randomwalks/dj

Heh. I've noticed recurring imagery of super-heroes crouched on a building rooftop, on the ledge, usually in the rain, usually moping. It is also usually followed by the hero jumping off to do their thing.

So far I've seen it in:

• Daredevil - It's raining. he does a great dive, parkoursing in Daredevil's signature way (BTW, he's my favourite super-hero*)
• Underworld - I only saw the trailers (shame). But Kate Beckingsale is on the movie poster for both movies, looking over a roof-top ledge. I think in Evolution, she does the Leap thing.
• Spiderman - Spidey usually hangs from buildings, but there's at least one scene in the last one of him in his new (evil) suit, on a spire of a building.
• • 
  Batman - There is always a scene of the Dark Night looking over the city and then jumping off.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - These boys are the original traceurs.
• Dark Angel the TV series - Didn't most episodes end up with her on the Seattle Space Needle? And if I recall she was on the Needle in the opening credits, too.

And some non-super-heroes that are almost super-heroes to me that jump off buildings:

• Bourne Ultimatum - Jason Bourne falls off a building and into a river, in a sort of phoenix progression.
• The Saint - Simon Templar (darker in the movie than I remember the TV series) has a sort of phoenix moment where he falls into a frozen river and is (lucky dude) revived by Dr Russell (a hot physicist, played by Elisabeth Shue).

 

I think part of this is the super-hero looking over the city, as an unwanted, un-thanked protector. The standing at the ledge is a symbol of fearlessness, a standing on the precipice, yet ready to confront what is at the bottom. And the Leap is a suicide, through which the hero comes out like a pheonix reborn, once again to do their Thing.

Have any of you seen this too? Any other movies or comics or books where this metaphor is used? Indeed, in some of my own stories, I have the hero jumping off the building, mostly due to the dramatic nature of plummeting from a building but surviving.

*Huh. Just realized that most of these super-heroes are unloved, tragic heroes. I also like heroes who really are not content with their marginalized existence, who get the krap beaten out of them all the time, and who despite it all still get up in the evening to do their derring-do  (in a Philip Dick sort of way). Anti-hero anyone?

Images from IMDB (Underworld), IMDB (Daredevil),  IMDB (Spiderman 3)

 

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on May 31, 2008 11:37 PM

Tesla is definitely showing interest in potty, diapers, and potty-related words. She appears to be trying to figure it all out. She watches anyone doing their business when possible, even lying on the floor peeking below the door when guests close the bathroom door and lock it so she can't waltz in to watch.

Lately, her new thing is bringing ALL her diaper gear out in the living room (diaper basket, changing table cover, and diaper cream) and putting diapers on her favorite doggy, babbling the whole time about something that sounds like poopoo.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Kokochi, on May 31, 2008 9:51 PM

May 30, 2008 - Apes and Androids perform at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, NY. The full set on Flickr.

Dear Apes and Androids,

You are my new favorite.

Sincerely,
Kathryn

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kathryn yu dot com, on May 31, 2008 9:47 PM

Some readers of this space may have heard that my son was being called Fritz for awhile there, and may be surprised to see that he wound up with a name a lot more—well, actually, less intriguing, and may be wondering why.

First, some background. Fritz Louis Jacob Wertheimer was born in Munich in 1912. A German, he was given an appropriately German name. (Actual conversation earlier this week: Amy: "If your great-grandma knew the names Jacob and Louie, why did she go and name your grandfather Fritz?" Me: "Have you considered that in Munich in 1912 Fritz was the hot name of its day?") So much so that the one baby name book I read, which gave paragraph-long perspectives on interesting names, said of the name Fritz, in full, "Still firmly in its lederhosen."

But poking fun of the name shortchanges the man. Fritz emigrated to the United States in 1936 on the cusp of World War II. Details on how much he brought with him are vague—two trunks of clothes; $200; some such—but he made his way first to northeastern Massachusetts, where he lived outside Cape Ann for a time, and where, 70 years later, his sons and grandsons (and soon, his great-grandson) still spend a long weekend every summer.

Fritz ultimately moved to New Jersey, met my grandmother (actual quote from my father a few years back: "Grandpa was very handsome. And Grandma had huge bazooms"), founded a construction company that my uncle and cousin still run, raised two sons who produced four grandsons, lived through three or four heart attacks, and willed himself to be the picture of health at my bar mitzvah in 1986 before dying 10 months later.

So it's not farfetched to say that Fritz deserved the honor of my son's name in some fashion. And indeed, Nathan's Hebrew name, which is on a religious level equally important, is Peretz, the same as Fritz's. But one doesn't use one's Hebrew name much in 21st-century America, so American Jews typically carry initials forward; for example, my middle name (Ian) is after my other grandfather (Irving).

But—and let's be honest here—it's nigh impossible to find a name that is
Jewish (or secular) in origin;
starting with an F;
appropriately trendy;
and not horrendous when paired with "Wertheimer."
This is a 30-year-old fact, as evidenced by my late grandmother, Frieda, whose honorarium by my parents is my brother's name... of Jeffrey. No offense to those reading this who have F names, but pretend your last name is Wertheimer, you're newly born in 2008, and your parents could have named you, what? Fred? Frank? Felix? Seriously: Felix Wertheimer?

So we decided to bump Fritz to the middle name, and honor Amy's late grandmother Nellie, whom Amy adored, with the first name. That was pretty easy. Nathan is a fine name indeed, strong and moderately popular and with all the right connotations. (I like that David means "beloved," but Nathan is "gift from God," which is just hot.) Plus Nate is a great nickname.

So: Nathan F____ Wertheimer. But. That would make his initials NFW. To which this text-messaging father to be said, nfw.

Less than 48 hours before his birth, my parents unearthed a gem: Fritz had not one but two middle names. (This in comparison to my father and uncle, who have no middle name at all, apparently thanks to my grandmother Dorothy's not wholly inaccurate opinion that Wertheimer was enough of a burden as a name and her boys shouldn't have to deal with any extras.) Epiphanies abounded! Little Nate could share Fritz's middle name. No burden of having the initials NFW or, for that matter, going through life as Fritz.

And here we are, with Nathan Jacob sleeping in the other room, with a name that carries on the memory of good souls on both sides of his family. We've told everyone that we welcome Fritz as a nickname, but so far, he doesn't look much like a Fritz. (Maybe in 60 years or so.) He's a really cute Nate, though.

Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby... we'll call him Nate... if it's a boy
—Prince, "Sign O' the Times"

Originally posted by David Wertheimer from Ideapad, on May 31, 2008 9:44 PM

“me.com” is currently a placeholder page hosted by MarkMonitor, a company that specializes in brand-related DNS management. You can see that it’s handled by MarkMonitor by checking the whois information for the domain. Apple uses MarkMonitor for most of its domains, including “apple.com”, and it’s where they’ve parked domains for future use previously. “mobileme.com” is parked at MarkMonitor, too, but “me.com” is a bit punchier, no?

Netcraft’s report for the “me.com” domain indicates that the “DNS admin” for the domain is Apple.

Update: Via Clint Ecker on Twitter, the name server for me.com changed hands today.

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on May 31, 2008 8:56 PM

A month or two ago I tried David Chang's chicken wings at Momofuku Noodle Bar. They were second, and just barely second, to the wings at Dinosaur BBQ but they were far more interesting and complex. I finally got around to reading the profile of David Chang in the 3/24/08issue of the New Yorker and I got an explanation of what made those wings so delicious.

Take the chicken wings, for instance. All you knew when you were eating them was that they tasted really good. What you didn't know was that they'd been brined in a salt-and-sugar solution for a whole day (but not longer, or they'd be too salty), then dried out and cold-smoked over mesquite for forty-five minutes, then poached in a vat of pork fat for an hour and a half, then browned on the flat-top, then glazed in a chicken-infused soy sauce combined with mirin, garlic, and pickled chili peppers. Each step, executed perfectly, was vital to the dish. This was what the cooks at Noodle Bar understand.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on May 31, 2008 12:17 PM

Examiner column for June 2.

   
    Thursday and Friday I saw my high school students for the last time, with very mixed emotions. I won’t miss having to arrive before sunrise, or the daily computer drill of recording absences for four classes of students. I am glad to be rid of the silly rules limiting times when students can go to the bathroom, and am especially thrilled I will never have to attend another faculty meeting.


    Yet I was so sad to see students exit my classroom. Thursday’s class (the “rowdy” one) even clapped and stood in line to hug me at the end. One of the many surprising insights I’ve had over the years is that students who are a bit hard to manage are often the ones who become the most attached, and that class—so noisy and difficult—was the one that brought a lump to my throat as I said farewell.

    My actual last day with students was an anti-climax, though. Friday was the day of prom, and as Katherine and Corinne put it, “We have nail appointments at 9 a.m. We can’t possibly come to school!” Truthfully, I saw their point.

    So I had classes that were half absent, and was grateful for my “half full” philosophy. “We’re only here for you!” said Kelcey, and I believed her. (I wanted to believe her.)
 
           But I needed to calculate 148 grades as a steady stream of students arrived to drop off books and extra credit, knowing this was the day the grades “turn into pumpkins,” as I warned--metaphorically.    

    At the end of the day, after hours of few students and much data entry, I realized I needed technical help    before I could do my “final export”—the step that would send my students’ grades to their final transcripts. The day was ending on a very mundane note.

    Rebecca, a few hours before being picked up for prom, arrived to drop off a book. “Can’t talk,” I said, heading down to the computer lab for help. We walked together towards the exit doors and she shyly said, “I really appreciated your class and wanted to say something wise and memorable to you.”

    The outside doors loomed and I was about to turn left as she was heading out. “There are so many things I learned, I just don’t know how to put them all in words. Oh wait—I guess I just have!” We both smiled, knowing this was a sweet moment.

    With that, Rebecca exited the building and I sent my final grades to Guidance, aware that grades are the smallest measure of a student or a class or a year spent in a room with wonderfully contradictory adolescents.

    It was only later that I realized Rebecca had articulated what I had been wanting to say for two days. I had talked to classes about the Senior Seminar I’ve designed and its connection to life and learning, and the pleasure I’ve gotten when students talk, write and think intelligently—but it was all too much to put into words. Yet I guess I just have.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on May 31, 2008 11:48 AM

Wow, this will be quite an optic.

Some folks have already reported this, based on anonymous sources, but now the Obama campaign has made it official via a press release: He and his wife, Michelle, will hold a big rally on Tuesday evening -- the night of the last voting in the Dem primary -- at the site of the 2008 Republican National Convention.

It will be at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Expect Obama to use the occasion to frame his entire argument against McCain.

It's a pretty ballsy move. To state the obvious, the event will strongly symbolize that the real significance of the completion of the Dem primary voting is that the general election has begun, with Obama as the standard-bearer challenging McCain and the GOP.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 31, 2008 7:26 AM

Two weeks ago, in my farewell post to TPMmuckraker alum Paul Kiel, I noted his critical and too-little-credited role in our coverage of the US Attorney firing scandal. But while that is entirely accurate, I failed to note an important part of the story.

By the time the story really broke open it was just me and Paul working the story at TPM since Justin Rood had already moved on to his current job at ABC's The Blotter. But key work on the story happened before a lot of the public and the rest of the news media really began to take notice -- particularly the initial work of compiling the initial list of seven US Attorneys who we then believed (and now know) had been fired. This was in some ways the Rosetta Stone from which the rest of the story unfolded over the spring and summer of 2007. And Justin was every bit a part of that reporting.

This is of course sort of inside baseball. It doesn't change the merits or implications of the story. But it's one that we're proud of here at TPM and one that's gotten a lot of attention. So I wanted to clarify this point and set the record straight.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 30, 2008 8:12 PM

Hey, want to help out with some xscreensaver hacking?

Recent-ish Linux systems have made it so that when you add or remove monitors (e.g., docking a laptop) the system is actually aware that this has happened (shocking, I know) and dynamically changes the size, position, and number of screens.

Based on the email complaints I'm getting, it would appear that xscreensaver handles this... poorly.

However, I don't have access to any Linux machines capaple of doing this new Xrandr junk, so I can't really debug it.

I would like someone who does have access to such a machine to A) figure out what cases don't work, and B) send me a patch. You'll need one (preferably two) external monitors to experiment with. Probably better if the machine is a laptop.

Is this person you?

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on May 30, 2008 7:54 PM

SocialDesignZine in English. My favorite Italian web site just launched an English version! SocialDesignZine is a blog about social design published by the Italian Graphic Design Association (AIAP). Huzzah!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on May 30, 2008 7:26 AM

The estimate given earlier this week that the Red Hook Ball Fields vendors will return by mid-June may have been premature: "Officials at the Parks Department said the vendors’ contract has cleared their review and is merely waiting for Comptroller Bill Thompson to sign off. But Thompson’s office said it has no record of it. Meanwhile, the purveyors...need the go-ahead from the Health Department...A spokesman for that agency said the vendors haven’t presented their new carts for inspection." [BP]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 30, 2008 5:00 AM

Folks, I think we've got a live one on the line out in Colorado.

You've already met GOP senate candidate, and former representative, Bob Schaffer. His main claim to fame in this cycle has been stumbling into fulsome praise for the Mariana Islands sweatshop program that revealed his ties to Jack Abramoff, Jack's island sweatshop junkets and generally carrying Jack's clients' water up on Capitol Hill.

Now Schaffer's got another great story cooking that's sure to help his flagging senate campaign.

The nuts and bolts of it basically go like this. A Denver businessman named Bill Orr lobbies Congress and gets a $3.6 million earmark to help develop some new kind of non-polluting fuel. And he sets up the National Alternative Fuels Foundation to get your tax dollars for the earmark. The only problem was that "science" Orr used to get the EPA to fork over $2 million of the $3.6 million of earmarked money was apparently bogus. And as will happen in such cases, it's gotten him indicted by the Feds for multiple counts of defrauding the government.

Now, Schaffer was still in the House when Orr got his prized earmark. And then not long after he gave up his House seat, he signed on as a "director" at Orr's highly-credible-sounding National Alternative Fuels Foundation. In other words, Schaffer was a board member of Orr's outfit/racket during at least part of the time Orr was allegedly bilking the government out of its money.

Part of Schaffer's explanation for this awkward confluence of events, as relayed by his campaign manager Dick Wadhams, is that he got involved with Orr on the recommendation of one of Schaffer's Colorado associates-cum-handlers Scott Shires. But that may not be a great association either since back in 2006 Shires copped a plea over his role in the scam and agreed to testify against Orr.

The jury in the case had been deliberating. But just this afternoon they returned their verdict: guilty on 22 counts. So the outlook is not looking good for Orr. But what about Schaffer?

Schaffer has been accused of no crime, though he may be called to testify at Orr's sentencing. But what about those earmarks? Democrats in Colorado are asking whether Schaffer was the one who got Orr the $3.6 million earmark. And while the case that he did is highly circumstantial and fairly thin at that, no one's stepping forward to say who got Orr the money and Schaffer's campaign is rather conspicuously not answering any questions about the earmarks origins.

One way or another, Schaffer is now at best unwittingly tied to an organization that was based in large part on criminal acts. So that can't be any more helpful than Schaffer's ties to Jack Abramoff.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 29, 2008 7:26 PM

Open source bug-tracker written in Rails. It’s the one Panic is going with after yesterday’s “Which web-based bug trackers should we consider?” question from Steven Frank.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on May 29, 2008 5:41 PM

One thing I really wanted with the updated Kokochi template design was to shorten my ever-growing archive list. It was getting too long and cumbersome. I've always admired Anil's niftier archive style. Since Dav has been super busy, I asked if Beau could do it, and he graciously said, "sure!"

What I didn't realize was Beau asked Anil about it, found out Anil manually did it, got Brad Choate to draft code, then tweaked it to make it work chez Kokochi. Wow. This is why I love working at Six Apart...great teamwork and help all around even for personal stuff. A big shout-out to Beau for taking the time to install the Advanced Archive Widget, and thanks to Brad and Anil too!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Kokochi, on May 29, 2008 2:50 PM

In his bombshell new book, What Happened, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lashes out at his old employer in a massive Bush-administration-wide bus-throwing-under. Better late than never? To assist Mr. McClellan with his big media sales push, we thought we might go back and revisit some of the lowlights from back when what he said actually mattered ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Late Update: A huge thanks to all the readers/viewers who e-mailed in with their favorite Scottie memories. We hope you find yours in there.

Originally posted by Ben Craw from Talking Points Memo, on May 29, 2008 1:50 PM

At Six Apart, our mission is to help people communicate on the web, and we've always done this by making the best software and services that we can. But part of our larger goal is to help do what's right for the web, and today we're launching the latest initiative in that effort: TypePad AntiSpam.

What's TypePad AntiSpam? A few short answers:

• A free, open source system powered by TypePad for blocking comment spam on any site, free no matter how many comments you get.
• A service for all bloggers, built into TypePad blogs already and implemented as a free plugin for users of platforms like Movable Type and WordPress.
• An open source engine which developers can use to create new antispam services, with customizable rules and logic.
• In beta! We're hearing great results from testers so far, but wanted to open up TypePad AntiSpam to a larger audience so we can make sure the system is getting as smart as possible.

One of the reasons that we think TypePad AntiSpam is performing so well already is that its adaptive learning engine has been trained by millions of comments already. Every time any TypePad user reports a comment as junk, the system gets a little bit smarter and is even more ready to fight future spam attacks. The same goes for TrackBacks and Pingbacks.

So, if you hate spam, you're probably wondering how to get TypePad AntiSpam. It's easy!

• TypePad AntiSpam is a free, automatic upgrade for TypePad users at any subscription level -- it's built in! You can read up on Everything TypePad to find out how this helps your TypePad blogs and be sure to check out the screencast.
• The service is included in the brand-new Movable Type 4.2 Release Candidate 1 and is available as a free plugin for any user of MT 3.3 or later.
• For users of other platforms, TypePad AntiSpam is a free plugin. Users of WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 can download the plugin for free, and other platforms can use our 100% Akismet API-compatible implementation to extend their existing antispam support to use this service.

So, why are we releasing TypePad AntiSpam now? It all comes back to our mission, as stated above: We want to increase the quality of conversation on the web. At the highest level, we wanted to change the economics of blog spamming by introducing variety into the ecosystem.

The more different implementations of spam-fighting technology that exist, the more complex and challenging (and expensive!) it becomes for spammers to keep attacking our communities. At the same time, we want to make sure our economic incentives at Six Apart as a business are aligned with the best interests of bloggers, so that we feel the pain and cost of spam just as you do. And we want to get these weapons in the fight against spammers into as many hands as possible. One of the earliest sites to deploy the new platform has been popular tech blog TechCrunch, which just offered up a review of TypePad AntiSpam from the site's founder, Michael Arrington:

[L]ast week we switched to TypePad AntiSpam as a test, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. After a week I'm pleased to say that as good as Akismet is, the TypePad product has performed as good or better for us.

TypePad AntiSpam has learned from the platforms that came before: Automattic's team has created a dead-simple API for Akismet, and we're 100% compatible with their API. (As Dave Winer once said, "Invention here is hardly the issue. What matters is adoption and forward motion.") The smart work at Defensio has made it clear that bloggers want more competition in the antispam market. And years of work on SpamAssassin has shown the success of making an open source antispam engine that anyone can extend and customize to their own needs.

But most important, we made TypePad AntiSpam so that you don't have to think about spam. So grab the plugin (or TypePad users, just keep on blogging) and join the fight against blog spam.

Originally posted by Anil Dash from Six Apart News & Events, on May 29, 2008 9:10 AM

The Obama camp releases a letter from his doctor detailing the health of the would-be next president...

His family history is pertinent for his mother's death from ovarian cancer and grandfather who died of prostate cancer. His own history included intermittent cigarette smoking. He has quit this practice on several occasions and is currently using Nicorette gum with success.

For some old-fashioned souls, this might prove to be a tad on the racy side...

Senator Obama's last medical checkup was on January 15, 2007; he had no complaints. He exercised regularly often jogging three miles. His diet was balanced with good intake of roughage and fluids. A complete review of systems was unremarkable. On physical examination, his blood pressure was 90/60 and pulse 60/minute. His build was lean and muscular with no excess body fat.

The conclusion...

In short, his examination showed him to be in excellent health. Senator Barack Obama is in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency required in the Office of President.

Full letter after the jump.

DAVID L. SCHEINER, M.D.

Hyde Park Associates in Medicine, Ltd.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am David L. Scheiner, a board certified general internist licensed to practice in the State of Illinois. I am on staff at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Rush University Medical Center. I have been Senator Barack Obama's primary care physician since March 23, 1987. The following is a summary of his medical records for the past 21 years.

During that period of time, Senator Obama has been in excellent health. He has been seen regularly for medical checkups and various minor problems such as upper respiratory infections, skin rashes and minor injuries.

His family history is pertinent for his mother's death from ovarian cancer and grandfather who died of prostate cancer. His own history included intermittent cigarette smoking. He has quit this practice on several occasions and is currently using Nicorette gum with success.

Senator Obama's last medical checkup was on January 15, 2007; he had no complaints. He exercised regularly often jogging three miles. His diet was balanced with good intake of roughage and fluids. A complete review of systems was unremarkable. On physical examination, his blood pressure was 90/60 and pulse 60/minute. His build was lean and muscular with no excess body fat. His physical examination was completely normal.

Laboratory studies included triglycerides of 44(normal under 150), cholesterol 173 (normal under 200), HDL 68 (normal over 40), and LDL 96 (normal under 130). Chem 24, urinalysis and CBC were normal, PSA was 0.6, very good. An EKG was normal.

In short, his examination showed him to be in excellent health. Senator Barack Obama is in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency required in the Office of President.

Sincerely,

David L. Scheiner, M.D.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 29, 2008 8:23 AM

And it continues: "So after weeks of trying, I got in today; problem is, I accidentally pulled down the drop-menu to 1 instead of 2 people...we can work it out so the second I cancel (nowhere near 10 AM, that's for sure), he/she can pick it up. So make me an offer, of money, or goods, or wine, or if nothing comes along and I want a taste of what it feels like to be God/Chang, I'll just give it to you anyway." [Craigslist]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on May 29, 2008 8:06 AM

The Internet Bench from Gdansk, Poland, The Cat Residence, Watching Plants Grow, Watching Pigs Grow, The Church of St. George located Sofia, Bulgaria, the cyber-enabled single crystal X-ray diffraction facility at Case Western Reserve University, Bridge in Umeå, Sweden, D & D Family Billiards in Thorndale, Pennsylvania, Universeum in Göteborg, Sweden, Plusnet Customer Support Center, Ustream, Justin.tv, Real Tokyo Life, SpaceVidcast, Nekomimi Lisa, KCJJ Raw, Live From The UK, Austincast, Zane Savage Live, Laura News, Louiscast, Music by Podington Bear

Originally posted by hello@rocketboom.com (Rocketboom) from Rocketboom, yea!, on May 29, 2008 8:00 AM

Scott McClellan's began his book tour this morning. Here's a sampling of his interview on the Today show:

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 29, 2008 7:59 AM

An interesting story on the "original Indiana Jones":

Like Jones, Rahn was an archaeologist, like him he fell foul of the Nazis and like him he was obsessed with finding the Holy Grail - the cup reputedly used to catch Christ's blood when he was crucified. But whereas Jones rode the Grail-train to box-office glory, Rahn's obsession ended up costing him his life.

However, Rahn is such a strange figure, and his story so bizarre, that simply seeing him as the unlikely progenitor of Indiana Jones is to do him a disservice. Here was a man who entered into a terrible Faustian pact: he was given every resource imaginable to realise his dream. There was just one catch: in return, he had to find something that - if it ever existed - had not been seen for almost 2,000 years.

(link)

Originally posted by cliffkuang@gmail.com from kottke.org, on May 29, 2008 7:45 AM

Here's a bit more on what the actual impact could be of the DNC's legal memo yesterday saying that the Rules and Bylaws Committee only has the authority to seat half the delegations.

It appears that Rules and Bylaws can proceed down one of two tracks here if they seat half the delegations. Either they can seat the whole delegation and have each vote counted as a half-vote, or then can cut the delegation in half and seat that.

And as if this weren't complex enough already, it turns out that each of those solutions would give the candidates a different number of delegates. Chuck Todd explains:

As for the actual meeting itself, there's one more angle you ought to be aware of: a 50% cut and a halving of the delegates is not the same thing. For instance, if Florida delegates are seated in their entirety, but only have their vote counted as a .5, then Clinton will net approximately 19 delegates out of the state. But if the delegation is cut in half, that's done in every congressional district as well as statewide, then suddenly Clinton's advantage is only a net of six.

So, a net gain for Hillary from Florida of roughly six or 19 delegates. Marc Ambinder says there is reason to believe that the Obama camp might be able to accept a 19-delegate net gain for Hillary. Michigan, meanwhile, is an entirely different morass...

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 29, 2008 7:41 AM

Glenn Fleishman did a great interview (back in March) of Clay Shirky on the topics in Clay's new book 'Here Comes Everybody'.

Clay, as always, has some great stories to tell. Glenn is pretty good too. Yeah, you should go and download the interview from Glenn's pages (link below).

The whole interview is great, but it was the very end that made me reel. Glenn asked Clay what business could do to take advantage of the participative nature of the Web. I overly simplify, but Clay, among other comments, mentioned that instead of proclaiming the next great thing in a press release and putting all the money into one pot, that companies spread the money across many endeavors and see what sticks (and do it without fanfare). Basically, have many experiments, put it out there, and see if folks like it rather than gab about it (Show vs Tell?). He uses the example of Wikitorial.

Gosh. I have lots to add to that and a few more examples. (My tongue is bleeding, I am biting it so hard. Though a beer can loosen it, in case you are interesting in a tale of enlightenment, abandonment, discovery, creativity, stealing, cluelessness, and dissapointment.)

While I hope that some companies hear what he has to say and take the learning to heart, I fear that most, as Clay points out, will end up focusing on the wrong thing. Or, as Glenn says, miss the elephant parade passing in front of them.

Sigh.

Hey, I'm just road-kill on the info superhighway. Go listen to some smart people (the link is below, in case you forgot).

Link: TidBITS Blog Post: The Internet Organizes Itself: Here Comes Everybody

I sat down with Clay on 14-Mar-08 to talk about the book for a short article that appeared in the Seattle Times, focused on the business side of his book. However, the Seattle Times allowed me to publish a podcast of our roughly 40-minute conversation.

As an aside: Clay does validate some thoughts I've been having. It's always nice to inadvertently come to the same conclusions as others smarter than me.

Image from Joi Ito

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on May 29, 2008 7:10 AM

Bobby Valentine will be a guest on WFAN’s mid-day show, live at 11:15 am EDT.

…my guess is that he’ll be on to plug the documentary, The Zen of Bobby V, but i certainly hope the show’s hosts talk to him about whether he is willing to return to American baseball…

…frankly, i cannot for the life of me figure out why he would be…from what i understand, he earns around $10 million a year in Japan, between his salary and endorsements, plus he is a huge icon over there…

…what’s more, he is like a cult figure among Mets fans now, too…why risk that…if he came back to the states, should he become tired of Japan, it would make more sense for him to be in television again, like he did with Baseball Tonight…actually, how cool would it be to have him and Mike Piazza, while also having Lee Mazzilli and Darryl Strawberry, occasionally in studio on SNY…a little bit of the 80s, a little bit of the late 90s…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on May 29, 2008 6:25 AM

psyched to see the albertans on pablo’s muxtape.  A+. andy action brian  david  ...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 29, 2008 6:17 AM

Here's one other nugget I meant to bring you from yesterday's Obama campaign conference call: Obama top adviser David Plouffe said flatly that reports saying Obama has a massive number of super-delegates secretly banked to roll out after June 3rd are untrue.

"That's not accurate," Plouffe said, when asked about such reports. "You know, we announce super-delegate support as people commit to us. We have done three so far today. So we are announcing them as they pledge their support to us...no, we do not have a bunch of super-delegates in our back pocket."

There's a simple reason that these rumors of blocs of super-dels secretly plotting to move en masse keep proving to be false: This isn't how the dynamic actually works. The reality is that getting indivdiual super-dels to commit -- and getting them to go public -- is hard enough on its own, let alone getting them to do so in a big group.

Once either campaign has got an individual super-del privately locked down, it rushes that super-del out the door and makes it public as quick as possible, in order to make it official. The campaigns don't privately hoard super-dels, because to do so would risk losing them.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 29, 2008 6:14 AM

In response to the ridiculous Seth Leibsohn challenge yesterday, I raise my hand and offer evidence (Exhibit No. __ -- oh, who can keep count at this point) that the press was soft on the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Here's Jessica Yellin of CNN (but formerly of ABC News, during the time period in question) talking last night about the pressure she was under from network news execs when she was covering the Bush White House back then (via Michael Calderone at The Politico):

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 29, 2008 5:47 AM

view additional pages

200 INCH TELESCOPE Is Greatest Engine of Science

by WILLIAM JENNINGS

COOLING slowly in a brick igloo in Corning, N. Y., is a lake of 34 tons of molten glass, representing the greatest scientific project ever attempted by man. It took six years to reach this stage of the great task and it will be more than four more years before its success is known.

From far and wide scientists came to see the formation of this huge lake of glass— the pouring of the 200-inch telescope mirror that is expected to reach out into the unknown depths of the universe.

The work has hardly begun with the pouring of the mirror. Countless problems still face the scientists who have undertaken the task.

The most complex of these is the shaping of the mirror. To properly reflect and focus light from the stars the mirror of a telescope must have a concave surface that is exactly parabolic. Amateurs feel that they have accomplished much when a six inch mirror is polished and corrected to fractions of an inch after a few days’ work.

The shaping, figuring, polishing, and silvering of the 200 inch mirror will require four years’ time. When it is completed, it will have a concave paraboloid surface true to within two millionths of an inch.

When the mirror is ready, engineers must find means to mount this great disk of glass that is 16 feet 8 inches in diameter and 26 inches thick.

The telescope is of the reflecting type. That is, the light from stars is collected by a huge concave mirror, and focused on a smaller mirror which transmits the light to any eyepiece, where the astronomer or the camera sees the enlarged image. Usually the focal length of a mirror is eight times its diameter. The focal length determines the length of the telescope. A 200-inch mirror would require a telescope more than 130 feet long.

To overcome the engineering problem of mounting and swinging a tube of such great length, the focal length of the great mirror will be reduced to 55 feet, requiring a telescope only 60 feet long.

The popular conception that this great telescope may reveal cities and life on Mars does not interest astronomers. They believe they have proved quite conclusively that human life does not exist on Mars. The 100 inch mirror at Mount Wilson observatory determined that only one-tenth of one percent of oxygen exists in Mars’ atmosphere, not enough to support life.

The purpose of the 200 inch telescope is to gather more light to show the faintest stars, planets and nebulae. The huge “eye” will reach farther into space. It will increase man’s knowledge of the vast voids of the cosmos, in which countless universes whirl on to an unknown destiny. The instrument will be used chiefly for photographic, spectrographic and radiometric work, that will give astronomers a better picture of the minerals and gases existing countless light years away from the earth.

The gigantic telescope will cost $12,000,-000 and will weigh 1,600 tons with its mounting. It will gather about 2,000,000 times more light than the human eye or about four times more than the present largest telescope, the 100-inch instrument of Mount Wilson Observatory.

A great difficulty that still remains to be solved is the transportation of the mirror to the site selected for the telescope. At first the plan was to ship the mirror from Corning, N. Y., to New York city by rail, from New York to Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal, by sea, and then by truck to Pasadena and to the site selected by Mount Wilson astronomers.

The plan had to be abandoned when it was discovered that the mirror will be too high for railroad bridges if loaded on a flat car on edge and too wide for tunnels if placed flat on flat cars.

Apparently the only means to transport the glass disk is overland. There remains the complication of finding a route without bridges and tunnels that are too small for the world’s greatest package of freight.

Reflecting Surface to Be Aluminum The glass disk, after it is shaped and polished, will not be coated with silver as has been done in the past. The reflecting surface of the 200-inch mirror will be aluminum, put on the disk by a special process developed by Dr. J. Strong, of the California Institute of Technology. The mirror will be placed in a high vacuum. Tungsten wire, coated with aluminum, will be heated electrically until the aluminum evaporates and collects in the form of a vapor on the mirror.

The pouring of the glass disk was a great spectacle. Approximately 7,500 persons, in addition to more than 100 scientists, witnessed the operation. In a large furnace in the Corning Glass Works the 34 tons of pyrex borosilicate glass was heated white hot at 1,500 degrees Centigrade.

The mold, studded with circular cores which will leave indentations in the mirror for mounting purposes, rested on the floor of the brick igloo. A workman, with a shield before his face, opened a furnace door. Eight men shoved the 20-foot handle of a huge ladle into the glaring interior, dipped the bucket into the dazzling mass of liquid and came out with 750 pounds of molten glass.

The ladle was trundled along an overhead monorail to the brick igloo where 400 pounds of the glass were poured into the mold. The other 350 pounds hardened before it reached the mold, and the glass had to be broken off.

Workmen Labor Ten Hours Three ladles were used, one for each furnace door. For ten hours the ladlemen dipped and poured load after load, while spectators looked on in relays.

The ladles became red hot on each trip and had to be dipped into water to cool before taking on another load. The molten glass was so hot it melted some of the cores from the mold. These were found floating on the liquid glass, and had to be taken out with ten-foot pincers.

The glass is cooled very slowly so that it will anneal properly and will not crack. Within a short time the glass experts will be able to judge the success of the pouring. If the glass is found imperfect the great task will have to be done over.

In 1938 this telescope, the greatest ever devised, is expected to be ready to turn on the heavens and seek new fields. The great mirror will be held in a 60-foot skeleton steel tube in an observatory yet to be built.

When all difficulties are overcome, man’s greatest “artificial eye” will look three times farther into space than is possible now.

Tags: telescopes

Related posts

• Photographing Stars with a Rocket
• THE POOR MAN’S TELESCOPE
• How They Trailed a New Planet
• 2,000-Inch TELESCOPE May Reveal End of Universe
• Rocket’s Flight Kept In Sight
• Candid Photography

Originally posted by Charlie from Modern Mechanix, ReBlogged by jwinter on May 29, 2008 at 08:22 AM

Originally posted by Charlie from Eyebeam reBlog, on May 29, 2008 5:22 AM

So, for a little while now, India and I have been trading links to patterns for airship-hostess dresses. (You know, what the flight attendant on the dirigible wears?)

Like this:



Or this:



Or this:




[Thanks to Beth B. for the last link]

I mean, I've found SPACE dirigible-crew dresses before, but for some reason these above are more suited to atmospheric travel.

What makes an airship-hostess dress, you ask? I think it's a combination of asymmetry, buttons, and a longish A-line skirt. Interesting collars and pockets are good, too. If the dress would look good with a tiny pillbox hat with a cockade, that's another plus.

I don't know why I'm so tickled by these dresses. Maybe it's the allure of steampunk (I like the idea of an art-deco kind of steampunk), or maybe it's that I've been flying a lot lately and am wistful for the idea of quiet, elegant airship travel (now! with fewer Hindenburgs!). Who knows why ... all I know is that I want to see more of them! Suggestions welcome.

(Oh, and btw, India, I'll have you know, is so deeply saturated with win that she made this Flickr set: A Daily Hint From Paris. Take a look ... there are only a baker's dozen or so right now so it won't kill your WHOLE morning.)

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on May 29, 2008 5:00 AM

• Chain Stores, Gas Stations Reaping Benefits From City Tax Break (NYT, News)
• West Coast Cities Are Less Carbon-Intensive Than Others in U.S. (NYT)
• Bloomberg Criticizes Corn Ethanol Subsidies, Gas Tax Holiday (Sun)
• New York-DC High-Speed Train Proposal Gets a Boost (Sun, NY1)
• New Yorkers Well-Positioned to Handle Rising Gas Prices (Post)
• MTA Defends Giving Board Members Free E-ZPasses for Life (AMNY, City Room)
• Checking in on Park Slope a Week After Suspension of Parking Rules (Brooklyn Paper)
• Sheldon Silver Challenger Luke Henry Opens Campaign Office (Politicker)
  
• Introducing the Dual-Mode Vehicle: It Runs On Rails and Off (Autopia)
• Wisconsin Man Swears Off Gas for a Month (Yahoo)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 29, 2008 4:59 AM

A GPS unit for bikes. Although its still kind of nasty looking for my silvery beauty.

(link)

Originally posted by cliffkuang@gmail.com from kottke.org, on May 29, 2008 4:49 AM

Here's card number five of the Florida Agriculture set. I don't have any wacky conspiracy theories about this card because it's hard to blame the Illuminati for Tom Glavine looking like a total dork. I'm sure Tom was in the middle of a brilliant Bugs Bunny impression but when the photographer snapped the pic, he captured "goofball eating carrot" instead. Tom is the only player not obviously wearing any Braves gear either so it's entirely possible this photo was not posed but was instead Tom working his patented Looney Toons move to pick up a chick at a party. It's all rather silly, but significant in that the Fresh 2 U logo is the only one where the produce featured in the logo is not circular. You may think this fact is meaningless, but I shall be pondering it the next time I meditate on the Florida Agriculture Koan for sure. The back of Tom's card does not specifically mention carrots, but it does say that Florida farmers produce everything from avocados (which is misspelled as avacados) to zucchini. I'm glad now that I don't have the Marlins half of this set, because I really don't want to see any baseball players doing funny poses with a zucchini.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on May 29, 2008 4:49 AM

Scientific American: Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 29, 2008 4:30 AM

The Journal has been running its three-part series on the fall of Bear Stearns, and it's absolutely worth reading, assuming you have a reasonable amount of stomach lining to spare. Worth quoting at length, this excerpt about the Sunday night conference call between a group of "Wall Street CEOs" (the Journal's words, not mine) discussing the (then) $2 per share buy out of Bear by J.P. Morgan...

Messrs. Geithner and Dimon led off with some brief remarks, noting that J.P. Morgan would be guaranteeing Bear Stearns's debts and that if the pact hadn't come together, the market impact may have been catastrophic. During the question-and-answer session, Citigroup Inc.'s new CEO, Vikram Pandit, spoke up.

Mr. Pandit -- who did not initially identify himself -- asked a shrewd but technical question: How would the deal affect the risk to Bear Stearns's trading partners on certain long-term contracts?

The query irked Mr. Dimon. "Who is this?" he snapped. Mr. Pandit identified himself as "Vikram." Offended that Mr. Pandit was taking up time with what he considered granular inquiries, Mr. Dimon shot back, "Stop being such a jerk." He added that Citigroup "should thank us" for staving off further mayhem on Wall Street.

The online feature has all sorts of video and links to archived stories about the fall.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on May 29, 2008 12:24 AM

Ginza at dusk, originally uploaded by Joi.

Wow, Joi's taking great photos lately. This one just stopped me in my tracks, and makes me want to book the next flight to Tokyo. Hey, Six Apart Japan, there must be something we need to discuss that just can't be done over video, no?

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on May 28, 2008 10:24 PM

The ACLU has posted a handful of documents they’ve pried from the CIA about the use of waterboarding on prisoners in CIA custody.

After the Director of the CIA publicly admitted that the CIA has, in fact, used waterboarding, the agency could hardly argue that this was a state secret.

The documents are, of course, heavily redacted, an insolent “up yours” to the court, the ACLU and concerned citizens. The graphic effect is both comic and chilling to imagine what else lies beneath the black. Click below for a larger image.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on May 28, 2008 9:00 PM

I had the privilege of interviewing Aaron Hillegass for InformIT in support of the brand-new third edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. We talk a bit about the book, but a good chunk of the interview is about his thoughts on Mac and iPhone programming in general...

Originally posted by scott from Theobroma Cacao, on May 28, 2008 8:41 PM

Hope everyone rested up over the weekend in time for all of the events happening here at Arts Engine with the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival! This year's collection includes some amazing films focusing on such issues as the essential role of youth in a democracy, the burden of war on a young boy's life, the changing face of nomadic life in Tibet and the importance of honeybees on the environment. After watching these films and meeting with the filmmakers, we are proud to provide this platform to celebrate these visions of hope through film. Tonight's world premiere will feature 12 new inspiring short films from around the world at the IFC Center in New York City at 7pm. The filmmakers from this latest collection will be participating in a Q&A soon after the premiere, so come out to meet these great new advocates for social change through film. Get your tickets quick! The collection will also be simultaneously launching online at the Media That Matters website. In case you can't make it to our Wednesday premiere, due to popular demand, we'll be having a second screening on Friday, May 30 at Tribeca Cinemas at 7pm where you'll join many of our partners for a run of these same 12 films with many of the filmmakers for a follow-up Q&A session. Bring your friends to Tribeca Cinemas this Friday!. And if all of this isn't enough, join us for the official Media That Matters after-party on Saturday, May 31 as festival winner African Underground: Hip Hop in Senegal's filmmaker and featured artists spin tracks and lay down beats at the Rose Live Music center in historic Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I hope some of you are able to attend our events — but in case you can't, check out the festival online! Stay tuned for more screenings and events around the world with Media That Matters. See you there!—posted by Maia Ermita

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MediaRights: Staff Blog, on May 28, 2008 2:47 PM

(circa 2006 Twitter maintenance cat)

Along with a whole slew of smart folks, I’ve been playing the current think game de jour, “How would you re-architect Twitter?”. Unlike most I’ve been having this conversation off and on for a couple of years, mostly with Blaine, in my unofficial “Friend of Twitter” capacity. (the same capacity that I wrote the first Twitter bot in, and have on rare occasion logged into their boxes to play “spot the run away performance issue.”)

For my money Leonard’s Brought to You By the 17th Letter of the Alphabet is probably the best proposed architecture I’ve seen — or at least it matches my own biases when I sat down last month to sketch out how build a Twitter-like thing. But when Leonard and I were chatting last week about this stuff, I was struck what was missing from the larger Blogosphere’s conversation: the issues Twitter is actually facing.

Folks both within Twitter and without have framed the conversation as an architectural challenge. Meanwhile the nattering classes have struck on the fundamental challenge of all social software (namely the network effects) and are reporting that they’ve gotten confirmation from “an individual who is familiar with the technical probelms at Twitter” that indeed Twitter is a social software site!

Living and Dying By the Network

All social software has to deal with the network effect. At scale it’s hard. And all large social software has had to solve it. If you’re looking for the roots of Twitter’s special challenges, you’re going to have to look a bit farther a field.

Though you can hedge your bets with this stuff by making less explicit promises then Twitter does (everything from my friends in a timely fashion is pretty hard promise to keep). Flickr mitigates some of this impact by making promises about recent contacts, not recent photos (there are a fewer people then photos), meanwhile Facebook can hide a slew of sins behind the fact that their newsfeeds are “editorialized”, no claims of completeness anywhere in site. (there is a figure floating around that at least at one point Facebook was dropping 80% of their updates on the floor)

So while architectures that strip down Twitter to queues, and logs could be a huge win, and while thinking about new architectures is the sexy, hard problem we all want to fix, Twitter’s problems are really of a more pedestrian hard, plumbing and ditch digging nature. Which is less fun, but reality.

Growth

Their first problem is growth. Honest to god hockey stick growth is so weird, and wild, and hard, thats it’s hard to imagine and cope with if you haven’t been through it at least once. To quote Leonard again (this from a few weeks ago back when TC thought they’d figured out that Twitter’s problems were Blaine):

“Even if you’re architecturally sound, you’re dealing with development with extremely tight timelines/pressures, so you have to make decisions to pick things that will work but will probably need to eventually be replaced (e.g. DRb for Twitter) — usually you won’t know when and what component will be the limiting factor since you don’t know what the uses cases will be to begin with. Development from prototype on is a series of compromises against the limited resources of man-hours and equipment. In a perfect world, you’d have perfect capacity planning and infinite resources, but if you’ve ever experienced real-world hockey-stick growth on a startup shoestring, you know that’s not the case. If you have, you understand that scaling is the brick that hits you when you’ve gone far beyond your capacity limits and when your machines hit double or triple digit loads. Architecture doesn’t help you one bit there.”

Growth is hard. Dealing with growth is rarely sexy. When your growth goes non-linear you’re tempted to think you’ve stumbled into a whole class of new problems that need wild new thinking. Resist. New ideas should be applied judiciously. Because mostly its plumbing. Tuning your databases, getting your thread buffer sizes right, managing the community, and the abuse.

Intelligence and Monitoring

Growth compounds the other hard problem that Twitter (and almost every sites I’ve seen) has, thery’re running black boxes. Social software is hard to heartbeat, socially or technically. It’s one of the places where our jobs are actually harder then those real time trading systems, and other five nines style hard computing systems.

And it’s a problem Twitter is still struggling to solve. (really you never stop solving it, your next SPOF will always come find you, and then you have something new to monitor) Twitter came late in life to Ganglia, and haven’t had the time to really burnish it. And Ganglia doesn’t ship by default with a graph for what to do when your site needs its memcache servers hot to run. And what do you do when Ganglia starts telling you your recent framework upgrade is causing a 10x increase in data returned from your DBs for the same QPS. Or that your URL shortening service is starting to slow down sporadically adding an extra 30ms burn to message handling. (how do you even graph that?)

Beyond LAMP Needs Better Intelligence

Monitoring and intelligence get even harder as you start to embrace these new architectures. Both because the systems are more complex, but largely because we don’t know what monitoring and resourcing for Web scale queues of data, and distributed hash tables look like. And we don’t yet have the scars from living through the failure scenarios. And we’re rolling our own solutions as it is early days, without the battle hardened tweaks and flags of an Apache or MySQL.

We all know that Jabber has different performance characteristics then the Web (thats rather the point), but we don’t have the data to quantify what it looks like at network effect impacted scale. (the big IM installs, particularly LJ and Google have talked a bit in public, but their usage patterns tend to be pretty different then stream style APIs. Btw I’ll be talking about this a bit in Portland at OSCON in a few month!)

Recommendations

So I’d add to Leonard’s architecture (and I know Leonard is thinking about this), and the various other cloud architectures emerging that to make it work you need build monitoring and resourcing in from the ground up, or your distributed in the cloud queues are going to fail.

And solve the growth issues, with appropriate solutions for growth, which rarely involves architectural solutions.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on May 28, 2008 12:34 PM

Look, I’m as big a Cure fan as the next non-Cure fan. I don’t want to be mean or anything. But when I saw the photos from Sasquatch, I realized that the comparison (to IMDB Character ch0003793) simply had to be made.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from your monkey called, on May 28, 2008 12:30 PM

TPM Media is announcing a job opening for a news editor working in our New York City office. The news editor has primary responsibility for running and updating the news section on the front page of Talking Points Memo (TPM), working closely with the site's managing editor. Key responsibilities include staying on top of breaking news, finding current news items, working with our reporters to find which TPM stories to feature, writing headlines and story descriptions, as well as selecting news photos and video to complement our front page news coverage. Applicants must be inveterate news and politics junkies and be able to work in a fast paced news environment every day. Their job is to make sure our front page is always on top of everything and putting everything in front of our readers' eyes from a witty, TPM perspective.

If you're interested please send a resume, two clips and a letter describing your interest and qualifications for the job to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject line "TPM News Editor Job".

This is a full-time, entry-level position, with health care. Salary is negotiable.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 28, 2008 11:16 AM

Maybe a little premature (then again, maybe not), but we've set up a discussion thread at TPMCafe on who the Democratic VP nominee should be.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 28, 2008 9:41 AM

From Required Eating

Dunkin Donuts has pulled a Rachael Ray ad where she appears to be wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men and, more recently, a fashion accessory, due to opposition from those who see the scarf as a symbol and representation of support for Palestinian terrorism. Now the world is safe from a black and white paisley scarf-donning Rachael Ray. [via So Good]

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on May 28, 2008 9:30 AM

Posted by Chris Prince, Software Engineer

It has been a year since the launch of Google Gears, and we wanted to offer a glimpse into what's changing, and what's ahead.

First of all, to better reflect the open nature of this project, we've decided to rename ourselves. Henceforth, the project will be simply "Gears." We want to make it clear that Gears isn't just a Google thing. We see Gears as a way for everyone to get involved with upgrading the web platform.

Our first year focused on offline-enabling applications, but that was only the beginning. Our broader goal has always been to close the gap between web apps and native apps by giving the browser new capabilities. There is no shortage of web application pain points to be addressed! In its second year, Gears will begin to tackle some of these problems.

On the applications front, there have been a number of exciting developments. Today, MySpace is launching enhanced functionality for MySpace mail using Gears. They are using the original Gears Database API with Full Text Search to enable fast and easy search and sort capabilities. The latest build of WordPress also integrates Gears, to improve performance, and to let users manage their blogs offline. And as many of you know, the Google Docs team added offline capabilities just a few weeks ago.

Gears remains a completely open source project. We strongly support web standards, and we continue to work with the W3C and WHATWG committees to help define standards for browsers.

Finally, we want Gears to be available to everyone, regardless of platform or browser. To that end, we are currently adding Firefox 3 and Safari support. And Opera is working to support Gears on both desktop and mobile. These new platforms will nicely complement our current set: Internet Explorer and Firefox, across Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Windows Mobile.

We're very excited about our progress this past year, and we have even bigger plans for 2008. All of you are welcome to jump in and join our fledgling community -- we're helping to push the web forward, and it's a lot of fun! :)

Originally posted by Karen from Official Google Blog, on May 28, 2008 8:34 AM

Signaling a renewed push to super-dels in advance of Saturday's meeting on Florida and Michigan, Hillary has sent a letter and memo today directly to the super-dels that once again presses her electability case and appeals to them for support.

In the letter, Hillary continues to try to argue that the Dem primary electorate has not rendered a clear verdict on their choice of nominee, the cornerstone of her strategy to get super-dels to focus on electability:

In addition, when the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee - the one who would be the best President and Commander in Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people will have cast their votes for me.

Her memo includes maps and polling to make her electability case -- including, as Ben Smith notes, Karl Rove's electoral maps.

Available in our Document Collection are the letter, the memo, and a collection state-by-state general election polling.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 28, 2008 8:30 AM

From Required Eating

Dunk 'em while you can, folks. Hydrox are back—but for a limited time only.

Hydrox, the cookies that the Kellogg company drowned as a brand in 2003, will be hitting shelves once more, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the company bows "to more than 1,300 phone inquiries, an online petition with more than 1,000 signatures, and Internet chat sites lamenting the demise of the snack."

But don't get too happy, Hydrox hounds. First, the comeback may only be temporary. "Kellogg's move is more about marketing and showing its responsiveness to consumers," the Journal says, "than about a permanent product reintroduction: The cookie will be sold nationally starting in August, but only for a limited time." (If reception is positive, the company may go permanent with the comeback.) Second, the recipe may be different, a company spokesman said—no trans fats, for one.

Related
Top 10 Awesome Nostalgic Foods We Want Back
What Childhood Food Do You Wish They Still Made?

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on May 28, 2008 7:45 AM

seasonal ingredient map  organized by month and state

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 28, 2008 6:23 AM

i wish

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 28, 2008 5:16 AM

• New Climate Report Forecasts Sobering Future for Western U.S. (NYT)
• NYT: Senate Climate Bill Needs All the Votes It Can Get
  
• Thomas Friedman: Set a Price Floor for Gas (NYT)
• Conditions on Subway Getting Worse, Say Transit Officials (AMNY)
  
• Gotham Gazette on the State of Biking in NYC
• Scott Stringer Floats a New Plan for Moynihan Station (Sun)
  
• Simcha Felder Backtracks on His Vote for Pricing in City Council (Politicker)
• Albany Moves to Ban Texting While Driving (News)
• Atty Gen Cuomo Wants MTA to Revoke Free E-ZPasses for Its Execs (News)
  
• Gas or Guns, Which Do You Prefer? (Wheels)

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on May 28, 2008 4:56 AM

SDIM0758.jpg, originally uploaded by andi808.

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on May 28, 2008 2:29 AM

Photos from roidrage, Mrs Soop, and dehartinger4.

Originally posted by Heather Champ from Flickr Blog, on May 27, 2008 5:30 PM

We had so much fun with Scott McClellan. And to think now he's turned around and written a scathing, tell-all Bush White House memoir.

Didn't see that coming.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on May 27, 2008 5:02 PM

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on May 27, 2008 4:40 PM

cached, minified, gzipped and up-to-date versions of jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, and more  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on May 27, 2008 3:50 PM

You may have seen this already. Americans cut back on driving in March, compared to the previous March, more than in any single month since such record-keeping began in 1942. It was a 4.3 percent drop in miles driven, a reduction of 11 billion miles.

I was doing a little more reading on this and came across this piece from Time, circa 1947:

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. He takes it into his garage as fondly as an Arab leading a prize mare into his tent. He woos it with Simoniz, Prestone, Ethyl and rich lubricants--and goes broke trading it in on something flashier an hour after he has made the last payment on the old one. ...

By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world's most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.

Except for the occasional dated turn of phrase, the perspective is remarkably contemporary.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 27, 2008 2:10 PM

Book suggestions for readers who enjoy the television series "House". Especially intriguing: A historical thriller series set in the 12th century about a cynical, smart female physician/coroner, Adelia Aguilar, who is brought to England to solve murder mysteries for King Henry II.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 27, 2008 12:53 PM

Forget Jack Abramoff and parasailing in the Marina Islands. Colorado GOP Senate candidate Bob Schaffer has another problem on his hands.

The president of a foundation for which Schaffer served on the board of directors is currently on trial (the jury is deliberating) on criminal charges for defrauding the government out of some $2 million. The treasurer for the group, who ran some of Schaffer's earlier political campaigns, has already pleaded guilty.

As Andrew Tilghman explains at TPMmuckraker, the case arises from a earmark secured back in 2000 for the National Alternative Fuels Foundation, whose board Schaffer served on from October 2004 until March 2005, after he had left Congress. His tenure on the board overlapped with some of the alleged criminal conduct by the foundation executive director, Bill Orr.

Orr had a for-profit business seeking to develop alternative fuels, and he set up the nonprofit foundation to receive the earmarked funds. Although Schaffer was in Congress at the time, it's not clear at this point which member of Congress arranged the earmark.

Schaffer himself has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But he is on a witness list in the case, as is Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, himself a former congressman.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on May 27, 2008 12:41 PM

1. The 2008 Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival announced today that KRS-One and DJ Premiere have been added to the bill on June 12 in Empire Fulton Ferry State Park in DUMBO. The three-day fest starts on June 10 with performances at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene and a showcase at the powerHouse Arena (also in DUMBO) on the 11th. As we've mentioned before, you really should check out the Masonic Temple as it is one of coolest music venues in the city. 2. Great shots of Mars here. 3. The Ting Tings' debut album We Started Nothing went straight onto the UK album chart at #1. Congratulations Katie and Jules. 4. Two New York artists are selling paintings of things they want so that they can buy the real things, i.e. If you buy their 20" x 16" painting of a Guitar Hero II guitar for $64.98, they will use that money to buy a new Guitar Hero II guitar. 5. If you are afraid of zombies, don't go here. 6. Mark Jones from UK record label Wall of Sound reveals in PAPER Magazine's June/July music issue that he's working on a new Grace Jones album and they are using Sly & Robbie and Brian Eno.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on May 27, 2008 12:21 PM

Everyone can stop picking on Kirsten Dunst for her hard-partying ways, now that the actress has revealed that she didn't actually check into rehab earlier in the year because of her excessive drinking.

“I didn’t go to Cirque Lodge for alcohol abuse or drug abuse,” Kiki said in a new interview to E!. “I went there for depression.”

The actress says that it took six months before she admitted she needed help.

“I was struggling, and I had the opportunity to go somewhere and take care of myself," she said. "I was fortunate to have the resources to do it. My friends and family thought it was a good idea, too. But I didn't know where to go. My doctor recommended Cirque Lodge."

Kirsten says she's also taking this opportunity to clear up the rumors that have been circling about her recently. "There has been a lot of misrepresentation about what is going on in my life," she insists. Basically saying that talk that she is a walking mess are just untrue and are "very painful for my friends and family."

“Everyone feels like they have to defend me. They hear the rumors, and it puts them in a defensive position," she adds. "Now that I’m feeling stronger, I [am] prepared to say something.”

As for her love life, Kirsten felt the need to address those rumors that she is getting it on with her All Good Things co-star. "I am not dating Ryan Gosling!”

 Well, at least that's a bit good news.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on May 27, 2008 12:17 PM

What's the first thing you think of when you think of Apple (beautiful), McDonalds (fat), or Amnesty International (Sting)?  Obviously, those are my answers in parentheses, but a marketing strategist is working on a brand name experiment that's fun to participate in.  Just go to the website and enter the first word or phrase you think of when you see the logo.  Then you'll have an option above to see what other people have said.  (Above are some of the responses for Walmart.)

One thing I've learned is that I'm glad I'm not the head of PR for Hilton Hotels.  The first things people think of are: paris hilton, hotel, expensive, whore... well, the list goes on.

The other thing that I've learned is that some people need to expand their vocabulary.  Kids, "gay" is not an all-purpose word.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on May 27, 2008 11:48 AM

The Biggest Drawing in the World, a self portrait of the creator, was made by sending a suitcase with a GPS tracker around to various sites, using DHL. (via Core 77)

(link)

Originally posted by cliffkuang@gmail.com from kottke.org, on May 27, 2008 11:06 AM

“A content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries” — i.e. Google-hosted versions of jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, MooTools, and Dojo.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on May 27, 2008 10:20 AM

tony and hilary’s 3 in 1 studio

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 27, 2008 9:24 AM

muxfind:

amritsingh:

Search engine for Muxtapes. Discover by artist, or by muxtape. (via LHB)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 27, 2008 9:01 AM

Obama at Wesleyan commencement
Originally uploaded by erabino

L. Britt and I met in New Haven and headed over to our alma mater to hear Barack deliver the commencement speech. (Ted Kennedy was the original speaker but for obvious reason, he had to sit it out.) We were worried that it was going to be a bit of zoo but it was better than we thought. We did not sit on Foss Hill with the rest of the alumni because it was too crowded and honestly, I really did not want to see a lot of people. I wanted to hang with Lauren and hear Barack. I wasn't really up for the whole Wes reunion thing.

I am still amazed that after so many speeches I am still so inspired by him. After following his career for so long, I am still in shock that he has come this far. He really could be our President! It really is happening! (I have mixed feeling about the idea of Clinton as his running mate but I'll talk about that another day.)

Like I mentioned in my last post, I have been thinking of being a mentor and this speech is also a part of the reason why. I have been wanting to do more in the service of other people.

You can watch a great, high res version of his speech here.

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on May 27, 2008 4:53 AM

Feast your eyeballs on this:

Colors! [...] Developed by Jens Andersson, it offers hard and soft brushes, pressure sensitivity, a 512x384-resolution canvas, and can send paintings as PNG files via email. It has a Corel Painter-style hue-circle, saturation-triangle palette.

Wired's How-To Wiki has a tutorial on how to work with it to produce stunning works of art; pictured above is a reproduction of a Rembrandt self-portrait by Jason R. Dunn.

So this is a homebrew painting app; wasn't Nintendo developing some kind of painting-by-numbers Do The Masters game/app too? I haven't heard much about it for a while now, unless it's turned into this horror. Meanwhile, you'll need $50 worth of gear to get this homebrew running (a micro SD and a flash cart), but how cool?

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on May 27, 2008 3:29 AM

Indy's still got it!

In the second biggest Memorial Day Weekend opening in history (just behind Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull whipped the competition, reportedly earning an estimated $311 million around the world.

WOW!

And it wasn't even the kids who begged their parents to take them to see the Harrison Ford flick. "Adults really drove this opening. This is one of their favorite franchises and they couldn't wait to take their kids with them," Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution told Reuters.

I didn't get the chance to slap my twelve bucks down for this baby -- it was too nice of a weekend to be inside -- but I'll get there. Did any of you catch Indy in all of his greatness? How was it??

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on May 27, 2008 3:21 AM

tragicm posted a photo:

- Camera phone upload powered by ShoZu

Originally posted by tragicm from From sudama's friends and family, on May 27, 2008 3:08 AM

This isn't working out. I might need to start over.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from stevenf.com, on May 27, 2008 12:18 AM

For anyone not familiar with Delicious Library, it's a Mac application that lets you use your built in iSight or any attatched firewire camera (or bluetooth barcode scanner) to scan books, movies, games... pretty much anything with a barcode that is listed on Amazon.com, and then builds a library of your collection with box covers, pricing and details, and lets you keep track of who you are loaning stuff to, among lots and lots of other things.

DL2 brings some pretty significant new features and a freshly updated UI. At the top of the list is the ability to catalog far more than just media like DVDs and books; users can now keep track of their gadgets, toys, tools, and just about anything else that Amazon carries. Speaking of media, though, DL2 now also catalogs your entire iTunes library, including music, movies, TV shows, and even audiobooks. While one of Delicious Library's most appealing features has always been keeping track of things you lend to friends, though, note that you can't really do much with your iTunes media in DL2 besides keep track of it for record-keeping or insurance purposes (certainly a drawback of going digital).

Other great new DL2 features include the ability to publish a browsable HTML library of all your stuff or just a specific Shelf of selected items, as well as the ability to subscribe to your friends shelves to keep track of their stuff. DL2 will also be the first Mac OS X app to allow AppleScripts to live anywhere in the app's menu structure. Per the example, a user could create an 'Import from FileMaker' AppleScript for DL2 that lives under the File > Import menu--a script that is not bound to the AppleScript menu.

I purchased my upgrade the moment I saw that the new version was available, and I'm not sorry. This is an incredibly slick, lovingly detailed application that should be mandatory for every Mac owning movie/music/book/etc curator/collector.


Do not adjust your browser: Delicious Library 2 is out

Originally posted by weevil@wileywiggins.com (Wiley Wiggins) from It's not for Everyone., on May 26, 2008 9:46 PM

My dad was served as a doctor in the war we call the Vietnam war, the war the Vietnamese call The American War. He was there from 1966 to 1967. My dad's Kodachromes—there are hundreds of them—were my first sense of 'the other side of the world'. Many photos are of empty landscapes. There are shots taken from the backs of jeeps. The barracks. A whole roll is devoted to a praying mantis that lived in his dorm.
There are many shots of red dirt roads and palm trees. The palms and the red dirt must have made some deep psychic impression because during my trips there as a backpacker, my first impression was of a kind of overpowering and almost haunting dejavu. His photos largely turned away from the horrors he experienced. In the year he served more than 6,000 Americans died. 12,000 South Vietnamese died and 61,000 North Vietnamese. More than 30,000 were wounded. The hospital where he worked was one of the busiest in the country. When I was growing up we would sometimes talk about that year during long Texas car rides, but his answers to my questions always seemed like riddles to me. They still do.

Related: Quiet Sunday, Telegrams and Polka Dots

Filed under: family lore
Tags: memorial day, vietnam, war

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on May 26, 2008 9:03 PM

Filed under: Software

The beta period is over and Delicious Library 2.0 is officially ready to go (we took an early look at version 2 back in March). If you're unfamiliar, Delicious Library is the beautiful personal media database (that's the fancy way of saying "it keeps track of your stuff") that's as fun as it is useful. Use your Mac's iSight camera to scan the UPC on a book, DVD, software, games, etc. and watch it appear on your "shelf." From there, you can track who you've loaned it to, publish your library to the web and a whole lot more.

Version 2.0 includes more than 100 changes, including

• One-click web publishing
• Speedier graphics
• iTunes integration
• Three-click selling

There's plenty more, of course, and you can read the rest here. Delicious Library 2.0 requires Mac OS 10.5 and a single license will cost you $40US.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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Originally posted by Dave Caolo from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on May 26, 2008 8:45 PM

Up Close and a long ways out..., originally uploaded by ambienttraffic.

I wish I had checked out the Theory and Practice show at Gallery Aferro when it first opened.  Unfortunately, I went on closing day, so I can't recommend that you go see Tracie Lee's incredible series "Pieces of Sky."  But I do recommend that you read on to learn more about this remarkable work.

For the past year, Lee, who is based in Brooklyn, NY,  has been painting the sky every day.  She tries to complete these pieces in the morning from home but this isn't a rule:

...[T]he ritual of the project is independent of my location, and it has become a way of measuring and grounding myself, whether I am in my studio or traveling. The paintings are markers of an accumulation of time and place. They form a record of my observations, but also my state of mind. How closely was I able to observe and not let distractions come in? This project has redefined my notion of discipline, and how it should not be seen as a negative and rigid force. Rather I wanted to approach it as a positive part of a practice, and utilizing it to work through frustrations and doubts. I have just begun to understand how the skills of observation, discipline and painting are vitally intertwined, and create momentum for other ideas to germinate.

In September of 2006, Lee painted the sky every day for a month.  It's interesting to compare that project with the year long "Pieces of Sky."  In the September 2006 series, it seems that Lee worked within a larger frame, so that the individual paintings end up containing a great deal more detail. As a result, each individual painting seems to encompass more sky.  The paintings that comprise "Pieces of Sky," on the other hand, capture a detail of the sky rather than the sky in detail.  Taking several steps back from "Pieces of Sky," I was impressed by how the paintings worked together, each piece enhancing the light, weather and color in pieces surrounding it. Lee displayed about 260 frames from this ongoing project, which can be purchased in a series of seven.

When Tracie first told me about this project, I was reminded of Elaine Reichek's "A Lexicon of Clouds," which I had seen at MAD's Pricked: Extreme Embroidery exhibit.  This piece consists of cloud details from works by El Greco, J.M.W. Turner, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, among others.  Threaded throughout are bits of text from the poems of Wallace Stevens (see his poem "Sea Surface Full of Clouds").  Both Tracie's and Elaine's work made me think about the representation of clouds in art. Prudence Peiffer's essay "Sky Writing" takes John Constable's sky studies as a point of departure for discussing contemporary sky/cloudscapes.   

Tracie uploaded to Flickr many frames from the piece (you can find them under the tag "sky") as well as pictures from the installation. 

Originally posted by Adriana from Stingy Kids, on May 26, 2008 12:44 PM

It's become accepted wisdom in this campaign that Obama's problem with working class voters is largely confined to Appalachia. But in the current issue of Newsweek, writer Evan Thomas claims that even if this is the case, this could still prove to be a major problem:

Appalachia is a big place, encompassing 13 states: southwestern New York, western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, western Maryland, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North and South Carolina, and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. You cannot afford to lose all those states and still win in November. Other pollsters have suggested that the race factor is at least noticeable in a much wider swath of rural America, where 60 million voters reside.

One recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of rural voters in battleground states showed that you are trailing McCain by 9 points (and that Clinton runs even with him). Dee Davis, president of a Kentucky-based advocacy group called the Center for Rural Strategies, points out in a recent article on Salon.com that in June 2004, John Kerry trailed George W. Bush by the same 9-point margin in the same rural battlegrounds.

Your mission is to not wind up like Kerry, who ended up losing the rural vote by 20 points. The "reality," writes Davis, "is that when Democratic candidates run competitively in rural America, they win national elections. And when they get creamed in rural America, they lose."

The problem with all these arguments is that there are countless ways to slice and dice these demographics. As John Harwood of The New York Times points out, if you look at working class whites nationally, Obama is actually where he needs to be among that group right now, running 12 and seven points behind McCain among them in two recent national polls.

By contrast, Al Gore lost among this demographic by 17 points in 2000, and Kerry lost by 23 points four years later. The Dem doesn't need to achieve parity among working class whites to win.

Separately, all this renewed talk about Appalachia reminds me that Obama privately promised John Edwards that he'd undertake a poverty tour in the general election. Why not take that tour, with Edwards at his side, right through the heart of Appalachia?

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 26, 2008 7:35 AM

The skirmishing around Hillary's RFK assassination remarks went into a second frenzied round on the Sunday shows yesterday, with a top Obama adviser coming under questioning as to whether the Obama camp was trying to keep stirring up the controversy by pushing an incendiary interpretation of her comments to reporters.

In response, the adviser, David Axelrod, said that the Obama camp accepted her apology and indicated that it was time to "move forward."

Over the weekend, the Obama campaign circulated a transcript of Keith Olbermann's steroidally outraged special comment from Friday, in which he blasted Hillary as "heartless" and claimed that the RFK remarks signaled that Hillary's motives are "not merely troubling, but frightening."

But both Obama himself and Axelrod have said that they don't believe that she meant the worst by her comments; Obama suggested they had been merely "careless."

Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos whether the campaign was trying to keep the controversy bubbling by pushing Olbermann's Hillary-As-Lady-Macbeth interpretation, Axelrod answered:

"As far as we're concerned, this issue is done. It was an unfortunate statement, as we said, as she's acknowledged. She has apologized. The apology, you know, is accepted. Let's move forward."

Generally, when a campaign circulates an opinion piece in this fashion, it's a quasi-endorsement of the positions contained therein. On the other hand, it's pretty standard political practice for campaigns in such situations to take a public high-road position while simultaneously encouraging reporters sotto voce to believe the worst of their opponent.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on May 26, 2008 5:50 AM

So it has come to this: in our UX-obsessed moment, the new rock radio station in New York is WRXP, "The Rock Experience." That can't last.

Neither, I bet, can RXP's playlist, because it's so damn good.

For the first time in years, if not decades, New York's overly segmented, overly conservative FM dial has a station that's willing to mix it up. WRXP is the only commercial station I know that says, "Yeah, that rocks," and puts on an artist regardless of subgenre or popularity.

It's more or less a modern rock station, but to RXP, that doesn't mean Nirvana and the Pixies, full stop. To quote the launch press release, the playlist is "not determined by era, but rather by the acoustic quality of each song, as determined directly by on-air personalities and staff."

The results are nothing short of astounding (again, in New York radio terms). The artist roster I've heard this weekend ranged from Dave Matthews to the Jam (the Jam!) to ancient Aerosmith cuts to Death Cab for Cutie to the Alarm (the motherfucking Alarm!) to Sheryl Crow. All on one station.

Few radio stations exist that would play Sheryl Crow's new single and the Velvet Underground in the same sequence, but somehow, miraculously, this station landed in New York.

In short: phenomenal.

This broad-minded rock fan hopes and prays that incoming morning man Matt Pinfield--who, I'm guessing, has also been hired as music director--keeps it interesting. Scott Muni would be proud.

Originally posted by David Wertheimer from Ideapad, on May 25, 2008 10:46 PM

Call me an optimist, but I think it's inevitable that Earth-folk will eventually be wandering over Mars. Eh, not sure if it will happen in my lifetime or in my children's. I'm taking a long term view on this.

But last night, one more entry has been made in the time line: NASA set down a lander in the Mars arctic region.

I had comletely forgotten about it until I noticed an article in the Boston Globe. When I went to the mission site I found out that landing was immanent (but on the middle of my night). Of course, being the geek that I am, when I woke up the next morning I flipped open the computer to see what images were to be seen.

The one below seemed most interesting. Note the scalloped pattern to the dirt. Alas, what I hate about this pics is the lack of scale. When the first rover pics came in, things looked big and daunting, only to find out that they were tiny rocks and such. Sigh.

Nonetheless, I find this all exciting.

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on May 25, 2008 10:42 PM

richard blakeley: “We land on Mars today and it looks as I suspected.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on May 25, 2008 7:40 PM

Filed under: Books, Developer

Way back in December, our Christmas Gift Guide featured our pick of the many OS X-related books out there. One of the recommendations was the (very excellent) Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass - commonly referred to as 'The Bible' in the Mac development community.

At the time the book was a little outdated -- however in the last couple of weeks an updated third edition has been published. New sections feature Objective-C 2.0, Core Data, Garbage Collection, Xcode 3 and Core Animation, meaning this third edition is all ready for many of the new technologies in Mac OS X Leopard.

At just $32 (via Amazon.com), this updated version clearly ought to be on every developer's bookshelf (and aspiring developer's wishlist).

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Originally posted by Nik Fletcher from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on May 25, 2008 7:30 PM

Please join us Tuesday evening for an incredible event featuring Adam Mansbach at SF's Intersection For The Arts. It'll be an amazing event!

Here are the details:

A Reading Featuring Adam Mansbach with Jeff Chang and Dan Wolf

Tuesday May 27, 2008 at 7:30pm
$5-$15/sliding scale, general admission

Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street (btwn 15/16)
Mission District SF CA 94103
(415) 626-2787

This evening features dynamic author Adam Mansbach (The End of the Jews: A Novel, Angry Black White Boy: A Novel) in conversation about hip-hop, literature and race with journalist & author Jeff Chang. Mansbach reads from his latest novel The End of the Jews: A Novel, and also features an Open Process presentation of Dan Wolf's theatrical adaptation of Mansbach's critically acclaimed bestseller Angry Black White Boy featuring Tommy Shepherd & Keith Pinto from the hip-hop band Felonious.

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on May 25, 2008 6:41 PM

noahkalina:

Sunbathers on the Willamsburg Waterfront by Joyce George.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on May 25, 2008 5:51 PM

Soul-Sides.com's Summer Songs series: 2008 style.

On this year's invited guest list:



(from l-r: Greg Tate, Murphy's Law, Christine Balance, Adam Mansbach, Karen Tongson, Captain Planet, Daphne Brooks, Jody Rosen, Ann Powers, Robert Fink...

...and more to follow!

Originally posted by O.W. from soul sides, on May 25, 2008 12:03 PM

From the Washington Post today

City officials, hoping to make commutes like his less treacherous, have created a seven-block experiment of a bike lane on Ninth Avenue. Here, concrete dividers and a row of parked cars shield a bike lane from the street and its traffic. Low mini-traffic lights show when cyclists have the right of way. Bike commuters, messengers and delivery people peel down perfectly smooth paths.

The article also cites Portland as an example, how bikes are fashionable, and cites a needed change from car culture to bike culture in major cities. (Who’d a thought we’d see NYC promoting commuting!)

One of our faves is still the Calmest Road in America.

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on May 25, 2008 8:45 AM

Shared by Ariel
I love this closing quote:

If you are a Web 2.0 company in today's Web you really need to ask yourselves, "Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?"

If you work in the technology industry it pays to be familiar with the ideas from Geoffrey Moore's insightful book Crossing the Chasm. In the book he takes a look at the classic marketing bell curve that segments customers into Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Conservatives and Laggards then points out that there is a large chasm to cross when it comes to becoming popular beyond an initial set of early adopters. There is a good review of his ideas in Eric Sink's blog post entitled Act Your Age which is excerpted below

The people in your market segment are divided into four groups:

Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.

Pragmatists might be willing to use new technology, if it's the only way to get their problem solved.

Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.

Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.

This drawing reflects the fact that there is no smooth or logical transition between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists.  In between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists there is a chasm.  To successfully sell your product to the Pragmatists, you must "cross the chasm". 

The knowledge that the needs of early adopters and those of the majority of your potential user base differ significantly is extremely important when building and marketing any technology product. A lot of companies have ended up either building the wrong product or focusing their product too narrowly because they listened too intently to their initial customer base without realizing that they were talking to early adopters.

The fact is that early adopters have different problems and needs from regular users. This is especially true when you compare the demographics of the Silicon Valley early adopter crowd which "Web 2.0" startups often try to court with the typical users of social software on the Web.  In the few years I've been working on building Web applications, I've seen a number of technology trends and products that have been heralded as the next big thing by technology pundits which actually never broke into the  mainstream because they don't solve the problems of regular Internet users. Here are some examples

• Blog Search: A few years ago, blog search engines were all the rage. You had people like Marc Cuban talking up IceRocket and Robert Scoble harranguing Web search companies to build dedicated blog search engines. Since then the products in that space have either given up the ghost (e.g. PubSub, Feedster), turned out to be irrelevant (e.g. Technorati, IceRocket) or were sidelined (e.g. Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Blog Search). The problem with this product category is that except for journalists, marketers and ego surfing A-list bloggers there aren't many people who need a specialized feature set around searching blogs.  

• Social bookmarking: Although del.icio.us popularized a number of "Web 2.0" trends such as tagging, REST APIs and adding social features to a previously individual task, it has never really taken off as a mainstream product. According to the former VC behind the service it seems to have peaked at 2 million unique visitors last year and is now seeing about half that number of unique users. Compare that to Yahoo! bookmarks which was seeing 20 million active users a year and a half ago.

• RSS Readers: I've lost track of all of the this is the year RSS goes mainstream articles I've read over the past few years. Although RSS has turned out to be a key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting) actually subscribing and reading news feeds in an RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users. When you think about it, it is kind of obvious. The problem an RSS reader solves is "I read so many blogs and news sites on daily basis, I need a tool to help me keep them all straight". How many people who aren't enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?

These are just the first three that came to mind. I'm sure readers can come up with more examples of their own. This isn't to say that all hyped "Web 2.0" sites haven't lived up to their promise. Flickr is an example of an early adopter hyped site that showed up sprinkled with "Web 2.0" goodness that has become a major part of the daily lives of tens of millions of people across the Web.

When you look at the list of top 50 sites in the U.S. by unique visitors it is interesting to note what common theme unites the recent "Web 2.0" entrants into that list. There are the social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook which harness the natural need of young people to express their individuality yet be part of social cliques.  Then there are the sites which provide lots of flexible options that enable people to share their media with their friends, family or the general public such as Flickr and YouTube. Both sites also have figured out how to harness the work of the few to entertain and benefit the many as have Wikipedia and Digg as well. Then there are sites like Fling and AdultFriendFinder which seem to now get more traffic than the personal sites you see advertised on TV for obvious reasons.

However the one overriding theme is that all of these recent entrants is that they solve problems that everyone [or at least a large section of the populace] has. Everyone likes to communicate with their social circle. Everyone likes watching funny videos and looking at couple pics. Everyone wants to find information about topics they interested in or find out what's going on around them. Everybody wants to get laid.

If you are a Web 2.0 company in today's Web you really need to ask yourselves, "Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?"

Now Playing: Three 6 Mafia - I'd Rather (feat. DJ Unk)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life, on May 25, 2008 3:54 AM