randomwalks/dj

TPM Reader RD has a good question some of the more pliant journos would do well to consider ...

I take it from watching the news and reading the coverage of the campaign that Obama's a big fat flip-flopper.

But it makes me wonder... At this point, is there any significant policy position that John McCain currently holds, on any topic, that he's consistently held over the past 10 years? I mean that as a serious question. On economics, foreign policy, environmental policy, immigration, the role of evangelicals, you name it, it's hard for me to pin down. I guess maybe on free trade?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on July 19, 2008 3:51 PM

I've spent a couple hours now trying to process the probable impact of Prime Minister al Maliki's explicit endorsement of Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. My first instinct is always to try not to overstate the impact of momentary developments. But I don't think it's enough to say this is a huge development. It's huger than that. In a stroke, I think, al Maliki has cut McCain off at the knees in a way I'm not sure his campaign strategy can recover from.

Consider McCain's strategy, which is all bound up with Iraq.

All understand it is a given that the war is unpopular and that the vast majority of Americans want out as soon as possible. The big of wiggle room is just what's 'possible.' McCain has invested his entire campaign in support for the purportedly nascent Iraqi democracy al Maliki represents and the claim that Obama's support for a timetable for withdrawal irresponsibly risks losing the gains we've achieved and giving Iraq back to al Qaeda.

Here, with a brush of the hand and in so many words, al Maliki says, "No, we're good."

What exactly is McCain to say to that? He can hardly turn against Maliki or say he doesn't have a feel of the situation on the ground.

What's more, he's given Obama want amounts to a potent new talking point by defining American redeployment out of Iraq as 'victory'. Says Maliki: "So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat. But that isn't the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias."

I don't doubt that the McCain will come up with some pat response, though their silence so far does signal the difficulty of coming up with it. But McCain's campaign has been almost entirely dedicated to raising doubts about a withdrawal strategy the great majority would like to embrace. And Maliki has now handed Obama the trump card of all trump cards with which to parry all of McCain's attacks.

I would not discount the possibility that the White House will muscle Maliki into a retraction of some sort. But I think it will be difficult for that to seem to be anything other than what it is. What he said pre-waterboarding will always appear more genuine than whatever statement came later. McCain may also say that his 'surge' strategy is what made all this possible. But fundamentally that's not a point Obama is arguing. The debate is about whether or not to leave. And on that count, Maliki has now placed McCain is an extremely precarious position.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on July 19, 2008 11:43 AM

July 19, 2008 - 12:32 p.m. EST - New York, NY

I know this post will probably start a few fist fights. So here goes...

I've been hearing about Shake Shack for some time now. It's hard not to when you have friends living in New York City. Shake Shack announcements are twittered constantly as though it's boast-worthy to beat long lines and eat there for several consecutive days. Every single time a foodie friend bites into a burger, they announce their happiness to many others. You're lead to believe that Shake Shack's Americana menu delivers the best burgers in the world. And they're not. They're definitely, really yummy but in my humble opinion, not worth waiting more than thirty minutes for. And from what I can tell, most patrons wait over an hour to place their order, nevermind to sit down and eat.

The way I described eating the famous Shack Burger to my friends was that, "It's really tasty. The meat's one step better than our fast food fave, In-N-Out, but they're not so good that I'd eat here more than once a month." In all fairness, it would've been hard for any food item to live up to such hype. It is not the burger equivalent of Blue Ribbon's bone marrow. The burger is juicy. Cooked near perfectly. The condiments are fresh. And bonus points for the toasted bun. Seeing that it's a burger I won't even comment on grease and messiness, however, size-wise, it's small. Most friends mentioned having to order three between a couple and eating one and half burgers each to really satisfy the appetite. Taste-wise it's nothing extraordinary.

For an amateur gourmand, the Shake Shack bun-meat patty-combos are an easy go-to for something dependable and affordable. I'm happy I had the experience, however, next time I'm in town, I'm going to go for one of the Chicago Dogs instead, mmm mmm!

Originally posted by hustler of culture from hustler of culture, on July 19, 2008 11:32 AM

When meeting new people at Blogher, every introduction inevitably starts with the "what's your blog?" question. For the first time in the past seven years, I don't have an easy answer. The answer, for years, has been rote -- I'm dollarshort.org, but I blog at something called Mena's Corner. But that hasn't been true for a while. Then I blogged privately at Vox -- an answer that didn't really excite those who wanted to check my posts out. As I awkwardly explained this answer to one woman, I jokingly said "I need to come up with a better answer for tomorrow."

So if the answer is "dollarshort.org," here's a view into the old Mena and five fun five facts about the new Mena.

I still speak at conferences now and then.

I'll be speaking tomorrow at Blogher about taking back "naked blogging." It's all about pulling back from the blogging spotlight and retreating for various reasons. The past week has caused me to do a lot of thinking about my choice to stop blogging publicly (I've blogged consistently and privately on Vox for the past couple years). For example, not making this list of the "50 Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers (don't know what the awkward quotes around female are all about) gave me a chance to reflect on my role in the blogging world. On one hand I questioned if making myself so forgettable was a good thing. On the other hand, I didn't the same pangs of jilt (I like that phrase), I would have felt if this list had been posted a couple years ago. This makes me feel I made the right decision to pull away. That said, I still want to participate and build back my blog. And I still want to be out there and speak. So I'm taking more speaking engagements lately, including The Start Conference in August.

I've been blogging at another blog -- Nested -- off and on since I was pregnant.

This has been a quite a fun project of mine because I started completely anonymously. I wanted to see the blogging experience from the point of view of someone starting completely fresh and didn't want to rely on any of my connections in the blogging world to build traffic. I'd love to get back to the two to three posts daily schedule, but am still struggling to find the time to do this and take care of my daughter, Penelope. Which brings me to the next fact.

I'm a stay-at-home mom now.

When you are a co-founder of a company and your spouse (and co-founder) still puts in crazy start-up hours, it's impossible to ever really be removed from the day-to-day. I'm part-time now which means I come in once a week (with Penelope in tow) and work from home on a individual project basis. I actually have been putting in almost full-time hours designing a project launching soon and have had a chance to blissfully do some pure design work. I'm a stay-at-home mom that just happens to work-at-home too.

 

Having a child has changed me (in a good way).

I had no idea I was going to be the parent I am right now. Many of the neuroses I carried with me my entire life seemingly vanished overnight. This isn't too say I'm still neurotic, I'm just less neurotic. I like to think of it this way -- I'm like the patient in the mental ward (figuratively) who has gone from self-soothing through rocking to just looking like there's a good song playing somewhere.

Being a mom has forced me to become less self-centered and more aware of the small thing/big thing differences in life. Yes, I still have dreams that I'm being picked on by my seventh-grade classmates but when I wake up I'm able to laugh it off a bit better. Being at Blogher has made me more aware of this change. For example, in 2005, when I attended the first Blogher someone had written a post about how (and I paraphrase) "Mena Trott had the chance to talk to all these fabulous and interesting women at Blogher and instead chose to sit by herself and bury herself in her computer." The person didn't take in account that I'm actually quite shy when it comes to introducing myself. I almost never approach anyone because I'm intimidated, but once we're in a conversation I'll become quite extroverted. Since Penelope has been born, a lot of this fear has disappeared, though I still find it difficult at times to go up to a person and say hello.

I'm so so proud of Six Apart and everyone at the company.

Once again Blogher has been a massive reminder of why we do what we do. I have met women at this conference who have used our products since inception and they're incredibly complimentary and effusive. I've been wanting to say this for a long time: Yes, we seriously messed up when we changed our licensing FOUR years ago. The industry was a bit different then and for a company that (at the time) had only about 500k in funding, we wanted to be sustainable. We may have been stupid with our decisions and execution, but we were always ethical. And, we paid the price by losing a number of our best customers. But to this day, we're a company of bloggers for bloggers who really want to do the best for this industry. Hating Six Apart is so 2004.

Bonus Fact

I'm even more proud of our customers and all bloggers (whether they use our products or not)

Back to Blogher. When I'm talking to these women, I'm amazed how far we all have come. When I go to my dentist or see a relative, I don't have to explain that my job has something to do with "online journals that are often written daily and in reverse chronological order." If someone has internet access, they read a blog (even if they don't know it). It has been a revolution and any tool that can make a person feel less isolated and connected to a greater group is remarkable. I've talked to bloggers who have been saved emotionally (and physically) because of blogging. And that's a really awesome thing.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on July 19, 2008 12:45 AM

July 18, 2008 - 11:36 p.m. EST - New York, NY

Super congrats to our pals Omar and Megan on their wedding day. Wishing them the most beautiful life together. And with a kick off like this, how could it not be?! If you invite me to your wedding, I will rock it.

Originally posted by hustler of culture from hustler of culture, on July 18, 2008 10:36 PM

Today, the Mets announced a partnership with Nikon and SNY to launch a program celebrating and honoring the greatest moments in the history of Shea Stadium.

The Mets will announce the details of the celebration at press conference on July 22 prior to their game against the Phillies.

ShareThis

Originally posted by Mike Nichols from MetsBlog.com, on July 18, 2008 1:13 PM

Ben Fry analyzes the data from an intelligence test administered to all incoming NFL players and displays the results by position. Offensive players do better than defensive players on the test, although running backs score the lowest (wide receivers and cornerbacks also don't do well). As Michael Lewis suggested in The Blind Side, offensive tackles are the smartest players on the field, followed by the centers and then the quarterbacks.

Malcolm Gladwell talked about the Wonderlic test at the New Yorker Conference and judged it a poor indicator of future performance.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 18, 2008 11:12 AM

I have a nice long entry in draft about my recent surgery for fibroids and how it has really got me thinking about how precious life is. However, it is one of those entries that is going to take a long time to write and since it's been a while since I've written here, I decided to bite the bullet with a brief update entry and just get back to posting. Sometimes when it has been a while, you feel like you have to give this whole long update and the idea of that just feels so daunting that you don't write anything at all. So, I am going to just write a quick update and over time, I will write more about each of these things:

1. I had surgery for fibroids. I recovered pretty quickly. I'm glad I finally did it.
2. I've been doing Weight Watchers and have lost 30 pounds. It has been hard but great.

Actually those are the two most important things. I could give you work updates but who cares about that? More meaningful entries to come ...

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on July 18, 2008 10:27 AM

Yesterday the MTA invited members of the media to check out the monster of a tunnel being built 19 stories under Manhattan, and Curbed has a massive photo gallery of the beast. Besides seeing the construction workers' subterranean break room, here's our favorite part: a dirty utility bar named Bungalow Bar a.k.a the closely guarded secret and the city's impossible to get into underground hot spot. [Curbed]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on July 18, 2008 10:19 AM

Eight years ago I was sitting in a focus group sponsored by IBM, who was interested in seeing the reaction to a potential product offering they called, "Utility Computing". The pitch was a solution to a classic problem faced by all administrators of IT infrastructure, which is to find the correct...

http://jjnapiorkowski.vox.com/library/post/perl-catalyst-and-cloud-computing.html

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Originally posted by John Napiorkowski from david’s Neighbors, on July 18, 2008 8:10 AM

Salma Hayek and her French billionaire babydaddy have put an end to their wedding plans.

"We are sad to announce the engagement of Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault has been canceled," the actress' rep told USA Today. "There will be no further comment."

The couple, who welcomed beautiful daughter Valentina Paloma in September 2007, had announced that they were engaged and expecting the March prior, but never set a wedding date.

So, why were the nups nixed? Don't know -- no reason was given, and there's no word on if Salma and Francois (who own Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, uh huh) are even still a couple at all, but my guess is no.

Ah mi Dios!

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on July 18, 2008 7:22 AM

I got a few minutes to speak with DNC Chairman Howard Dean after his keynote address at Netroots Nation. It was late last night, and we were both pretty tired, so ignore my rambling, arm- waving question. I was asking Dean about his role as in some ways the founder of what has become known as the netroots:

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on July 18, 2008 5:08 AM

does it get any realer than this?

 bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by fruminator to frumin brother - more about this bookmark...

Originally posted by fruminator from del.icio.us/fruminator, on July 18, 2008 12:33 AM

They extracted the colours from 3 million “interesting” Flickr images. Using their visual similarity technology you can navigate the collection by colour.

http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/

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Originally posted by Buster McLeod from david’s Neighbors, on July 17, 2008 3:42 PM

A list of the fictional film referred to in Seinfeld. (thx, nicholas)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 17, 2008 2:40 PM

July 17, 2008 - 2:46 p.m. EST - New York, NY

Artist, actor, designer, nice guy Wiley Wiggins happened to be in New York City the same time as us. So we spent an afternoon together with the usual suspects eating and visiting galleries. I tried to convince him to change his flight home to Los Angeles so he could join us for our BBQ but it was too last minute to manage. I know Wiley from our tech and film posse and we've only met a few times in real life, but I totally dig the bugger.

Originally posted by hustler of culture from hustler of culture, on July 17, 2008 1:46 PM

I am proud to announce the release of Devel::NYTProf v2 … just in time for presentation at OSCON 2008! Dedicated Open readers might remember my first post announcing NYTProf — a next-generation Perl profiler — back in March. The response to NYTProf was overwhelmingly positive. The project quickly caught the attention of some well-known Perl figures [...]

Originally posted by Adam Kaplan from Open, on July 17, 2008 1:40 PM

Considering today’s Tour news, I think I’d paint a Yellow Jersey on this mailbox, paint the flag to look like a syringe, and with photos of Ricardo Ricco coming out the back.

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on July 17, 2008 11:43 AM

I just release an interview with Frank Speiser, who is leading several projects related to Perl and Cloud Computing Services, such as Amazon's EC2. If you are curious about this new trend in web application development, please take a look and send me your comments.

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by jjn1056 (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on July 17, 2008 11:09 AM

Owner's Manual: Pedestal Powertraining By Brian An audio interview with Coach Johnson and  video of the Pedestal exercises he describes can be found at http://runningtimes.com/apr08 Whether you're an improving 1500-meter runner or an aspiring Boston Marathon qualifier, core strength can help give your training and racing a boost. But, not only is it hard to get fired up about doing 300 crunches every morning when you wake up or the moment you finish a run, crunches aren't the only--or best--answer.With the idea of hardening some of his young middle-distance runners, Kansas State University distance coach Mike Smith incorporates a series of general strength workouts known as the Pedestal Routine into his program's daily workout regimen. It's a series of 10 quick core-building exercises that strengthen many muscle systems from mid-thigh to the bottom of the ribcage. If done regularly, the routine will build the abs, psoas muscles, hip flexors, upper hamstrings, glutes and numerous other structural systems that contribute to core stability. And that will ultimately allow a runner to exert maximal power throughout a workout or race and maintain an efficient, upright form, even when fatigued, Smith says. The bottom line is that, combined with a strong aerobic system, a sturdy structural system can help you drop race times, run better workouts and recover quicker."The concept of a pedestal is something that supports something from a strong, stable base," Smith says. "And in this case, your core is supporting your upper body and your legs. So the stronger that core is, the better we are able to sustain our power, flexibility and efficiency."For an 800-meter runner, it means creating more efficient power on a short-term basis. For a 10,000-meter runner or marathoner, it's about tolerating the impact and fatigue over a long period of time. And it can also help you avoid nagging overuse injuries and soreness that can keep you from a workout or force you to reschedule a race.Smith implemented the series of exercises because he was noticing a trend of young college runners being aerobically strong but structurally weak. The same might be said for marathoners who took up running in their late 20s to early 40s, which is why these exercises have such a broad reach. The beauty of the routine is that it can be done in about 10 minutes, depending on your fitness level. But be prepared to feel the burn. "We're really not talking about a lot of time for the benefit you're getting," he says. "It's not easy, but we have to get away from the notion that extra work is detrimental. With this routine, you're making yourself stronger to run faster and more efficiently, and you're making yourself less prone to injuries."1. Prone Hand Stand Single-Leg RaiseBegin from an elevated "push-up" position (1a) balancing on the hands with fully extended arms and a stationary foot; Lift the opposite leg upward (1b), keeping the toes pointing downward and the knee mostly straight; Continue the smooth, quick upward motion of the leg (1c) to near full rear extension. Return the leg back to the starting position (1d) and repeat 5-10 times on each leg. It's important to keep the body aligned in the same horizontal plane (1e) from the shoulder to the ankle of the stationary leg. Repeat 5-10 times on each leg. (It's easy to raise the hips too high on this exercise.)2. Supine Hand Stand, Single-Leg RaiseFrom a supine position (belly button facing upward), balancing on the hands with fully extended arms and a stationary foot, lift the opposite leg up to near full forward extension. Again, it's important to maintain postural integrity by keeping the hips in line with the plane of the body.3. Prone Elbow Stand Single-Leg RaiseFrom a prone position balancing on the forearms and elbows and one foot, lift the opposite leg upward to near full rear extension, keeping toes pointed downward and knees straight. It's important to keep the body aligned in the same horizontal plane from the shoulder to the ankle of the stationary leg. Repeat 5–10 times on each leg. view page: Prev 1 2 Next

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=13142

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Originally posted by Alaina from david’s Neighbors, on July 17, 2008 10:47 AM

This morning I took a tour of the MTA's newly completed East Side Access tunnel 140 feet below Midtown Manhattan. My laptop is about to run out of batteries and, of course, I left my power cord at home. (It's a good thing I'm only in charge of running a blog and not, say, a 22-foot diameter, 850-ton tunnel boring machine.) So I'm just going to publish these photos with minimal text. I'll fill in the details later. Warning: If you're not a serious infrastructure geek, you might just want to skip this post altogether.

Joe Trainor, MTA Capital Construction

Sixteen flights down.

Reminds me of a Merle Travis song.

(more...)

Originally posted by Aaron Naparstek from Streetsblog, on July 17, 2008 10:46 AM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on July 17, 2008 10:13 AM

From Required Eating

fun.drno.de

No English speakers were involved in the making of the banner for this restaurant in China. I hope. As for the Chinese name, it's just "restaurant." "Translate server error" is definitely more memorable.

Related
The Best Worst Restaurant Names Ever
Lettuce Eat at Pun Restaurants Only
Photo of the Day: Custom Cake From Wal-Mart

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on July 17, 2008 10:00 AM

After years of creating multiple versions of files and directories and storing them locally, we in NYPL Labs are moving to a shared repository for our code and our projects. It’s a big move. We are using subversion to manage the code for all of our work. The first step [...]

Originally posted by Michelle Misner from NYPL Labs, on July 17, 2008 5:23 AM

YouTomb is a “research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Justin Blanton, on July 17, 2008 12:42 AM

• Jon Stewart clips about the New Yorker Obama cover
  thanks HuffPo. I just think it is a bad cartoon without a framing device for context. Normal image of them as seen through a tv or paper then it would have made more sense and been better commentary. just weak.
  (tags: politics comics)

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on July 16, 2008 9:31 PM

Jumping on the Madison Square Park outdoor gourmet dining bandwagon is one of our favorite restaurants -- Tabla. Waiting on the endless Shake Shack line is not your only al fresco dining option in the hood, as two weeks ago the nouveau Indian restaurant opened Street Cart, an outdoor food cart located outside of the resto on 25th and Madison. The cart'll be open Mon.-Fri, from 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Here's the menu: Chicken Tikka Frankie $8 Bread Bar "Chicken Tikka" & mint chutney wrapped in an egg washed roti Bhel Puri $6 Bombay street salad of local apples, green mango, puffed rice dressed with tamarind chutney Chocolate Kulfi Pop $4 Frozen confection flavored with Tahitian vanilla beans and coated with chocolate Pombupani $4 Sparkling limeade with pomegranate juice

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on July 16, 2008 2:26 PM

The NYC subway system's unlimited-ride MetroCard turned ten years old this month.

"I think it's absolutely changed travel habits in the New York region, and it's been a boon for the economy as well," said Andrew Albert, who represents transit riders on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "Where once you might have used it more sparingly because you had a finite number of trips, you're more likely to take a trip during your lunch break, go shopping perhaps or go to dinner somewhere," he said.

On average, unlimited-ride MetroCard users take 56 trips per month (~$1.45 per trip), although some take many more or less. (via buzzfeed)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 16, 2008 2:06 PM

The always-great Clay Shirky talks about the power of communities, and uses Perl and comp.lang.perl.misc as examples. "Perl is a Shinto shrine. Perl is an act of love." he says, and I can't disagree.

Originally posted by Andy Lester from Perl Buzz, on July 16, 2008 1:02 PM

From Required Eating

New for the Playstation 3 is the game Fat Princess in which two teams of players must try to save their team's princess. It may sound like it's been done before, but there's a twist here: the enemy fattens up the princess, making her more and more difficult to bring back.

The game will have single and multiplayer, support for up to 32 players (two 16 player teams), 10 maps, and one obese princess to rescue. [via Kotaku]

Originally posted by Gordon Mark from Serious Eats, on July 16, 2008 1:00 PM

When Adam Kaplan first released Devel::NYTProf, I loved it. It stole the code grid feel from Devel::Cover, and it worked well.

Now, Mr. DBI, Tim Bunce, has done some amazing work and released Devel::NYTProf 2.0. Follow the link and check out the screenshots.

As cool as everything looks, and as helpful as the color-coding is, the big advance in 2.0 is the clickability:

On lines that define a subroutine NYTProf now adds ‘comments’ giving the total number of times the sub was called, the inclusive time spent in that sub, and the average. Then it adds a break-down of the same details for every location that called the subroutine.

For anyone concerned with finding bottlenecks in Perl code, Devel::NYTProf is clearly the gold standard.

Originally posted by Andy Lester from Perl Buzz, on July 16, 2008 11:25 AM

In my previous post, I introduced the philosophies behind Google ranking. As part of our effort to discuss search quality, I want to tell you more about the technologies behind our ranking. The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR). The IR community has studied search for almost 50 years. It uses statistical signals of word salience, like word frequency, to rank pages. (See "Modern Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview" for a quick overview of IR technology.) IR gave us a solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous system on top using links, page structure, and many other such innovations.

Search in the last decade has moved from give me what I said to give me what I want. User expectations from search have rightly increased. We work hard to fulfill the expectations of each and every user, and to do that we need to better understand the pages, the queries, and our users. Over the last decade we have pushed the technologies for understanding these three components (of the search process) to completely new dimensions.

When we talk about queries at Google, we use square brackets [ ] to mark the beginning and end of queries (see "How to write queries" by Matt Cutts), a notation I will use throughout this post. (Pages and search results change frequently, so in time, some examples used here may not behave as explained.)

• Understanding pages: Over years we have invested heavily in our crawl and indexing system. As a result we have a very large and very fresh index. In addition to size and freshness, we have improved our index in other ways. One of the key technologies we have developed to understand pages is associating important concepts to a page even when they are not obvious on the page. We find the official homepage for Sprovieri Gallery in London for the Italian query [galleria sprovieri londra], even though the official page does not have either London or Londra on it. In the U.S., a user searching for [cool tech pc vancouver, wa] finds the homepage www.cooltechpc.com even though the page does not mention anywhere that they are in Vancouver, WA. Other technologies we have developed include distinctions between important and less important words in the page and the freshness of the information on the page.
  

• Understanding queries: It is critical that we understand what our users are looking for (beyond just the few words in their query). We have made several notable advances in this area including a best-in-class spelling suggestion system, an advanced synonyms system, and a very strong concept analysis system.

Most users have used our spelling suggestion system at one time or another. It knows that someone searching for [kofee annan] is really searching for Mr. Kofi Annan, and is prompted: Did you mean: kofi annan; whereas someone searching for [kofee beans] is actually looking for coffee beans. Doing this internationally with very high accuracy is hard, and we do it well.

Synonyms are the foundation of our query understanding work. This is one of the hardest problems we are solving at Google. Though sometimes obvious to humans, it is an unsolved problem in automatic language processing. As a user, I don't want to think too much about what words I should use in my queries. Often I don't even know what the right words are. This is where our synonyms system comes into action. Our synonyms system can do sophisticated query modifications, e.g., it knows that the word 'Dr' in the query [Dr Zhivago] stands for Doctor whereas in [Rodeo Dr] it means Drive. A user looking for [back bumper repair] gets results about rear bumper repair. For [Ramstein ab], we automatically look for Ramstein Air Base; for the query query [b&b ab] we search for Bed and Breakfasts in Alberta, Canada. We have developed this level of query understanding for almost one hundred different languages, which is what I am truly proud of.

Another technology we use in our ranking system is concept identification. Identifying critical concepts in the query allows us to return much more relevant results. For example, our algorithms understand that in the query [new york times square church] the user is looking for the well-known church in Times Square and not for articles from the New York Times. We don't just stop at identifying concepts; we further enhance the query with the right concepts when, for instance, someone looking for [PC and its impact on people] is in fact looking for impact of computers on society, or someone who searches for [rainforest instructional activities for vocabulary] is really looking for rain forest lesson plans. Our query analysis algorithms have many such state-of-the-art techniques built into them, and once again, we do this internationally in almost every language we serve.

• Understanding users: Our work on interpreting user intent is aimed at returning results people really want, not just what they said in their query. This work starts with a world class localization system, and adds to it our advanced personalization technology, and several other great strides we have made in interpreting user intent, e.g. Universal Search.
  

Our clear focus on "best locally relevant results served globally" is reflected in our work on localization. The same query typed in multiple countries may deserve completely different results. A user looking for [bank] in the US should get American banks, whereas a user in the UK is either looking for the Bank Fashion line or for British financial institutions. The results for this query should return local financial institutions in other English speaking countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa. The fun really starts when this query is typed in non-English-speaking countries like Egypt, Israel, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland. Likewise the query [football] refers to entirely different sports in Australia, the UK, and the US. These examples mostly show how we get the localized version of the same concept correctly (financial institution, sport, etc.). However, the same query can mean entirely different things in different countries. For example, [Côte d'Or] is a geographic region in France - but it is a large chocolate manufacturer in neighboring French-speaking Belgium; and yes, we get that right too :-).

Personalization is another strong feature in our search system which tailors search results to individual users. Users who are logged-in while searching and have signed up for Web History get results that are more relevant for them than the general Google results. For example, someone who does a lot football-related searches might get more football related results for [giants], while other users might get results related to the baseball team. Similarly, if you tend to prefer results from a particular shopping site, you will be more likely to get results from that site when you search for products. Our evaluation shows that users who get personalized results find them to be more relevant than non-personalized results.

Another case of user intent can be observed for the query [chevrolet magnum]. Magnum is actually made by Dodge and not Chevrolet. So we present the results for Dodge Magnum with the prompt See results for: dodge magnum in our result set.

Our work on Universal Search is another example of how we interpret user intent to give them what they (sometimes) really want. Someone searching for [bangalore] not only gets the important web pages, they also get a map, a video showing street life, traffic, etc. in Bangalore -- watching this video I almost feel I am there :-) -- and at the time of writing there is relevant news and relevant blogs about Bangalore.

Finally let me briefly mention the latest advance we have made in search: Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR). CLIR allows users to first discover information that is not in their language, and then using Google's translation technology, we make this information accessible. I call this advance: give me what I want in any language. A user looking for Tony Blair's biography in Russia who types the query in Russian [Тони Блэр биография] is prompted at the bottom of our results to search the English web with:

Similarly a user searching for Disney movie songs in Egypt with the query [أغاني أفلام ديزني] is prompted to search the English web. We are very excited about CLIR as it truly brings us closer to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I could go on and on showing examples of state-of-the-art technology that we have developed to make our ranking system as good as it is, but the fact is that search is nowhere close to being a solved problem. Many queries still don't get satisfactory results from Google, and each such query is an opportunity to improve our ranking system. I am confident that with numerous techniques under development in our group, we will make large improvements to our ranking algorithms in the near future.

I hope my two posts about Google ranking have made it clear that we live and breathe search, and we are more passionate than ever about it. Our fervor for serving all our users worldwide is unprecedented. We pride ourselves in running a very good ranking system, and are working incredibly hard every day to make it even better.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Originally posted by Karen from The Official Google Blog, on July 16, 2008 9:53 AM

iPhone 2.0 tip. If you tap-then-hold an image in Safari, an option pops up for you to save the image. Nice way to get new wallpaper or photos for your contacts.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 16, 2008 9:05 AM

Sometimes if you do something very difficult, and you do it really well, the end result is that your achievement becomes completely invisible.

I mentioned a year and a half ago that I like Twitter. That was a little bit less common a position to take back then, but in the months since, tons of people have taken to the little messaging service, so clearly this was no great insight on my part -- it's just a useful, fun service.

But of course, that popularity has not been without its problems. Twitter's gotten a reputation for being unreliable, as a result of its rapid growth. In fact, in many ways, the Fail Whale and its related frustrations has come to define Twitter's brand more than almost anything else.

I'm no expert at these things, but there are a lot of reasons startups fail, and the reasons almost never include the fact that thousands of users clamoring for a service. Indeed, it seems to me that most companies (whether they're tech startups or anything else) fail because of being poorly managed. Put another way, execution is everything.

With that in mind, it's worth pointing out how particularly well-executed Twitter's recent acquisition of Summize has been. I don't know any of the deals of the financial or business arrangements, except that I'm a little disappointed that Twitter isn't maintaining a presence in New York City, instead moving all of the employees to San Francisco. That nitpick aside, the public face of this transition was extremely well executed.

Ev Williams, co-founder and the most public face of Twitter, speaks about the deal at some length in this excellent, candid interview with Techcrunch. (Which site, by the way, may rank as my "most improved" blog of 2008.)

Rumors of the Summize acquisition leaked a few weeks ago, but both companies kept discipline around communications and didn't acknowledge or respond to the conversation. And then, when it came time to announce the deal, the sites had been fully integrated, a lengthy and personable blog post complete with a sketch of some future ideas for integration was posted, consistent branding was in place on the acquired site, and the roadmap for what was going on with employees affected by the acquisition was clearly communicated.

In all, that's a formidable amount of coordination to happen across the country, while business deals are being worked out, and while maintaining secrecy about the fact that it's taking place. And, all of that was done with an eye towards providing a good user experience to their shared customer base.

There are a lot of things to criticize in such deals most of the time, though it seems likely that this will be a successful acquisition, from an outsider's point of view. But what's striking to me is that, as quick as so many are to criticize Twitter (fairly) for technological problems, people haven't been as eager to acknowledge a remarkable discipline and execution on the business side of the company. Frankly, all of those who'd suggested that Twitter should be sold to a larger company seem to have forgotten that almost none of the big companies suggested as acquirers have a history of consistently pulling off this kind of execution. And that's even more true for the smaller innovative companies that they've acquired.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on July 16, 2008 8:35 AM

Opening this Friday is one of the must-sees of the summer: The Dark Knight. “Dark" is the operative word in director Christopher Nolan’s masterful, edgy, and exhilarating follow-up to Batman Begins (which reinvented the franchise). Christian Bale expertly returns as the billionaire caped crusader Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Aaron Eckhart stars as a brash District Attorney Harvey Dent ruthlessly crusading to rid Gotham City of crime. But suddenly a wild card, “The Joker,” (Heath Ledger) enters the equation hellbent on throwing the entire city into chaos by taunting the crooks and the cops. Ledger’s performance is as good as people have been saying -- he plays it not as a cartoon villain but a punked out schizophrenic who takes delight in the destruction he causes and is as funny as he is totally frightening. The fact that Ledger is no longer among the living adds a darker patina on an already film noir canvas as this installment careens off into dark waters for most of the cast... and quite a few don’t live to see the outcome. I was riveted by the breathless action sequences and gothic tragedy in this sensational film.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on July 16, 2008 7:46 AM

Filed under: MobileMe

Apple has extended every MobileMe subscription by a month, due to the exceptionally ornery transition this past week.

"The .Mac to MobileMe transition was a lot rockier than we had hoped," Apple spokesman Bill Evans told Macworld. "We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge."

An email sent to subscribers noted that "we have worked through those problems, and the web apps are now up and running," but several pages of comments from our readers suggest otherwise. TUAW staff with MobileMe accounts agreed yesterday that the service is mostly working, but still quirky.

Also in the email, the MobileMe team has promised to stop using the word "push" to describe some aspects of MobileMe's functionality "until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too." This might suggest they're closing the loop on MobileMe's push technology for all connected devices.

Hopefully this goes a long way to assuage the burning, burning rage that MobileMe users have been feeling recently.

(You can read the full letter, after the jump.)

Thanks, Rick, Frank, Mark, Chuck and James for the tip!

Continue reading Apple extends MobileMe subscriptions by 30 days

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Originally posted by Robert Palmer from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on July 16, 2008 7:15 AM

Remind me next year to take a vacation around this time.  These past few weeks have been a bit rough, for a variety of reasons, so of course some key players on my support team go AWOL.     *grin*     David V. traveled to Indonesia, Joolye to Chile, Leane to Minnesota and The Person That Shall Remain Anonymous is otherwise engaged.  Now, my sister is flying out of the country today.  Come on, people, can't you stagger your trips and satisfy your wanderlust at the same time?!   

I'm okay, though.  The grass is blue and the sky is green.

*grin*

I must say, I have amazing friends and, albeit small in number, an amazing family; I am truly blessed.

Adriana, I will miss our daily conversations and your frequent grumbles over how many minutes you have left!  I hope you and others enjoy the following pictures.  You were always there to read to me (love the matching nightgowns) and be silly with me (love the matching pajamas over the clothes plus the shower caps), and you are wonderfully supportive now.  I miss you already.  Gute Reise!            

 

Originally posted by Emily Roth from Emily Tatum Roth, on July 16, 2008 6:49 AM

In my cycling career, I’ve sported at least two of these looks … that would make a good Warhol-influenced print. For more Brent Humphreys photos, check his site, navigate the Flash to Projects > Le Tour.

Caption suggestions?

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on July 16, 2008 6:47 AM

* There's more where that came from here!

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on July 16, 2008 6:18 AM

                                                                                                                Photo by Donna Ruhlman

Garlic has arrived and it's one of my favorite purchases at our grower's market.  This is fresh garlic, not cured, and it's very juicy and strong. The skin is tight over the cloves, the stalks—this is a hard-necked variety—are green and firm.  If you  find ones like these taste the roots (chef's garden sells similar roots to use with its greens).  You can't buy this at a grocery store—you can only get if from the saintly folks who grow it.  Very special stuff.  (By chance, as I was thinking about this post an hour ago, almost as if I'd beckoned it, an email dropped into my box from Timber Press, announcing the forthcoming The Complete Book of Garlic, by Ted Jordan Merideth, which contains info on growing it yourself, which is easy to do and which I highly recommend).

Originally posted by michael ruhlman from ruhlman.com, on July 16, 2008 5:30 AM

Is that the sound of a designer waiting for Adobe Updater to complete? No, just a brief response to a question on Docs Populi, via Coudal Partners:

“What does one call the use of random non-alphabet characters to indicate cursing? It’s a universally understood device, and is applied in both graphic and textual settings. It is such a commonly accepted staple that I assumed it must already be defined and described — but apparently it’s not.”

But it is! The term is grawlix, and it looks to have been coined by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker around 1964. Though it’s yet to gain admission to the Oxford English Dictionary, OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower describes it as “undeniably useful, certainly a word, and one that I’d love to see used more.” As the author of the grawlixy compendium The F-Word, Sheidlower’s perspective is unique — and unassailable, if you’re wise, since he and his cronies have the power to immortalize naysayers as expletives themselves. (Don’t laugh: such was the fate of philistine Thomas Bowdler, miser Charles Boycott, and jingoist Nicolas Chauvin, to say nothing of famous typeface designer James W. Scumbag.)

Until its OED entry is solemnized, we’ll have to settle for this definition on Wiktionary: “grawlix, n. A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swear word.” I don’t think I’ll ever look at a character set quite the same way again. —JH

A hand-picked selection: Those &%£§$‡@?!! Fonts!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on July 16, 2008 5:06 AM

Via Modern Art Notes, Time's Richard Lacayo on the connection between Monet's Water Lilies and Mark Rothko made real at Tate Modern.

Going back and forth between the two canvases, you could understand in an almost physical way how Rothko's picture operates, how its vertical orientation and near human-scale dimensions, its direct address to your eye, brain and body, condenses the visual field of Monet's horizontal image and untethers it from its last connections to the visible world.

Yeah, art speak. I know. But if you're at all a Rothko fan, you'll get it. (Lacayo's piece has the images to prove his point, so, y'know, click through.)

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on July 15, 2008 5:41 PM

Kurt Vonnegut shares his tips on how to write with style.

5. Sound like yourself. The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

(via chris glass)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 15, 2008 3:08 PM

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPhone 101

If you are running the new 2.0 firmware on your iPhone or iPod touch, you might not have noticed a new handy shortcut in Safari. When you type in your address, hold down the ".com" button to get a selection of 3 other domain name endings: ".net," ".edu," and ".org." When you tap on any of the endings, it will be automatically inserted in the address bar.

Want more iPhone/iPod touch tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's iPhone 101 section to learn more.


Thanks, Ryan!

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Originally posted by Cory Bohon from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on July 15, 2008 3:00 PM

The Periodic Table of Videos is a collection of videos about all the elements. All your favorites are there...Neon, Rubidium, Lead, Plutonium.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 15, 2008 1:58 PM

You know, Malkmus is being a bit of a bitch in interviews recently. One thing he said last summer referred to me as “trashy mouth.” And he just did this article in Spin where he alluded to me unpleasantly, saying, “You know, I always thought that Pavement could have had one of those big hits in the early ’90s with ‘Cut Your Hair,’ but I guess people preferred ‘Cannonball.’ ” Yeah, I liked Pavement. But if he keeps fucking smacking his mouth off about me, I’m going to end up not being able to listen to any of their fucking records again. Anyway, I thought, God, man, “Cut Your Hair” isn’t as good of a song as “Cannonball,” so fuck you. How’s that? Your song was just a’ight, dawg.

--Kim Deal

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on July 15, 2008 1:57 PM

For the last 20 years, home builders, designers and dwellers have watched the construction of manufactured, or prefabricated, homes change from quick, basic and temporary to ultra-hip, eco-friendly and sustainable.

Taking a multifaceted look at this progression is a the New York Museum of Modern Art's latest exhibit “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," which will showcase the historic and modern elements of the prefab housing evolution. Opening on July 20, the exhibit will feature 60 projects within the museum as well as the construction of five full-scale houses on the streets of Manhattan, outside and west of the museum. “Home Delivery” will take visitors on a tour of not only the history of prefab design and construction but also of the issues surrounding the building technique, such as mass production, sustainability and portability.

Barry Bergdoll, the museum’s chief curator of architecture and design, recently told The New York Times about why the MoMA decided to present prefabricated houses as an art instillation:

“Home Delivery” offered the perfect opportunity to bring together architects’ current interest in digital fabrication with the general public’s nostalgia for Modernist prefab designs, and to do an exhibition that was both contemporary and historical at the same time…As Bergdoll [explained], “I’m very interested in process — how architects work, how they solve problems and how they adapt to new technologies — not just ‘Isn’t this cool?’

As we’ve written before, 21st century prefab has come a long way from its strictly utilitarian beginnings. Fabulous prefab of the new millennium continues to impress us with its capacity to combine two ideas we love: smart urban design and ecological ingenuity. The movement to make prefab more sustainable will only further its ability to stylishly create both density and affordability, and integrate innovative building techniques such as natural ventilation and green roofing.

Check out some examples of fabulous Aussie prefab here, and shots of the upcoming MoMA exhibit from the New York Times here.

Photo credit:Richard Barnes for New York Times Magazine

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Sustainable Design at 1:55 PM)

Originally posted by Sarah Kuck from WorldChanging, on July 15, 2008 1:55 PM

kevindavidcrowe:

I’ve never rode the front of a train before. I’m not sure if they are all like this J train, but there is a big door window in the front and it feels like your driving the train.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on July 15, 2008 1:12 PM

The Laboratorium: The Google Dilemma

I’ve posted online my latest draft, The Google Dilemma. It’s based on a couple of talks I gave this spring—one to a group of high-school students and one to a group of law students. Very loosely, it’s an attempt to explain why people should care about search engine law. I take five search queries—two of them seemingly harmless and three highly controversial—and tell their stories. How does Google decide which sites to return in response to one of them, and whose ox is gored when it does? It’s short—by legal academic standards, at least—and, I hope, both readable and entertaining.

Here is the abstract:

Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us. They can shape what we read, who we listen to, who gets heard. Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself. Today, no one comes closer to controlling search than Google does. In this short essay, I’ll describe a few of the ways that individuals, companies, and even governments have tried to shape Google’s results to serve their goals. Specifically, I’ll tell the stories of five Google queries, each of which illustrates a different aspect of the problems that Google and other search engines must confront: • “mongolian gerbils” shows their power to organize the Internet for us. • “talentless hack” shows how their rankings depend on collective human knowledge. • “jew” shows why search results can be controversial. • “search king” shows the tension between automatic algorithms and human oversight. • “ tiananmen” shows how deeply political search can be. Taken together, these five stories give us a snapshot on search and the interlocking issues that search law must confront.

Originally posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan from The Googlization of Everything, on July 15, 2008 12:34 PM

Just finished reading Wired's cover on Julia Allison. Julia is a good friend of mine and I'm incredibly proud of her-- a fact people I know envy and abhor, sometimes at the same time. It's no secret one thing that's bonded us is our similar experience as Internet whipping girls, although I have never gotten it nearly as badly as Julia, but I also have a very different life and career. But having gotten to know her, I really  like Julia and I think this article captures her brilliantly. Her charm and her savvy. The mixture of poking her haters with a stick and begging them to stop. And this is what makes her more successful at the Internet fame game than I ever will be. I know in my head that controversy only makes me more well-known-- and to be crass-- makes me more money. But I hate it and I never court it.

And yet somehow, it seems to come out of nowhere to find me. Take today. Someone on Twitter blasted that I was bashing the New York "tech scene." I quickly thought through the latest interviews I'd been on either side of, blog posts, columns and couldn't come up with a time I'd bashed the New York tech scene. It turned out he was talking about this video, where I say-- as I have a zillion times explaining the title of my book-- that there's a unique cultural phenomenon in the Valley where true entrepreneurs are sucked into the game of starting another company because just doing it once isn't enough. I said New York reporters were frequently stunned asking "Why don't you go sit on an island?" Yeah. And? It's really more a cultural observation than "bashing." And it says nothing about the tech scene in New York. It's a minor example, but welcome to my life. (Update: I asked the guy about it via Twitter and he was actually pretty nice.)

It's weird to live on that fine line between love and hate, and even weirder to increasingly make your living on that line. The people who write the cruelest things are the ones who come back to my column, blog or yahoo show every single day. (Less so with the blog than the others.) They are probably my most loyal viewers/readers. Oh, and they frequently talk up why I should be fired or that they'll never -- ever-- buy my book or support anything I do. See that click? You just did. (Again.)

For months now, I've been trying to wrap my head around Internet fame and why it seems more powerful than real fame-- but at the end of the day, rarely if ever translates outside a niche. Magazines always profile people just before they break out. And then they don't. (Although I hope Julia proves me wrong with her Bravo show. She's certainly got a more traditional star quality than, say, the "Leave Britney Alone!" guy...) For instance, my husband pointed out to me that according to this, I rank number 90 on the list of 100 most famous people on the Internet. Sort of like my reaction to the Playboy thing, I felt a mix of how-can-that-be-possible head-scratching and flattery. That said, I don't kid myself: If you randomly asked ten people in San Francisco-- let alone the rest of the world-- who I was they'd have no clue.

I wonder if the discrepancy between Internet fame and real fame has something to do with being so hate-based? It's no secret the SXSW debacle and before that the Digg Cover caused much of this notoriety-- not my ten years of solid, and to some, boring business reporting-- and both were times I was slammed, even if then subsequently praised. (Both times I was also just trying to do my job.) But can you profit off hate offline? Would you, for instance, go see a movie starring someone you hated the way you will read a Gawker post and take the time to leave a nasty comment? I'm not so sure. I guess it all goes back to that ease of conversion online. Whether it's clicking on a paid search link, or tacitly endorsing a rising micro-celeb with your eyeballs.

Originally posted by sarah lacy from SarahLacy.com, on July 15, 2008 12:03 PM

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, iPhone, MobileMe

Many commenters and bloggers hither and yon have noticed that MobileMe lacks "true push" capabilities, even though Apple uses the "push" buzzword extensively to describe MobileMe services.

A commenter in a MacRumors thread about the subject took screenshots from Apple's site, showing they had removed the phrase "Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously." In its place, Apple clarifies that changes from the iPhone and web apps are updated instantly on connected computers, but not vice versa.

Apple also notes in a Knowledge Base article that changes "made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe 'cloud' once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11)."

That, to me, doesn't sound like "push," it sounds like "sync." The term "push" still applies, however, to me.com email, as that shows up immediately (in my experience, at least.) Calendars and contacts, though, not so much, apparently.

[Via BetaNews.]

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Originally posted by Robert Palmer from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on July 15, 2008 12:00 PM

Radar's obtained the special issue ideas that didn't pass muster

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Radar Online Features, on July 15, 2008 11:59 AM

In his latest column for SI.com, Joy Heyman takes a look at the market for Rockies OF Matt Holliday and lists five logical destinations for the slugger.

According to Heyman, the Mets are one of the logical choices, but the team apparently balked when Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd started negotiations by asking for Carlos Beltran.

Heyman believes the Mets may be able to construct a deal for Holliday with OF prospect Fernando Martinez being the center piece, but believes the Mets are a ‘major long shot’ to acquire Holliday.

Last week on Metsblog, Matt Cerrone stated buzz from around the league suggested Rockies want the absolute-best possible prospect they can find, preferably a pitcher, who is ready to go, highly-touted and under contract.

Cerrone also stated the Rockies do not have to trade Holliday this season, as he is under contract next season.

Holliday is batting.337 with 14 HR and 51 RBI this season.

…obviously holliday would be the ultimate right-handed, corner outfield acquisition for the Mets this season, but i’m not sure he’s worth mortgaging the minor league system for…the farm system, which is by all accounts below average at this point, would probably become one of the worst in the league if the Omar Minaya made another four-for-one type deal again, such as he did in the Johan Santana trade…

…i’ve always had the philosphy that trading away unproven prospects for proven major league talent is a no-brainer, but with limited prospects available at this point, i’m not sure that would be wise…

…with that beiing said, there are pros to pulling off a deal to acquire holliday…filling a void in the outfield, especially with a mvp-caliber talent like holliday…but another pro would be if the Mets could not come to an agreement with holliday by the end of next season, the team could let him walk, which would net the team two draft picks…

ShareThis

Originally posted by Mike Nichols from MetsBlog.com, on July 15, 2008 11:30 AM

There are two possibilities regarding the iPhone’s continued lack of a system-wide copy-and-paste clipboard. Either Apple’s iPhone UI team doesn’t plan to add it, or, they haven’t gotten to it yet.

I saw a couple of links today pointing, incredulously, to this post from Sascha Segan at AppScout:

I got a few minutes of quality time today to ask Apple product head Greg Joswiak some of the most burning questions about missing iPhone applications and features.

Why isn’t there cut and paste? Apple has a priority list of features, and they got as far as they could down that list with this model, Joswiak said. In other words, they don’t have anything against cut and paste. They just judged other things to be more important.

No direct quotes from Joswiak, but based on Segan’s paraphrasing, it sounds like the latter of the two explanations — that they haven’t gotten to it yet. I’m not sure why so many people find this explanation so hard to believe.

Additional features take additional time to develop. Many commenters at Engadget, for example, seem to think adding copy and paste to the iPhone is simply a matter of “storing a text string into memory” or writing two lines of code.

Writing the code to implement a system-wide clipboard isn’t the hard part — as I wrote in August, the hard part is coming up the right UI design for it. Whatever the UI for copy-and-paste for the iPhone OS eventually is, it’s very likely to remain as the UI for copy-and-paste on the iPhone for decades to come. (The basic UI for copy-and-paste on the original Mac remains in use today by everyone using Mac OS X and Windows — same concepts, same menu commands, even the same keyboard shortcuts.)

But even if Apple has already decided upon a UI design for iPhone clipboard features, it would take time to write the code. There are some very interesting new features in the 2.0 release of the iPhone OS, but what’s most striking is how little has changed since the 1.0 release last June.

Part of it is that Apple’s iPhone UI is exceedingly minimal — most apps seem to be designed using “what’s the least we can possibly do?” as the guiding principal, but then implement those basic features with as much attention to detail as possible. Do way less, but way better. So, most of the UI that appeared in iPhone OS 1.0 remains unchanged. Very little has changed at all in Safari, iPod, or Phone — three of the four primary apps. And even Mail’s biggest change is rather minor (multiple selection for deleting and filing messages).

But a big part is that the iPhone software engineering teams had an enormous amount of work on their plates implementing the features that did appear in the 2.0 OS — most obviously with everything associated with opening the iPhone to third-party software — the App Store, the Cocoa Touch APIs, the sandboxing of individual applications, integration with Xcode development tools, etc. There’s also a thing called MobileMe. And the iPhone performance team had to integrate 3G networking, and wound up with the highest-performing battery life of any 3G phone PC World tested.

And if you’re actually using iPhone OS 2.0, you’ve probably seen a few spots where a lot of this new stuff isn’t working perfectly. Like with third-party apps that crash on start and force the entire phone to restart.

I want copy-and-paste as much as the next guy. Probably more, really. But given the evidence at hand — that the new iPhone OS 2.0 as it actually is has significant new features, which were already a little late, and which still have at least a few significant bugs — it boggles the mind that anyone could take Joswiak’s explanation regarding the lack of copy-and-paste as anything other than the obvious truth.

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on July 15, 2008 11:29 AM

Lance Arthur deals with an iPhone line-cutter.

"Are you standing in line?"

"Yeah."

"Were you standing in line behind me outside for three and a half hours."

"Yeah, I was." Grin.

He stares at me. I instantly hate him. A lot. I hate everything about his self-congratulatory smart-assed grin and his cheating little heart and his idea of how life should work for him, where he can outsmart us all and get what he wants and get away with it. "No, you weren't."

Fairness matters, even when you've got something to lose.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 15, 2008 11:28 AM

This morning I went for a ride in the park before it was open to traffic. Then a few cars passed and I started biking in the bike lane getting more and more annoyed at the joggers, walkers, and odd starers who continued to be in my way instead of moving to the inner lane. I began saying things like "the park is open get to the left" which is what they are supposed to be doing. I did this for a bit and then noticed that the cars weren't going all the way around and the people I'd been yelling at must have thought I was a crazy asshole. I was in fact right but also wrong and when I realized it could only sheepishly hang my end and ride slowly home.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on July 15, 2008 11:14 AM

As a software developer, the one thing I’m good at is listening to users.

I’ve always worked in public or semi-public: release, listen to feedback, release, listen, repeat forever. I worked this way for years UserLand. All of NetNewsWire was developed this way, beginning with the very earliest betas of NetNewsWire Lite back in 2002.

My entire career has been about software development as social activity (and a little bit as public performance, I admit).

I don’t know another way to do this — and, if I did, that other way probably wouldn’t suit my temperament. It may not be the best way to do software, but it’s the way that works for me.

Which is why I’m more than a little bit at sea with the iPhone development experience. Getting beta testers is a technical and legal challenge. And I’m used to having hundreds, not just a few. Discussing development and design issues with other developers is usually a valuable thing, but there’s an NDA in the way.

But, then, well, in theory I can do frequent public releases, get lots of feedback, and keep the cycle going. Great theory. Works for me!

Of course, that is, if I had a way to get my releases to the public... That’s where I’m bugged. I keep getting feedback on stuff I fixed or changed days ago. And no feedback on the recent changes.

Anyway, just thought I’d wave hi from out here on the waves.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from inessential.com, on July 15, 2008 10:16 AM

The latest New Yorker cover, by pop-culture visual commentator Barry Blitt, is stirring up considerable controversy. Apparently Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters don’t agree that satire helps their cause - see the story at the International Herald Tribune. That’s a pretty tricky line for a Democrat to take. Where would we be without cartoonists and caricaturists - the court jesters of our times - to speak the taboos that cover up hidden agendas and to question, hence improve and refine, cultural values?

At least two illustrators are defending The New Yorker’s willingness to keep imagemaking relevant and thought-provoking. The indefatigable DB Dowd (previously) - who brought this dust-up to my attention - has an excellent essay about it, while Person-of-the-Day caricaturist Steve Brodner has a call-to-action on his Drawger blog.

Now if only The New Yorker would stop being wimps and post about this on their new Cartoon Lounge blog, and put in message threads!! THAT would make their new blog something to bookmark, a place to regularly discuss freedom-of-sight. Instead, they are conducting all the juicy discussion over on The  Huffington Post.

Originally posted by jaleen from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on July 15, 2008 10:12 AM

In a special Halloween episode of The Simpsons that aired in October 1995, a freak lightning storm brings all of Springfield's giant advertising statues to life. The advertising monsters begin to destroy the town when Lisa, an advertising executive, and Paul Anka come up with a jingle urging everyone to stop paying attention to the monsters. Here's the chorus:

Just don't look. Just don't look.
Just don't look. Just don't look.
Just don't look. Just don't look.

The townspeople comply and with no one paying attention, the advertising monsters collapse and die, saving the town.

The "just don't look" strategy works for more than advertising...it's effective in any situation where someone or something runs on attention. On the web attention comes in the form of links and pageviews so "just don't look" translates roughly into "just don't link or read". If you don't like who's on the cover of Wired, just don't look. If no one talks about her, she'll go away. Think media gossip sites are ruining the web? Don't read them. Leggy blonde conservative got your knickers in a knot? Just don't look. Commenters ruining the internet? Moderate your comments or close them up. If some Web 2.0 blowhard says something stupid, just don't look. Hate blonde socialites? Just. Don't. Look.

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 15, 2008 10:05 AM

On my weblog I posted an update: what I’ve been doing and what’s the plan.

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on July 15, 2008 9:26 AM

I have been frequently put to shame for Sphinx release schedule and version numbering. Indeed, taking into the account the typical amount of features and fixes per snapshot, most if not all of so-called snapshots in 0.9.8 branch could likely qualify for a separate release, receive their very own minor version tags, etc.

We are going to work on that. But even the longest journey begins with a first step. Time to make that step.

Over 15 months, over 700 revisions, and about 70 new features since the previous "release" tag, Sphinx 0.9.8-release is finally out. As usual, source tarball and Win32 binaries are available in the Downloads section.

The complete list of new features since 0.9.7 is available in the documentation. With 70 entries, it's too big to copy here, and had to be split in several sections for the doc. It does not include bugfixes at all, cause that would make it too big even for the doc. (Also, I'm too lazy to go through all the commits and summarize all the fixes we did over the year).

The complete changelog since RC2 is also in the documentation. (This one includes the fixes.) There were no new features in the engine itself since 0.9.8-rc2, because we intentionally froze it. Nevertheless, we did some additions to the whole package:

• added Ruby API and pure C API;
• added network timeout and error parameters to PHP API;
• added sphinx-min.conf sample file;
• added --without-iconv switch to configure.

Some trivia about 0.9.8-release:

• 0.9.8 is revision 1371;
• 0.9.7 is revision 606;
• 0.9.8 source size is almost precisely 2 times the 0.9.7 source size;
• automated testing suite runs 33 tests, 250 subtests (meaning 250 different config variants), and verifies 1695 queries against manually checked reference results;
• creating the unified documentation, ie. documenting all the sphinx.conf features and API calls, took 5 all-night-long bursts to complete (and then some daylight polishing that does not count);
• the only bugfix mentioned in the list of changes since 0.9.7 is the fix that enabled Sphinx to run on SPARC and ARM.

Also in the news, we're among the finalists in SourceForge Community Choice Awards 2008! Sphinx is in the shortlists for “Best Project”, “Best Project for the Enterprise”, and, somewhat unexpectedly for me, “Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition”. Many thanks to all who voted for Sphinx during the nominations! Now is the time to vote again in the 2nd round. There are several quite popular competitors (such as OpenOffice), so please spread the word as much as you can.

As promised, the next update is going to be 0.9.9 alpha. We've already got some nice new features there for you, but need to merge all the fixes from 0.9.8 and eliminate some known crashes. In the meantime, have fun with 0.9.8, be sure to report everything that resembles a bug, and vote for Sphinx again. Thanks!

Originally posted by shodan@shodan.ru from Sphinx search engine news, on July 15, 2008 9:25 AM

Somebody emailed me and asked if I was responsible for Pheltup. Uhm, no.

Originally posted by unknown from link:pheltup.com - Google Blog Search, on July 15, 2008 9:17 AM

From Serious Eats: New York

A couple of months ago Ed Levine Eats morphed into Serious Eats: New York. There were just too many delicious things to eat in the Big Apple we weren't covering because I didn't have the time or the stomach capacity. So I decided to unleash the force of many other New York-based serious eaters to cover as much deliciousness as we could eat and drink.

We thought there was a need for a never-ending search for deliciousness in New York, and apparently you agreed, because our community has grown tremendously in that time. You loved Kathy Chan's search for the perfect ice cream sandwich, Gordon Mark's quest for the perfect bowl of noodles in Chinatown, and our attempt to identify all the New York-based food icons in Grand Theft Auto IV. I loved it, too. How could you not?

But we realized there was some unfinished business to attend to. Even though Serious Eats: New York was its own entity, it looked like the Serious Eats front page. That blurred the lines a little too much, and we saw that people were missing some great entries on SE:NY in the confusion.

So we're proud to relaunch Serious Eats: New York with a new design that matches the energy of the great food city we're reporting on. We hope this will help you find all the best eats in New York. In addition to the blog, which is now located at newyork.seriouseats.com, there is also a Serious Eats: New York Talk section, where you can start your own discussions and chew the fat with other serious eaters in New York. And we'll be sending out the first Serious Eats: New York newsletter at the end of the week—if you haven't signed up to receive it yet, get on that now. Thanks for making Serious Eats: New York such a quick success, and we look forward to hearing from all of you in the comments of all our posts!

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on July 15, 2008 9:15 AM

search.twitter.com is now live  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on July 15, 2008 9:07 AM

It's only been a few days since the launch of the iPhone App Store, but the verdict is in: Bloggers are loving the new TypePad for iPhone application. We've seen a massive number of TypePad members download the new application for their iPod touch or iPhone, and just as exciting is seeing an influx of new members who finally gave TypePad a try because of the application. If you've got an iPhone or iPod touch and haven't given it a try yet yourself, just download it for free on the App Store.

TypePad for iPhone lets unleash your creativity from wherever you are: Create posts, upload photos, even resize images taken on your camera. And your posts appear instantly on your TypePad blog (and optionally on Twitter as well) as soon as you're done.

But, while we're proud of the success of this new application, you don't have to take our word for it. Take a look at just some of the early press reaction:

• AppleInsider lists TypePad amongst its Best of the App Store: "As the only full-scale blogging app on launch, TypePad (free) is almost a category of its own but is nonetheless notable for just how complete it is."
• Longtime TypePad member Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press weighs in: "I downloaded a free program for Typepad, the popular blogging platform from Six Apart. It writes, posts copy and pictures and updates the blog I set up like I was at my main computer."
• In its own inimitable style, Valleywag lists the new TypePad app as one of the 10 iPhone apps that will drive you into Steve Jobs's clutches.
• Eric Benderoff at the Chicago Tribune offers his assessment: "I prefer the Web App for the Typepad blogging software because it allows me to manage -- track where the readers are coming from or approve comments, for example -- the Eric 2.0 blog."
• And finally, Scott McNulty, who's been using TypePad for years, offers a detailed first look on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: I'm a big fan of the service ... and that's why I was very excited to see TypePad was coming out with an iPhone native blogging app."

We're just as excited to see what you think of the application, of course. So do let us know: Post about your experiences on your TypePad blog, or let us know via Twitter. (You do follow the Six Apart account on Twitter, don't you?) That's just as easy to do, because TypePad for iPhone supports posting to TypePad and Twitter at the same time. And a tip: One of the new features for iPhone and iPod touch is really handy if you want to write about an application -- just hold down the power button and the Home button to take a screenshot, which shows up as a regular image on your device.

Best of all, TypePad for iPhone joins a whole family of mobile applications for TypePad. There's a powerful iPhone web interface for TypePad, which includes a ton of cool features like statistics and comment management. And just like the iPhone app, they're all free for TypePad members, they're all among the first full-featured blogging applications on their platforms, and they're all exclusive benefits of being a TypePad member.

Better Mobile Blogging for Everyone

We haven't forgotten that some of our most valuable bloggers are on Movable Type and Vox, and that we have an obligation to all bloggers to make it as easy as possible to share your ideas with the world. So there are some great iPhone options for these bloggers, too:

• For Movable Type, the free iMT plugin gives you a full-featured interface for updating and managing your Movable Type blogs, including the ability to review comments, entries, and more. You can also use the free Blog It, powered by TypePad, to easily update your MT blog while updating other services like Twitter or Facebook as well. (These options work perfectly with Movable Type 4.2, which is now in the Release Candidate stage of testing.)
• For Vox members, you can just sign in to Blog It on your iPhone and post to your Vox blog with just a few taps.
• For everybody else, Blog It's a good option as well. The TypePad-powered service works with popular blogging tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, and WordPress.

We hope you'll give TypePad for iPhone a try, and we're excited that, once again, TypePad members are getting the coolest new features first.

Originally posted by Anil Dash from Six Apart News & Events, on July 15, 2008 8:03 AM

“I don’t think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, our ties with the Saudi family and our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said! Are we a nation of 6-year-olds? Answer: yes.”

- David Cross (via unalone)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on July 15, 2008 7:38 AM

for christmas paul gave me a book of soviet posters. i will have to look to see if some of these are in there.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on July 15, 2008 7:33 AM

For the brave-hearted, here's a trick to increase the frequency of Mac-to-MobileMe synchronizations.

Read More...

Originally posted by ars@niload.com (Erik Kennedy) from Infinite Loop, on July 15, 2008 7:31 AM

Our busy family trip to Northern California last week meant that I didn't get a chance to link to George Will's excellent (and very flattering) column about beer and civilization, "Survival of the Sudsiest":

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book, "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water.

I like how he extends the Everything Bad Is Good For You theme all the way into Ghost Map. (I'm ashamed to say I have a comparable riff about coffee in the new book.) By the way, anyone interested in reading more about beverages and world history should read the superb A History Of The World In Six Glasses.

I've also been chuckling about the fact that I've been quoted now in columns by George Will and David Brooks in the same month. I am seriously going to start losing credibility at the Park Slope Food Co-Op.

 

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on July 15, 2008 7:21 AM

The Online Personas of the Candidates' Kids

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Radar Online Features, on July 15, 2008 7:14 AM

• Bush Lifts Executive Orders Banning Offshore Oil Drilling (NYT)
• Ped Counts Show Streets Near Penn Station Need the Boulevard Treatment (MTR)
• MTA Plans to Introduce New Types of Ads in Subway Stations (NY1)
  
• Assemblyman Dov Hikind Wants to Hear About Unsafe Subway Conditions (AMNY)
• Notices About Service Changes Befuddle Straphangers (City Room, 2nd Ave Sagas)
• Low-Cost Competitors Join Fung Wah in Intercity Bus Market (Sun)
• The Building Blocks of Bike Language (Planetizen)
  
• Virtual Speed Bumps Work in Philly, at First (NYT)
• SF Deploys Network of Sensors to Help Drivers Find Open Parking Spots (NYT)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on July 15, 2008 5:01 AM

Examiner column for July 16 (Wednesdays from now on!) 

    Less than two weeks ago, I was a full time high school teacher, and had been for more than two decades. Although I always teach George Mason University classes during the summer as well as during the regular year, this summer seems different because these students are representative of my future. Now that I have a full-time college job, I will never again teach anyone younger than 19 years old.

    Yet my current students resemble high schoolers in unexpected ways. College students are not in my classroom to improve their intellectual lives—they are there to fulfill a requirement, just as my high school students wanted a good grade and college recommendations. College students’ demeanors are more controlled, yet they are just as hurt when they receive criticism. They are adult versions of the adolescent, insecure pranksters I’ve left behind.

    Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Eleven” helps me understand these connections. On Rachel’s eleventh birthday, she realizes she is not only eleven, but “ten, nine, eight, seven, six”—just the way middle-aged adults still feel eighteen, somewhere deep down.

    In the story Rachel turns eleven, but is humiliated by her teacher and therefore cries, which is the part of her that is three. “Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.”

    Having seen my students grow up, agonize over SATs and college acceptance, get together and break up with significant partners, and sneak out of school for illicit dates with a fast food outlet, I don’t even try to banish their faces as I see the more mature adult faces in my college classes. They are the same, with a few more character lines. Those 22- year-olds are still 18, 15, and six.

    Jenni encapsulates the perspective I’ve developed over the years. I taught her at Oakton High School and now, again, at GMU. Mostly I remember her hot pink cell phone. But now she is so much more than “hot pink Jenni.” She is a wonderful writer---someone with self-deprecating humor, intelligence and maturity. What I saw in the chrysalis stage three years ago has taken flight. “And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is.”

    Even when I have no literal memories of the earlier layers of my students’ onion lives, I can imagine them. I see the dreams that used to be mostly in their heads, now coming to fruition. And I see the insecurities that loomed large before, still lurking beneath the surface. I see a younger Keith with his perfectionism and wicked wit developing, and the determination in Kadija’s eyes that led her out of a war-torn country and into the GMU nursing program.

    College students are “smart eleven” because they’re nearly fully formed, adding another layer to their lives. It’s wonderful to see students mature with their earlier selves still visible. My decades teaching younger students have given me the ability to peek at the layers below.  In Cisneros’s words, “That’s the way it is.”

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on July 15, 2008 3:51 AM

Will Wright from his now legendary Long Now talk with Eno, as quoted by Jim Rossignol in his excellent book “This Gaming Life” (my emphasis below)

“When we do these computer models, those aren’t the real models; the real models are in the gamer’s head. The computer game is just a compiler for that mental model in the player. We have this ability as humans to build these fairly elaborate models in our imaginations, and the process of play is the process of pushing against reality, building a model, refining a model by looking at the results of looking at interacting with things.“

Yep.

That’s still the mission plan.

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on July 15, 2008 1:36 AM

After three-year hiatus, a new Cut and Paint stencil template zine is now available!

This time around we (Josh MacPhee, Colin Matthes, Nicolas Lampert) traded in the headaches of attempting to scam double-sided 11x17 photocopies for the impeccable offset printing provided by Eberhardt Press. As always, Cut and Paint has a plethora of copy-right free stencil template designs that we envision as a toolkit for your creative application.

Expanding on the scope of the first issue, this edition has a number of writings including an essay by Emily Abendroth on a stencil project in Oakland and a short how-to-guide on moss stencils and a description of micro-stencils! Cut and Paint # 2 also features a number of photo spreads about stencil activity.

The most gratifying aspect of the project is imagining where the images might turn up in the far corners of the world. Below is an image from the zine by Eliot and an image by Claude (that is not in the zine) but demonstrates the potential of the medium.

Cut and Paint website:
www.cutandpaint.org

Originally posted by Nicolas Lampert from Just Seeds: Blog, on July 14, 2008 6:55 PM

So my blogging has been rather slow lately. Being a new father is part of it but another reason is that I've been hard at work on leading a great team of people in creating GeoToolkit. You can read the post about it on the outside.in blog. If you blog about places even occasionally you might find it interesting. Next up tools for sites powered by the GeoToolkit. I'm really excited about these so my blogging might be even slower still.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on July 14, 2008 6:44 PM

The Tour de France is currently doing an anti-clockwise lap of that particular European country. I have the late night TV-induced bags under my eyes to prove it. The current world of pro-cycling is a dizzying mix of space-age materials and very scientific training methods and in regard to the current hi-tech synthetic fabrics worn by the riders, they wick away sweat, expel it to the outside of the garment where it evaporates, leaving one cool and dry. Lots of contemporary sportswear utilises this approach. The jersey graphics are often applied via a heat sublimation process.

In days of yore, the riders wore wool. That's right, wool. Good old environmentally friendly wool (pretty much). You know, from sheep. Logos and type were stitched on by hand. Wool is a terrific insulator and keeps you warm even when wet and draws heat away from the body when one gets hot.

One of the reasons I enjoy being a cyclist and a cycle-sport spectator is the scenery, the visual poetry of the sport, and the (moving) typography!

Old cycling jerseys feature some startlingly beautiful typography. My favourite being the famed St Raphael jersey (seen above) worn by five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil (although he wore other sponsored jerseys on his various Tour wins). He's also my favourite old-time rider because he shares a surname with my grandmother (both were from a similar part of the world).

Currently whizzing around your town may be cyclists on 'old-style' single-speed bikes. They have become the 'in' cycling thing, alongside retro cycling jerseys. Prendas Ciclismo, a British cycling product retailer have lovingly recreated in synthetics the great jerseys of Tour days gone by, and Solo, from New Zealand have created retro-styled jerseys for teams that never existed! They have made their jerseys as terrific pastiches of those that may have belonged to the great cycling teams of the 1950s and 60s that never were! (Nice idea). Vintage Velos from the US, and the esteemed Santini from Italy (also makers of the originals) make replicas of the old jerseys out of the original material: fine grade (often Australian) merino wool. Lovely. Terrific type too.

Here's a bunch of old or recreated jerseys from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, most of which (save for the Renault and Reynolds ones) would have originally been made out of merino wool.

Vive le Tour et la typographie!

The above Molteni jersey being possibly the most notable retro jersey of all. Worn by the unstoppable and incredible Eddy Merckx, winner of, well, practically everything, including five Tour de Frances.

The Reynolds jersey above being the original team of the great Miguel Indurain, also a five-time winner of the Tour de France.

Originally posted by Andrew Haig from One Plus One Equals Three, on July 14, 2008 5:30 PM

MANscoop: Prado researchers will soon announce that this is not a Goya.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on July 14, 2008 3:45 PM

You've likely seen the wedding photo of the wounded Iraq War soldier and the woman who stuck by him through his recovery. After being married for just over a year, the couple is now divorced.

"Nothing was ever really wrong. It just wasn't right. Going into the marriage? I'd never been married before. I think we were okay. The wedding - it was so planned. There was this thing... " He breaks off and gets up to retrieve the framed certificate. It's from the state of Illinois declaring his wedding a state holiday. "To call something like that off..." He sits back down.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 14, 2008 3:18 PM

I've just stopped blogging about it, because I stopped saying anything new. Everyone has done a bad job and everyone is angry. We get it!

But I can only hope Henry's analysis is the consensus of Yahoo's investors leading up to this shareholders' meeting. I don't say that as someone who draws a salary from Yahoo. First off, I don't think Microsoft would cancel TechTicker and it's just one of my several jobs, so it's not like my livelihood depends on this deal not happening. And I don't own stock in any tech companies, Yahoo included. (Besides, whenever I write or speak about Yahoo it's as a reporter not a contractor. I don't report anything I see or experience being on campus for work, per my contract.)

I'm just weary of all this fire-sale/break-up news that positions Yahoo as if it's, say, Novell: A troubled company that's a shadow of its former self. (Sorry friends at Novell!) Let's be clear: Yahoo is a shadow of Google when it comes to search-- which is hardly its whole business or greatest asset. But hardly a shadow of itself.

As a member of the media, let me express how remarkably unbroken Yahoo is as a property. Just see the news that the SF Chronicle is laying off another 100 newsroom jobs? Picked up an every shrinking issue of any business magazine lately? Yeah, that's our world. No other platform reaches half a billion people a month. TechTicker has become one of the biggest audiences for financial video content since its February launch mostly by being on Yahoo Finance. (As much as I think we're awesome...) And remember the much maligned Digg-copycat Yahoo Buzz? Look at its traffic, again just by being in front of that fire-hose of traffic.

Yahoo may operate like a fiefdom at times but it's a fiefdom that draws its strength from that torrent of traffic. Why you'd think you could get more value from breaking it up is beyond me. I guess that's why this story has ceased to interest me. It's become nothing more than a Wall Street game. And one that even Henry is bored by!

Originally posted by sarah lacy from SarahLacy.com, on July 14, 2008 3:08 PM

…for an impressive ability to keep screwing stuff up, even after we’ve moved our entire infrastructure to another host — except one server.

Rackspace: A drive died in the RAID array. he;lp

Me: OK, doesn’t this support hot-swap? Just replace the disk. We’ll tolerate the reduced disk performance during the rebuild.

Rackspace: Yes, you won’t have any downtime because this supports hot-swap.

[…]

Rackspace: OK, we replaced it, but we had to install a new driver, and we need to reboot the machine to complete the installation.

Me: Uh… why? (checks RAID status) The controller reports that everything’s rebuilt, online, and optimal with zero errors.

Rackspace, direct quotes now: “Yes, everything is up and operational, but the new drivers that were installed will not be effective until a reboot is performed.”

Me: “If everything is rebuilt and working perfectly well now without doing a reboot, why did we need the drivers to be updated? What will be different after the reboot?”

Rackspace: “I looked over the previous technicians information and from what you and I see it does look like it will be fine to continue running without a reboot.”

We used to pay an $500/month/server premium for this “service”.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on July 14, 2008 2:04 PM

Easy accessibility to your GTD lists is key. If your brain thinks it will take longer to get something onto a list than to hold on to it in psychic ram, it will have no incentive to let go of it.

For those of you who are fans of Google spreadsheet as a GTD list manager, a quick way to get actions on to your lists is to create a "form" for new entries. What a form will do is give you a few simple fields to capture next actions. What you enter will automatically get filed onto your spreadsheet (setup as GTD lists) in the proper format. No need to even navigate to your spreadsheet.

Here's how to set that up:
1. Once you've created a Google spreadsheet, open up your spreadsheet on your desktop
2. Go to the sheet you are using for next actions (will be easier if all next actions are in one sheet)
3. Click on the Form tab
4. Click on Create a form
5. All of the columns in your current worksheet are captured as a form and will open in a new window
6. Once in your new form, hover over the Categories question, select Edit, and create it as a drop-down list instead creating options for each of your contexts (quick fill on the first letter of the list name will work if you don't use the @ at the beginning.)
7. Change the Next Actions question to the format of Paragraph text for more space to type
8. When you are done making changes, click Save, then Next, choose recipients. You don't actually have to send it to anyone. Just create a bookmark for the unique URL you see there. I added it as a button on my Firefox toolbar called "Add Actions."

What this gives you is a simple web page that includes all of the fields you need for capturing a next action on the fly:



For those of you with web access on your phones, this could make getting things onto your lists much faster and easier. If you primarily work from your desktop, keep an open window for this form when you start your day so that you can easily toggle over to it.

If you want more info on using spreadsheets as GTD lists, check out my earlier blog post on that.

Originally posted by kelly@davidco.com (Kelly) from David Allen Company Updates, on July 14, 2008 12:46 PM

Here's a better "frame", also via The New Yorker: Barack Obama on the South Side during his first campaign, for the State Senate. (No mediocre self-defeating cartoons here, thanks.) 

Here's a smart piece on the Obama cartoon flap, via Alternet {excerpts}:

The Bad Frame: Why Are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing the Right's Dirty Work?
By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2008.

This week's New Yorker cover image of the Obamas is shocking in the racism and gross stereotyping that is built into its supposed satire.

New Yorker magazine hits the newsstands today with a shocking cover -- a caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama depicting the presidential candidate in a turban, fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun slung over her shoulder, while the American flag burns in the fireplace. The cover is shocking in that it depicts the Obamas in bizarre, caricatured images and associations that reflect the very stereotypes with which the conservatives, particularly Fox News, have been trying to frame both the Obamas. Thus, instead of satire, the cover becomes a political poster for conservatives to reinforce their messages. Sen. Obama was shown the cover image by a reporter covering the campaign on Sunday, and while seemingly taken aback, he declined to comment.

But the Obama campaign quickly put out a release condemning the magazine cover. Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Unfortunately the impact of this image will extend far beyond the reading audience of the New Yorker; cable news and the right-wing media noise machine will amplify the derogatory image to millions more. And the New Yorker of course will reap enormous publicity, clearly translating to increased sales and notoriety for the brand, and for corporate owner Conde Nast -- one of the largest and most powerful media companies in America.

But the publicity could very well backfire. Editor David Remnick and artist Barry Blitt's attempt at satire seems so arrogant and indulgent in its insensitivity, and so out of touch with political and media dynamics of tabloid TV and blogs, that it just might make a lot of people angry, including some subscribers. The cover turns the magazine into a potential Molotov cocktail, to be gleefully tossed by Fox News and the conservative blogs, into the already combustible tinderbox of race and Muslim stereotypes just below the surface of America's public discourse. (Remnick has since done an interview about his decision to run the cover.)

John Aravosis at America Blog writes:

A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it's funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, and Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you'll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall). ... And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don't realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife?
[...]

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post added on Sunday on his CNN media show Reliable Sources that the cover is arguably "incendiary." In the end, it is shocking how the experienced editors of the New Yorker don't have the remotest idea of how framing the Obamas in this way completely reinforces the negative and harbored feelings that they are absurdly trying to satirize. This is satire run amuck, and it is a perfect example of how antiquated notions of journalism can play a role in provoking the worst of stereotypes and off-the-wall fantasies. [...]

So far neither the conservatives nor the McCain campaign have been able to negatively frame Obama in a way that has stuck. Hillary Clinton and partner Bill were not ultimately successful either. But that hasn't been for a lack of trying. Charges suggesting Obama is weak on defense, untried under pressure, inexperienced, and even a male chauvinist a la Geraldine Ferraro, haven't succeeded. It may be that Obama is a far more nimble politician than his predecessors, that Gore and Kerry's painful lessons have been well learned by the Obama team, or that the media for whatever reason haven't yet ganged up on Obama as they did in the past. Or probably some combination of all three.

Thus far the attempt to raise questions about Obama's religion represents the most persistent attempt to create a false narrative about him. So it was pretty shocking recently when I saw "Barack Obama is a Muslim and other stories" as the headline of the lead article on Salon. Maybe Salon is still sweet on Hillary. But one wonders why this headline and message? It does heavy lifting in support of the frames that Obama is a closet Muslim -- not a Christian -- with a secret agenda. It's the same message that Fox News, right-wing talk radio and conservative pundits have been pushing for months. Questions about Obama are consistently linked to Fox's repetition compulsion connecting Obama with the word "madrassa" -- which happens to mean school -- and are now planted firmly in the media's psychology as school "for terrorists in the making." [...]

Elements of a Frame

There are some basic rules about frames that editors and writers might want to think about, if they are interested in avoiding persistently reinforcing conservative language and ideas. The fundamentals include: every word is a frame; evoking a frame reinforces and strengthens that frame; negating a frame, i.e. attacking it, reinforces that frame; and finally, words defined within a frame evoke the frame.

[...] My objective is point out that often progressive and independent media -- perhaps because we imagine that our readers are different than normal people -- frequently undermine progressive messages, or more likely reinforce conservative messages.

I believe that the words and images editors and writers use to frame their stories is what most people will take away from the articles, especially since many people get their news from just glancing at the front page and cover story. Headlines, subject lines and teasers are the most powerful and visible communication tools to connect immediately with readers. With journalism on the Web, a split-second medium, some readers spend only brief moments on sites or on articles, merely glancing at headlines and teasers.

The lead, or opening paragraph, of the story is also important, but a lead is only as good as its opening headline. If the lead paragraph never gets read because the headline or teaser doesn't effectively communicate, some great journalism and information can be wasted. [...]

One essential point is that drawing attention to negative frames and reprehensible media figures, even in an attempt to answer them, can have the effect of reinforcing them. It is almost always better to frame one's own positive message and not mention the bad frame or framer.

[read full article]

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on July 14, 2008 12:39 PM

Unsurprisingly, last week was dominated by a certain mobile phone launch, a subject I'm tackling in my Technology column this Thursday. For now, though, I'll just mention that mobile game publishers were determined to get in on the action,...

Originally posted by Keith Stuart from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on July 14, 2008 12:19 PM

Continuing the Goo theme, here’s the photograph of the whirlwind, heat, and flash that served as the inspiration for Raymond Pettibon’s Sonic Youth album artwork.

It’s a photograph Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the couple responsible for the Moors Murders.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on July 14, 2008 12:16 PM

Pictured is this week's controversial New Yorker cover, which artist Barry Blitt and New Yorker editor David Remnick have called a satire of the rumors going around about Obama.   "It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is," said Blitt. 

An Obama spokesman called it "tasteless and offensive."  Steve Duin, whose opinions I'm always interested in and usually agree with, says it "succeeds brilliantly."

I understand what Blitt was going for, so I don't find it tasteless and offensive, which I think implies malicious intent.  But in trying to illustrate the absurdity of these rumors, I think the cover instead reinforces them.  That cover has voiced the fear of every person who's gotten that stupid Obama-is-a-Muslim email and believed it.  And because it's The New Yorker, which I bet Fox News watchers think of as a left-wing magazine (despite this morning's HuffPo, which, after perusing the current issue asks, "Is it the New Yorker's job to write uniformly flattering profiles of Obama?"), it gives these fears a legitimacy that they wouldn't have if they were on the cover of, say, National Review.  

What do other people think of it?  Am I overreacting? 

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on July 14, 2008 12:10 PM

So far, I’ve been pretty impressed with speeds on the AT&T 3G network when I’m out and about time. I’ve noticed, however, that 3G signal strength isn’t showing as many bars as it was on the EDGE network. At home, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing 4 or 5 bars while using the EDGE network. On the iPhone 3G, I’m either seeing 2 bars, or even one itty bitty almost not quite there bar.

To show the difference, here are two screenshots taken from the same physical location inside my home. The top screenshot shows EDGE network strength, the bottom shows 3G network strength.

Interestingly enough, when I make a call on 3G with one lonely little bar of signal strength, the connection goes through without a problem and the call quality is super crystal clear. With the same signal strength on EDGE on my first iPhone, well, that’s where we’d be in shakier “Hello? Can you hear me now?” territory right before hearing “boop-boop-boop” as the connection dropped.

To be fair, this is the worst comparison I could make. When I use my phone over by my windows, I get 3 bars and sometimes 4. As soon as I walk out the door of my building, 3G signal strength pops up to a full 5 bars. In my thoroughly non-scientific observations, this has pretty much been my impression everywhere I’ve been in Portland. 3G signal strength outside is pretty good. Indoors, it’s a lot lower in comparison to the outside strength compared to what I grew to expect on EDGE.

Regardless, no matter where I’ve been so far, no matter what the signal strength, I’ve not had a dropped or fuzzy call. In fact, every call has been awesomely clear and reminds me of the quality I get at home. My guess is that since voice only uses a percentage of the total bandwidth available on a 3G connection, you can get away with a whole lot less signal strength than before and still have great voice quality. Maybe a more interesting thing to do would be to measure bandwidth throughput at different bar levels. If the cat wakes me up at 5AM again tomorrow, maybe I’ll play around with that a bit.

Related Posts on this Blog:

• Two Small Reasons for an iPhone 3G

Originally posted by James Duncan Davidson from James Duncan Davidson, on July 14, 2008 12:07 PM

I've been poking at this historical tileset of Oakland lately. Last time, I posted slippy maps of Oakland in 1877, 1912, and the 1950s. I recently acquired a 1936 Shell map of the bay area that filled in a time period I was interested, the pre-war years when the Bay Area started to make the transition to an automobile society but hadn't yet been experienced the military base explosion of World War II.

Here's the thing, check the new 1936 layer:

A few things I'm finding interesting about this new map:

• The visual treatment completely changes from the 1912 layer, starting to seem modern and borderline cartoonish.
• The progressive infill of Middle Harbor (just south of the Bay Bridge) visible over the years.
• The differences in highlighted driving routes between the 1930s and the 1950s, in particular the introduction of Macarthur Boulevard and West Grand Avenue.
• Still not a lot of trains shown on the second driving map.
• The Bay Bridge construction is apparently still underway, it opened in November 1936.

I'm starting to get better at quickly processing these layers from scanned images. The new one is a bit blurrier than I'd like, possibly due to the crappy Epson scanner I'm using here. Anyone within biking distance of Oakland or SF have a better scanner I can use to re-do the driving maps?

The next layer I want to get is something from the 1970s, maybe the 1980s - I'm keen to show the pre-Earthquake raised freeway structures that were ramrodded through West Oakland at the time.

Comments

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on July 14, 2008 11:32 AM

The New Yorker is having an Imus moment.

Today, it was slammed by the Obama campaign, Muslim Americans and African Americans for its July 21st cover of Barack and Michelle Obama dressed as Islamic terrorists doing a fist bump. See it here.

Bill Burton, spokesman for the Obama campaign, stated today, "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

(McCain's staff was like, "Ditto.")

A coalition of organizations, including hip-hop media justice organization Industry Ears, Muslim American media watch group Project Islamic Hope and the Los Angeles chapter of Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network, are calling for newsstands and stores to pull their magazines from its sales racks, and for advertisers to pull their ads immediately.

Paul Porter of Industry Ears, said to Vibe.com, "Afro's and AK 47's are no way to portray Michelle Obama. Add the Arab garb to Barack Obama and you achieve a racist satire."

He added, "We are just tired of the same old media bias game. It's always 'satire' with people of color when you're reaffirming fears and stereotypes. The New Yorker is just reinforcing and profiting from divisive media."

What were they thinking? Editor David Remnick told the Huffington Post this morning:

I respect people's reactions -- I'm just trying to as calmly and as clearly as possible talk about what this image means and what it was intended to mean and what I think most people will see -- when they think it through -- that it means. The fact is, it's not a satire about Obama - it's a satire about the distortions and misconceptions and prejudices about Obama.

Writing in today's Huffington Post, author and satirist Leonce Gaiter calls the image "red meat for Red States" and says,

There seem to be two possibilities. The first: they truly find the idea depicted in the image so ridiculous that they couldn't conceive of anyone taking it seriously. However, if that were the case, there'd be no need for the satire in the first place. Attempting to satirize it acknowledges the idea's prevalence.

The other possibility is that somewhere, deep in the recesses of their upper east and west side white minds, lurks a restive "fear of black." To provide such an image without context is to accept its message to some degree. No similar cartoon would have ever appeared about a white candidate.

As I've noted in earlier blogs, polls show that up to 15% of the country believes Barack Obama is Muslim, roughly the same percentage that also tells pollsters they wouldn't vote for him because he is Black.

Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on July 14, 2008 9:39 AM

scans of old comic book sound effects on Flickr

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on July 14, 2008 9:04 AM

You probably saw this propaganda photo from Iran last week, showing a quartet of dangerous-looking missiles simultaneously launching in a test exercise. It became immediately obvious to anyone with half a brain that the shot was Photoshopped, with an additional missile added for extra punch. Now Photoshop artists from around the Internet respond with some artwork of their own. Here’s our favorite:

Check out the gallery below for more.

Via Danger Room

Originally posted by Charlie White from DVICE, on July 14, 2008 9:03 AM

In an attempt to make Billy Bob Thornton jealous, artist Jillian McDonald pasted herself into movie scenes kissing several well-known actors, including Thornton's former wife, Angelina Jolie.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 14, 2008 8:41 AM

France is currently hosting the 95th Tour de France - which began on July 5th, and continues through July 27th. The Tour is the world's largest cycle race, with twenty teams of nine riders (invitation-only) entered in this year's race. Ten riders have dropped out so far, including one suspension for a doping offense. (18 photos total)

David Millar of Great Britain strains to take a third place during the fourth stage of the Tour de France cycling race, an individual time trial over 29.5 kilometers (18.3 miles) with start and finish in Cholet, western France, Tuesday July 8, 2008. Stefan Schumacher of Germany won the stage and took over the overall leader's yellow jersey.(AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on July 14, 2008 8:11 AM

Mamihlapinatapai, a most succinct word.

It describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start. This could perhaps be translated more succinctly as "eye-contact implying 'after you...'". A more literal approximation is "ending up mutually at a loss as to what to do about each other".

Heartbreaking. I wish we had an English word for that feeling. (via cyn-c)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on July 14, 2008 6:49 AM

Posted by Ola Rosling, Product Manager

A few weeks ago we heard about a project Radiohead was working on. The band was making a new video, but they weren't using any cameras, just lasers and data. As you might imagine, we were intrigued.

The song is called “House of Cards,” from Radiohead’s recent “In Rainbows” album. In this new video, there were no cameras on set. Instead, two scanning technologies were used to capture 3D images. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produced structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne LIDAR system that uses multiple lasers was used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In the video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Whether you're a music fan or a developer (or both), we agreed with the band that it would be great to give you a deeper look into how all of this was done, and even a chance to play with the data yourself, under a license that allows remixing.

You can view the video, watch a short documentary about how it was made, interact with the video in 3D, download some of the data, and download an iGoogle theme and gadget - all at http://code.google.com/radiohead.

Originally posted by Karen from The Official Google Blog, on July 14, 2008 6:47 AM

So this is my version of Simplicity 3875, henceforth known as Duro Junior.

I know I haven't been posting about the Duro lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been THINKING about the Duro. I was looking for a lighter, slimmer version to wear when it's really hot: the Original Duro can be a LOT of fabric.

This pattern didn't originally jump out at me as a good candidate, mostly because the jewel-neck version on the pattern envelope had these dumb little string ties which managed to obscure the lines of the bodice. But once I erased those (mentally) I decided to give it a shot.

Although not actually difficult, this pattern is still a massive PITA to put together. The back of the dress has no waist seam (just a lengthwise back seam), so, in order to finish the neck edge with the bias facing BEFORE the front panels are attached, you have to sew the front bodice pieces to the back bodice pieces at the shoulder WAY early in the process. Which means for the rest of the construction, you're shoving that long back piece out of the way. Arrgh.

I was able to add pockets, too, in the side seams, although lining them up when sewing that seam was a bit tricky. There's a single notch to match the front skirt to the back at the side seam, so I placed my pocket piece on the front skirt pattern where I thought it should go, then cut a corresponding notch on the pocket -- that helped it match up pretty well.

The original pattern has the tie hanging down the back, but I prefer the way it looks brought around to the front.

Here's the back view:



And here's a closeup of the front:



I haven't hemmed the skirt, or the sleeves, BOTH of which were about three inches too long (PITA, pt. 3). I ended up cutting a 12 in the bodice and a 14 in the skirt, which was more or less the right size; if I had to do this again I'd maybe cut a 10 in the bodice (for narrower shoulders) and add some length to it, and a 16 in the skirt for a little bit more fullness. Although that would necessitate buying two copies of the pattern (PITA, pt. 4).

The fabric is Michael Miller, maybe? I bought it at City Quilter a gazillion years ago, I think ... (I really should start labeling my fabric with where and when and from whom I bought it, shouldn't I?) I think it's a little too stiff for this pattern, but it was a good tradeoff between fabric I could bear to screw up and fabric I would want to wear if it actually turned out okay. I think next time I will make it in some stripey seersucker, or maybe even in this silk noil I have lying around ...

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on July 14, 2008 6:20 AM

From Slice

Clicking in to the Slice inbox today, we've got ... an email from a guy in some band or other.

Photographs by Brian Chase

Hi, Adam,
I posted a review of Di Fara's on my band's website, http://site.yeahyeahyeahs.com/, that I thought you would be interested in checking out.

Dom for president!

Best regards,
Brian

------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Brian,

Dom for president? I second the nomination.

Wow. Nice meditation on what makes Dom and Di Fara so special. Thanks for passing that link along.

I think you've nailed it with the bit about imperfections. To quote:

But, for me, what makes the pizza truly outstanding and worthy of genius status is its inconsistencies and 'imperfections.' A Di Fara's pie is not uniform all around. It's just the opposite. The crust is slightly burnt and darker on one side but cooked at a more moderate temperature on another; the cheese is more concentrated in some places and more spread out in others; on one side, the cheese would be cooked slightly longer than the other; the dough is thinner here and more dense there; large chunks of tomatoes poking through in some spots are absent everywhere else; the basil is scattered about. This results in contrasts in texture: some parts are gentle, soft, and moist and others are chewy, tough, and dry; flavors range from sweet and mild to bitter and fiery.

When you look at Dom's pies, you know there's evidence of the handmade about them—and, perhaps, evidence of a mind focused on flavor rather than some obsessive-compulsive need to make a perfectly round pizza with X-many ounces of cheese per quadrant.

And I have to say, you must have timed it just right. There's NOBODY in the background of your photos.

Thanks again for the link. And thanks for makin' great music. I am a fan of YYY.

Hasta la pizza,
Adam

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on July 14, 2008 6:00 AM

As noted during last night’s game, Jose Reyes is the first player in Major League history to have 10 HR, 20 2B, 10 3B and 30 stolen bases before the All Star break.

Reyes continued his slump that marred the second half of 2007 in April, hitting just .240 with 6 stolen bases, while walking only 9 times in 100 at-bats.

However, since May 1, Reyes is hitting .320 with a .396 OBP, 8 HR, 32 RBI and 26 SB.

…it’s a shame reyes was not named to the all star team, as he has put historic first half numbers and without question has better than both Miguel Tejada and Christian Guzman, who will represent the national league, along with Hanley Ramirez, at shortstop…

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Originally posted by Mike Nichols from MetsBlog.com, on July 14, 2008 5:53 AM

Dean Baker: "We had to keep Fannie and Freddie in business, but we could have done this by putting conditions on the bailout. The government uses conditions all the time when it offers help to low and moderate income people. ... It is only when it comes to giving money to extremely rich people that we find it impossible to impose conditions."

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on July 14, 2008 5:26 AM

In an article for the Journal News, Mike Lopresti comments on how the final season of Shea Stadium is being unfairly overshadowed by the final season of Yankee Stadium.

Lopresti writes:

“Plain truth: Shea is an outdated, scruffy place. Then again, so is Yankee Stadium. But Shea’s history is rich enough that it should not be left to the wrecking ball without recognition.”

“Yankee Stadium had its mighty champions. But it never witnessed a Cinderella double feature like 1969, when the Joe Namath Super Bowl Jets were followed by the Mets winning the World Series in their eighth season, after losing 737 games in the first seven.”

“Yankee Stadium has more famous moments than pretzels. But how many have been replayed more than the ground ball squirting beneath Bill Buckner’s glove in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series?”

…i didn’t hear it, but someone told me that joe morgan and jon miller kept talking about the all-star game and yankee stadium during last night’s Mets game on espn…of course they probably had to market their network, but this exemplifies lopresti’s point…

…being overshadowed by the yankees is nothing new, but there was a yankee fan at the game last night who was chanting ‘26′ over and over in regards to the team’s many championships …maybe i’m being unfair, but to me this type of arrogance is what separates us from them, especially on a night when the yanks got shut down by the blue jays…

…besides, if the mets were around since 1913 also, who knows how many championships they’d have by now…i’m just saying…

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Originally posted by Regis Courtemanche from MetsBlog.com, on July 14, 2008 5:16 AM

This publicity photo, from the Berthold foundry’s Specimen No. 525B (late 1950s?) shows the foundry type for Arabic Shaded No. 50. In addition to demonstrating the maker’s facility with both non-Latin scripts and elaborate ornamentation (this is an outline face with a drop shadow, produced at 30pt), this diagram shows an interesting technique for kerning Arabic’s many delicate features.

A kern, in the literal sense, is any part of a character that extends beyond the body. The more delicate a kern, the more likely it is to break off during use, and Arabic is among the world’s most sinewy scripts. To compensate, this typeface was cast with an especially long neck — the distance from the top-most printing surface (the face) to the non-printing surface below (the shoulder) — so that kerns would be stronger, and more fully supported by adjacent characters. A clever, simple solution.

Pop quiz: Arabic reads from right to left, and printing type is always reversed. Which end is the start of the line? If you’re disoriented, imagine the sixteenth century French and Flemish typefounders who produced some of the world’s finest Arabic typefaces, three hundred years before the invention of the mass-produced silvered-glass mirror. —JH

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on July 14, 2008 5:09 AM

• Two Cyclists Killed in Separate Crashes (Post, AP)
• NYT to Congress: Don't Shortchange Amtrak With Privatization Requirement
• Prioritizing the MTA's Mega-Projects (AMNY)
  
• Funding for Second Ave Subway, East Side Access Moves Through Senate Committee (NY1)
• Some Downtowners Object to Proposed Bike Path Through City Hall Park (NYT)
  
• Alternate Side Parking Rules Return to Park Slope (NYT)
• Complaints About Gas Stations Rise, But City Inspectors Find Little Evidence of Price-Gouging (NYT)
• 90 NYC Gas Stations Shuttered in Past 18 Months (News)
• Pedicab Regs Remain Unenforced During Court Battle (Post)
• What Can the MTA Learn From Ikea Shuttle Buses? (2nd Ave Sagas)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on July 14, 2008 5:00 AM

Obama Camp: New Yorker Cover "Tasteless And Offensive"
The Obama campaign has condemned as "tasteless and offensive" the new cover of the New Yorker:

Cartoonist Barry Blitt defended the cover, in an e-mail to the Huffington Post: "It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is."

Obama Speaking To NAACP
Barack Obama will be in Cincinnati today, where he will be addressing the annual convention of the NAACP. In many ways, this is a moment in history: An organization founded when most African-Americans were disenfranchised will be hearing from a man who may well become America's first black president.

McCain Courting Latinos
John McCain is speaking today before the National Council of La Raza conference in San Diego, an effort by the Republican nominee to improve his party's standing among Latino activists unhappy with their anti-immigrant wing. "And I know this country, which I love more than almost anything, would be the poorer were we deprived of the patriotism, industry and decency of those millions of Americans whose families came here from other countries in our hemisphere," McCain will say, according to pre-released excerpts.

McCain: Obama Should Travel To South America
Also in his La Raza speech today, McCain will needle Obama as a neophyte on foreign policy, saying he should visit South American in order to learn the value of trade: "And while it is surely not my intention to become my opponent's scheduler, I hope Senator Obama soon visits some of the other countries of the Americas for the first time."

Obama Op-Ed: Iraqis Are Giving Us Opportunity To Withdraw
In an op-ed this morning in the New York Times, Barack Obama points out that the Iraqi government is now strongly pushing for a timetable of American withdrawal: "We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States."

Obama To Visit Israel And West Bank
Barack Obama will be bolstering his image on foreign policy next week, with a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The candidate will be meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as other top names in Israeli politics, plus Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and peace negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on July 14, 2008 4:58 AM

I worked on this film, Election Day, and think you should check it out.  A bit about the film:  "Forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, "Election Day" combines 11 stories — shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight — into one. "  I meant to post the broadcast info but it came and went.  But fret not, you can watch it online until the end of July. 

There is also the most recent Media That Matters Film Festival.  OK, I work there but you should check it out because there are some good shorts.

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on July 13, 2008 6:44 PM

Davey Johnson is wearing a Mets cap while serving as manager of Team USA in this afternoon’s Future’s Game.

Johnson told reporters that he chose to wear the Mets hat because, being that the game is in New York, ‘It just seemed right.’

…that’s very cool…of course, it’s the black cap with blue brim…but, nevertheless, still cool to see davey rocking the blue and orange…

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on July 13, 2008 9:19 AM

creepy uncle

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on July 13, 2008 8:41 AM

Truth in advertising.

(via cabel)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on July 13, 2008 7:58 AM

In their past five games, the Mets have only allowed four runs and 13 hits to their opposition.

They have also pitched three shutouts and the bullpen has not given up a run in 18 1/3 innings.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Mets are the first team since 1900 to allow three or fewer hits in five consecutive games.

Carlos Beltran, speaking about the team’s pitching, following yesterday’s win against the Giants:

“Our starting pitching has been great.  We know we’re going to get six, seven strong innings and our bullpen is coming in and shutting the door on the opponents.”

…what hasn’t been going right lately…the team is having more fun, their confidence is back, and the vibe at Shea has certainly been much better these days…

…eight game winning streaks will do that of course…

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Originally posted by Regis Courtemanche from MetsBlog.com, on July 13, 2008 4:19 AM