randomwalks/dj

Kenny Shopsin, the proprietor of NYC institution Shopsin's, is coming out with a cookbook. Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin is out in September.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 24, 2008 2:14 PM

Examiner column for May 26.

    Students often remember their teachers, but teachers remember students just as vividly. This is the case with a student from George Mason University whom I haven’t seen in nearly 25 years, but whose words on the Vietnam War I read every year to my classes.

    Of all the possible ways to remember those who have died in battle, Ed Cherry’s essay on the death of a Marine holds the most power for me.  Written shortly after the opening of the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall, the essay begins with Ed looking for the names of his lost buddies in vain, since he knew them only by nicknames. But one winter day, he recognizes the name of Wilfred Lynn Donaho, and then it all comes back to him.

    During the monsoons of 1969, Lynn was killed in a firefight, but the weather prevented him from being airlifted out. “We’d have to carry him out, and that’s what we did. We strapped him to a pole and began the long walk home, the walk Lynn would never make.”

    On Day 5 when Ed’s company had to negotiate a steep cliff in the rain, they tried to lower Lynn with ropes made out of vines. The vines broke, and they watched in horror as Lynn tumbled to the bottom.
 
    “I cried in Vietnam, more than once, but I never cried in front of anyone until that day. We wept for ourselves, for what we were putting ourselves through, we wept for Lynn, for what we were putting him through, and I think we wept for every soldier in Vietnam.”

    They continued to carry Lynn out, and Ed “wanted to remember every detail of that operation,” yet he, like other Vietnam veterans, returned to the U.S. and put his experiences behind him. He felt disconnected from that jungle trek until the day when he found and touched Lynn’s name on The Wall.

    “Not only did The Wall radiate the life of the dead, it seemed to beat with the pulse of Lynn, and the pulse shook The Wall and every man and woman it represents, and The Wall was alive. And I was more alive than I ever had been since I came home. I finally remembered, and I was finally alive. God bless you, Lynn. God bless you.”

    Ed’s essay has moved hundreds of my students, and helped them understand how war shapes those lucky enough to return. Each year I marvel at its undiminished power.

    Just as touching Lynn’s name brought Ed to life that day in January, his essay brings to life a war we often try to forget, but must not forget. It brings to life the sacrifices many made, and the contradictions that made the war an enigma.

    Teachers are only as good as the material they teach, and often that means we must let another’s words do the teaching. Ed’s essay holds as much classroom power today as it did twenty years ago and is always met with a stunned silence. For me as well as my students, Ed’s memories of Lynn keep the meaning of Memorial Day alive.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on May 23, 2008 5:26 PM

I recently happened upon Khoi Vinh’s post concerning the relationship between studio size and quality of design.

It pleased me.

Mike and I founded Mule coming out of the expansionist 90s. We experienced what happened when design teams became ever larger and agencies accumulated talent like client-services Katamari.

Great design emerges from the right combination of individuals working together to solve a problem. Interpersonal chemistry is staggeringly significant and individuals are not interchangeable.

Design studios should have a voice, and the more people you add, the more dilute that voice becomes, the more serviceable and bland. Simultaneously, it becomes more difficult to guarantee the same high standard of work, as Khoi points out.

So, now, as we anticipate entering into our own phase of growth, cautiously, and with trepidation, we seek the Mules that may already be out there in the world, ready to team up.

Mule Design is hiring!

Originally posted by erika from Mule Design : Off the Hoof, on May 23, 2008 2:26 PM

Hi, my name is Fred Benenson and I’m Creative Commons’ Cultural Program Associate working in New York City. I’ll be blogging about and working on all things CC in the Big Apple. Without further ado, I’m happy to announce that the eighth annual Media that Matters Film Festival is about to begin in downtown Manhattan. The festival showcases shorts created by young filmmakers and releases them after the festival under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Arts Engine, the non-profit that organizes and hosts the festival also sells region-free unencrypted CC licensed DVDs of all the films that can be shown in any non-commercial setting.

A description of the festival from The Media That Matters site:

From gay rights to global warming, the jury-selected collection represents the work of a diverse group of independent filmmakers, many of whom are under 21. The films are equally diverse in style and content, with documentaries, music videos, animations, experimental work and everything else in between. What all the films have in common is that they spark debate and action in 12 minutes or less.

A short from the sixth Media That Matters film festival, “A Girl Like Me” made its way on to Oprah’s television show, and has since racked up almost a million views on YouTube. Check out previous MTM festivals online here and here.  The premier of all the shorts from MTM 8 will be happening on Wednesday, May 28th at the IFC Center in Manhattan, so buy your tickets now.

Originally posted by Fred Benenson from Creative Commons » CC News, on May 23, 2008 2:14 PM

Filed under: Video, Developer, Found Footage

Over at Theocacao Scott Stevenson has posted the video of his Introduction to Cocoa talk (entitled "Best of Both Worlds") aimed at those who want to learn a bit about Apple's preferred API for building OS X applications. The talk runs to over 90 minutes and includes "an introduction to Xcode, Interface Builder, Objective-C, Mac UI standards and more."

For anyone who has ever wanted to figure out what those developers tools are all about this is definitely worth (the rather large) download (scroll down towards the bottom) though it seems that a lot of folks are have problems getting the whole file (myself included). There's also a torrent available.

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Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on May 23, 2008 2:00 PM

Rave review of the Kindle by Justin Blanton, who is a gadget freak of the first order.

I love the Kindle, and totally see myself using and enjoying it (and its progeny) for many years to come. I'm reading more because of it, and seriously doubt I'll ever read a paper book again.

It still looks like the Pontiac Aztek of e-readers but it solves one of the things I dislike about reading in bed:

One of the nicest things about the Kindle, and something that is inherent in such a device, is that, unlike a regular book, its orientation and weight aren't constantly shifting. With a paper book, you are made to move [it] around as you shift from the left to the right page, flip pages, etc. With the Kindle however, all of that shifting disappears and you can hold your chosen position indefinitely.

Such a "feature" generally allows you to expend less energy when reading. For example, I like reading in bed while lying on my side. With a paper book you have to constantly hold the book to keep it open and to move it slightly depending on whether you're reading the right or left page; with the Kindle, you can just let it rest on the bed and then tap the next-page button as needed. I realize that this may sound like a trivial thing to devote a paragraph to, but it really is amazing how such a device can change the way you read, or make the way you're used to reading that much better.

As Justin notes, Kindles are back in stock at Amazon.

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Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 23, 2008 1:30 PM

New York Governor David Paterson has granted Slick Rick, né Ricky Walters, a pardon for the 1990 shooting of his cousin and an innocent bystander. The pardon may finally put a halt to the repeated attempts to deport the British-born rapper that began after his release from jail in 1997 and dragged on through numerous appeals and his arrest by the INS in the summer of 2002 upon returning to Florida on a cruise ship. Federal statutes mandate the deportation of alien felons but today's pardon should allow Walters to remain in the US.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on May 23, 2008 11:57 AM

If you need proof that Cooks.com lets anyone submit recipes:

Wiener water soup

1 pkg. wieners
3 c. water

Combine wieners and water in a two quart saucepan. Bring to a boil until wieners are cooked. Throw the wieners in the garbage. Serve soup. Serves 3.

The NYC hot dog vendors should think about branching out into soup. (via serious eats)

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Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 23, 2008 11:57 AM

This one if for all of my fellow Twin Peaks dorks. If for some reason you haven't heard of Twin Peaks first read this and then go to amazon and buy this.


Kyle MacLachlan - "Diane... The Twin Peaks Tapes Of Agent Cooper"
Download It

Originally posted by Damn Those Blood Suckers from Damn Those Blood Suckers And Their Good Qualities, on May 23, 2008 10:38 AM

In commercials for Domino's Pizza, the chain's employees wage a never ending battle against the Noid, a gremlin who delays deliveries and carries a gun that can turn a pizza ice cold. Many viewers are amused by the Noid, Domino's says, but one of them took the advertising campaign personally. Last week Kenneth Noid, 22, walked into a Domino's Pizza shop in Chamblee, Ga., with a .357 Magnum revolver and took two employees hostage. When police arrived, he demanded $100,000 in cash, a getaway car and a copy of The Widow's Son, a 1985 novel about secret societies in an 18th century Parisian prison.

All Noid got was the pizza he ordered. After a five-hour siege, the two employees slipped away and Noid gave himself up. According to police, Noid has "psychological problems" and believes that he has an "ongoing dispute with Tom Monaghan," the head of the Detroit-based Domino's chain.

Time Magazine, you're making that shit up. (via lonelysandwich)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 23, 2008 10:33 AM

During a meeting with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, Hillary appeared to accuse the Obama campaign of being behind the story CNN aired today reporting that there are "talks" between the two campaigns about her getting out of the race and possibly becoming veep.

"That's flatly untrue -- flatly, completely untrue," Hillary said when asked about "reports" of such talks. The edit board meeting is being aired live, and is still underway.

"No discussions at all," Hillary continued. "It is not anything I'm entertaining. It is nothing I've planned. It is nothing I'm prepared to engage in."

Both campaigns denied the story earlier today.

A bit later, Hillary added: "This is part of an ongoing effort to end this before it's over."

Later still, Hillary brought the hammer down: "I would look to the camp of my opponent for the source of those stories," she said.

So much for a non-aggression pact as the race draws to a close.

Late Update: It should be pointed out that the CNN story actually is explicitly sourced to people in Clinton's inner circle. What's more, Hillary's top finance chair today pushed the idea of her as veep.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 23, 2008 10:26 AM

Look at all the lovely things Gamasutra has to say about Heather Kelley, whom we all know is one of the top 20 women in the videogame industry.

I always thought the Gamasutra 20 was the weight you gain after your first year in the industry (damn you snack bar!). Live and learn.

Originally posted by cloo from Kokoromi Collective, on May 23, 2008 8:35 AM

Peter Parasol #2 went live this week and features poems that, in very different ways, are inspired by or interact with an artwork by S. Lariviere.  The piece "The Gasp Mechanism" is a vibrant hybrid of tapestry, quilt and collage.  Bits of text and images come together through what seems to be a very spontaneous and intuitive process.  But cutting and stitching these materials also take time, and I began to wonder how these "pauses" determined the placement of certain elements.  In Bobbi Lurie's poem, the speaker observes that "the material of a painting allows the brain another region to believe in."  This is beautifully stated.  There is a long standing, productive exchange between the visual arts and poetry.  In "The Gasp Mechanism," for instance, the visibility of the seams and the way in which ribbons created internal frames sparked new ways of thinking of line, break and juxtaposition in poetry.

My contribution to this issue is a poem titled "Mechanism" (and includes an audio reading of the poem).  I didn't set out to describe the piece but rather to take certain visual juxtapositions and see what could happen to them in the "blank" space of the poem.  Somehow this fused with the myth of Cassandra.  The image that appears in this post is a snapshot of one of my favorite details, "the rooster becomes a scythe."

Peter Parasol is currently accepting submissions for issue #3.

Originally posted by Adriana from Stingy Kids, on May 23, 2008 8:14 AM

Rarely do the two chief campaign flacks, Howard Wolfson and Bill Burton, agree. But they both tell TPM Election Central that CNN's report this morning that there are formal talks between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over her dropping out of the race and getting the VP nod are "100% false."

Now that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't some sort of back-channel communications going on. I'd be surprised if there weren't. These people aren't strangers to each other. They've all been involved together in Democratic politics for a long time. They talk. But as I said before, I'm skeptical that these discussion amount to anything approaching "formal talks."

At the same time, I don't doubt that CNN had what it considered to be well-placed Clinton sources feeding them these various scenarios for how the VP selection will play out and what her role might be. As I said before, it's noteworthy in itself that some elements of Clinton's supporters are making these kinds of noises.

In fact, Hillary's top fundraiser, Hassan Nemazee, in an interview with TPM Election Central today, may have gone as far anyone in the Clinton camp thus far in essentially demanding she get the vice presidential nomination -- or else:

"[T]here's a risk that if she isn't invited on the ticket, Hillary's political and financial supporters may not feel compelled to be as integrated and involved in the Obama campaign in order to provide the maximum support that he'll need to prevail in November."

If she does get out of the race before the convention -- which I think is still the most plausible scenario -- it will be only after extensive negotiations over all manner of issues, political as well as personal. Today's rumblings may just be the start to those negotiations. And as any good negotiator knows, your opening position better be as favorable to you as possible and then some.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 23, 2008 7:59 AM

Screen is a full-screen window manager for the console, that comes with every flavour of Linux and UNIX. It is best known for multiplexing a physical terminal across several processes. By using it, you can run any number of console-based applications within a single terminal.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from All about Linux, on May 23, 2008 7:04 AM

happy memorial day weekend! [via]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 23, 2008 6:32 AM

Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends

MacMinute was one of my favorite Mac news sites, so it was with some sadness that I saw that its founder, Stan Flack, died back in April. The site has been quiet for a while, and now Flack's family has announced that they have decided to shut down the venerable Mac news site after serious efforts to keep it going fell through.

Flack founded MacMinute back in 2001 not long after selling his original Mac news site MacCentral to Macworld in 1999. It is with respect that we at TUAW note the passing of this pioneer of the Mac web and add our condolences to many others out there among the community of Mac centered sites.

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Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on May 23, 2008 6:30 AM

Unlike the US government, Hasbro lets you print out your own Monopoly money. There are PDFs for 1,5,10,20,50,100, and 500 dollar bills.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 23, 2008 6:02 AM

• Congress Gives Oil Execs a Tongue Lashing Over Fuel Prices (NYT)
• $4/Gal Gas Weakens Ford and American Auto Industry (NYT)
• Rep. James Oberstar Tweaks Federal Transit Funding Formula (GGW)
• Bloomberg: Growth in Ridership May Be More Than Transit System Can Handle (AMNY)
  
• Double-Decker Buses Coming Back to Fifth Avenue (AMNY, Post, NYT)
• G Train Riders Ask for Better Service (NYT)
• MTA Board Approves Hudson Yards Deal (News, NYT)
• Nassau Exec Suozzi Vows to Crack Down on DWI (News)
• Why Sidewalk Water Fountains Would Work in NYC (NYT)
• Brooklyn Bridge, 125 Years Old, May Become More Transit-Oriented (News, NY1)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 23, 2008 4:58 AM

I'm really, really busy this week so I thought I'd look for a pattern picture that also had a lot going on. But the more I look at this one, the more I can't figure out what the heck is going on here (and the more I like this dress).

First off, it's rare for there to be a random guy in a pattern picture. (For all that people think the clothes of the 1950s were all about dressing for me, you'd think that there'd be more blatantly goggling men in the pattern pictures.) And what is this Random Guy doing? Is he painting or drawing the model? If so, why does the model in the picture have a completely different hairstyle and different sleeves? Is it really a picture, or a door opening from another dimension, from whence Bad Fuchsia Dress lady has come to wreak havoc? Or is she saving her past self from the predations of Random Guy (who also has a chandelier of some sort growing out of his ears, he should have that taken care of), wearing a similar dress to reassure herself? [Making note: if ever need come from the future to save my past self, wear favorite clothes to project air of trustworthiness.]

And, perhaps most puzzlingly: where's the other legs of the chair? And why isn't it falling over, since PastSelf/LongSleeveLady is putting some weight on it?

Only questions, with no answers. Can anyone help?

(If you want the pattern, not answers, click on the image to visit the eBay auction.)

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on May 23, 2008 3:53 AM

Michelle Williams returned to the red carpet for the first time since Heath Ledger's passing. She looked absolutely stunning as she promoted her new film Wendy and Lucy.

A rep for the movie told People:

""It was decided on Monday night that she could come to Cannes, and she got on the next plane to arrive just in time to get dressed and come to our premiere. She came in and had a long nap and then came to the screening."

Michelle then stayed in Cannes to promote a second movie she's appearing in, Synedoche, New York. Next she's flying to Boston to continue filming a Martin Scorsese flick.

Good for Michelle. She looks beautiful and is staying busy. We only wish the best for her!

P.S. Hi all -- Jacki here. Tracy's off for the day, but don't worry - she'll be back next week :)

Originally posted by Jaclyn Garfinkel from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on May 23, 2008 3:44 AM

brooklyn bridge fireworks. (via yatta)

I was on the Q train back to Brooklyn when all of a sudden, the fireworks for the 125th Anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge began. The conductor stopped the train and everyone watched the fireworks from the windows. My favorite part was when the woman sitting next to me, angry b/c I had accidentally sat on her coat when I got on board, turned to me, pointed out the window and said “Look! A happy face!”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on May 22, 2008 7:26 PM

Last Christmas, Adaptive Path participated in the OLPC program. Today, fifteen OLPC laptops sit in a storage room here in San Francisco and with the recent panning in the press, I’m not all together sure what we are gonna do with those little computers.

While I agree with a lot of what is being written about OLPC’s shortcomings, I can’t help but feel it’s going to the easy “pot-shot” place. Sure, OLPC’s goal of providing technology access to impoverished children was lofty and probably unattainable. Yes, it was a product designed from a cultural perspective misaligned to the culture and context of the people it was designed for and ultimately failed to meet it’s own creative brief. Yes, it’s difficult to not to get a little irritated by the arrogance of the perspective from which this product was made, especially when it won so many design awards.

OLPC was a failure - but don’t products fail all the time?

In light of all the discourse on the shortcomings of the product, there seems to be little said on the things that OLPC accomplished that were interesting. It’s not often that one sees a product that reframes the conceptual model of the operating system. If anything, Sugar was gutsy and interesting in that regard. OLPC also made it out into the world into people’s hands – it wasn’t a pet project cooked up in a research lab, whose only outputs were a couple academic papers and patent filings. Most of all, I believe OLPC at heart had a virtuous Buddha nature. It was created on the belief that people can improve their lives with technology and the desire to increase access to technology throughout the world.

Failure is part of the creative process and yet when we scathe each other on our individual failings, we make it difficult for people in our industry to take the creative risks necessary to push design and technology forward. By focusing so firmly on failure, we aren’t able to see the beautiful by-product failure brings – learning. OLPC was a failure, but there were some cool things about it… and most importantly, it succeeded in giving us something concrete to learn from.

If we head for the ash heap of history, there are countless examples of failures that were necessary in order to realize a dream in the areas of science, transportation and technology. We wouldn’t get on airplanes today if Orville and Wilbur wouldn’t have had the courage to continually fail at Kitty Hawk. Without Apple Newton’s failure, we probably wouldn’t have had the Palm Pilot or the iPhone. Perhaps like the Apple Newton and the Wright Brother’s early flyers, OLPC will be remembered as one of the colossal failures necessary to bridge the digital divide.

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Originally posted by Rachel Hinman from Adaptive Path, on May 22, 2008 5:54 PM

We hear that actress/director Asia Argento is pregnant with her second child, thanks to her new husband, filmmaker/long-time Sean Lennon collaborator Michele Civetta. Woo!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on May 22, 2008 3:05 PM

world food crisis indicator: my wine shop’s $10 & under table now has a $12 & under section.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 22, 2008 2:09 PM

As small, socially responsible businesses gain attention, some large corporations start to take notice, and in some cases take over (See, for example, Ben & Jerry’s, Tom’s of Maine and Burt’s Bees.)

To help companies maintain their morals in the face of corporate takeovers, and to attract socially responsible investors and consumers, a nonprofit called B Lab has created B Corporation, where the 'B' stands for beneficial (to the business, public and environment).

B Corporation is a certification for business that are “purpose-driven” and that want to create benefits for all stakeholders (employees, the community, the environment, ect.), not just shareholders. And in a time when every business wants to at least look like they’re going green, this certification could be essential for socially responsible investors and consumers who are trying to differentiate “good companies” from “good marketing.”

The certification was created to help companies interested in the triple bottom line have the best of both –profit worlds. As a “for-purpose” business, B Corporations can reach beyond the capital limitations of the nonprofit world, and also the constraints of having to appease shareholders or investors as a for-profits.

In the words of B Corporation’s co-creator Jay Coen Gilbert:

"We are witnessing the birth of a new sector of the economy between the private sector and the nonprofit sector," Coen Gilbert told the SF Chronicle. "Our grandchildren will be talking about this new sector the way we talk about the nonprofit sector. ... Eventually it will be 5, 7, 10 percent of GDP. And unlike nonprofits, it will have the ability to scale up from there because it can attract capital. There will be a social stock exchange, lower capital gains taxes for investing in these companies, and government procurement preferences. All of that is going to happen - but for it to happen, we need to create some standards.”

And what he means by creating standards is their certification system, which allows businesses to prove their intentions to operate in socially and environmentally responsible ways to investors and consumers.

“As a B Corporation, you differentiate your business from the growing barrage of green- and cause-marketing campaigns and stand out as a leader in the market, creating a clear path for others to follow,” states the organization. “You also embed your values into your corporate governing documents so they can survive new investors, new management and even new ownership.”

To become a certified B Corporation, applicants must score above 80 points on a 200 point test, and must amend their articles of incorporation to say that managers must consider the interests of employees, the community, and the environment instead of worrying solely about shareholders.

The SF Chronicle reports:

Method filled out B Lab's scorecard and received a grade of 128.7 out of 200, well over the passing score of 80.

Similarly, Numi Tea - which sells organic, fair trade teas from more than 25 countries - scored a 101.2 and became a B corporation.

Companies like Numi, Method and Give Something Back say they were attracted to the B corporation idea partly because of its potential to help them attract investment capital without jeopardizing their ideals.

Some are comparing the certification system to the LEED certification for green buildings or TransFair's certification of fair-trade businesses.

It will be interesting to watch as this certification gains popularity -- more than 100 businesses currently have B Corporations status, such as New Leaf Paper, Comet Skateboards and Dansko.

Will other organizations start labeling efforts? Will corporations try to gain certification for less than purpose-driven reasons (As this Inc.com article points out, corporations could score higher in social areas and lower in environmental stewardship and still make the cut.)? Will their amendments hold up in court?

As businesses continue to evolve to fit our demands for more social responsibility, only time will tell.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Business at 1:03 PM)

Originally posted by Sarah Kuck from WorldChanging, on May 22, 2008 1:03 PM

For being small, San Francisco has a lot of neighborhoods in its 7x7 miles. When I talked about moving to the Outer Sunset yesterday I forgot to link the Wikipedia page for the neighborhood.

And, to be accurate, we're actually going to be in Parkside.

Originally posted by torrez from Andre's Notes, on May 22, 2008 12:45 PM

OMFG. Now you have an infinitesimally better chance of getting that Momofuku Ko reservation you've been futilely refreshing your browser for every morning. The Ko will be open on Tuesdays, starting on May 27th, and natch, the resys for next week went in just a few seconds. Happy hunting people, and be on the lookout for lunch, set to debut within the next month or so.
· The Momo' Ko Obsession [~E~]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 22, 2008 12:35 PM

jude really wants you to see this!

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 22, 2008 12:04 PM

Filed under: Humor, iPhone

I purchased an iPhone during the refurb sale that AT&T had last week. In two working days I got my 16 gig iPhone, times two. Two identical boxes, two identical iPhones and two identical charges on my debit card. Given the good deal, I decided to keep both (yes, despite the impending update). Imagine my surprise when my wife called me at work the next day to report that a third box had arrived from AT&T via DHL 2-day shipping, and that it was twice the size of either of the iPhone boxes. Given the previous day's spoils, I couldn't wait to get home.

Arriving at my house, I located the box and sat down with it on the couch. It was very, very light, but I've become accustomed to good things not weighing much. Pulling out my trusty Swiss Tech Utili-Key, I carefully sliced open my unexpected delivery. Inside was a packing slip with a single line item:

75011 MISC iPhone PPA BAG ... $0.00

Yes, it was an unsolicited, rush delivery, plastic iPhone bag. This is definitely not a first for AT&T and the monetary waste involved in packing and shipping a completely unnecessary plastic bag is, I assume, passed back to the consumer. Next time you look at your AT&T bill, you can think about my MISC iPhone PPA BAG ... which I'll be cherishing forever. Or at least until the novelty wears off.

Gallery: iPhone PPA Bag unboxing

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Originally posted by Brett Terpstra from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on May 22, 2008 12:00 PM

From Required Eating

Jane, an advertising account executive, documents a day of her life in brand logos in the form of her "Brand-Timeline Portrait" with some food-related bits here and there (although I assume the Whiskas is for her cat). My favorite part of her day is when the clock strikes 5:49: it's all about the beer and cigarettes. Would your daily brand-timeline portrait also include Jane's regulars of Quiznos, Pepsi, and Starbucks? [via neatorama]

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on May 22, 2008 12:00 PM

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on May 22, 2008 11:45 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on May 22, 2008 11:44 AM

A semi-contrary view from one of our shrewdest readers ...

You argue that "the evidence is simply overwhelming that Sen. Clinton didn't think [that Florida and Michigan were] a problem at all." That's one way to read the factual record.

But I'd suggest that there are compelling reasons to reach the opposite conclusion. After the 2000 election, she called for the abolition of the electoral college. "I believe strongly," she said, "that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people." She argued then that "the total votes cast for a person running for president in our country should
determine the outcome." Sound familiar?

Of course, as you point out, that's not what she or her supporters were arguing when the convoluted rules of the nominating system seemed likely to deliver her the nomination. And that, I think, is where she lost her bearings. She and her aides decided not to rock the boat. Instead of using their clout to fix the problems with the system, thereby alienating voters in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, she and her surrogates mouthed the same platitudes we hear every four years about the unique role played by
early states and the lovable quirks of the caucuses. But when the rules she had always disliked started to work against her, she lashed out with righteous indignation.

I think Hillary is genuinely convinced that this election has been a travesty. That elections ought to be about who wins the most votes, full stop. Never mind the innumerable problems with applying that argument to the contests this cycle; it's what she believes. And it's of a piece with a set of grievances that she and her surrogates have voiced: that the media has treated her too harshly, that her candidacy has been hobbled by sexism, and that her opponent has enjoyed unfair advantages. Each of these complaints
springs from a common premise - Hillary could not have lost a fair fight for the nomination. And working from that premise, she sees herself not only as a victim, but also as a champion of those who, like her, have been wronged by the system. This really has become a moral crusade for her, and that's impelling her forward long after she's lost any realistic chance of winning.

Perhaps she can be persuaded to back away from the edge. But now that the dictates of her conscience and of political expedience have at last converged, Hillary is finally giving voice to the grievances that she's long held back. As she's done so, she's tapped into a deep and powerful strain of resentment and - dare I say it - bitterness in the electorate. It's not easy to put that genie back in the bottle, and it's not at all clear to me that she wants to.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 22, 2008 11:14 AM

I don't know about you, but this makes me really happy and frankly a bit excitable:


(via m,appeal)

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on May 22, 2008 10:58 AM

Lucas finally does away with all those pesky human actors in an animated sequel to Episode II that no one was clamoring for. But I had to look at the trailer.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 22, 2008 10:57 AM

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Karl Rove to testify about the U.S. Attorneys purge, among other mucky things.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 22, 2008 10:51 AM

The big headline for this week is that The Perl Foundation received a very large grant to support Perl 6 development, so we're all very excited about that.

I'm also pleased at the increasing number of contributors we have to Rakudo and Parrot. Some highlights over the past week:

• Moritz Lenz refactored the test harness so that "make spectest_regression" gives far more usable output.
  
• Eevee contributed an implementation of the 'reduce' method to List objects. Thus one can now write:
  
        ## long version of [+] operator
        my $sum = (1..6).reduce { $^a + $^b };

  
• Vasily Chekalkin added a .kv method for hashes, and .sort and .map for lists.
  
• Stephen Weeks continued to improve placeholder variables and topic handling in blocks.
  
• Jonathan continued his amazing work by implementing private methods, .?, .+, and .* forms of method calls, specifying the name of an invocant in method signatures, the prefix:<^> operator, and much more.
  

This week I spent most of my hacking time (1) brainstorming; (2) implementing a new Perl 6-like metaclass system for Parrot, the compiler tools, and Rakudo; and (3) answering questions and closing RT tickets.

Most of the brainstorming I did was on "major pieces" that we will need for implementing Perl 6 on Parrot. First, thanks to the new metaclass system (described below and next post), I finally figured out how to refactor PGE's base Match, Regex, and Grammar classes to be much less convoluted than they are now. In the process I also figured out how we can implement protoregexes from Synopsis 5, which should improve our parsing speed a fair bit and also allows us to bring Rakudo's grammar much closer to STD.pm. The change I have in mind still doesn't bring us full "longest-token-matching" capabilities yet, but it will still be a substantial improvement.

PGE also needs a little bit of refactoring for its operator precedence parser in order to properly handle list vs. item assignment. Since that's one of the highest priorities for Rakudo at the moment, I'll be tackling that this week also.

The other thing that finally started to make sense to me was how to handle variables (mutables) in Parrot. After discussing the ideas with Jonathan last week, our plan now is to create a Mutable PMC that can serve as the base implementation for variable types like Scalar, Array, and Hash. It should simplify a lot of things in Rakudo's implementation.

The new P6object.pbc metaclass library replaces the old Protoobject.pbc library that PGE and PCT were using, as well as the various "Perl6Protoobject" classes that Rakudo perl was using. This means we now have common metaobject model underpinning the various Parrot tools that have Perl 6-like behaviors. In particular, every class gets a protoobject, objects in the class have standard Perl 6 methods like .WHAT and .HOW, and the like.

On Tuesday I converted PGE and PCT over to the new metaclass library, and then Jonathan, Jerry Gay, and I did a massive hacking session yesterday to convert Rakudo over to the new library. Moritz addition of the "spectest_regression" target was a huge help to making it all work correctly. Thanks to everyone's help we were able to make this massive internal change in the span of just a few hours.

I'm quite happy with the final result -- the underlying implementations are all much cleaner and more regular than they were before, and we were able to eliminate a fair bit of cruft that had been accumulating in Rakudo and PCT. So it was well worth the effort, and will greatly simplify things for people who later work with the compiler tools or Rakudo.

I'll post more details about the P6object library in my next post. I still also need to write up the details of the PCT code generation changes I made last week, but that's a bit more involved and so I may save that for much later (so I can keep up my momentum on writing code that we really need sooner rather than later).

Questions and comments welcomed as always.

Pm

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Planet Perl Six, on May 22, 2008 10:32 AM

We finally got our new postcards back from the fabulous Eberhardt Press!!! If you'd like one, sign up for our mailing list, and include a snail mail address in your email.

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on May 22, 2008 10:19 AM

From Serious Eats: New York

"These little squares of chocolate-nut heaven are the brownies of my dreams."

I don't know why exactly, but lately I've been exploring the brownie culture of New York. On one foray to Chelsea Market, I tried brownies from Sarabeth's, Amy's, and Fat Witch, and found all of them lacking in one way or another. I despaired of ever finding a truly terrific brownie in New York until I came upon one in a truly unlikely spot: the cookie plate at Del Posto. I know brownies aren't Italian, but Del Posto executive pastry chef Brooks Headley insists that his brownies are really just a slightly gussied-up version of a torta Caprese, a traditional Italian dessert. In the end, it really doesn't matter what Brooks or anyone else calls it. These little squares of chocolate-nut heaven are the brownies of my dreams. Brooks generously agreed to share his recipe with serious eaters (and even suggested a baking soundtrack). Thank you, Brooks. Here's what he had to say about it:

This is a new addition to the Del Posto cookie tray. It's a really simple and fairly traditional Italian sweet. I bake it in a sheet and then cut it into miniature squares. I like to top it with a sliver of walnut that I roast with olive oil, sea salt, chili flake, and a pinch of cumin, then finish with a single drop of aceto balsamico tradizionale for a much-needed umami blast. It ends up looking like a "brownie alla Nonna," ("grandma brownie")—rustic but full of chocolate and nut flavor. It also seems to capture that perfect Italian dessert feel—kind of crumbly and just barely supporting its own structure.

This is also a very easy recipe, good for busy parents, beginner pastry cooks, and lazy folks. You almost cannot mess it up. It's best made while listening to the first Ramones record. Keep it simple and fun. It's also gluten-free.

Here's the recipe »

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on May 22, 2008 10:00 AM

From Required Eating

The limited-edition Indiana Jones Snickers bar. What makes it Indy-worthy? It has a hint of coconut in it. And can I just say that that little addition makes all the difference?

You know how when Indy had that medallion thingy that needed to go on the top of the staff and then the sunlight would shine through it and reveal the location of the Ark of the Covenant on that miniature city in the tomb?

And you know how that Nazi dude with the black hat and round glasses burned only half the medallion on his hand and tried to use it to create a reproduction medallion to do the same thing? And remember how that didn't quite work?

Well, the coconut-tinged Snickers is like Indy's medallion, and regular Snickers is the fake-ass Nazi one. I wish they'd keep the Indy Snickers FOREVER. Sadly, it will eventually be locked away in Indiana Jones's Nazi Loot Storage Warehouse. Innard shots, after the jump.

They look pretty much the same, except that the Indiana Jones version (on the right) is smaller.

Related

Candy Bar Identification Quiz
Unfortunately Named Candy Bars
Favorite Chocolate Bar
What's your favorite candy bar?

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on May 22, 2008 9:45 AM

 
On Tuesday, voters in Portland, Oregon elected Sam Adams as their next mayor. A former Congressional staffer and current Portland city commissioner, Adams -- who is a cyclist -- ran on a platform that emphasized environmental and progressive growth initiatives, including, in the words of the Oregonian, "use [of] the Portland Streetcar and better planning to spur urban renewal." Adams received strong support from the livable streets community, which helped earn him a 52-34 percent margin of victory.

There is speculation that the Adams camp got a last-minute boost from Barack Obama, who came to town ahead of Tuesday's primary and drew a crowd of some 75,000 -- with an estimated 8,000+ arriving on bicycles. As quoted on BikePortland.org, Obama responded with some fairly breathtaking comments on transportation policy.

(more...)

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on May 22, 2008 9:21 AM

On a conference call with reporters just now, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson flatly rejected the notion that Camp Hillary is pushing for a full seating of Florida and Michigan in order to ensure that Obama's win is seen as somehow tainted should the delegations not be seated.

Wolfson was asked by Slate's John Dickerson if an Obama victory would be "counterfeit" if the delegations aren't seated -- and the votes aren't counted -- in the manner Hillary hopes.

"I wouldn't use the word you used," Wolfson answered. "This is not about tainting the nominating process. It's about an effort to secure maximum participation from everyone who came out and voted."

Wolfson added: "That's not what Senator Clinton is thinking, not what we're thinking. I wouldn't characterize it in the way that you characterized it."

That would appear to be a flat-out assertion that Hillary's position is that even if she doesn't get the votes counted as she hopes to, Obama's victory would be nonetheless completely legitimate.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 22, 2008 8:37 AM

As Greg Sargent reports at TPM Election Central, Tim Griffin is the RNC's new hire as the opposition researcher on Barack Obama.

Griffin has a colorful past as the RNC's director of opposition research in 2004. Here's some video of Griffin in the RNC war room on the night of one of the Bush-Kerry debates. Griffin's memorable line that night was that his crew of oppo researchers created the ammunition for the Bush campaign to fire. "We make the bullets," Griffin is overheard saying.

But Griffin didn't achieve notoriety until his role in the U.S. attorney purge scandal was revealed. After leaving the RNC, Griffin went to work in the White House as an aide to Karl Rove. With help from Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers, the then-34-year-old Griffin was installed as the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas in December 2006.

A total of nine U.S. attorneys were ousted to make room for naked partisans like Griffin or to remove prosecutors considered too independent by the Republican political operatives in the White House and DOJ. As the extent of the purge became known and it became clear that unqualified Griffin would never be confirmed on a permanent basis by the Senate, he withdrew is nomination. Last June, he tearily declared that public service was "not worth it," sometimes crying as he said he had no plan to return to politics.

What a difference a year makes.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 22, 2008 8:03 AM

May 31st, 2008: the survivors will call it Judgment Day, the day that Hillary Clinton hijacks the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee to achieve the full seating of Florida and Michigan's disputed delegates and effectively wrest the nomination away from Barack Obama. But wait... can this really happen? We take a look at the actual situation behind thehype in today's episode of TPMtv ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Originally posted by Ben Craw from Talking Points Memo, on May 22, 2008 7:49 AM

(A little something Heather left me to post)

As the mergers pile up, it’s a good time to step back and wonder, yet again, about Google’s YouTube purchase, which really helped set the bar for Web 2.0 prices.

That YouTube remains a phenom is undisputed. But it’s about a year and a half since Google snapped up our little social media whirlwind, and it hasn’t come up with any really brilliant ways to make big big bucks off the thing. Or put another way. The kind of money that’s proportionate to the service's influence as a capital way to waste time, keep up on pop culture, and make sense of our wacky pols. I.E. as an important barometer of life as we know it.

Sure, sure, we have the standard ad overlay. And the in-line video that you can choose to click on. And we have the standard lip service about not doing pre and post roll ad. Though as Mike Arrington argues, pre and post roll ads can be done right. If Google wants to really be daring.

Instead, we have been waiting for the Answer. In the likeness of Targeting. That’s Targeting with a capital T and that rhymes with C and that stands for cash.

Usually. Or maybe hopefully. Or actually not yet. Because “Buzz Targeting, ” a new ad program that Google recently rolled out doesn’t feel much like targeting to me. Essentially, as a video is “about to go viral” (their words, not mine), advertisers can buy advertise on the video. Huh? Not exactly what I think of when I think of Google, brilliant use of algorithms, and targeting. Unless you call targeting simply putting an ad next to something that’s popular. It brings more to mind, err, TV programs.

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on May 22, 2008 7:48 AM

Now it becomes clear: They just wanted a piece of the Gawker-commenter action.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Jessica Coen, on May 22, 2008 7:47 AM

For the last week it's seemed that Sens. Clinton and Obama were adhering to their tacit truce, continuing the primary campaign but avoiding the harsh exchanges that make later party unity a dimmer and dimmer prospect. Clinton particularly had deescalated her rhetoric. Then we have a speech like Sen. Clinton's yesterday in Florida in which she compared the controversy over seating the Florida and Michigan delegates to the Florida recount debacle and many of the great voting and civil rights battles of the 20th century. She is of course also claiming that whatever the delegate count, she leads in the popular vote and that that is what really counts. Never mind of course that even if you count Michigan and Florida she's still not ahead in the popular vote without resorting to tendentious methods of counting.

I've always assumed, as I think most people have, that once the nomination is settled the Florida and Michigan delegates will be seated. And I can see if Sen. Clinton wants to embrace this issue to claim a moral victory even while coming short of her goal of the nomination. As things currently stand, seating them would still leave Sen. Clinton behind in delegates.

But Sen. Clinton is doing much more than this. She is embarking on a gambit that is uncertain in its result and simply breathtaking in its cynicism.

I know many TPM Readers believe there is a deep moral and political issue at stake in the need to seat these delegations. I don't see it the same way. But I'm not here to say they're wrong and I'm right. It's a subjective question and I respect that many people think this. What I'm quite confident about is that Sen. Clinton and her top advisors don't see it that way.

Why do I think that? For a number of reasons. One of her most senior advisors, Harold Ickes, was on the DNC committee that voted to sanction Florida and Michigan by not including their delegates. Her campaign completely signed off on sanctions after that. And there are actually numerous quotes from the Senator herself saying those primaries didn't and wouldn't count. Michigan and Florida were sanctioned because they ignored the rules the DNC had set down for running this year's nomination process.

The evidence is simply overwhelming that Sen. Clinton didn't think this was a problem at all -- until it became a vehicle to provide a rationale for her continued campaign.

Now, that's politics. One day you're on one side of an issue, the next you're on the other, all depending on the tactical necessities of the moment. But that's not what Clinton is doing. She's elevating it to a level of principle -- first principles -- on par with the great voting rights struggles of history. There's no longer any question that she's going to win the nomination. The whole point of the popular vote gambit was to make an argument to super-delegates. And that's fine since that's what super-delegates are there for -- to make the decision by whatever measure they choose. But they've made their decision. The super delegates are breaking overwhelmingly for Obama. They simply don't buy the arguments she's making.

As Greg Sargent makes clear here. There are very good reasons to think Sen. Clinton won't take this to the convention, even as today she suggested she might. But that's sort of beside the point.

What she's doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she's gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her -- a belief many won't soon abandon. And that on the basis of rationales and arguments there's every reason to think she doesn't even believe in.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 22, 2008 6:28 AM

• Oil Tops $130/Barrel for First Time; Analyst Predicts $15/Gal Gas (NY1, BMI)
• American Cities Pondering Car-Free Parks and Ciclovias (RedOrbit via Car-Free USA)
  
• Teachers Union Won't Give Up Parking Placards Without a Fight (Post)
• More Brooklyn Nabes to See Parking Rules Suspended This Summer (News)
• Schumer's Moynihan Station Plan Would Wrest Control From Silver (Sun)
• Richard Ravitch Tries to Save the MTA Again (Observer)
  
• SUV Strikes Pedestrian Outside Manhattan Supreme Court (NY1)
  
• Ped Entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Gets Better Signs (City Room)
• Should Cops Keep Authority to Shut Off Subway Power? (News)
• Traffic Videos From Around the World Popping Up on YouTube (LAT via Planetizen)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 22, 2008 5:00 AM

back after an aborted launch that I missed out on, this is great archival work  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on May 21, 2008 7:06 PM

From the JTA ...

The diminishing fortunes of the Bush administration and the resurgent fortunes of Hezbollah may be behind the surprising announcement that Syria and Israel are renewing peace talks.

The announcements Wednesday by the two countries, which said Israel and Syria would launch talks in Ankara under Turkish auspices, came despite longstanding U.S. opposition to talks with Syria.

The news garnered only tepid endorsement from the Bush administration.

"We were not surprised by it, and we do not object to it," said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman. "We hope that this is a forum to address various concerns we all have with Syria -- Syria's support of terrorism, repression of its own people."

With Bush nearing the end of his term in office, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might have felt emboldened to shuck off Bush's longstanding resistance to outreach toward Syria, analysts said.

"This demonstrates that what has kept things back is the United States," said Steve Spiegel, a professor of political science at UCLA and a scholar at the Israel Policy Forum. Bush's "leverage is not as great -- Bush has seven-and-a-half months left."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 21, 2008 5:16 PM

Governor David Paterson never ceases to surprise us. It turns out his two-bedroom apartment in Harlem is rent-stabilized, so he and his wife only pay $1,250/month for their home.

Paterson and his wife Michelle, who made $270,000 last year, live in the Lenox Terrace apartment complex, where the market rate for a two-bedroom go for $2,600. When asked by the Sun, Paterson said the rent was appropriate, given the city's rent regulations. "It is within the spirit of the law."

However, the Conservative Party's chairman Michael Long told the Sun, "Why should a high official like the governor of the state of the New York live in a government-subsidized apartment?" (The Patersons own a home upstate, near Albany, and could reside in the Governor's Mansion.) And the Rent Stabilization Association's Frank Ricci said, "People who make over $100,000 have plenty of choices where to live."

Discussions to raise rent stabilized rents are currently underway. They will undoubtedly be higher than what tenants want and lower than what landlords want.

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 21, 2008 2:29 PM

I see that Linda Douglass has signed on with the Obama campaign. So I thought I'd share this little snippet of personal trivia about the morning I met Linda way back 31 years ago.

This was in June 1977, when I was a mere stripling. Early one morning I was laying in my bed, floating between sleep and consciousness, when out of the corner of my eye, through the window to my left, I heard the roar and, in a flash, saw a twin engine plane careen across my view and explode in a massive ball of flames into the anonymous drywall and stucco two story apartment building immediately next to mine.

I shot up and in a moment saw this surreal image of two half naked people getting out of bed in what a moment ago had been there apartment surrounded by smoke and flame, clearly too much in shock to realize that dressing was not a high priority. The whole thing was maybe 15 feet in front of me. Before I could take stock of any of this my mother ran into the room to see if I'd been blown up too. And in a moment we were running. Mainly just out of the house and away from the fire. And then somehow instantly we were out on the sidewalk where all sorts of mayhem was breaking loose and soon there were fire trucks and a man running out of the building on fire.

This was the real thing, a terrible tragedy for the people immediately involved. Five people died in the plane. Four were injured on the ground. It even made the national news as one of those one day -- it happens to other people -- stories on the nightly news. Here's a reference to it I found on the web -- Walter Cronkite's short news segment. And Linda Douglass who was a local TV reporter there to cover it for which local affiliate I can't remember. She interviewed my dad.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 21, 2008 2:21 PM

From Required Eating

"SMOKE TURKEY WINGS" sounded pretty good until my eyes hit "COW SOMETHING." It's a beefy surprise in every bite! [via The Triumph of Bullshit]

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on May 21, 2008 2:00 PM

Marcy caught Dav, Tesla, and I at the Bay to Breakers. Tesla looks a bit annoyed (from all the chaos around us), but I love this picture as I don't get to see her when she's on my back.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Kokochi, on May 21, 2008 1:55 PM

San Francisco: No One Will Tell You When You Have A Bad Idea on Flickr.

Of course, today we just signed up to live in this City for a few more years. We found a place in the Outer Sunset which sounds a lot like saying we're moving to one of Saturn's Outer Moons—and that is not far from the truth—but we do get our own place with a yard and can still stay in San Francisco.

Originally posted by torrez from Andre's Notes, on May 21, 2008 1:30 PM

bookwars:

i’m often inclined to roll my eyes anytime someone plays the ol’ it-was-so-much-better-way-back-in-the-day card.  it’s far too personal a characterization to be the sort of thing one person can impose upon another.  but you know, more often than not, those nutjobs, they’re probably on to something. 

last night we watched bookwars, a rough-hewn doc about a small group of book sellers who would set up shop on W4th.  within the first 10 minutes i was struck by how much more vibrant life was just a decade ago.  and it wasn’t just life before the “quality of life” regulations put forth by the city started to transform sidewalks from bustling marketplaces into sterile spaces to sip your latte-to-go.  it was also life before the internet really took hold, before e-commerce had been fully embraced, before the best place to ferret out something special was at home in your bathrobe. 

i wonder if we consume so much because we’ve taken the fun out of it.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 21, 2008 1:20 PM

From this quick overview of why internet shoe retailer Zappos is such a great company, this clever hiring practice:

When Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company's strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period. After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it's time for what Zappos calls "The Offer." The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you've worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus." Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

That's pretty fucking brilliant. It applies a direct incentive of cold hard cash against what the company wants: employees dedicated not primarily to their paycheck but to the company/customers.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 12:33 PM

Apple reportedly plans to put LED backlighting in all notebooks in 2009. Here's to a brighter—and more energy efficient—future.

Read More...

Originally posted by ars@chrisforesman.com (Chris Foresman) from Infinite Loop, on May 21, 2008 12:01 PM

Absolutely incredible photos of a wedding and then an earthquake.

Can you imagine what it was like to have been photographing a wedding in Sichuan, China when 7.9 earthquake hit and shakes for three minutes? From what understand, there were thirty-three missing guests in this church.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 10:58 AM

Earlier this year Central Park crowds looked on in horror as a hawk dug his talons into a squirrel. Now the pigeons of New York are being targeted as the city considers bringing in robotic hawks to perch on rooftops.

Newsday reports that robo hawks could be a weapon for driving pigeons from city sidewalks; an idea brought in last year by Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder. Just how much will it take to rid the city of its huge pigeon problem?

Felder is proposing a bill that would fine people $1,000 for feeding the birds and would create a "pigeon czar" to be responsible for pigeon-related matters, such as cleanup. He expects a council hearing on the legislation, which is still being drafted, to be held before the end of the year.

The pigeon czar will allegedly be backed by an army of robotic hawks, and while they're not a part of Felder's bill, he mentioned they "could be an option if the Bloomberg administration feels the high-tech scarecrows are a good investment."

The faux hawks could be a solution to Astoria's squirrel problem too, but they aren't a cure-all or necessarily a workable solution for the city; the Robop (pictured) was designed for much smaller areas. But at about $4500 a pop, the city would just need to catch a few (hundred) pigeon feeders to fine in order to stock up on the robo hawks.

Originally posted by Jen Carlson from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on May 21, 2008 10:56 AM

I took a quick Twitter poll this morning: What's the opposite of standing: sitting or lying down? The results: lying down wins but sitting is a close second. My favorite answer, which several people gave, is doing a headstand (or hanging upside down).

Now, what about this: What's the opposite of sitting: lying down or standing?

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 9:51 AM

A really nice remembrance of Florent, a beloved meatpacking district restaurant set to close its doors next month, by the people who knew the restaurant best.

The first time I went to Florent I had been out very late at night with some friends and we were looking for somewhere to go for breakfast at about, you know, 3:30 or 4 o'clock in the morning. We went down there and it was very dark and we came onto Gansevoort Street and the restaurant was lit up and it looked - it looked almost like a mirage. It felt magical.

The article is not just a history of Florent but also of a Manhattan and New York City that is all but gone. Says Calvin Klein:

It was alive with real downtown character types who dressed every which way: from straight, creative types of all ages, young and old, to transvestites, to probably local prostitutes. It was downtown. It was real downtown. That's when they were cutting meat all night long. And that was during the Studio 54 days. We were young and we were having a lot of fun and we were out all night. And we'd end up in the meatpacking district, at the clubs. You went to Florent after the clubs.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 8:56 AM

Theocacao: “The first edition is the one I used to learn Cocoa (back when it was one of maybe two books on the topic), and I remember being struck by how well written it was.”

Like Scott, I learned Cocoa from the first edition. When I recommend Mac programming books, this is the one I recommend first.

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on May 21, 2008 8:53 AM

Russell Davies covered the front of his laptop with blackboard paint; it now doubles as a quick jotpad for to-do lists, etc. Great idea, but I'd always forget to haul the chalk around.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 8:22 AM

Greg Reinacker: “Why would we do such a crazy thing? We want more people to see it. More feedback. More visibility. This product has been extremely successful — our customer list reads like a who’s who of the Fortune 500 — but it’s been primarily deployed in larger installations.”

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on May 21, 2008 8:14 AM

“Though it feels like a modern appendix to our ancient alphabet, the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today. By the time the letter W entered the Latin alphabet in the seventh century, ampersands had enjoyed six hundred years of continuous use…” There, that’s already ten times more than you knew about the character before.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Elsewhere, on May 21, 2008 7:49 AM

One of the most enjoyable sessions at the New Yorker Conference was the chefs roundtable.

Bill Buford talks with the chefs David Chang, Daniel Humm, and Marc Taxiera about their influences and the future of the culinary world.

Buford talks too much and the chefs too little but he manages some good questions and fun is had.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 21, 2008 6:55 AM

In a sign that they're trying to seize some momentum after the primaries last night, the Hillary Clinton camp is first out of the gate with a super-delegate endorsement this morning, coming from Ohio add-on delegate Craig Bashein.

Barack Obama still leads in super-dels, though, which are essentially Hillary's last chance to win the nomination since he clinched the pledged-del majority.

The latest super-delegate numbers from DemConWatch: Obama 304.5, Clinton 278.5. With both pledged and supers added together, Obama leads with 1,961 against Hillary's 1,780.

Not counting Michigan and Florida, Obama only needs 64 more delegates to clinch the nomination -- and adding the two rogue states into the mix wouldn't radically change the math, either.

Late Update: Obama has picked up his own super, Congressman Joe Courtney of Connecticut.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on May 21, 2008 6:29 AM

Today the Times runs an epic tribute to Florent, the 23 year-old Meatpacking District staple that will be closing on June 29th. Since it's been around so long in such a dynamic neighborhood and because its owner, Florent Morellet is a huge figure in both the restaurant industry and in the neighborhood in general, the closing strikes a major chord with people who have been dining out— and partying hard— in the city for the last quarter century. The Times gathers quotes from local notables including former food columnist Hal Rubinstein, Calvin Klein, Spike Lee, and a smattering of waiters and hostesses. The highlights:

Florent's first review: "MR. MORELLET: I didn’t want any press. I was so scared because I’d seen so many restaurants opening with a bang, big media, blah-blah-blah. And it’s a disaster. MR. RUBINSTEIN: ...the review came out, and I remember being home on a Saturday night, and the phone rang at about 8 o’clock, and it was Florent, furious. Furious. MR. MORELLET: After he wrote it I called him and yelled at him and I said, 'Listen!' I put the phone up to the din of the dining room, which was really loud, and hung up."

Florent on being H.I.V. positive: "It actually became one of my lines. When customers were aggravating, I would say, 'You know I’m not going to lose one T cell because of you.' Let me tell you, that really shut them up."

On the 80's Crowd: "JACKIE HOFFMAN (actress and stand-up comedian): It was kind of like the halfway house of restaurants. If there was a pre-op tranny or someone who just wasn’t finished yet, or a burn victim — anyone could go in there and not be judged. It had a safe haven quality to it."

Florent as a center for politics: "MR. KLEIN: He would always talk about some cause he was promoting. He got me to sign on to something — I didn’t know what I was signing on to. It turned out it was to protest the Richard Meier buildings that were going up in the neighborhood. And I was already committed to being on three floors of the Meier buildings. And now I was on a list protesting them!"

On the Changing Nabe: "SPIKE LEE (filmmaker): I’ve been going to Florent since 1986, whenever I can. But the whole neighborhood changed. Before it used to be transvestites and transsexuals on every corner. Now? Forget about it. Gansevoort Street, that whole area — it’s crazy. It’s like everything else in New York. It’s like SoHo and everything else that gets 'hot'. And I put that in quotations. 'Hot.'"

The Shuttering: "MR. MORELLET: We were fighting my landlord and I was angry and still somewhat in denial until we settled out of court on April 4. When I came to that, when I arrived that day, I wanted to settle. It’s about moving on. Since that day I’ve been able to move on and to get my troops at the restaurant to move on. We’re going to go out with a big bang. But we’re going to go out with an ironic, absurdist, Dada-ist big bang."
· Florent Watch: Florent's 5 Stages of Shuttering [~E~]
· Florent Watch: Morellet Goes to Court, Faces New $70K Rent [~E~]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 21, 2008 6:00 AM

When eGulleters call wd~50's pizza pebbles "revolting" like "3 year old vending machine food", and the "worst restaurant dish of all time", Wylie Dufresne stops in to drop the hammer: "Since the four of you, Nathan, Jesikka, Sneakeater and Dave H, have taken so much of your valuable time waxing poetic about the pizza pebbles, I would personally like to extend a lifetime free supply of them to each and every one of you!!" [eG]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 21, 2008 5:22 AM

Every day for the past 8 years (give or take), cron has run a little script to change my Desktop background image to the astronomy picture of the day.

I logged in today, and this is what I got:

I realize it’s Gliese 876d, but I took it as a statement about the current state of my psyche. Some days are just like that…

Originally posted by ed from inkdroid, on May 21, 2008 4:26 AM

1. You really understood the brief and asked extra questions to get absolute clarity of how to win the business.

2. Your response is well-structured, easy to read, easy to understand, easy to navigate with all questions answered. There is a good executive summary and appropriate references at the end of the document. The proposal makes it absolutely clear why your proposal is unique.

3. The proposal looks good as an attachment and great on paper if printed out.

4. The paper proposal (with sufficient copies for each decision maker so they don´t see a poorly copied version) were sent secure delivery.

5. You will phone to check it got into the hands of your key decision maker.

6. They know exactly how to place the order with you.

Originally posted by Nicholas Bate from Nicholas Bate, on May 21, 2008 4:18 AM

a functional information design poster that uses computational aesthetic principles to visualize a geopolitical survey of the 192 member states of the United Nations with regard to the quantitative degree to which each contributes to peace & terror in the world.

the "A_ side" displays measures of peace, while the "B_ side", measures of terror. the graph is divided into 3 rings for the quantitative measures obtained from researchers working in the field of geopolitics, while line thickness conveys the variance between low & high values. the dual-sided overlay of the 2 graphs allows for a direct visual comparison of the peace & terror measures.

[link: designsupremo.com|thnkx Peter]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on May 20, 2008 8:18 PM

The NY Times' City Room blog has a short profile of photographer Nikola Tamindzic.

He uses long exposures, then shakes the camera while the shutter is still open, causing colors to blur and lights to streak. "I'm not recording what is really happening, but it's something like what the brain is seeing late at night, especially if maybe you're drunk or very excited," he said. "I like that hour between 3 and 4 in the morning when desperation sets in, when you see all the anticipation of going out starting to fade. The masks drop and everybody realizes the night is not going to be everything they were hoping for."

You may have seen Tamindzic's photos on Gawker or on his own site, Home of the Vain. Here's the photo with Huffington, Murdoch, et al. An archive of his photography is available at Ambrel.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 20, 2008 6:50 PM

There's been a lot of pundit chatter tonight to the effect that Obama should not have passed on campaigning in Kentucky over the last few days despite the fact that he seemed set to lose by a massive margin. (Why make an effort if it's not going to pan out? Why screw with the low expectations?)

I think they're right. To weirdly paraphrase Ronald Reagan's line from 1980, I think someone running for president needs to go to everyone and say, in so many words, you may not be for me, but I'm for you.

At the same time, there's simply no getting around the role of race in the Kentucky and, for that matter, the West Virginia results. From the exit poll numbers tonight, "Was Race of the Candidate Important to You?" 21% said Yes and 81% of those voted for Hillary Clinton.

Given how the levels of under-reporting are that go into a question like that, I don't think you easily get around that number.

Still, he should have gone.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 20, 2008 6:02 PM

Just as Hillary begins her victory speech in Kentucky, the Obama campaign's April fundraising numbers land in our inbox.

Obama raised $31 million last month for the primary, with an additional $600,000 for the general election. Other numbers:

New donors in April: 200,000

94% of contributions were under $200

93% of contributions were $100 or less

77% of contributions were $50 or less

52% of contributions were $25 or less

Number of donors to the Obama campaign overall at the end of April: 1.475 million

Number of contributions given: 2,929,000 million

Average donation: $91

Cash on Hand: $37.3 million (plus an additional $9.2 million for the general election)

McCain raised $18 million in April, a little over half of Obama's haul. No hard numbers yet from Hillary.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 20, 2008 4:28 PM

Sen. Clinton is on stage now in Kentucky making some very nice, moving comments about Sen. Kennedy. I must say the news about Sen. Kennedy today really hit me like a sock in the gut. People get terrible diagnoses every day. In a sense, we all will at some point -- it's just a question of whether it will come slowly enough to get that grim heads up. I lost both my parents very suddenly. But this really caught me off-guard. And gets to me at some deep level. I don't know if other people's experience is the same.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 20, 2008 4:18 PM

If I'm not mistaken Terrry McAuliffe just announced two new goalposts.

1. Hillary has gotten more votes and delegates since March 4th.

2. Hillary has gotten more votes in a nomination race than anyone in history. "Hillary Clinton has now received more votes than any candidate ever running for president in a primary."

As I said in this morning's episode of the TPMtv, I think that over the last week there've been tentative but hopeful signs of a deescalation of tensions between the two campaigns. But some of this stuff is just ridiculous. Point one sounds like it's probably true. What relevance it has I have no idea. Point two though is really the kicker. Even if you change the rules and fully seat Michaigan and Florida and count them for the popular vote totals and don't count any portion of the Michigan "uncommitted" (which were understood a the to be for Obama) vote for Obama, Hillary is still behind in the popular vote total. The only way she moves ahead in popular vote is if you do all that and don't count four of the caucus states.

Some stuff is just too ridiculous to let pass. You just have to assume this is just Terry's nonsense.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 20, 2008 3:43 PM

A Bay Area blogger asked me to share a few sentences about corporate or professional blogs. Basically, those built for PR purposes. He works for a museum that is thinking of starting a blog, and he asked me to impart some wisdom. I gave him this instead:

Things I think are important to consider when working with a corporate or otherwise professional blog:

• Be authentic and genuine. Have personality. Bland, boring press releases will be ignored. Consider have the blogger write in first person.
• Have fun with it. People need a reason to come *back* to a blog like one for your museum. Sure, they may go there the first time for info, but having engaging writing is key. Don’t be afraid to loosen things up a bit.
• Participate in the blog community. If you don’t read, link to or otherwise engage other bloggers your site will not see much traffic.
• Be transparent. Don’t lie to people, they’ll figure it out. Don’t use wormy wording as businesses are so inclined to do. Don’t use a bunch of industry lingo unless your site is geared specifically toward a niche group.
• Encourage participation. Don’t make people jump through hoops to comment. Welcome dialogue and exchange.

I think there is a lot more to explore here, but this is a good jumping off point. Just remember that blogging provides an opportunity for readers to get to know the person behind the site or learn things they can’t get elsewhere. Make it engaging and make it genuine and you will be surprised how much mileage you will get.

Originally posted by brittney from Sparkwood & 21, on May 20, 2008 12:37 PM

So it seems my gchat flacking for the amazing Jay Smooth (and his wonderfully humanistic viewpoints) has brought me a moment of fame in the feminist blogosphere. Welcome feministing readers! Oh, the stories I could tell you…

So you know, this is the personal blog I use to aggregate my favorite links and my writing on new media. I also occasionally put up posts here from my day job writing at TPMCafe and running the TPM blog network. Also, I post a lot of videos from Jay Smooth.

In any event, the quote from Jay Smooth that is my gchat away message:

“When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.”

And the vid:

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on May 20, 2008 12:06 PM

The Hillary campaign announces that she's picked up a super-delegate today, her first of the week: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

But check out this quote from Coakley, which has an after-the-fact ring to it...

"Regardless of the outcome of the primary, Mrs. Clinton's energy, stamina, and resolve have changed the course of history for women seeking office, including the presidency, and I dare say, have changed the course of history of Presidential politics in the United States. It is for these reasons that I will vote for Hillary Clinton in August at the Nominating Convention."

"Regardless of the outcome of the primary..."

MSNBC's latest totals: Obama has 1,906 overall delegates, while Hillary has 1,724.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 20, 2008 11:04 AM

For Alex: the New Yorker has an exhaustive article on hangovers, both the causes and the cures:

There are other non-ingested remedies. Amazon will sell you a refrigeratable eye mask, an aromatherapy inhaler, and a vinyl statue of St. Vivian, said to be the patron saint of the hung over. She comes with a stand and a special prayer.

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on May 20, 2008 11:02 AM

If you missed the New Yorker Conference a couple weeks ago, (it was over $200 a ticket, so we don't blame you), the video of Bill Buford's chat with David Chang, Daniel Humm, and Marc Taxiera is now online. It's incredibly long and Buford's charm wears thin, but the four of them discuss sea urchin, sous vide, "their influences and the future of the culinary world." [New Yorker]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 20, 2008 10:31 AM

the start of something beautiful?

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by fruminator to graphs servers transit directions - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by fruminator from del.icio.us/fruminator, on May 20, 2008 6:29 AM

• EPA Chief Was Pressured to Block Limits on CA Tailpipe Emissions (AP)
• Utah Considers Gas Tax Hike, Road Pricing to Fund Highways (Salt Lake Trib)
  
• Officials Confident MTA Will Close New Hudson Yards Deal (Sun, NYT, Post)
• Yet Another Times Story About the Suspension of Parking Rules in Park Slope
• Dick Gottfried Tries to Explain Why Pricing Never Got a Vote (Politicker)
  
• Sheldon Silver's Opponents Like Running Against Him (Politicker)
• State Sen. Sabini No Longer Favored by Queens Dem Establishment (NYT)
• West Village Residents React to New Gansevoort Plaza (Villager)
• More Bridge and Tunnel Bus Route Ideas from Cap'n Transit
• Seoul May Levy Fee For Driving to Certain Downtown Buildings (Korea Times)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 20, 2008 4:59 AM

Even I was surprised by the differences: Portion SIzes, Then and Now. (via se)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 20, 2008 4:30 AM

Ever since 2003, when the late great R. W. " Johnny" Apple Jr. wrote about his unabashed love of the once forbidden (at least in the U.S.) mangosteen, I've been hankering to try one. This is what he wrote that got me so excited: "No other fruit, for me, is so thrillingly, intoxicatingly luscious, so evocative of the exotic east, with so precise a balance of acid and sugar, as a ripe mangosteen.... I'd rather eat one than a hot fudge sundae, which, for a big Ohio boy, is saying a lot."

When Johnny Apple says that he would rather eat a mangosteen than a hot fudge
sundae, that's a powerful statement.

Fruitmeister David Karp (the New Yorker once called him the fruit detective) reported last year that the mangosteens were at last coming to the U.S. This year I had read that they were available at Agata & Valentina and Dean & DeLuca in New York, and at Kings Super markets in New Jersey, but I have to admit that the Serious Eats mangosteens came in the mail from the exotic fruit sellers Frieda's Produce. Freida's ships irradiated (that's the only way they're allowed in this country) Thai mangosteens anywhere and everywhere there is a mangosteen lover.

Getting It Open

A mangosteen has a red shell, which makes it look like a pomegranate-shaped Christmas tree ornament. When we first looked at our mangosteens, we were not sure how to open them. The internet came to our rescue. Alaina found a video tutorial on opening and eating mangosteens.

Armed with that information, Robyn opened the mangosteens. I was trying to lower my expectations, but knowing that Johnny Apple preferred mangosteens to hot fudge sundaes, it was difficult.

The sections were milky white with faint markings. I popped the first one in my mouth. It tasted like nothing else I have ever had. Its creamy sweetness was cut by just enough acidity. In his story, Apple had written that a mangosteen's flavor "reminds me of litchis, peaches, and clementines, mingled in a single mouthful." I also detect more than a faint hint of mango, though Wikipedia disagrees.

Really? Better Than a Sundae?

Would I rather have a fresh mangosteen than a hot fudge sundae? If the hot fudge sundae is made with Shake Shack vanilla custard and its Valrhona-derived hot fudge, I don't think so. Were it a generic hot fudge sundae, however, then I would absolutely agree with my old friend Johnny.

Decide for yourself this weekend. Conduct your own hot fudge sundae–mangosteen taste test. Buy the best hot fudge sundae money can buy or make one at home and order a box of mangosteens from Frieda's. Mangosteens are extremely perishable, so they must be shipped overnight, which means a box of 8 to 12 mangosteens will end up costing you $39. Pricey but I believe worth it, if for no other reason than to pay tribute to the late, great, R. W. Apple Jr.

How to Eat a Mangosteen

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats: Main, on May 20, 2008 4:30 AM

Most companies grow in steps. They operate at one level for a while, make good progress, then take a step up, and start operating at a new level.

In the past month, our portfolio company has stepped it up on a number of levels. First and foremost, Mark Josephson joined as CEO and founder Steven Johnson became Executive Chairman. This step had been planned as far back as our original investment, as Steven is a wonderful author who really enjoys writing books, typically one every year. He took a break from that schedule last year but really didn’t want to do it again this year. With Mark in the CEO job, Steven will be able to continue to do the things for Outside.in that he does best; plot strategy, evangelize, and think of new products and services. Mark comes from Seevast/Kanoodle where he was President and before that About.com where he held a number of leadership roles. We think it’s a great fit for Mark and Outside.in and are excited by his decision to join and lead the Company to the next level.

In addition, Outside.in raised a third round of financing, the first of any magnitude as the first two were really seed style financings. This time the Company raised $3 million from the existing investors who have been eager to put more money in the Company as well as several newcomers, most notably the New York City Investment Fund.

The combination of a stronger management team and a full tank of gas takes Outside.in to a new level of operating capacity, just in time to roll out a series of new services that they have been working on for the past six months. Techcrunch and Alley Insider have the details on one of those services, called Radar, and are offering a limited number of alpha invites on their blogs.

If you can't get an invite to Radar from TechCrunch or AlleyInsider and want one, leave a comment on this blog and we'll try to get you one. We can't promise it though.

Originally posted by fred from Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing, on May 20, 2008 4:00 AM

Florent's Official "Au Revoir" Signage

· Jason Denton Chats About Bar Milano [Gothamist]
· Q & A With Ilili's Phillippe Massoud [Bruni Blog]
· Latest in Ridiculously-Priced Burgers: $175 Foie Gras Burger [NYDN]
· Del Posto Announces New Pastry Chef, a "Dessert Psycho" [Strongbuzz]
· Profile of Competitive Eater "Crazy Legs" [Midtown Lunch]

Originally posted by Kelly Dobkin from Eater, on May 20, 2008 3:45 AM

The video for the Introduction to Cocoa talk at CocoaHeads is now available. Technically, this talk is called Best of Both Worlds, but the bulk of the talk is on entry-level material. We also had several interesting demos before the main talk...

Originally posted by scott from Theobroma Cacao, on May 20, 2008 1:24 AM

In case you missed it, I want to commend to your attention Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the Sunday Times: "Israel's 'American Problem". The premise will be a familiar one to anyone who's thought seriously and sanely about Israel's future and America's relationship with Israel. The breadth of acceptable opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vastly greater in Israel than it is in the United States. Indeed, as Goldberg suggests, if Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak were running for president in the US, they might not be deemed sufficiently pro-Israel to be acceptable in the American mainstream.

Here's one memorable passage in which Goldberg quotes Joshua Katzen of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which one might fairly describe as a think tank which advocates on behalf extremist American Jews, a good number of whom found their way into the Bush administration (here's a good article on the group by Jason Vest who's reported on them extensively).

From Goldberg's article ...

One leader, Joshua Katzen, of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, told me, "I think that Israelis don't have the big view of global jihad that American Jews do, because Israelis are caught up in their daily emergencies." When I asked him how his Israeli friends responded to this, he answered: "They say, 'When your son has to fight, you can have an opinion.' But I tell them that it is precisely because your son has to fight that you have a harder time seeing the larger picture."

I won't take the time to recapitulate the whole article. But you should read it because it covers a basic reality -- by conflating being pro-Israel with supporting the continued colonization of the West Bank, many of Israel's 'friends' in the US are placing Israel in great danger and doing no favor to the United States either.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 19, 2008 9:32 PM

Dave Winer: "Now if you ask me -- there never was such a thing as a pro blogger. ... Blogging is an amateur activity. It's users writing about what they do, not professionals writing about what users do." If you want to become a rich and famous blogger, go out and do something that matters, then blog about it. As a bonus, you won't have a heart attack because when you report your own news you can't be scooped.

Originally posted by Wes Felter from Hack the Planet, on May 19, 2008 7:45 PM

The tawdry political scandals of Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) could soon be coming to an end. The Associated Press is reporting that Fossella has decided to announce this week that he will not be seeking re-election.

Republicans believe that an open seat would be easier to hold in this particular case, with the Staten Island district likely to vote for John McCain by a big margin. If Fossella were to run again, the cash-strapped national party would have been unlikely to spend any money on his behalf in the country's most expensive media market.

If Fossella does announce his retirement, it would be a big cause for relief on the part of the NRCC.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on May 19, 2008 7:41 PM

"...a new word: "emplot" or the short form of "narrative emplotment". The idea here is to repurpose the tools of story telling or theater to talk about how we make sense of the world. We make sense of the world by mapping its raw bits into plot lines. The paper is a very preliminary run at the scenario where we map somebody in our organization into the role of the evil bastard."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on May 19, 2008 6:59 PM

"One Laptop Per Child has been a textbook example both of the worst kind of development (broadly, rich white people believe that they know what's best for poor black people) and the most egregious kind of technotopianism (broadly, complex social problems can be solved if only we have the right technology)."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on May 19, 2008 6:46 PM

As a cancer survivor, let me congratulate Jon Lester in a way that only some of you will understand. Whether it’s Lance Armstrong winning the Tour, Lester throwing a no-hitter, or getting up in the morning and typing, any victory against cancer is a sweet one. This is just a reminder that we don’t win every battle and that more needs to be done. or merely your attention because the losses are too much to take.

As an injury analyst, I know that the Red Sox don’t need my advice. In fact, I hope they merely do what they did last time — Jon Lester went 130 pitches for his no-no, 15 more than Clay Buchholz went for his last September. I’d love to see the Sox give Lester a start off or at least some extra rest. Maybe they can just shorten him up next time out, pairing him with a long reliever to keep his pitch count down and make sure he recovers. At 24, we’d hate to see this be the highlight of Lester’s career.

Congratulations, Jon.

UPDATE: Reader James Dunne writes: “I’m not sure about an extra day off, but the Red Sox are going with a six-man rotation this week. Because of the double-header on Satursday, Masterson is pitching tomorrow and Colon Wednesday before swinging back to the front four. So Lester will at least be getting one extra day off before his next start - a fact which I’m sure helped Francona breathe a little bit easier heading into that 9th inning.”

Originally posted by Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on May 19, 2008 5:51 PM

It's almost two years to the day since I originally decided to put together a team and raise a little money to build outside.in, after the gentle prodding of my friends (and now outside.in board members) Andy Karsch and Mark Bailey. At the time, the idea was that I would help put together a prototype, and make a couple of early hires, and then if things seemed promising, we'd find a real CEO to run it, and I'd go back to writing the next book, which I was already under contract to write for Riverhead.

Obviously, that didn't exactly go according to plan -- though for excellent reasons. The site quickly got way too interesting, and the people I was working with (my co-creator John Geraci and our super-talented CTO Cory Forsyth, and then our first wave of investors and early employees) were all just too stimulating to hand off to a new CEO. And the fact was I couldn't really get the problems we were trying to solve out of my head -- even if I'd wanted to go back to writing a new book. So my tenure as CEO ended up lasting much longer than I had intended. And though I did in fact finally start writing the new book a few months ago (more about that in another post), I had convinced myself that I could run a 20-person company and write a book at the same.

But then I got introduced to Mark Josephson, who was at the time president of the ad network company Seavast, and who had helped build About.com before that. We hit it off very quickly, and it was immediately clear to me that he would bring a set of skills and experience to the CEO job that I didn't have, skills that in many ways were more suited where outside.in was in its evolution as a business. Fortunately for us, he saw a similar opportunity in outside.in, and a few weeks ago he officially joined us as CEO. We're announcing it today, along with a $3 million round of financing that we just closed on Monday.

My new role at outside.in will be as an active Executive Chairman -- I'm still very much involved in the day-to-day business, but trying to leave open the mornings for writing. If all goes well, you'll see a steady flow of new features and partnerships from outside.in through the year, and then a new book from me in early 2009. So good news all around!

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on May 19, 2008 5:23 PM

"An itinerary server for a variety of situations Graphserver is a webservice server providing shortest-path itineraries on large graphs. Graphserver currently comes packaged with scripts to load TIGER/line road maps, and transit data in the Google Transit Feed Specification format, though grapsherver is by no means limited to these formats."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on May 19, 2008 3:29 PM

Today, we launched Serious Eats New York. I'm super excited about this new corner of Serious Eats because it's all about one of my favorite things -- everything delicious in New York City. I like it even more that part of my job is finding (and eating!) delicious things! Props to everyone on the SE team, with a special shout-out to Raphael. Let's eat!
 

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on May 19, 2008 3:13 PM

"It's funny because it's racist."  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on May 19, 2008 1:59 PM

Radar examines potential Democratic VP nominees

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Radar Online Features, on May 19, 2008 1:18 PM

There were moments of doubt. About three different times during the process of cooking this meal I turned to the fiancée and said we should just scrap it and make a more traditional fried rice recipe. Many of the hallmarks of a fried rice recipe were ignored, including no high heat and no scrambling of eggs. But, just like the eggplant I made last week, I was calmed by the fact this was a Jean-Georges recipe. And it certainly doesn’t taste like any fried rice I’ve had before. The flavors are perfectly clean thanks to the ginger and, because of the leeks, slightly sweet. But the best part is the runny yolk that drips over every grain of rice, making it a much more cohesive dish than it first appears.

You can just toss the rice in a bowl and flop the fried egg on top, but the dramatic presentation pictured above is surprisingly easy. Just put half of the rice into a small bowl, set a plate on top of it, then flip both over so that the rice bowl is upside-down. The rice should be mounded nicely on the plate. Flatten the top slightly with a spatula and set the fried egg on top. Of course, as soon we started eating we just busted the yolk and mixed everything up. But still...

About the author: Nick Kindelsperger is a co-founder of The Paupered Chef, a blog dedicated to saving time and money while enjoying food in every way possible. He sells wine for a living and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Ginger Fried Rice

- serves 2 -
Adapted from Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten

Ingredients

1/4 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
1 cup leeks, thinly sliced white and pale green parts only
2 cups rice, preferably day old or at least cool
1 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 large eggs
Salt

Procedure

1. In a large pan pour half of the oil in over medium heat. Toss in the leeks and cook until they are softened, but not browned. It should take about 10 minutes. Turn the heat to medium-low if they start to develop any color. Season with salt.

2. Dump in the rice and stir it together with the leeks. Cook until it is hot, just a few minutes. Turn off the heat. Divide the rice into two plates. Drizzle each with half of the soy sauce and sesame oil.

3. Meanwhile, in another large pan pour the rest of the canola oil over medium heat. When hot, add the garlic and ginger. Stirring occasionally, cook until the garlic is nicely browned, just a few minutes. Remove the garlic and ginger and drain on a paper towel.

4. Fry the eggs sunny-side up in the remaining oil left from frying the garlic and ginger. When done, place one egg on each mound of rice. Sprinkle the garlic and ginger on top. Season with salt. Add more soy sauce or sesame oil if you so desire.

Originally posted by Nick Kindelsperger from Serious Eats: Main, on May 19, 2008 12:30 PM

This Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., Hakeem Jeffries, staunch opponent of congestion pricing, will stand on the steps of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene and call for increased service on the G train. As Streetsblog noted last week, this move reeks of cynical pandering from someone who had ample opportunity to stand up for transit riders mere weeks ago, but chose to obstruct $4.5 billion in MTA funding instead.

Judging from the response to that post, a counter-protest could be brewing. Might the Brooklyn Assemblyman regret grandstanding on this particular issue? If anyone is planning to go to the event to challenge Jeffries, hand out flyers, ask tough questions, hold up signs, or otherwise call attention to the hypocrisy of his speech, shoot us an email.

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 19, 2008 12:15 PM

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, on May 19, 2008 11:48 AM

Al Gore is set to do a major fundraising event uniting top Hillary and Obama donors on behalf of the Democratic National Committee on May 31st, a sign that the Dem fundraising establishment is beginning to unite and ramp up in earnest for the general election.

The event features prominent donors on both sides, as you can see if you click on the image of the invite (which was forwarded our way by a source) to enlarge...

Of those listed on the invite, Maureen White, Robert Zimmerman and Al Puchala are major Hillary backers. Meanwhile, Orin Kramer, Mitchell Draizing, Brian Mathis and Jamie Whitehead are Obama supporters.

There's a lot of chatter out there to the effect that the Republican National Committee is outraising its counterpart, the DNC, in advance of the general election.

While this won't mean that Obama won't have a financial advantage against McCain, given his astonishing fundraising success, Obama backers would of course like to see the DNC as flush as the RNC, and will be cheered by signs that the Dem donor and fundraising establishment is uniting -- in this case, with the help of Al Gore -- to gear up for the general.

For the privilege of attending this particular Gore event, donors are being asked to shell out up to $28,500 apiece.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 19, 2008 6:42 AM

Last week, Hawthorne Street showed us the pedestrian nightmare that is the southeast entrance to Prospect Park at the corner of Ocean and Parkside. Tonight, livable streets advocates can help take the fear out of walking to the park and put pedestrians atop the hierarchy at this critical intersection. The Hawthorne Street bloggers have the details:

Some help may be on the way for the Ocean & Parkside intersection at Prospect Park: park reps have informed us that the entrance will be redesigned as part of a massive Park development project due to begin next year.

Of course, how it will be redesigned remains to be seen. We'd urge anyone and everyone concerned about the Park entrance to attend the upcoming public meeting: Monday, May 19, 6:30 p.m. at Wollman Rink.

The meeting will also address parking lots and roads within the southeast section of the park, an excellent chance to call for designs that limit the use of cars. The nearest subway station is Parkside Avenue on the Q.

Image courtesy of Hawthorne Street

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 19, 2008 6:11 AM

As I said earlier, the best part of yesterday’s win over the Yankees was seeing their stadium be dominated by Mets fans, after most Yankee fans fled the scene down 11 to 2.

Ryan Church, talking to reporters about hearing ‘Lets Go Mets’ cheers, while playing in Yankee Stadium:

“It is nice…We gave them something to cheer about, and that’s important.  We’ve always said we appreciate the support.”

Yankees OF Johnny Damon, said:

“They had a reason to be out there cheering.  They ended up kicking our butts.  It was pretty embarrassing.”

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on May 19, 2008 5:36 AM

The Amazon page for Malcolm Gladwell's new book is up. From here, we learn that the full title is "Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't" and what the cover looks like. Here's the description:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" -- the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

And an excerpt from the Little, Brown catalog:

Outliers is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In Outliers, we're going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We're going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world's greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don't. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us -- the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual -- I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.

This doesn't sound exactly what I had heard his new book was going to be.

A few days ago, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell noted that he's almost finished with his third book. I've learned that the subject of this book is the future of the workplace with subtopics of education and genius.

I guess if you flip those around, that describes Outliers marginally well. According to Amazon, the book is due on November 18, 2008. (thx, kyösti)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 19, 2008 5:22 AM

This is a big deal:

On May 13th, 2008 the Debian project announced that Luciano Bello found an interesting vulnerability in the OpenSSL package they were distributing. The bug in question was caused by the removal of the following line of code from md_rand.c

	MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
	[ .. ]
	MD_Update(&m,buf,j); /* purify complains */

These lines were removed because they caused the Valgrind and Purify tools to produce warnings about the use of uninitialized data in any code that was linked to OpenSSL. You can see one such report to the OpenSSL team here. Removing this code has the side effect of crippling the seeding process for the OpenSSL PRNG. Instead of mixing in random data for the initial seed, the only "random" value that was used was the current process ID. On the Linux platform, the default maximum process ID is 32,768, resulting in a very small number of seed values being used for all PRNG operations.

More info, from Debian, here. And from the hacker community here. Seems that the bug was introduced in September 2006.

More analysis here. And a cartoon.

Random numbers are used everywhere in cryptography, for both short- and long-term security. And, as we've seen here, security flaws in random number generators are really easy to accidently create and really hard to discover after the fact. Back when the NSA was routinely weakening commercial cryptography, their favorite technique was reducing the entropy of the random number generator.

Originally posted by schneier from Schneier on Security, on May 19, 2008 4:07 AM

Presenting the look & feel solutions to a client can be a decisive moment of the creative process. The most appropriate and brilliant solutions can get rejected in a mismanaged presentation.Here are 8 tips for presenting the look & feel solutions to a client:

1. Share the meeting agenda in advance. Include the goals of the meeting and ensure that it matches client expectations.
2. Think of Feng Shui; If you are presenting the solutions physically, decide where and how you want your client to review the work so that you can help create a collaborative environment.
3. Start the meeting with a review of the decisions made to date, such as creative brief, goals, target audience and brand positioning.It is important to get agreement on the creative brief prior to starting concept explorations. Include mood board, and visual exercise results to build consensus on the feeling of potential look & feel concepts.
4. Present each solution as a concept that addresses agreed goals. Describe how the concept addresses values that are important to the users and client. Do not dive into aesthetics right away, instead talk about meaning.
5. Present the solutions that you believe in that work best for the client’s needs. Avoid presenting too many solutions that dilute the key concepts and may confuse the client.
6. Be a facilitator of collaborative conversation rather the receiver of aesthetic criticism.
7. Summarize the meeting result and share next steps.
8. Follow up with meeting notes with the decisions that were made.

 

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Originally posted by Kumi Akiyoshi from Adaptive Path, on May 18, 2008 10:35 PM

Find out about a broad's broad mind in this Rita Hayworth classic from Pal Joey.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on May 18, 2008 8:07 PM

When the new Ikea is finished, it'll be easier than ever to get to Red Hook from Manhattan. The Serious Eats crew noticed that the free ferry deposits interested eaters about four blocks from the renowned Red Hook soccer taco vendors.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on May 18, 2008 6:23 PM

Introducing What to Order, a new feature where we pick three new restaurants in one neighborhood and find out what the critics, the average diners, and the staff recommend. Tried any dishes from a new restaurant that blew you away? Let us know.

Kalina, 12/26/07

Dovetail
The critic pick:
From Bruni: "The lamb’s tongue — breaded, fried and straight out of Mario Batali’s offal dreams — is part of a deconstructed muffuletta sandwich that includes olives, pimentos, a caper mayonnaise and a visually arresting spiral of salami, provolone cheese and more. That’s just an appetizer."

The user review:
From Yelp: "Bread pudding with bacon!!!! It does not get better than this, I promise you. This was one of these dishes that you want to never swallow. just hold the sweet, salty, fatty, soft but crunchy bits in your mouth forever."

The staff rec:
From the host "I found the sweetbreads surprisingly good and light, and I like the avocado appetizer with the pickled ramps. For entrees the beef cheek lasagna is really amazing and incredibly tender, and I've heard good things about the red snapper but haven't tried it."

Bar Boulud
The critic pick:
From Platt: "The restaurant’s superb cold meats and pâtés are the work of Sylvain Gasdon...the dignified gastronomes at my table put down their glasses of Sicilian wine and began grappling for pink wedges of cognac-infused country pâté (“pâté grand-mère”) and a delicious assortment of jellied terrines made with inventive ingredients like beef cheeks, pressed rabbit, even slow-cooked lamb blended with chunks of sweet potato and spices from Morocco."

The user review:
From eGullet: "Coq au vin: AWESOME. ORDER IT. EAT IT. BE HAPPY. It was so good we gave some to a neighboring table. It was so good, I wanted to lick the plate. A very generous portion, yet again. I am going back for this dish specifically."

The staff rec:
From the hostess: "I recommend the charcuterie. That's our specialty here. And the escargot. For the mains all of our fish are great, especially the skate."

Eighty One
The critic pick:
From the RG: "Brown has much better success with meats, delivering an exemplary sirloin sided by a tender short rib folded with an olive oil marmalade, as well as a perfectly cooked pork belly plated over al dente Beluga lentils."

The user review:
From Chowhound: "Poached egg with sweetbreads and grilled calamari to start, chicken breast with thigh and codfish for mains. The sweetbreads were soft, not crispy, but blended well with the egg, the calamari were perfectly grilled."

The staff rec:
From the reservationist: "Definitely get the cod, from personal experience I recommend that. But also anything made "a la plancha". Our chef is famous for using that technique, and it means it's cooked with very little oil so the flavor of what's being cooked, the calamari for example, comes through."

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 18, 2008 11:11 AM

Examiner column for May 19.

    Long before students hear the processional from Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” at graduation, they have experienced a procession of events, each one of them for the last time.

    Friday they rejoiced that the fire drill was “our last fire drill!” They have had their last Advanced Placement tests and their last interim grades. Soon they will take their last high school finals. With the passing of each “last,” the students grin in triumph, but with some awareness that not all of their “lasts” will be so simple.

    Within weeks, students will have gone to their last high school dance and had their last “wing night” at the local restaurant. They will have their last study groups, their last cafeteria lunches with friends, their last varsity games, their last stolen moments together between classes or surreptitiously text messaging during class.

    These events have none of the triumphant grins or exclamation points associated with fire drills or tests. These are wistful moments when students realize that graduation will both “free” them from high school constraints, and shove them into a world where they will be forced to make more decisions, meet new friends, and take on increased responsibilities. College and work can be scary places for those used to living at home and having teachers remind them when work is due.

    Concurrent with theirs, I have been having my own procession of “lasts,” for I am “graduating” with my students. After twenty-three years as a high school teacher and part-time college teacher, I will be teaching English full-time at George Mason University.

    I will teach many fewer students and might even have a few days a week when I will not be correcting papers. Plus, I will never have to drive to work in the dark again! (That warrants a big exclamation point.)

    So during Friday’s fire drill, I too was thinking, “this is my last!” And even though I still need to be in the school building by 7 a.m., light comes earlier in May and I will never again be stumbling around in the dark wondering whether the shoes I have on are black or navy blue. 

    But, like my students, I am wistfully sad when I think that I will never teach “Hamlet” or “Bel Canto” again, or that I will never prepare another student for the AP test. I will never pace nervously while they take that test, even though I will continue to grade AP tests for the Educational Testing Service.

    Fittingly, my last high school students have been my best ever. Of 148 students, not one is sullen in class. I have been waiting all year for the beasts within to emerge, but it hasn’t happened. I will carry with me the memory of students who are smart and funny and seem to enjoy being in Senior Seminar.

    And so we graduate together, but not before we have a few more “lasts” together. Some will be jubilant (last report! last grade!) and some will be sad (last class, last hug.) For all of us, it’s time to move on.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on May 18, 2008 5:35 AM