever. But the workers in Eastern Europe, India, and China gradually became consumers. They bought TVs and cars and better food and whaddya know, inflation is back. The bubble burst.
Amy Smith challenges her students to try living on $2 a day for a week...that includes food, transportation, and entertainment. This video of a talk that Smith did at TED in 2006 covers much of what she talked about today at the New Yorker Conference. The NY Times covered her clever inventions back in 2003.
Who's blogging from Pangea Day?
(Above: a scene from Thursday's tech rehearsal on the Pangea Day set)
You can follow news from Pangea Day on the Pangea Day Blog -- and get updates from bloggers at screenings and viewing parties around the world. If you're going to be blogging Pangea Day as well, write to us with the subject line "Blogging Pangea Day" and we'll add you to the list!
Hosting Pangea Day events and blogging:
+ Pangea Day Dharavi/Mumbai
+ A New York City screening hosted by the Acumen Fund
+ Friends of Pangea Day Vancouver
+ Pangea Day Cambridge UK
+ Pangea Day Milano
greenpix zero-energy massive LED display
the largest color LED display worldwide, & the first photo-voltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China. the display requires zero external energy, as the facade harvests solar energy by day & uses it to illuminate the screen after dark. the display comprises of 2,292 color (RGB) LED’s light points comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. (2.200 m2) monitor screen for dynamic content display.the polycrystalline photovoltaic cells are laminated within the glass of the curtain wall & placed with changing density on the entire building’s skin. the density pattern increases building’s performance, allowing natural light when required by interior program, while reducing heat gain & transforming excessive solar radiation into energy for the media wall.
you can play with the online simulator, or watch a movie after the break.
[link: greenpix.org|via engadget.com]
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition
My editor at Addison-Wesley wrote me today. He says that 6000 copies of “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd Edition” are on trucks. I think the 3rd edition is pretty good; it adds two chapters on Core Data, and chapters on the garbage collector, Core Animation, Web Services, NSTask, and NSViewController. A lot of little things were tidied up.
One important note: The most recent betas of Xcode have started using XIB files instead of NIB files by default. XIB files are readable XML representations of the stuff that is usually in an NIB file. At compile time, the XIB is converted into an NIB. As you go through the book, you can ignore the difference between the two file types.
Here is a tarball of the solutions to the exercises, not the challenges.
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition
My editor at Addison-Wesley wrote me today. He says that 6000 copies of “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd Edition” are on trucks. I think the 3rd edition is pretty good; it adds two chapters on Core Data, and chapters on the garbage collector, Core Animation, Web Services, NSTask, and NSViewController. A lot of little things were tidied up.
One important note: The most recent betas of Xcode have started using XIB files instead of NIB files by default. XIB files are readable XML representations of the stuff that is usually in an NIB file. At compile time, the XIB is converted into an NIB. As you go through the book, you can ignore the difference between the two file types.
Here is a tarball of the solutions to the exercises, not the challenges.
Matt Lauer Goes Underground for "Secret" Train Car
First NBC announces it's starting a 24-hour local NYC news channel yesterday--a possible competitor to NY1-- and now Matt Lauer is invading the turf of NYC TV's Kelly Choi by heading to the "secret subway station" under the Waldorf-Astoria!
In the Today's show "Access Granted"series, the Today show personalities are getting behind-the-scenes looks at private places (Meredith Vieira visited the Vice-President's mansion yesterday and Al Roker visited the Malstrom Air Force base on Tuesday). Today's segment is near and dear to the hearts of NYC transit geeks, who know about Track 61, off Grand Central's Metro North tracks.
The unused tracks were meant for guests with private train cars to enter the Waldorf Astoria hotel directly--a special perk for VIPs. This entrance was used by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to discreetly enter the Waldorf-Astoria hotel without people knowing he had polio. The video segment is a good look inside, but for those wanting a little more information, Trainjotting has some more details, like how Andy Warhol held a party there!
Quote of the Day
In today's wars, fighting is no longer confined to the battlefield; 90% of those killed or wounded are civilians. Often driven from their homes, women are targeted for ethnic cleansing, raped, widowed and left as the sole providers for their families in societies that, in many cases, show little respect for their rights. The most urgent tasks of rebuilding daily life in a devastated nation--feeding a family, doing the laundry, taking children to school, shopping for basic necessities--fall to women. These challenges are critical to stabilizing a society, yet the world pays more attention to military and security issues.One woman is trying to change that. "We hear much discussion about the front lines of war," says Zainab Salbi, 38, founder of the Washington-based group Women for Women International. "We need to focus more attention on the back-line delivery of peace."
- From Caroline Kennedy's article on Women for Women International in Time
(I've blogged about Women for Women International before, and some of you sponsored my reading list for a year with per-book donations, which I've in turn sent to Women for Women Intl to sponsor a woman in need. For those of you who donated, I've been matched with a woman, but I haven't received any information about her yet. I'll let my loyal donors know when I do.)
Obama's Super-Del Whip: Wright Makes Super-Dels More Eager To Back Obama
As noted below, after interviewing Rep. Melissa Bean, one of Obama's chief super-delegate whip-counters, I contacted her office with a follow-up question:
How often do super-dels raise concerns about Reverend Wright, or about Hillary's claim that Obama struggles with blue collar whites?
Here's the answer that was sent back, from Bean herself:
"I have not heard that as a reservation from anybody. I only heard about Reverend Wright in the context of people saying it made them decide to step forward sooner to declare their support for Senator Obama."This seems like a reference to Obama's handling of the Wright affair. Either way, it's a striking claim indeed from Bean, who talks to the super-dels every day, and obviously runs counter to virtually all of the roar of punditry we've heard on the topic.
Pretty Black and White
TPM Reader AB is having a hard time reconciling Hillary's remarks on Obama's support among working class whites:
It seems to me that every progressive voice in this country should be outraged - jumping up and down - shouting in print and word - to repudiate Hillary Clinton's remarks that Obama "is having trouble winning over blue collar "white" voters... "white Americans"...It is a disgraceful, shameful tactic to justify her own non-candidacy. This is a remark I would expect from a politician from Mississippi or Louisiana - not from our New York State senator... I am outraged, I am deeply embarrassed that my children have heard this reported on the news...and I regret that have I ever gave her one hard earned nickel.
All the while she touts the glass ceiling as a woman but when her chips are down, the racism springs forth fully formed.
AB is right. Maybe it's general campaign fatigue, or the sense that the race is all but over now, but a month ago her remarks would have been a huge story, the dominant political story of the day.
The political press spent weeks trying to divine whether the Clinton camp was really attempting to cast Obama as the black candidate, a favorite son candidate of the African American community. The Clinton camp vehemently denied it then and even as recently as a few days ago Bill Clinton claimed it was the Obama camp playing the race card against him.
Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary's argument for her own electability. But now she's thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can't win because he's black. Vote for me instead.
You don't have to believe that Hillary's a racist (I don't) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community.
Hers is not an appeal we'd tolerate from a Republican candidate, nor should we from a Democrat, no matter how sterling her progressive credentials might otherwise be.
There's been a lot of talk about the damage Hillary will do to the party by staying in the race this long. Perhaps she should consider the damage she's doing to herself.
Obama's Super-Del Whip: Many Super-Dels Back Obama, But Won't Go Public
I just got off the phone with Rep. Melissa Bean, who is one of Obama's chief super-delegate whip-counters. She said two things of interest:
First, she predicted that it was "entirely possible" that Obama could pull even with Hillary in super-delegates by next week -- and predicted that at the end of the process Obama would have more super-del support than Hillary.
And second, she insisted that many super-dels who are publicly uncommitted actually are privately backing Obama but won't say so right now.
"They're uncommitted, but it doesn't mean they're undecided," said Bean, who speaks to super-dels daily. Why go public, she asked, "if it's unnecessary and will alienate a portion of your base?"
"You're gonna see more quietly let him know, and some already have, that they're in his column," Bean said.
By some counts, Obama is roughly eight super-dels behind Hillary right now. I asked Bean whether Obama would, by next week, draw even with Hillary in public super-del support, given her insistence that she has locked up so many of them privately.
"It's entirely possible," she said. Her overall prediction: "At the end of the day, he will be ahead. When those who are `undecided' become public, he'll be in great shape."
Separately, I've contacted Bean's office with a follow-up: In all her conversations with super-dels, how often, if ever, does she hear them raise concerns about Reverend Wright or Hillary's claim that Obama struggles with blue-collar whites? I'll keep you posted on any answer I get.
Late Update: Bean answers the Wright question here.
Bees Hunt for Upper East Side Real Estate
The Gothamist Newsmap indicated an "unusual incident"at 75th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan yesterday. The Emergency Service Unit officers responded, but they reportedly "hung back a bit" because the unusual incident turned out to be a swarm of bees!
A witness told WNBC the bees "were swarming all around like debris, a whirlwind type of thing," around a newspaper box for the Learning Annex. Jim Fisher, who volunteers at the Bronx Zoo, arrived on the scene and, per WABC 7, managed to calm things down:
Fisher used water to wet the wings of the swarm to prevent them from flying off, then used a whisk broom to sweep the bees into a cardboard box. Once the queen bee was inside, the rest of the bees followed her pheremones into the box.Fisher says the bees had been on the box for about an hour and likely landed in desperation, having come from a nearby hive that had split its population in two. Half flew off with the new queen bee in search of a new home, while the other half remained with the existing hive and the old queen bee. It's behavior that's not unusual this time of year, Fisher said.Awesome! There were about 5,000 bees, weighing about a pound in total, which is considered a small swarm. Fisher says there's another half of a hive out there, somewhere.
The Queens County Farm Museum has a honey bee program (where children "learn about the life-cycle of honeybees, their products, and how they help us") and there are also programs for groups of adults. And these bees do have a new home--with a beekeeper north of the city.
Pokemon Farming: Aerodactyl
This time in Pokemon Farming: Aerodactyl, the Fossil Pokemon!
These ferocious babies were carefully extracted from old DNA inside Old Amber, found mostly from digging underground. And I’ve bred these Aerodactyl to whoop some multi-type butt!
These Aerodactyl know many moves to cover all types of adversaries!
- Ice Fang
- Thunder Fang
- Fire Fang
- Earthquake
All of tonights Aerodactyl are Adamant (+Att,-Sp.Att) and have the ability Pressure, which allows moves that hit you use 2PP instead of 1. Also all of tonights Aerodactyl will be named after characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Want one of these multi-tasking Aerodactyls for yourself? Heres what to do!
- Comment with your Name and Friend Code
- Even if we have traded before, I need your information again!
- Get a Pokemon to trade (preferably non-Sinnoh, though I will take anything, items like Rare Candies and TMs are always appreciated!)
- Be in the Wi-Fi zone at 4pm ET (New York Time) on May 10 (Saturday)
- Make yourself available to Trade (Invite–>Trade) I will come to you when I’m ready.
- If you are new to our site, your first comment will be moderated. Don’t worry if your post doesn’t show, we will get to it in time, and you will not miss out!
My Information:
Trainer name: God
Friend Code: 0602-6974-2308
My Friend Code has changed! I got a shiny new DS lite! :D
Modern cooking and "molecular gastronomy"
There's much interest these days in experimental cooking, a relatively recent approach to food that invents new dishes, and explores new ways to make traditional dishes, with the help of the tools and ideas of science. Its sudden blossoming around the turn of the 21st century has been a fascinating development in the history of food and eating.
Misinformation and misunderstandings about experimental cooking have been accumulating from its very beginnings. They're now hardening into bad pop cultural history that tags very different chefs and their ideas with the impressive but empty terms "molecular gastronomy" and "molecular cuisine."
An example: in the current May 12 "Innovators" issue of The New Yorker you'll find "A Man of Taste," a profile of Grant Achatz and his Chicago restaurant Alinea. The profile does offer moving passages that recount Achatz's battle with cancer. But it caricatures his originality and ideas, the things that make him the important innovator that he is, with such sentences as:
"Achatz followed in the footsteps of the molecular gastronomists, who believed that the standard repertoire of cooking--the roasting, boiling, and sautéing that dominated the kitchen since the time of Auguste Escoffier--was out of date. . . . The world's best restaurants, Adrià and his ilk believed, needed to catch up with Nabisco"and the other innovative snack manufacturers that gave us Cheetos and Reddi Wip.Much of the confusion about experimental cooking begins with confusion about the term "molecular gastronomy" and the pioneering workshop in Erice, Sicily that introduced it in 1992. To my knowledge, the origins of the Erice workshop have been accurately recounted only once, in a little-known article by David Arnold in the trade journal Food Arts (June 2006). As a result, a key figure in the story remains unacknowledged, and the nature and influence of the workshop itself have been misunderstood.
For anyone who's interested in understanding the evolution of experimental cooking, I've put together a brief account of the Erice workshops, including the original documents on which it's based. You'll find it here:
http://curiouscook.com/cook/erice.phpand click on "about molecular cuisine by Ferran Adrià."http://www.elbulli.com/historia/index.php?lang=en&seccion=6&subseccion=2
And anyone interested in what Ferran Adrià actually believes about modern cooking should visit his dazzling website and the
For his view on "molecular cooking," go to
__________________________________
Dianne Feinstein: I'm Sticking By Hillary
Senator Dianne Feinstein caused a big stir yesterday by suggesting that the drawn-out Dem primary was producing "negative dividends" and indicating that she would ask Hillary what her real game plan is.
But Feinstein spoke privately with Hillary today. And Feinstein is sticking by her candidate and affirming her right to stay in the race:
Feinstein talked with Clinton via phone this morning and erased any doubts about her own commitment to the campaign and that of the candidate. "I'm sticking with her, absolutely," she told reporters. "Her strategy is to win this. And she's entitled to her opportunity to try."The California senator said she heard "conviction" in Clinton's voice during their conversation. "She feels she owes a deep debt of gratitude to the people that support her -- who support her intensely."...
"I agree that she should take this for as long as she feels she has a chance to win it," Feinstein added. "And she says she will do nothing that causes the party any difficulty."
That last quote is key. The conventional wisdom has been that even if Hillary sticks it out, she'll dial back some of the harsh criticism she's leveled at Obama, both for the sake of future party unity and her own legacy.
Feinstein suggests here that Hillary promised as much to her privately. We'll see what happens.
Obscure Psych Record Cover Or...
Obscure psych record cover or lost Three Investigators novel…
Heidi's Hotter than Lauren!
Sad, but true. The Maxim editors have decided: Heidi Montag is hotter than Lauren Conrad.
In their annual "Hot List" poll, Heidi is ranked number 36, while Lauren's all the way down at number 56.
Apparently those Maxim men don't care that only about 1/2 of Heidi is actually real. Oh well.
For those who are wondering, Audrina Patridge was ranked number 74. Neither Whitney Port nor Lo Bosworth made the list.
Poor Audrina. She got naked and still couldn't make it higher on the list than Heidi and Lauren.
And The Hills feud continues...
Wow: 100,000 Comments and Counting!
Our helpful counting robots have calculated that the Serious Eats family of blogs (Serious Eats, Ed Levine Eats, Slice, and A Hamburger Today) recently passed what some would consider a milestone: There are now more than 100,000 comments across all those blogs. 105,400 as we write this, to be exact.
That wouldn't have happened without you....Thank you.
That's a lot of good advice, ideas, and laughs going around! It's a milestone for the whole community, and we're so glad that so many have found your way to Serious Eats, and we hope you stick around!
Guess who made the 100,000th comment ...
Impromptu Congratulatory Giveaway
The 100,00th comment was from Chiff0nade:
Promised my brother a grain pie (Pizza Grano/Easter dessert pie) and had just mixed the crust when a small piece fell to the floor. I called my dog. He gladly obliged. —6:22PM on 04/08/08
And in celebration, we're going to send Chiff0nade a copy of The Complete Thomas Keller: The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon as well as personalized copies of Ed Levine's books The Young Man and the Sea, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, and (More) New York Eats.
● Whatever Gavin Newsom is selling, I'll take ten
I'll admit I don't watch politicians speak that often, particularly in public. So maybe I'm being a little naive here, but San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is nothing short of a magician up on the stage. He talked for 20 straight minutes (his would-be interviewer could only get in 2-3 questions during that time and Newsom pretty much ignored them and talked about whatever he pleased) and it felt both like 5 minutes and exhausting at the same time. By the time he'd finished what I would term a sermon, I wanted to sign up for whatever he was selling at a price no lower than my heart and soul. I haven't non-sexually crushed this hard on a speaker since Robert Wright.
Ok, two particularly interesting things that broke my gaze long enough for me to scribble them down in my notebook.
1. Newsom talked about building filling stations for electric cars that relied on exchanging batteries instead of plugging in and waiting for your car to charge. You don't need to own your particular battery.
2. In SF, he's hoping to exchange the payroll tax for a carbon tax. In his words, tax a bad thing (carbon use) instead of taxing a good thing (jobs). That way, the incentives are in the right place...people aren't penalized for working but are penalized for using excessive amounts of carbon.
A woman's right to choose
Anyone else notice how politicians talk about Hillary ending her campaign as if it’s an unwanted pregnancy?
“Hillary, of course, will make the decision as to if and when she ends [it].”
“I think that it would be inappropriate and awkward and wrong for any of us to tell Senator Clinton when it is time for [it] to be over. This is her decision and it is only her decision.”
“It’s her decision to make and I’ll accept what decision she makes.”
In Videos: Mario Batali on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!'
Mario Batali made the braciole from his new book, Italian Grill
, on Jimmy Kimmel's show last night. Kimmel did indicate he knew his braciole. "I'm from Brooklyn," he said. That, Mario said, is known as "Western Italy." The whole exchange, after the jump.
Mario Batali on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live'
Batali: We're going to make beef braciole, now are you familiar with that?
Kimmel: Well yeah, my family always said bra-CHOLE... we didn't pronounce that right?
Mario: The Italian word is brah-CHO-leh and each different province has its own dialect or it's own little accent. So your family, that's probably a southern Italian family?
Kimmel: Well, we're in Brooklyn.
Mario: Brooklyn? That's western Italian culture.
Related
Adam Perry Lang on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!'
Mario Batali Unclogged
Mario Unclogged: How to Sauce Pasta
Being Mario Batali's Sous-Chef Was No Picnic
● Gladwell on the mismatch problem
Picking a subject from his upcoming book, Malcolm Gladwell talked about the difficulty in hiring people in the increasingly complex thought-based contemporary workplace. Specifically that we're using a collection of antiquated tools to evaluate potential employees, creating what he calls "mismatch problems" in the workplace, when the critera for evaluating job candidates is out of step with the demands of the job.
To illustrate his point, Gladwell talked about sports combines, events that professional sports leagues hold for scouts to evaluate potential draftees based on a battery of physical, psychological, and intelligence tests. What he found, a result that echoes what Michael Lewis talks about in Moneyball, is that sports combines are a poor way to determine how well an athlete will eventually perform as a member of their eventual team. One striking example he gave is the intelligence test they give to NFL quarterbacks. Two of the test's all-time worst performers were Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, Hall of Famers both.
A more material example is teachers. Gladwell says that while we evaluate teachers on the basis of high standardized test scores and whether they have degrees and credentialed training, that makes little difference in how well people actually teach.
Me in 50 years
* Via BuzzFeed!
Serving millionaires and Hollywood stars: Are food service folks tipped or stiffed?
Serving millionaires: Are food service folks tipped or stiffed?
● New Yorker Conference
I'll be at the New Yorker conference today and some attempt to provide an alive weblogging of the goings-on will be made. On the slate are kottke.org tagholders David Remnick, Rebecca Mead, David Chang, Malcolm Gladwell, and James Surowiecki.
May 7, 2008
We're Not Talking About Just Anyone!
Noted without comment, because what can you say ...
From USAToday's new interview with Sen. Clinton ...
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.""There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Stewart Butterfield wins Silicon Valley best beard contest. Sloooow news...
Stewart Butterfield wins Silicon Valley best beard contest. Sloooow news day at Fortune...did the bosses tell 'em to Valleywag it up a little?
(link)
Terms, II
According to the Huffington Post's Tom Edsall and a number of others, one of the possibilities in the offing if Hillary Clinton quickly ends her presidential campaign is that the Obama campaign will not only retire the $10 to $15 million in unpaid campaign related expenses the Clinton campaign owes but will also help the Clinton campaign pay back to the Clintons personally the $11.4 million they have loaned to the campaign during the last three months.
Helping to retire an opponent's campaign is not unprecedented and can sometimes be justified in the interests of party unity. (Remember, this isn't just money in the abstract. A lot of it is payment to people who provided services or goods of various sorts to the campaign and need to be paid or paid back.) But using more than $10 million raised in large part by small individual donations to pay back the Clintons who appear to be worth many tens of millions of dollars simply seems wrong.
This isn't meant to sound ungracious. I don't begrudge the Clintons their very substantial wealth. And even for really, really rich people, $11 million isn't nothing. But that is simply too much money raised from small givers to give to people who loaned it with full knowledge of the odds and have more than enough money to really know what to do with.
Frankly, I'm surprised that it's even being suggested. It would be a mistake for the Clintons to ask (and just because people are chattering about it -- don't assume they have or will), a mistake for Obama to offer and one that would risk a severe backlash.
That's not what people gave their money for.
Till Next Week
I'm going to be stepping aside from my normal duties at TPM for the rest of the week for some family time. I'll be leaving you in the able hands of the rest of the TPM staff. Next week or the week following we'll have some announcements about new projects and personnel at TPM.
Despite having no basketball playing ability or experience, college junior...
Despite having no basketball playing ability or experience, college junior Zach Feinstein has declared himself for the 2008 NBA Draft. You can find him listed on the NBA's official early entry list under "unknown individuals". (thx, jared)
(link)
Booty Call Hump Day: David Weeks' Sculpt Chair
Booty Call, PAPER's back of the book section filled with items we're currently gagging over, is crossing the pond as it were, and heading into the blogosphere! Along with items culled from the 'zine, us web editors will be introducing our own favorite objéts into the mix. So check in every Wednesday, aka Hump Day, for your weekly Booty Call! Our first item is an armchair from David Weeks' new furniture collection Sculpt. It goes for $6,720 and is available at Ralph Pucci, (212) 633-0452.
Hillary Picks Up Another Super-Del
Hillary Clinton has reportedly picked up another super-delegate today, even as she works to dispel the idea that she should drop out.
Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) is now backing Hillary, on the grounds that she carried his district in the primary. He joins Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), who also announced earlier today that he's supporting Hillary because she carried his district.
Today's score so far: Obama +4, Hillary +1. (Clinton lost a super-delegate in a defection to Obama.)
The overall super-del score: Hillary 273.5, Obama 260.
Like Thought Updates Opacity
Filed under: Software, Graphic Design
Do you spend part or all of your time creating resolution-independent graphics for the Web? If you do, then you're probably familiar with Opacity. It's a powerful tool for creating icons or other graphic elements that are designed for viewing on a screen rather than on paper.
The developer of Opacity, Like Thought, LLC, is now shipping version 1.1 of their app. Opacity 1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5.2 and has a redesigned interface with a new grid and dynamically generated images in the toolbar. To make life easier for new users of Opacity, Like Thought also added a "How To" screencast and four new templates.
The biggest addition to Opacity 1.1 is support for SVG vector graphics for the Web. Opacity creates reusable workflows called factories, which now support such cool features as gamma stripping in PNG images, automatic uploading to Web sites using Cyberduck, and multi-page PDF images.
If you own Opacity 1.0, this is a free upgrade. A demo is available for download, and you can purchase Opacity for $89.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini
Quick Post
Seven short films on the sex lives of insects. No matter how awesome (or not awesome) you think this will be, it is awesomer.
Rumor: Australian iPhones will be unlocked
A little birdie flew into TUAW Headquarters (read: Scott's Philadelphia apartment) this morning. In fact, he flew all the way from Australia to tell us that Vodafone will not be the exclusive carrier in Australia.
"What's that, little bird?" we asked. He said that Aussie carriers will have their own plans and deals, and that unlocked iPhones will be sold at Apple Stores.
Now, we can't substantiate the bird's accuracy (though he did say "G'Day" and "mate" several times), but considering the announcement that Italy will have two carriers, we aren't dismissing it out-of-pocket, either.
Update: The Sydney Morning Herald has published confirmation that Australia-based Telstra and Optus will also carry the iPhone.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Uncommitted Super-Del: How Could I Tell My Black Constituents I'm Backing Hillary?
The uncommitted super-delegates are rarely candid about this publicly, but one of the key reasons they feel pressure to back Barack Obama is that as elected officials, they are themselves dependent on black voters -- so picking Hillary at this point solely on the basis of her alleged "electability" would seriously risk alienating their core supporters.
Brad Miller, a white Democratic Congressman from North Carolina, just admitted as much in an interview with the Washington Post, saying that he would be uncomfortable telling his African-American constituents that he was picking Hillary over the African American winner of the pledged-del count on the grounds that she might be more electable: "I'm not sure how I could tell them that."
It's yet another major hurdle Hillary faces as she seeks to woo the super-dels to her side as Obama marches towards the nomination.
Vogue: Who's Best Dressed?
You might be able to turn all that Met Ball office banter into some actual cash -
Vogue just announced their first ever Viewer's Choice Awards for the clothes we've all seen a zillion times since Monday night.Starting Friday, you can log on to the Vogue.tv site and vote for your favorite look from the gala, and enter to win two round trip tickets to a $2,500 shopping spree at J. Mendel and two nights at the Lowell Luxury Hotel in NYC.
You have until May 16, but if you think that's a tough deadline, just think of poor Alexandra Kotur who has to manage the politics of the ten best dressed by Monday morning.
Our votes?
Britt can't decide between Christina Ricci and Lou Doillon, Brett likes Zac/Kate Mara and Kate Bosworth, and Natalie thinks both Christina Ricci and Julie Gilhart walked the ball attire/superhero line to great effect.
You?
Microsoft Promised NBC a ‘Copyright Cop’ to Block Non-DRM Video Files
So why are NBC TV shows now available for the Zune but not for iTunes? Saul Hansell reports:
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.
Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.
Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.
That sounds like a surefire winner to help the Zune catch up to the iPhone.
Hillary: "I'm Staying In This Race Until There's A Nominee"
Hillary, at a press conference moments ago:
"Well, I'm saying in this race until there's a nominee. And I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee."This means either...
(a) She's not dropping out until Obama reaches the magic number of delegates by attracting super-dels to put him over the top;
(b) She's not dropping out until some sort of arrangement persuades her to concede Obama the title of nominee herself; or
(c) She's not dropping out until a battle over the super-dels and/or a floor fight at the convention results in one of the two getting the magic number.
Indeed, on that last score, she was asked about the possibility that there could be a fight on the Rules and Bylaws Committee over seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. Her reply:
"Under the rules of the Democratic Party, the Rules and Bylaws Committee makes the first determination. And if people are not satisfied with that they go to the Credentials Committee. So we'll see what the outcome is."
"If people are not satisfied..."
Onward we go.
Late Update: For a time, the comments section on this post was inadvertently turned off. Apologies. Comment away.
Late Update: Here's video...
Hello, Mexico City!
If you’re in or around Mexico City tomorrow night (Thursday), I hope you’ll join us for Muestra Tu México en Flickr. (If you haven’t visited the group, be sure to check out the active discussion and fabulous photography.)
Photos from Mac1968 and Don César.
Hillary, Obama Nab Super-Dels
Despite Obama's big win yesterday, Hillary and Obama are running even in super-delegate endorsements since yesterday's contests got underway.
Clinton has been endorsed today by freshman Congressman Heath Shuler of North Carolina, whose Appalachian district Hillary carried by 13 points. Shuler had previously indicated he would back the district winner.
Obama has been endorsed by North Carolina DNC member Jeanette Council, who announced her support before the polls closed yesterday.
Spokesperson For Wes Clark Denies He Urged Hillary To Quit
Last night, it was reported that top Hillary supporter Wes Clark privately phoned her after last night's results and urged her to quit the race.
But a spokesperson for Clark adamantly denies the report.
"General Clark was on a plane to Ireland last night and in fact didn't learn about the election results until he landed," said the spokesperson, Jessica Vanden Berg. "He didn't talk to Senator Clinton."
Berg added that Clark hadn't spoken to Bill or any of Hillary's campaign advisers.
Responded Obama-supporter John Aravosis of AMERICABlog, which first reported the story: "I wouldn't be surprised if General Clark is denying it -- when you take on the Clintons, the sniper fire is real."
Clark will be among the handful of prominent Hillary supporters whose actions vis a vis Hillary will be among the most closely watched -- by the campaigns, their top supporters, uncommitted super-dels, and the media -- in the days ahead.
Late Update: The Huffington Post reports that Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson is also denying the report.
Curious Cook in the New York Times: Organic produce and yak cheese
In today's Curious Cook column I write about nutritional claims made for organic fruits and vegetables and for yak cheese made in Nepal.___________________________Benbrook, C. et al. New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-based Organic Foods. The Organic Center, March 2008.
http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=126
Or-Rashid, M.M. et al. Fatty acid composition of yak (Bos grunniens) cheese including conjugated linoleic acid and trans-18:1 fatty acids. J. Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2008, 56: 1654-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jf0725225
As the world braces for the R. Kelly sex trial, Radar takes a look at the central players
Everything you need to know about the R. Kelly sex trial
Cook free or die!
For Bourdain fans, the cook free or die! t-shirt.
If you Google "email me", kottke.org is the first result....
If you Google "email me", kottke.org is the first result. This may explain all the spam I've been getting. (via two separate most-likely-drunken emails last night)
(link)
The Beginning of a Blog
For anyone who has fallen in love with blogging, you remember those early days when writing 5,000 words a week was like breathing. Of course, back when I started, I wasn't nearly as poignant as Roger Ebert.
Ebertt is following a trend I see of established writers who finally get blogging. Their first few months of posts are filled with topics that have been sitting in a large pile — similar to my pile of New Yorkers — of information waiting to be shared. Yesterday's post from Ebert is a good example of something he's probably thought about a lot but hadn't found the right outlet to share.
Frank Bruni's Diner's Journal started the same way. Now that he has gotten all of the long held tidbits off his chest, he's invited other writers to keep up the output.
This is certainly not a revelation, but it is fun seeing well respected writers following the same trends we've seen from bloggers since the beginning. Unfortunately for all of us, Ebert and Bruni have never written blog posts like this.
Another Strike?
Say it ain't so!
Remember when it was the Writers Guild (WGA) versus the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP)?
Well now it's the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) againt the AMPTP!
In other words, actors (all of them!) might go on strike, which is very, very bad news for us, the audience.
SAG's current deal expires June 30, so we all knew talks were going on. However, we also all hoped that they'd end amicably and there wouldn't be another strike. Well, as of Tuesday afternoon, talks between the alliance and the union shut down, as the AMPTP called SAG's demands for higher residuals from DVDs and Internet content "unreasonable."
Yes, this is pretty much the same argument that went on between the WGA and AMPTP. How come both sides didn't learn their lesson from the strike we just went through? So many people were out of work, and we were out of entertainment.
Fingers crossed this gets resolved quickly.
Apple rolls out 5th beta of iPhone SDK, UIKit still in flux
Apple has released yet another beta SDK to iPhone developers, the fifth of the series. Changes in UIKit and OpenGL ES could cause a lot of work for developers to update their apps.
Rating Systems: Breaking news people: Ed Levine has...
Breaking news people: Ed Levine has decided to start reviewing restaurants for Serious Eats (first one, Terroir is up now). After much careful deliberation, he decided the ideal rating system would be "a report card–like rating system, A to F, with every plus and minus gradation included." [ELE]
Looking for blog recommendations
I'm talking to some BW colleagues about blogging today. Jeff Jarvis was in last week and gave a great talk. In fact, one of my colleagues, whom I already considered a good blogger, came into my office yesterday and said, "I think I finally get blogging." His point was that he always considered the "conversation" politically correct BS. But Jarvis changed his perspective.
Still, these colleagues want to take it back a step, looking at the basics of linking, aggregating, setting up search engines for hunts. We're meeting at 10.
Can you recommend any blogs we should look at as models?
Anything that especially bugs you about blogs, MMS blogs (even this one)?
Thanks.
Dear Virgin Media: if Net Neutrality is "bollocks" then you can get stuffed
Last month, Neil Berkett (the new CEO of Virgin Media, one of my ISPs in London) announced that Network Neutrality was "bollocks" and that Internet services would have to pay for premium connections or be relegated to the "Internet bus-lane." In other words, rather than giving me the sites I asked for as fast as they could, Virgin would henceforth deliver the sites that paid bribes faster than other sites (Virgin tried to spin this by saying that the sites that paid would get priority traffic -- but how do you prioritize one service's packets without de-prioritizing other sites' packets?).I said then that I would resign my Virgin account over this, and now that I'm back in London, I've been able to look up my account number and send off the following letter (they have 28 days to respond, and I'll post their reply here too):
Complaints,Link
Virgin Media,
PO Box 333,
Matrix Court,
Swansea SA7 9ZJMay 7, 2008
To Whom it May Concern:
We are writing to you today to cancel our Virgin Broadband account, having read the remarks of your new CEO, Neil Berkett, in which he described the idea of Net Neutrality as "bollocks," promising that any Internet service that failed to pay off Virgin to deliver its packets would be put into the "Internet bus lane."
We contracted with Virgin Broadband to provide us with access to the Internet, on the implicit understanding that Virgin would supply us with the packets we requested at the highest speeds it could manage. We did not sign up to be used as tokens in a tawdry game in which Virgin demands back-handers from the world's websites in exchange for access to us. We want to access the Internet, not be traded to another inmate for two packs of cigarettes.
We believe that this is a material violation of our agreement with Virgin, that Virgin has substantially altered the nature of the service we are paying for. Therefore in accordance with your own terms and conditions, para, J4, "If we and/or Virgin Media Payments break the terms and conditions of this agreement, you're free to end this agreement" we would ask you to terminate my contract without any penalties or fees.
Sincerely,
See also: Virgin Media CEO: Net neutrality is "bollocks," promises to breach agreement with customers
Investing in the future of the open Internet
Posted By Larry Alder, Product Manager
As you may have read, Google, Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners have entered into an agreement to invest $3.2 billion in a new wireless broadband company. The new company will combine Clearwire's existing consumer WiMAX business with Sprint's broadband infrastructure and 2.5 GHz spectrum to create a new nationwide wireless broadband network. In addition to our $500 million contribution as part of the investment group, we will provide search and applications to the network's users, and will work with Clearwire to offer additional services and applications. This will include jointly creating an open Internet protocol to work with mobile broadband devices (including Android-powered devices) and implementing other open network practices and policies.
We believe that the new network will provide wireless consumers with real choices for the software applications, content and handsets that they desire. Such freedom will mirror the openness principles underlying the Internet and enable users to get the most out of their wireless broadband experience. As we've supported open standards for spectrum and wireless handsets, we're especially excited that Clearwire intends to build and maintain a network that will embrace important openness features. In particular, the network will: (1) expand advanced high speed wireless Internet access in the U.S., (2) allow consumers to utilize any lawful applications, content and devices without blocking, degrading or impairing Internet traffic and (3) engage in reasonable and competitively-neutral network management.
We're looking forward to seeing the Clearwire network take shape and begin to deliver benefits to users, and we will continue to look for new partners to promote openness and bring compelling applications and services to end users. There's more information on Clearwire and the transaction on Clearwire's site.
Nokia releases community gaming tools
Nokia has beefed up its offering to gaming developers, so it’s easier for them to make fun games for us all to play with.
May 6, 2008
Top 9 Iconic Baseball Cards (1990-1994)
Well, we've made it to the last two sets of the Early Nineties Countdown. To celebrate, I've listed the top nine iconic baseball cards from the time period.
1. 1990 Score Bo Jackson FB/BB
2. 1994 Upper Deck SP Alex Rodriguez
3. 1990 Topps Frank Thomas Draft Pick Error (No Name on Front)
4. 1991 Score Jose "The Steroid Stallion" Canseco Dream Team
5. 1991 Topps Stadium Club Nolan Ryan
(and his inexplicable tuxedo)
6. 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas
7. 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter
8. 1991 Upper Deck Michael Jordan (insert)
9. 1991 Studio Steve Lake
10th Card Honorable Mentions: 1990 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson Baseball Heroes (autographed), 1990 Donruss Brian Downing Diamond King (reverse negative), 1990 Donruss Juan Gonzalez (reverse negative), 1990 Score Rookie/Traded Eric Lindros, 1992 Bowman Mike Piazza, 1993 Topps Finest Nolan Ryan (refractor)
Keynote for Print
Here’s how much I like Apple’s Keynote presentation software. I just used it the way I might have used QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign: to create a document intended not for the screen or projection, but for printing, and being held in one’s hand.
The document is my final, outgoing treasurer’s report as I finish up my two-year term as a board member for AIGA New York. (My work isn’t quite finished yet, though, as I’m moving on to the national board.) When I started to create the report, I originally tried to use InDesign and Illustrator, but the prospect of using those lumbering programs seemed slow and tedious compared to Keynote, where all of the charting and graphing tools are built right into the application and are lightning fast.
Simple-headed
There are no style sheets in Keynote, of course, which makes it an impractical tool for complicated documents. Also, in its final form, the report is intended for output on nothing higher in resolution than the laser printer in my office, as Keynote is simply not a serious tool for preparing print-ready documents.
Still, it suited my needs perfectly: fast, lightweight and no-nonsense. Keynote’s completely logical and intuitive approach to design is completely engaging and unexpectedly powerful, given how bare bones it is. Which, compared to the complexity of Adobe’s products, made the process of designing this document fun. That counts for a lot.
Gary
For an hour or two now it's seemed clear that the result in Indiana is going to come down to the results in Lake County and the city of Gary. Now this from the Post ...
As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary -- and possibly the course of the Democratic race -- hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said that his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton."Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you're looking at something for the word to see," Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama's Gary headquarters. "I don't know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here."
Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted -- about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.
Here's some more from the blog of one of the local papers ...
With Hillary Clinton's statewide lead under 40,000, the pending results from Lake County loom large.While Clinton reportedly led voting in cities like Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay is indicating a huge margin in favor of Obama in his city.
It's very lopsided," Clay said, pointing to a hand-written list of precinct results.According to his numbers, in most districts Clinton's turnout in the city of Gary was near non-existent. One district saw 126 voters turn out for Obama, while only four voted for Clinton.
Clay said the election is seeing a record turnout in the city.
"We're used to having maybe a 22, 23 percent turnout for a primary. We're seeing numbers as high as 85 to 95 percent," Clay said. "The Gary people took care of business."
A hand-written list of precinct results?
Flickr Find: Twitter in Mac OS X developer tools
Filed under: Flickr Find
An avid reader of TUAW, Chris Thomson, sent us a link to a Flickr picture (being the nosy people we are, we clicked the link). What we found surprised us -- a Twitter Quartz Composer composition was included as a part of the Mac OS X developer tools for Leopard. "Twitterverse," when tweaked right, can be used as an OS X screen saver and display all of your friends tweets in a graphical way.
You can find this Quartz composition in the ~/Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/XML/The Twitterverse/The Twitterverse.qtz. If you want to add it as a screen saver, just drag it onto the preview in the "Screen Saver" part of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane (in System Preferences.app). You can then add your username / password in the screen saver options.
Thanks, Chris!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Speaking of breaches of trust…
What’s the background on this? Is she just revealing now a private conversation with McCain seven years later? Doesn’t that seem like one of those breaches of the rules of journalism Jay Rosen (Huffington’s partner in the Off the Bus venture that was the impetus for our discussion) wasn’t worried about people breaking?
Update: Huffington, according to the LA Times, claims to have been told by McCain that he didn’t vote for Bush at a dinner party in Hollywood. Sounds kind of like “off the record” to me.
Nau and Never
I've been coveting Nau clothing like a teenager covets Abercrombie and Fitch ever since the line first debuted. Not only does it look simple, classic and comfortable, but Nau produced its clothing with sustainability foremost in its mind, meaning they wanted to make clothes that would last from a product creation process that was efficient and had as little impact upon the environment as possible. Oh, and they would donate 5% of your purchase to one of various charities of your choosing.
Sadly, the sustainability goal Nau couldn't achieve was for its own business. Nau closed suddenly on Friday. I think it's a shame that they didn't start Nau about 5-10 years ago. They might be a stable business by now that could ride out a recession, rather than a new business trying to strike while the iron's... well, freezing cold.
On a very selfish note, this means that their clothes - hitherto prohibitively expensive - are now 50% off. (They'll still set you back, but they're not only for people who live in the Pearl now.) Go shopping here.
Goodbye, Nau. May you inspire other entrepreneurs to marry quality merchandise with sustainable values, and may those entrepreneurs be blessed with better market timing.
CocoaDev Refresh
CocoaDev Refresh
As many of you know, I run a site for Cocoa developers called CocoaDev.
I feel like the site is in need of a refresh, for several reasons. But it's easier said than done. Here are some of the challenges:
When CocoaDev was started, it did not have the "forums" section that it now has, which means people were making Q&A style pages (WhyDoesntMyTableViewWork) starting with a question and followed by a series of answers. Useful info, but poor wiki form.
My preferred form for the wiki pages would be to have only top level topics as pages (say "NSTableView"), which would contain an overview of the class and notes on how it works, its methods, etc. More along the lines of editable documentation pages than ongoing discussions.
Since Q&A discussions are now being mostly routed to the forums, there isn't much churn on new wiki content. This is fine -- wikis should be mainly "encyclopedic". But now it seems backwards to have this active, engaged forum as a "hidden" subsection of a relatively static main site.
Even though the "mailing list mode" wiki pages are bad form, they still contain useful info, so I don't want to completely "reboot" the site and start over with no content.
Pruning or migrating the existing wiki content into any new format is going to be next to impossible. I don't want to do it. You don't want to do it. Everything is so denormalized, I don't know if it CAN be done.
What's more, the wiki engine I chose to use is showing its age. Searches and dynamically generated pages are getting slower and slower. Features like categories and versioning were hacked in as afterthoughts. There are much better engines available for the wiki.
I feel like CocoaDev users would not be happy if they showed up one day and everything was different on the site, but if the change is a completely democratic process, I worry that it will never get done (death by committee). So I'd like to propose a plan, with the intention of following through on it, but listening to your feedback first.
Here is the plan:
What is now the "forums" section becomes the main content at the root of the site. Live, threaded Q&A type discussion seems to be a big draw of the site, and I think it makes sense to put it up front.
The existing wiki becomes a read-only "CocoaDev Classic" section. It retains all of its current information, and Google hits can still redirect to it, but will be clearly marked as legacy.
A new, empty wiki will start under a "Wiki" tab from the main (forums) page. This will adhere to the desired new format and editorial guidelines.
With WWDC coming up, it seems timely to start this process, but before I proceed, I want to at least get some confirmation that you don't think this is the worst idea I've ever had.
If you have comments about this plan, either positive or negative, please email me: stevenf@panic.com
I voted
E (4-year-old): Why does Mommy have a sticker?
D: Because I voted today.
E: Why does Daddy have a sticker? Did Daddy voted too?
Me: That’s right.
E: Why did you voted?
Me: Well, tell me this: who’s in charge of your clothes?
E (uncertain): Um, me?
Me: That’s right. And who’s in charge of this house?
E: Mommy and Daddy.
Me: That’s right. And who’s in charge of the roads outside?
E: Um… somebody else’s Mommy and Daddy?
Me: Well, that’s right, I guess. The people in charge of the roads are part of the “government.” And today we voted, which means we chose who we wanted to be in charge of the roads.
E: Like the men in the trucks?
Me: The garbage trucks, right, that’s part of it. And who do you think tells the garbage truck drivers what to do?
E (more confident than ever): Bob the Builder!Well anyway, I thought that was pretty good for a spur-of-the-moment explanation. How would you explain government to a 4-year-old?
Unsettlers of Catan
^ Photo: The Aeros Aeroscraft ML866 ConceptImagine my surprise reading today’s Grauniad finding George Monbiot coming out as a fan of airships, and more broadly – of advanced technological solutions (“like most greens I’m prepared to try almost anything, as long as it works.” – really George? Shall we go properly nuclear then?)
I’ve long been Col. Blimp in arguments with m’colleague Cheathco on the future of global transport. George’ll be hot for space elevators next, then I’ll really have to find a new schtick, or make him my best mate.
Once I’d calmed down from the initial flush of general airship lust though – the point that stuck with me from the article was this:
“Paradoxically, the other major constraint could be an environmental one. Airships are one of several green technologies which might be killed by a shortage of materials. A new generation of solar panels relies on gallium and indium, whose global supplies appear close to exhaustion(8). The price of platinum, which is used in catalytic converters, has tripled over the past five years(9). Beyond a few natural gas fields in Texas, economically viable supplies of helium are rare; even there they might be exhausted in 50 years at current rates of use, or much faster if airships take off(10,11). If there is a God, he isn’t green.”And that’s the worrying thing – this really seems like a game of what resource will run out – the cheap energy to do the R&D into The Gordelpus, the rare materials to make The Gordelpus, or the sociopolitical will to make The Gordelpus.
It’s like the early stages of a resource-trading game like Settlers of Catan.
If we can just get enough of the vital stuff, we’ll have a runaway advantage later in the play. Which bets shall we make with which resources in order to get that runaway multiplier before it’s too late in the game?
I guess I am with George after all – making some audacious bets mid-game looks pretty good right now.
It’s how we roll.
P.s.: “The Gordelpus” is Olaf Stapledon’s quasi-nuclear magical/religious/scientific endless-power mcguffin of the First Men in his awe-inspiring Last and First Men.
From Chapter 4 of “Last and First Men” (Project Gutenberg version)
A century after the founding of the first World State a rumour began to be heard in China about the supreme secret of scientific religion, the awful mystery of Gordelpus, by means of which it should he possible to utilize the energy locked up in the opposition of proton and electron. Long ago discovered by a Chinese physicist and saint, this invaluable knowledge was now reputed to have been preserved ever since among the elite of science, and to be ready for publication as soon as the world seemed fit to possess it. The new sect of Energists claimed that the young Discoverer was himself an incarnation of Buddha, and that, since the world was still unfit for the supreme revelation, he had entrusted his secret to the Scientists.Bonus (self)link: Olaf Stapledon’s amazing timelines he drew up while conceiving the book.
Photo of the Day: Omakase Bento
As part of her Mother Hen Project, blogger Cia B has been making omakase bentos for some of her coworkers once a week for more than a month. The above bentos contain kale with white beans and sun-dried tomatoes, potato-spinach-fish dumplings served with homemade tomatillo sauce, sardines and celery salad served with flatbread, and a new batch of Fuji apple kimchi. I wish I worked in her office!
Related
How to Pack a Bento Box
Photo of the Day: Deep-Fried Octodogs
Bento Boxes on Flickr
Bento Boxes That Look Like Album Covers
In Videos: Michael Pollan Lectures at Google
Michael Pollan gave a lecture last week at Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters to discuss his book, In Defense of Food, and share simple advice about how to eat healthily and responsibly, but also for pleasure and community.
The video runs for about an hour—half lecture, half Q&A with the Google crowd—but it's worth listening to if you're a fan of Pollan (or if you need an introduction to him). Watch the video, after the jump.
Michael Pollan Lectures at Google
[via Boing Boing]
Related
Review of 'In Defense of Food'
Michael Pollan's Twelve Commandments for Serious Eaters: Can You Live By Them?
Michael Pollan, Joan Dye Gussow, Dan Barber: Healthy, Green, and Hedonistic?
In Videos: Michael Pollan Interview and Lecture
Not a Bug, a Feature ...
From the AP ...
About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.
The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.
"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.
They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."
Curbed has some photos of the construction progress on the...
Curbed has some photos of the construction progress on the High Line. Compare and contrast with some photos I took in early 2004.
(link)
WTF?
It's always hard not to be in charge of your headlines.
This is now live on the front page of The Politico ...
In Ben Smith's defense this seems like a very weird headline for the post they appear to be referring to.
Myrtle the Turtle Survives Paint Attack
Photo via Gowanus LoungeCurbed is reporting on the latest victim of luxury condos: Myrtle the Turtle. Who's behind the act of animal cruelty? All fingers are pointing to the construction workers, who have the same shade of red paint on site at 5 Roebling Street. A neighbor, and friend of Myrtle the Turtle, wrote in:
It is obviously intentional because she got such a sustained spray that it has drip marks. The face and feet, as well. It is the exact color that the excavation people use on the 5 Roebling site to mark elevations on walls adjoining, so they know how deep to dig…The good news is that Myrtle is going to be okay! Her new guardian isn't having any luck returning her to her natural shade, however, so Gowanus Lounge is asking for tips on how to get thick paint off of a turtle shell.
iPhones in Italy
Another short press release. In fact, the URL is longer than the PR itself.
Building the Indic web
Posted by Naren Manappa, Software Engineer, and Melchi Sundararaj, Member of Technical Team
We have come a long way from our first Indic transliteration release to our current support for transliteration in 5 languages -- Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu -- for a broader set of Google products. We are also happy to release our very first English to Hindi translation service. Read on to understand how you can use these services to create, communicate and search in your language, and more.
- Type in your language easily on our Indic Transliteration Labs page.
- Add the transliteration gadget to your iGoogle page.
- Express your views and create more content: Blogger.
- Scrap your friends in your language: orkut.
- Find information: Google Suggest in your language.
You can now also try out our brand new English to Hindi translation service, and the translated search feature that lets you query in Hindi, obtain search results for the translated query in English, and then see the Hindi translations of these results.
● Ampersands
Over at H&FJ, the H talks about the &.
As both its function and form suggest, the ampersand is a written contraction of "et," the Latin word for "and." Its shape has evolved continuously since its introduction, and while some ampersands are still manifestly e-t ligatures, others merely hint at this origin, sometimes in very oblique ways.
He goes on to describe several ampersands they've designed for their typefaces. When designing the ampersand for Silkscreen, I came up with a solution that many continue to dislike:
If you're logged in to Flickr, you can see it action at a more appropriate size in the "prints & more" label above a photo. The symbol is basically a capital E with a vertical line through the middle...an e-t ligature that's really more of an overstrike. I fashioned it after the way I hand-write my ampersand, which I got from my dad's handwriting1. I don't know where he got it from; it's not a common way to represent that symbol, although I did find a few instances in the list of fonts installed on my computer.
I didn't think about this way at the time, but the odd ampersand is one of the few distinguishing features of Silkscreen. There's only so many ways you can draw letterforms in a 5x5 pixel space so a lot of the bitmap fonts like Silkscreen end up looking very similar. The ampersand gives it a bit of needed individuality. (The 4 is the other oddish character...it's open at the top instead of diagonally closed.)
[1] Now that I think about it, I borrowed several aspects from my dad's handwriting. I write my 7s with a bar (to distinguish them from 1s), my 8s as two separate circles rather than a figure-eight stroke, and my 4s with the open top. Oh, and a messy signature. ↩
Terry McAuliffe: Hillary Can Drink John McCain Under The Table!
Looks like Hillary top adviser Terry McAuliffe is really upping the ante when it comes to Hillary's ability to throw back shots with the best of 'em.
Hillary, of course, famously downed a shot of whiskey in the run-up to the voting in Pennsylvania, and today, with Hillary's efforts to court blue collar voters at full throttle, McAuliffe expanded a bit on Hillary's affection for tossing 'em back...
McAuliffe, asked whether her shot-tossing is phony, replied that "she loves to sit, throw 'em back," adding that "she actually beat John McCain in a shot contest. She's a girl from Illinois who likes to throw 'em down with the rest of us."
Hmmm. A bit of an embellishment? Here's the original anecdote, as reported by The New York Times, that appears to be the basis of this:
Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest.Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well -- memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much -- that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. "One of the guys" was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to some Republican colleagues.
McCain subsequently kinda sorta denied it had happened, though he also did say that "it's been 50 years since I'd been in a drinking game," adding that "she can really hold her liquor."
Unclear whether there's any evidence that she won, though.
Inside the world's elite secret societies
Inside the world's elite secret societies
Celebrating National Teacher Day
Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing Manager
Thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt, who in the 1950s persuaded Congress to recognize the importance of teachers with a celebratory day, today is set aside in the U.S. to honor our educators and acknowledge the contributions they make. I know that I speak for everyone at Google when I say that none of us would be where we are today without our teachers. On National Teacher Day, we salute you, the dedicated men and women who taught us much of what we know.
And we invite you to join us, too, at the next installment of the Google Teacher Academy at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California on June 25th. Back by popular demand, the GTA is an intensive one-day professional development event designed to help K-12 teachers get immersed in innovative technologies. Teachers near and far are invited to apply to spend the day with us getting your hands on tools like Google Earth, Google Docs and the entire Google Apps suite. Come, sit in classes, learn some new stuff, and rub elbows with some of your most creative contemporaries who, like you, are changing the world one student and one classroom at a time.
Today, Google for Educators is also pleased to announce the launch of the new Geo Education website, where you'll find oodles of information about Google Earth, Maps, Sky and SketchUp. In addition to spotlighting inspiring lessons from some pioneering teachers, we are also sharing quick tips and ideas for easy ways get started using geo tools in your classroom. Among other things, you'll learn how to take flyover tours of peaks, valleys and gorges, how to view constellations - even in the daytime - and how to make a 3D model of your very own school.
And last but not least, awhile back, we asked teachers to share stories about using Google Docs in the classroom. You told us about your students' collaborative writing projects, about class presentations where kids were engaged in dialog using the "chat" box throughout, and you mentioned being able to be involved in the creative process early on, instead of only seeing the final product. While we were reading, we realized that Docs can be somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated, so we created a getting started document specifically educators -- with tips for signing up, logging in, and working your way through a document -- both in-class and outside.
So happy Teacher Day! We hope you have an enjoyable day during which you get a hundred shiny apples and maybe even a hug from a kid who knows how much you do every day. And we hope to see you at the Googleplex in June, too.
IBM's del.icio.us: A big hit
I was talking yesterday to Irene Greif, an IBM fellow who heads up IBM's collaborative user research, and her colleague, Joan Dimicco. Some nuggets:
IBM's internal social network, BeeHive, has grown from 300 to 29,000 users worldwide since its launch in September. Here's more. One of the popular features, which entices people to share data, is a "top-five" list. People can list top-five of anything: dinners in Paris, R&B songs, favorite books, software projects at IBM. The open-ended aspect of it draws people in, which is what IBM wants. More participation = more connections and more data.
One popular inhouse feature is a Big Blue tagging initiative, similar to Del.icio.us. A few IBMers worked up a little button that fits right next to the Google search box on browsers. With that, employees doing a Web search can also see related documents and sites that their colleagues have tagged.
So, is everyone tagging at IBM? No, I learned. It's only about 10% of participants. But an active minority creates enough value for the other 90%--the so-called lurkers.
Free screening of seventh annual Media That Matters Film Festival in Indiana, USA.
The Lotus Petal Cinema, located in Nashville, Indiana, will be screening the seventh annual Media That Matters Film Festival. Showtimes: Sun May 4 at 1pm, 3:30pm, 6pm & 8:30pm Mon May 5 at 3:30pm, 6pm & 8:30pm This is a FREE EVENT, limited seating on first come basis. Click here for directions.
Opinion: Who Is No. 3?
While Willie Randolph thinks five runs and three home runs allowed in six innings is pitching “pretty well,” as he said to reporters last night, the truth is, Oliver Perez has an ERA above eight in his last three starts.
Last night was encouraging, but even Randolph admits Perez’s inconsistency. Mike Pelfrey is just as unreliable, and unlike Perez, he has yet to find success at the big-league level.
Does that make Nelson Figueroa the current No. 3 starter?
Figueroa may be the least-skilled of the three, and have the least impressive resume, but as of now he’s been the most even-keeled and unflappable - while Perez and Big Pelf tend to unravel under adverse conditions. That said, currently I’d be inclined to give the ball to Figueroa in a “must win” situation. And that’s a bad sign for the Mets.
I’m a huge Figueroa fan, but if he remains their third-best starter, the Mets will have their hands full getting into the postseason. Figueroa should be a pleasant surprise at the back end of the rotation - not a go-to guy. Luckily “It’s early as far as pitching is concerned,” as Randolph said after last night’s game, so there’s time for Perez to get on track - and/or Pedro Martinez to get healthy.
Poutine: Curdy Canadian Comfort
Photograph from iwona kellie on Flickr
Our Quebecois cousins to the North may speak a different language and enjoy the solace of universal health-care, but when it comes to comfort food their North American tendencies peek through in the form of poutine, a fancy word for cheese fries with gravy.
OK, well they're a little more involved than that. The cheese is really a helping of fresh cheese curds, made soft by the heat of the fries, and the gravy is Canadian-style barbecue chicken gravy, which is quite different than traditional American gravy—dark, thick and vinegary. Last weekend the Boston Globe profiled Chez Ashton, a chain of Quebecois fast food restaurants that many consider as serving the best poutine around.
Cheese curds are nuggets of fresh cheese that are removed in the middle of the cheddar-making process (before pressing) and sold separately. When they are very fresh, they make a squeaky sound when you chew them, and are a very popular snack in Wisconsin and Quebec. (And like most American culinary foodstuffs, there is also a deep-fried version of cheese curds, usually available at state fairs and the like.)
In America we enjoy a very similar dish to poutine, but we call it gravy fries. I remember as a kid getting steak fries topped with melted mozzarella cheese and brown gravy at my local Long Island diner. I don't want to know how many calories and grams of fat were in that dish, but to a 16 year old at 2 a.m., nothing could be better. At Nectar's in Burlington, VT, many a stoned Phish fan has enjoyed a midnight helping of gravy fries topped with either chili, shredded cheese or cheese sauce.
Whatever you call it, it's hard to beat the combination of fried potatoes, cheese and gravy. Canadians, who makes your favorite poutine and what makes it special?
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
Ruth Reichl: Ed Levine Eats takes a look...
Ed Levine Eats takes a look at Ruth Reichl's appearance on NY1 last night. She discussed dumpster diving, her famous use of disguises when she was the critic for the Times, and her ambivalence towards what she does: "There's still this voice inside me that says 'Yeah, but all you're really doing is telling rich people where to go to eat.' And if I had thought that was all I had done with my life, it would make me very sad." [ELE; NY1]
Thinking I'll have soup tonight.
Shared by GoldtoeThinking I'll have soup tonight.
Dude. We have an app for that sorta thing.
Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere.
Shared by Adam Rice
I've been wanting this feature ever since I found it on pitas.com.Have you ever wanted to share something that you were reading, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of subscribing to a whole feed for a single interesting article? And what about sharing content from sites with no feeds? There you are, reading along, and you think to yourself, "If only everything on the web had a 'Share' button like in Google Reader!"
As it turns out, there's all sorts of information "out there" just waiting to be streamed, shared and otherwise consumed by you and your friends. Now you can finally show all of your Reader friends that awesome talking cat video you found, your favorite grilled trout recipe, or reviews of the best brunch place in your neighborhood -- all without a subscription.
Here are a few new ways you can add and share interesting things in Reader:
Share anything with a bookmarklet - Just drag this link from the Notes page up to your browser's bookmark bar and click, click, click your way to easy, no-subscription sharing in Reader. You can share any content from any web page, even if the site doesn't have a feed. For even more control over what gets shared, select some text from the page before clicking the "Note in Reader" bookmarklet and your selection will appear as the item's body. There's also a space for you to add an editorial note when you need to let your friends know why you are sharing something. You can always uncheck "Add to shared items" if you want to add something to Reader without also adding it to your shared items.Share items with a note - If you are like me, you might want to share something in Reader, but think your friends might not "get" why you are sharing it. Use the "Share with note" button on the item toolbar to create a copy of that item with your own note attached to it. Now your friends won't have to wonder if the B-movie about an evil floor lamp you shared was intended to be funny, sarcastic, ironic or the real motivation behind your next movie night.
Add a note - Do you ever get the urge to just share a thought with your friends without attaching it to any particular item? Now, you can let your friends know whatever pops into your head (for better or for worse) by typing anything into the text box at the top of the Notes page.
We have also added a few other small features to make your sharing even more awesome! Add a little personality to your public shared items page by choosing from three new styles from your shared items page.
Finally, we've changed the list view to highlight when an item is being shared by a friend, as opposed to through your normal subscriptions.
I hope you like these new sharing features as much as I do, because I'm always on the lookout for even more ways to share cool things with my friends! As always, much of our feature development is in response to feedback that we get in our discussion group, and a number of other sources -- so please keep it coming!
Teacher as Short Order Cook
Shared by Adam Rice
word got out that my quesadillas were “intense.”Examiner column for May 5.
Recently I have been a short order cook in a high school classroom. It all began with the scheduling of five Advanced Placement English review sessions after school. I had a notion that maybe they’d be more fun with food, but didn’t announce that ahead of time.
The first day thirty students arrived and were thunderstruck to find me cooking hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches. “Who’s that for?” they asked. “You!” I replied.
Their jaws dropped open, but shortly thereafter closed again; they were chewing. Oh yeah—we also did some work preparing for the test.
The next session I brought in some homemade chili for chilidogs. Word had gotten out that I was cooking; some just followed their noses. 81 squeezed into a space designed for 60 students.
They starting lining up as though it was a buffet and I had to order them to their seats while I grilled four sandwiches at a time on one grill and a dozen hot dogs on the other. Not a lot of work got done that day.
I bought lots more of everything at Costco (noting that the price of bread and hot dog rolls had increased 10% in two days), and then had an inspired idea: I would make quesadillas for the last two sessions! We’d pretend it was Cinco de Mayo instead of May 1 and eat guacamole, sour cream, tortilla chips, salsa, and chicken quesadillas with hot pepper sauce.
It was a great idea, and one that was only slightly insane. I was beginning to get the hang of talking about Hardy’s poetry over the sounds of a sizzling George Foreman grill. The Tex-Mex review session was a hit and word got out that my quesadillas were “intense.”
The last day dawned and I decided it would be a mop-up operation: move out everything that hadn’t been eaten so far. I didn’t want a single Nathan’s hot dog, quesadilla, or slice of American cheese left over. I prepped all the quesadillas I could with the remaining chicken and added the jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese and salsa. There were about 15 stacked up before the school after school session began.
Then Katie walked in and said, “Can I help?” Sezan wanted in on the action as well. And here is where I learned something I should have known all along: when a teacher models a valuable skill, it’s soon time to step aside and let the students demonstrate that they can do it on their own. And that’s exactly what happened.
Katie made quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, and hot dogs exactly as I had shown her, and Sezan brought out the plates to the students sitting at their desks studying the review packets. I was able to devote my time to my real purpose: teaching. In that last session, as crowded as it was, students were able to work AND eat, and I was able to stay focused on people and not grills.
Katie and Sezan taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes, teachers just need to step aside. At the end of the last session only a few tortilla chips remained. Mission accomplished.
May 6, 2008
As many of you know, I run a site for Cocoa developers called CocoaDev.
I feel like the site is in need of a refresh, for several reasons. But it's easier said than done. Here are some of the challenges:
When CocoaDev was started, it did not have the "forums" section that it now has, which means people were making Q&A style pages (WhyDoesntMyTableViewWork) starting with a question and followed by a series of answers. Useful info, but poor wiki form.
My preferred form for the wiki pages would be to have only top level topics as pages (say "NSTableView"), which would contain an overview of the class and notes on how it works, its methods, etc. More along the lines of editable documentation pages than ongoing discussions.
Since Q&A discussions are now being mostly routed to the forums, there isn't much churn on new wiki content. This is fine -- wikis should be mainly "encyclopedic". But now it seems backwards to have this active, engaged forum as a "hidden" subsection of a relatively static main site.
Even though the "mailing list mode" wiki pages are bad form, they still contain useful info, so I don't want to completely "reboot" the site and start over with no content.
Pruning or migrating the existing wiki content into any new format is going to be next to impossible. I don't want to do it. You don't want to do it. Everything is so denormalized, I don't know if it CAN be done.
What's more, the wiki engine I chose to use is showing its age. Searches and dynamically generated pages are getting slower and slower. Features like categories and versioning were hacked in as afterthoughts. There are much better engines available for the wiki.
I feel like CocoaDev users would not be happy if they showed up one day and everything was different on the site, but if the change is a completely democratic process, I worry that it will never get done (death by committee). So I'd like to propose a plan, with the intention of following through on it, but listening to your feedback first.
Here is the plan:
What is now the "forums" section becomes the main content at the root of the site. Live, threaded Q&A type discussion seems to be a big draw of the site, and I think it makes sense to put it up front.
The existing wiki becomes a read-only "CocoaDev Classic" section. It retains all of its current information, and Google hits can still redirect to it, but will be clearly marked as legacy.
A new, empty wiki will start under a "Wiki" tab from the main (forums) page. This will adhere to the desired new format and editorial guidelines.
With WWDC coming up, it seems timely to start this process, but before I proceed, I want to at least get some confirmation that you don't think this is the worst idea I've ever had.
If you have comments about this plan, either positive or negative, please email me: stevenf@panic.com
Update
Rather than having two wikis (read-only "classic" & read/write "new") I think a better idea is to just start up the new one, and import the current content into a "classic" namespace, leaving the main namespace available for the new content. I like this because it consolidates everything a bit more, and makes for easier migration of old content if it becomes necessary. It doesn't solve the problem of the old content looking terrible after the migration, but at least it keeps all the wiki content in one place, but with the old world still segmented from the new.
Feedback has been almost entirely positive, so I'll probably go ahead with this plan once I have a dull moment -- maybe over the weekend.
May 5, 2008
Getting Satisfaction
It’s not forum software. It’s better. It’s designed from the ground up to be more inviting and less technical than what we traditionally associate with the word “forum”. If you take a quick spin through the site, it’s easy to see, but it wasn’t until after I started using it myself and had a brief chat with Lane Becker, one of several people behind the interface, that I began to realize just how impressive their vision is.
Figure 1 The primary page doesn’t simply provide a link to “make a new post” or something equivalently dry. Instead, it immediately engages visitors with normal language about the primary contexts that a customer or potential customer would use to talk to a business or its representatives.
The site itself is designed to be provide “people-powered customer service”, and it shines through in the attention to detail seen throughout the interface. You can think of it as forums designed to help people more effectively communicate with businesses. More importantly, it also serves as a place where people can help each other regardless of whether or not they’re official representatives of a given company. While some companies may not be ready for this kind of approach, with an option of this caliber, it can only be a matter of time before they come around.
Getting Started
While the site itself is a treasure-trove of interface design gems, I wanted to focus specifically on the task of starting a new discussion. When you arrive at a company’s main page, one of the first things you see is a simple text field inviting you to ask a question, share an idea, report a problem, or start a discussion. (Figure 1) While each of the contexts are similar from a technical standpoint, the distinction between them helps provide valuable context for the ensuing discussion.
Figure 2 Throughout the interface, a simple banner identifies the company, but more importantly, it sets some context and lets you know that people from the company are actually listening and participating.
After getting started by asking a question, the first thing you see at the top of the page is the name of the company with a statement about the level of involvement from that company. (Figure 2) If the company doesn’t have any official representatives, it lets you know that “No one from this company has sponsored, endorsed, or joined the conversation yet.” It’s important that Get Satisfaction doesn’t require a company to sponsor or approve the conversation. This is a powerful default because it enables customers to start conversations and potentially help each other even if no official representatives show up.
We want it to be perceived that if you’re using Get Satisfaction that you’re saying you want to be an open and honest company that wants to engage customers.On the other hand, if the company is actively involved in the conversation, it creates a completely different sense of involvement. Or, as Lane said, “We want it to be perceived that if you’re using Get Satisfaction that you’re saying you want to be an open and honest company that wants to engage customers.” So, the simple statement in the interface that employees are “listening and participating” reinforces the implicit pact between business and consumer. It may seem simple at first, but it’s actually an incredibly relevant piece of information that provides context by letting you know whether you’re shouting into the canyons or speaking directly to people who can and will help you. It’s subtle, but it definitely feels better to know that the company, or at least someone who works for the company, is interested in what you have to say.
Starting a Conversation
Now that you’ve navigated to the right place and understand the level of involvement from the company, you’re ready to start a conversation, and this is where the interface becomes downright fun. While each of the contexts for starting a discussion are essentially the same from a technical standpoint, the interface actually uses a significant amount of real estate to provide context and clarification. (Figure 3)
Figure 3 Instead of simply using radio buttons to help identify the type of message, the types are used to help set context and change the resulting information accordingly despite the fact that the fields are the same regardless of which type is chosen.
In addition to making the context of the discussion so visually important, the field labels change based on the type of conversation that you’re starting. So, for a question, the label is “What’s your question?” whereas the label for an idea is “Tell us about this idea.” (Figure 4) Again, it’s a very subtle but important detail. In most interfaces, these options would be a drop down or radio button at best, but here they’re used as important tools for framing the conversation.
Figure 4 The form fields haven’t changed, but the descriptions and guidance have changed subtly based on the context of an ‘Idea’ instead of a ‘Question’.
Getting Emotional
The one feature that really caught my attention was the ability to tag conversations and comments with emotions, internally referred to as the “Satisfactometer”. (Figure 5) Online, it’s incredibly difficult to convey sarcasm, happiness, or frustration purely through text and words. Within the context of customer service, these emotions are a key part of the experience for both the company and the customer, and the team here clearly recognizes that.
Figure 5 The idea of tagging something surely isn’t a new one, but enabling people to tag something with feelings and emotions is a really interesting and, well, exciting touch.
Figure 6 When you select a face, an additional field is exposed offering you the ability to clarify your feelings with words.
It would be one thing if you could simply choose from the array of facial illustrations, but that’s just the beginning. Of course, 4 facial expressions is nowhere near enough to truly convey a detailed emotion or feeling, so again, they’ve come through with the option of getting a little more explicit with your emotions. After choosing one of the facial expressions, you can add a simple text description providing a more robust explanation of your feelings. (Figure 6)
So, this is getting a bit touchy-feely, but let’s give this an objective look from a usability perspective. Is it intuitive and learnable? Yes. Is it efficient? Yes, although, it does require you to use the mouse, so it’s not perfectly efficient. Is it easy to remember how to use it? Yes. Does it handle errors well? Yes, but really, it almost eliminates the possibility of errors, so that’s a huge plus. What about satisfaction? (No pun intended.) Is it pleasant to use the design? In my opinion, I think it’s exponentially more enjoyable than selecting an emotion from a drop down or a series of radio buttons.
Figure 7 Specifying your feelings doesn’t end with the process of posting. Each discussion keeps track of the general feelings and displays a pleasantly simple bar chart to summarize the “room’s mood”.
So, we’re able to share our emotions, but what happens afterwards? Unsurprisingly, they’ve thought of that too. Whenever you view a conversation of any type, one of the elements in the sidebar is a simple bar chart to help communicate the general feeling of the room. (Figure 7). What makes it interesting is the decision about how to represent it. By using a bar chart with only four categories and not displaying a summary of the associated tags, you’re losing a significant amount of the granularity. However, when you really think about it, the four primary categories are enough to provide a simple and quick overview of the conversation.
Ultimately, it’s not a defining feature, but it’s a great way to help make online interactions more human. Instead of everything being about form fields, numbers, and text, it’s a simple and user-friendly way to make the experience a little more natural. I definitely think that’s worth talking about.
Quality Control
Lastly, after you’ve gone through the form, there’s a status meter to help you gauge the quality of your discussion. (Figure 8) While it would be easy to trivialize, or think that it might discourage people, according to Lane, it actually leads to “more perfectly formed topics because people have this huge incentive to do things right.” So, by providing a quality meter, you can actually provide people with the context and motivation necessary to invest more time in the discussion.
The quality control piece leads to more perfectly formed topics because people have this huge incentive to do things right.What’s more interesting is that the quality meter was an idea from the developers, and they came up with it shortly before launching. So, while they would ultimately need to collaborate with the designer, the inspiration for great interfaces can come from anywhere. One of the encouraging parts of talking to Lane was that they felt that a huge part of why the interface is so successful is that it was truly designed by everybody. Instead of simply having one interface designer that drove the interface, the team worked in a much more collaborative and iterative way that lead to higher quality and more innovative solutions.
Figure 8 While these dynamic bars are common for helping you understand the quality of a password, the idea of using them to help people gauge the quality of the post is fantastic. Naturally, it also provides suggestions for improving that quality.
Summary
Without a doubt, making interfaces more human, inviting, and friendly is a worthwhile goal. I feel like it’s the obvious progression out of simple forms and basic data entry. It takes an incredible amount of insight and experience to recognize the right opportunities and solutions for making an interface more human, but the team behind Get Satisfaction has helped show just how possible and rewarding it can be.
I hope to put together more of these posts going forward and bring the site back to focusing on examples of great interface design. In doing so, two of my goals with each post are to talk to someone involved in the design and also to recognize the people behind the curtain. As I mentioned earlier, at Get Satisfaction, the whole team truly contributes and collaborates on ideas, so there’s quite a few people to mention.
The core product team…
- Lane Becker, President
- Leslie Chicoine, Designer
- Ted Grubb, Front-end Developer & Designer
- Scott Fleckenstein, Rails Developer
- Cameron Walters, Rails Developer
…and, everyone else that contributed…
- Thor Muller, CEO
- Amy Muller, CCO (Chief Community Officer)
- Eric Suesz, Community Manager
VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1
Filed under: Software
VMware has just announced VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, the first beta of the second iteration of their very successful virtualization product for the Mac. As you'll recall Fusion allows you to run a host of OSes on your Intel Mac including, but not limited to, many flavors of Windows.
The above video gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1's top new features, including:
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The beta is available now, and best of all the upgrade to version 2.0, when it comes out of beta, will be free to all Fusion users.
- Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
- Improved networking and printing
- Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
- A refined UI for settings and VM management
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NY Times Crossword Drawings
This is pure genius, and as a crossword lover I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first. Emily Jo Cureton creates a daily illustration for each New York Times Crossword, conjuring an image out of two or more of the puzzle’s clues: NY Times Crossword Drawings
(Thanks, Alex!)
AP/Ipsos: Hillary Takes Seven-Point National Lead Over Obama, Both Beat McCain
While most polls have shown Barack Obama withstanding the latest Jeremiah Wright controversy, the new AP/Ipsos poll shows Hillary Clinton now taking a strong national lead.
The numbers, compared to last week's poll:
Clinton 47% (+4)
Obama 40% (-6)Sample size: 514 Democrats and Democratic-leaners.
Margin of error: ± 4.3%This poll still has some good news for Obama, though: He and Hillary Clinton are both defeating John McCain by similar margins, so Hillary won't be able to take an electability argument away from this:
Obama (D) 46% (+0)
McCain (R) 42% (-2)Clinton (D) 47% (-3)
McCain (R) 42% (+1)Sample size: 1,000 adults, weighted for region, age and gender.
Margin of error: ±3.1%
Goodbye Miss Brooklyn: Ratner Goes to Plan B1
Developer Bruce Ratner and architect Frank Gehry have announced that ‘Miss Brooklyn,’ the 620-foot residential and commercial tower planned for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project, has been scrapped. In its place they’re proposing a building called ‘B1’: a 511 foot tall structure that will now house commercial tenants only. If they can be found – Forest City Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for what will now be 650,000 of commercial space.
B1’s design is markedly different from the sleek Miss Brooklyn, which was to have risen higher than downtown Brooklyn’s tallest building, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Gehry’s redo is an amalgamation of asymmetrical stacked boxes – call it Miss Jenga – that he deems “more festive” than Miss Brooklyn.
A second building, dubbed ‘B2,’ would (theoretically) be built first. It’s a 340-foot building with 350 market-rate and affordable apartments, colored red and pink in order to “speak to the residential fabric of the neighborhood,” according to Gehry.
Atlantic Yards Report notes that the downsizing of Miss Brooklyn is old news, and a rally over the weekend drew hundreds of protesters who oppose the $4.2 billion project. In a Daily News Op-Ed yesterday, Ratner pledged to forge ahead.
Walk Score - Helping homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods.
Calculates walkability for neighborhoods
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by stamen to map walkability - more about this bookmark...
It's Official: John And Elizabeth Edwards Will Not Endorse In Prez Race
John and Elizabeth Edwards have finally made their endorsement plans -- or lack of them -- official.
On the eve of potentially decisive voting in Indiana and North Carolina, with political tensions at white-hot levels, John and Elizabeth revealed all in an interview with People magazine, of all outlets.
The news in the interview is that they confirmed they will not endorse either candidate in the presidential race, because they are "saving their political capital for their own causes -- his, fighting poverty; hers, fighting for universal health care," reports, um, People mag.
John also shared his thoughts on the pros and cons of Hillary and Obama...
On Clinton: "I like something different about Hillary. I think her tenacity shows a real strength that's inside her."What doesn't he like about Clinton? "Um, still a lot of the old politics," John Edwards said.
As for Obama, he says: "Sometimes I want to see more substance under the rhetoric."
But he cited two things he likes about the charismatic young senator from Illinois: "One is, I think he really does want to bring about serious change and a different way of doing things. And secondly, I think it's a great symbolic thing to have an African-American who could be president."
At that, Mrs. Edwards rolled her eyes and, gripping the arms of her kitchen chair with some exaggeration, seemed about to lunge from her seat. "What about the great symbolic thing about a woman ..."
"It's important. It's important," her husband said. "I know it."
Anyone else miss their presence on the political stage right about now?
Late Update: I should qualify that question. There's no doubt that Edwards' presence in the presidential race was salutary in many ways. Whatever his flaws, and whatever you think of his sincerity and/or motives, he forced a focus on certain issues that has basically vanished with his departure.
The presence of the Edwardses had a healthy effect on our political discourse, too. There is little doubt that the decisions by Obama and Hillary to appear on Fox would have been far less easy politically if Edwards, who led the way in taking on the wingnut media, had been in the race to call them out for it. And Elizabeth's constant scolding of the political media for its obsession with trivia and addiction to pre-fabricated narratives amplified the liberal media critique in various useful ways -- even if it was partly motivated by a desire to get her husband more attention.
You needn't have been an Edwards supporter to recognize that these contributions were valuable.
Obamacorn! (via o2b)
Obamacorn! (via o2b)
I think I have a crush on 16-year-old Mena Trott.
I think I have a crush on 16-year-old Mena Trott.
(link)
● Le long Deck
The Deck is a smallish ad network that handles the advertising for kottke.org, which consists of an unobtrusive high-quality advertisement in the sidebar of each page of the site. The Deck recently moved to a spiffy new domain and is no longer so smallish; the network now includes 29 sites.
Some recent additions to The Deck include Ze Frank, Chip Kidd's Good Is Dead, FFFFOUND!, Dean Allen's recently resurrected Textism, Clusterflock, and Aviary.
If you'd like to advertise on kottke.org and 28 other great sites, head on over to The Deck site...we'd love to have you.
writing | ben fry » Data availability is aiming too low: "“Praising companies for providing APIs to get your own data out is like praising auto companies for not filling your airbags with gravel.
... I’m not saying data export isn’t important, it’s just aiming kinda low. You mean when I give you data, you’ll give it back to me? People who think this is the pinnacle of freedom aren’t really worth listening to.”
This is the second rave review I've read of <a...
This is the second rave review I've read of Perfumes: The Guide.
Now there's a book called Perfumes: The Guide, by the husband and wife team of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, which is not just enlightening, but beautifully written, brilliant, often very funny, and occasionally profound. In fact, it's as vivid as any criticism I've come across in the last few years, and what's more a revelation: part history, part swoon, part plaint. All of the other reading I was supposed to do was put aside while I went through it, and it took me some time to finish, in part because I was savoring it and in part because I kept stopping to copy out passages to e-mail off to friends. In the library of books both useful and delightful, it deserves a place on the shelves somewhere between Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies and Brillat-Savarin's incomparable Physiology of Taste.
The first review was this New Yorker article:
The joy of Turin and Sanchez's book, however, is their ability to write about smell in a way that manages to combine the science of the subject with the vocabulary of scent in witty, vivid descriptions of what these smells are like. Their work is, quite simply, ravishingly entertaining, and it passes the high test that their praise is even more compelling than their criticism.
Perfume is one of those things that I don't particularly like in real life but that I really enjoy reading about.
(link)
Google's chart of character encoding adoption on the web
last December, Unicode beat out ASCII and Western European encodings for the first time
Losing His Religion
TPM Reader H- sees what's been a recurrent pattern that makes more sense of the Indiana polls ...
I think if you read the polling results of the various Indiana polls carefully, they are not as variable and contradictory as they might first appear. Nearly every poll in the last week has put Obama's number within one or two points of 43%. On the other hand, Clinton's numbers have varied much more dramatically in the 42-54% range. That variation tends to correlate negatively with the number of undecideds. So it would seem that what's going on is both candidates have solid bases of support in the low 40s, but when you start pushing less firm voters, they go overwhelmingly for Clinton (an indication that Zogby himself has also acknowledged). This still isn't very good news for Obama, but it does mean that pushing his supporters out and changing a few minds gives him a decent shot at keeping Indiana close.I want to make a totally separate point. I agree with your posts from about a month ago about how irrational it is for a Democratic voter supporting the losing primary candidate to defect to McCain in November, since Clinton and Obama are so close on the issues compared to McCain. But I have to say, as someone who was marching in New Hampshire in 1991 for Bill Clinton, who ran the campus Democrats for his '92 campaign, who interned in his White House, who argued against impeachment at every turn, who even defended the pardons, who has been an enormous and unwavering admirer, and who has been disgusted with his own parents for their seemingly irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton, there is something about the way she has run this campaign. From having people on her campaign raise Obama's drug use, to her jumping on the bandwagon for every right-wing cheap shot, to her new populist, "got no truck with economists" stance, its been craven. More craven than I could possibly imagine.
If somehow against all odds she got nominated, I'd vote for her, but I'd do so utterly unconvinced that the quality of her leadership wouldn't bring about disastrous results no less than the disastrous results that McCain's wrongheaded policies and own cravenness would bring about. Yes, her policy positions would be much better than McCain's. But if she's this divisive, this self-preserving, this craven, I think the results can still be horrible, even with policy positions that are much closer to mine. At this point I feel like it would be the hardest vote for a Democrat I'd ever cast.
Now, I'm a Democratic fundraiser. And as detailed above, a very long time Clinton supporter. If I'm this repulsed, if it seems this craven to me, and I'm this pessimistic about her leadership, can I be alone? That doesn't even factor in the breach with younger voters, netroots activists, and African-American voters a Clinton nomination would bring about at this point.
Had to get that off my chest.
Manhattan: 1941
Jack Delano for the Office of War Information
average American consumer spending
Nice graphage wifi geographical mapping
TPMCafe Book Club: Fareed Zakaria
We have an especially good line-up this week at the TPMCafe Book Club. Joining Fareed Zakaria to discuss his new book, The Post-American World, are The Atlantic's Matt Yglesias, Ann-Marie Slaughter of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, journalist David Rieff, and Michael Lind of the New America Foundation.
The discussion is underway, so stop by and join in.
Decoding the Netflix 100
Decoding the Netflix 100
● Grant Achatz in the New Yorker
The New Yorker profiles chef Grant Achatz this week. The piece focuses on his restaurant, Alinea, and the battle with tongue cancer that threatened his life, and worse to Achatz, his career and passion. The loss of his sense of taste had a bright side:
Because his ability to taste has come back over time, Achatz feels that he is understanding the sense in a new way -- the way you would if you could see only in black-and-white and, one by one, colors were restored to you. He says, "When I first tasted a vanilla milkshake" -- after the end of his treatment -- "it tasted very sweet to me, because there's no salt, no acid. It just tasted sweet. Now, introduce bitter, so now I'm understanding the relationship between sweet and bitter -- how they work together and how they balance. And now, as salt comes back, I understand the relationship among the three components."
In the Diner's Journal, Pete Wells contrasts Achatz with another chef that the New Yorker recently profiled, Momofuku's David Chang.
In March, The New Yorker published a profile of a chef who was about to open a restaurant. The chef complained about his health, worried about the future and cursed as if he had slammed his thumb in a car door.
On Monday, the magazine will publish a profile of another chef. Last year a doctor told this chef that he had advanced oral cancer and that unless he had his tongue cut out, he would be dead within a few months. According to The New Yorker, the chef reacted as if he'd just been handed a particularly challenging logic problem.
The point of the contrast is not to marginalize Chang's problems or his reaction to them but to demonstrate what a different approach Achatz takes to kitchen work than the typical (stereotypical?) Anthony Bourdainity of the restaurant kitchen.
The NYer article includes an online companion, a slideshow of photos of the latest menu items at Alinea and chef Achatz, looking very Seth Bullock.
Leona Lewis, Vegan Fashion Designer
Apparently, having a number one single on iTunes isn't enough for some girls - they also have to design clothes.
That's the word from the UK, where the super-cute Leona Lewis has announced her latest project: a vegan clothing line made with cruelty-free materials.Lewis has been a vegetarian since she was twelve, and doesn't wear leather or fur - though judging from a quick Google Image search, pleather is totally okay, especially if it comes in a tight cut and a sparkly, metallic color.
In fact, maybe Lewis' line can be the antidote to Natalie Portman's own vegan collection, a series of shoes for Te Casan that are priced from $200 - $500. If we can get a pair of vegan black ballet flats for $30, we are so game - especially if, unlike Stella McCartney's, they don't fall apart after two weeks.
Lindsay Lohan Gets Ugly
Lindsay Lohan has officially started her guest spot on Ugly Betty. Apparently the party girl showed up for her first day of work on Saturday, and not only did she arrive on set early, but sources say she actually did a good job!
Lindsay's playing an old high school friend of Betty's and will be appearing for five episodes. Think it'll go more of the Mean Girls route or do you think Lindsay's character may have actually been really nice to Betty?
I wonder if all of the problem celebs will follow this new trend. First Britney went on How I Met Your Mother and the world watched in shock as she actually seemed... normal. Maybe Betty will change our opinion of La Lohan?
Read: Pelfrey Sees Himself in Webb
In the New York Times, Ben Shpigel wonders if Mike Pelfrey can come close to following the same career path as Brandon Webb, however, Saturday’s duel was indicative of the distance between them.
Shpigel writes:
“Webb, despite giving up a three-run homer in the sixth to Carlos Delgado, improved to 7-0 because he relied on his trusty sinker to record 12 groundouts over six innings. In Webb, Pelfrey sees a more — much more — advanced version of himself. More precisely, he sees what he aspires to become.”
…it is easier said from here, but my observation is that pelfrey needs to just trust his stuff and let it fly…for whatever reason, it looks like his preoccupied with being too perfect which equals too many walks…let if fly mike and pound the strike zone…
Meanwhile, at his ESPN.com blog, Buster Olney describes how WFAN broadcaster Howie Rose noted that Pelfrey worked extra hard to get moisture on his hand.
Buzz: Mets discussing Turnbow
According to John Delcos of the
Journal News, the Mets are discussing whether to sign reliever Derrick Turnbow, who was recently designated for assignment by the Brewers.
Turnbow, an All-Star in 2006, is 0-1 with a 15.63 ERA in eight games this season.
By the way, keep an eye on Delcos’s blog for the Journal News before and after every game for news and notes about the Mets.
May 4, 2008
Buffalo!
My new favorite sentence in the English language:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
It's a grammatically correct sentence that utilizes three different meanings of the word "buffalo": one as an adjective, one as a noun, and one as a verb. Pay close attention to the capitalization!
It sort of makes you appreciate the difficulty of learning English (or any language, for that matter).
Hence, the fanatical devotion of fans of Crazy English, maybe? From the New Yorker article about Li Yang's shouting-as-learning program:
Li's cosmology ties the ability to speak English to personal strength, and personal strength to national power. It's a combination that produces intense, sometimes desperate adoration. A student named Feng Tao told me that on one occasion, realizing that he had enough cash for tuition to an out-of-town Li lecture but not enough for train fare, "I went and sold blood."
Thumb on the Scales
As some mix of manic euphoria, delirium and exhaustion settles over Democrats nationwide, it's worth stepping back from the clamor for a moment to consider just why it is the Democrats have superdelegates (which the Republicans don't have) in the first place and whether the whole concept should be abolished.
Obama supporters say that the superdelegates as a group should not overturn the verdict of the primary and caucus election process while Clinton supporters say that it's precisely the point of the super delegates to make their own considered judgment about who the party's nominee should be regardless of the tally of pledged delegates. And while I strongly agree with the first point there is no denying that the second is true.
In fact, that puts too gentle a gloss on it. Coming out of the 1970s, the Democratic party establishment created the superdelegates precisely to put a brake on the power of "the groups" or activists, which was shorthand for, and not necessarily in this order, the hippies, the blacks, the gays, the feminists, the environmentalists and everyone else suspected of driving the Democratic party to left of the American mainstream and out of contention in national elections. In this view there were ordinary Democrats on the hand and these assorted freaks on the other who came out every four years and out-organized the former group to nominate rotten presidential candidates who got slaughtered in national elections.
The more palatable argument was that the superdelegates balanced out the idealism of party activists with the more pragmatic experience of party regulars and elected officials who actually had experience winning elections. But however you argue it, the supers were put there precisely to second-guess the results of the primary and caucus process.
And there the decision stood, fixed almost as though in amber, after 1982 when the rules were put into effect. But it never really mattered because all the races since then either had a clear plurality winner or didn't even go on long enough for the superdelegates to really be an issue. And now we wake up more than twenty years later wondering just why we have these superdelegates in the first place.
Before being too judgmental toward the people who came up with this bright idea, we should note that the Democratic party was a very different thing and in a very different place than it is today -- at mid-point in an agonizing process of molting from the dominant but bifurcated party of mid-century America to the very different party it is today. With that said though, this was 1982, not 1782. So I doubt very much that the concept would have withstood its actual application -- that is, having the superdelegates overrule the pledged delegate tally -- even back then. Indeed, it's not only that the concept is less palatable today. The sociology of the party is simply different. zz
It was just a bad idea that got kept on the books because it seemed not to have any application in practice other than to give federal officeholders and sundry party bigwigs credentials to attend the conventions.Now here's one more nugget to consider. As you may know, there are almost 800 superdelegates and they're divided roughly equally between elected officials and party officials. While I think the superdelegate system should probably be scrapped in its entirety, I think the rationale for the elected folks is far, far greater than for the party folks. The electeds are basically every Democratic member of Congress, Democratic governors and then a few miscellaneous folks like ex-presidents, ex-vice presidents and ex-congressional leaders. These folks are actually elected by Democrats fairly frequently. And if they abuse the power they can be held accountable at the ballot box.
Now, back in February, Susan Estrich wrote a piece about just how the decision got made back in 1982. She was against the superdelegate concept because she was on the Teddy Kennedy team (long story), but was on the Rules Commission that set up the system. She has a good run-down of just what the politics were at the time. But if I read her correctly, she seems to say that what the Rules Commission decided was basically just to make the elected folks superdelegates. It was only later that the DNC added its own membership to the list of supers.
Just to recite the catechism, these are the rules this process is being run under. No changing the rules in midstream. But once this race is over and everybody can reconsider this matter without having to think about how it effects one particular candidate or another and either strip the list down to members of Congress and governors (and the ex-presidents, speakers, et al.) or get rid of the whole idea entirely.
Why Nas Loves Yoko
Kinda random but I'm not gonna knock Nas for this, I've always liked Yoko (she is WBAI fam!). Nas Thanks Yoko Ono For 'Breaking Up The Beatles' Outspoken rapper Nas has applauded Yoko Ono for reportedly splitting up The Beatles...
No More
Josh MacPhee No More $20 A police badge is not a license to beat and kill. There is evidence that increases of police violence and weaponry precede increases of violent crime in communities. 2 color silkscreen print 19"x25" signed/unnumbered
Barack Obama on Meet The Press
Video of Barack Obama on Meet The Press with Tim Russert. They discusses Reverend Jeremiah Wright in great detail.MR. RUSSERT: On Friday you said, "It's been a rough couple of weeks." An understatement. What has the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright done to your campaign? SEN. OBAMA: Well, obviously it's distracted us. I mean, we ended up spending a lot of time talking about Reverend Wright instead of talking about gas prices and food prices and the situation in Iraq. And so it, it's, it wasn't welcome. But, you know, I think that the American people understand that when I joined Trinity United Church of Christ, I was committing not to Pastor Wright, I was committing to a church and I was committing to Christ. And it is a wonderful church. It's a member of the United Church of Christ, a denomination that dates back to the battles around abolition. It has lived out, I think the, the social gospel by dealing with poverty and providing shelter to the homeless and, and working on critical issues that make me very proud. And, as a consequence, when Reverend Wright, who married me and baptized our, our children, when he made those statements, or I learned of those statements that I found so objectionable, I, I felt that they didn't define him. And so I spoke in Philadelphia about these issues and tried to construct, you know, a, a conversation about issues of race. But when I saw, this week, him come out and speak in a way that was just as divisive, that didn't explain or apologize, but rather worsened some of the comments that he had made previously, I felt it was very important to make clear that that's not who I am, that's not who I stand for. I don't think it represented well the church or the African-American church. And I had to make a clear statement. Hopefully we've been able to put it behind us.
they don’t make ‘em like they used to
they don’t make ‘em like they used to
Stencil Nation
Long time friend Russell Howze, who has been running StencilArchive.org for years, is about to release a new stencil book that looks really promising! It's called Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community and Art, and it's the only book I've seen since I released Stencil Pirates that attempts to deal with the ideas behind stenciling, where it actually comes from, and how it effects the world we're in. And unlike my book, Russell found a publisher who could print in full color, so you get the best of both worlds, a coffee table picture book and some thoughtful writing to chew on. It's slated for a June 1st release date on Manic d Press out of San Francisco. Russell will be touring around the country, so keep an eye on the book's website for dates, and keep an eye on your local bookstore to scoop up a copy.
Hillary On Wright: "We Should Move On"
"We should move on."
That's what Hillary just said during the Indiana town hall when asked by a voter whether the Wright controversy should remain an issue in the campaign.
Then, pressed by George Stephanopoulos as to whether she was saying Wright shouldn't be part of the campaign at all anymore, Hillary said: "People talk about it. there's no doubt that people talk about it." She added that people would elect a president based on the solutions he or she is offering.
A week or so ago, Hillary chief strategist Geoff Garin also said that we should "move on" from Wright, but Hillary subsequently hit Wright in harsh terms on Fox News.
The Clinton campaign message on Wright has proceeded on two tracks: High-mindedly saying that he shouldn't be an issue in the campaign while simultaneously saying that he is something that voters care about.
The latter, of course, helps ensure that he remain an issue.
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