randomwalks/dj

I take everything I read about American politics in the British papers with a grain of salt. But giving what we've seen so far, I can't say I'd be surprised if the moral jalopy that is the McCain-Palin Straight Talk Express sunk us even further into farce with something like this. From the Times of London ...

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one -- the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain's campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. "It would be fantastic," said a McCain insider. "You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 27, 2008 8:44 PM

Jonathan Weisman has a fascinating, even riveting narrative of what went down in Washington on Thursday as John McCain made his play to commandeer the high-level negotiations over the bailout bill. And TPM Reader TW called my attention to a passage that may help to explain the smoldering hostility that made it impossible for McCain even to make eye contact with Barack Obama during last night's debate.

We pick up Weisman in that big meeting at the White House ...

Pelosi said Obama would speak for the Democrats. Though later he would pepper Paulson with questions, according to a Republican in the room, his initial point was brief: "We've got to get something done."

Bush turned to McCain, who joked, "The longer I am around here, the more I respect seniority." McCain then turned to Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to speak first.

Boehner was blunt. The plan Paulson laid out would not win the support of the vast majority of House Republicans. It had been improved on the edges, with an oversight board and caps on the compensation of participating executives. But it had to be changed at the core. He did not mention the insurance alternative, but Democrats did. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, pressed Boehner hard, asking him if he really intended to scrap the deal and start again.

No, Boehner replied, he just wanted his members to have a voice. Obama then jumped in to turn the question on his rival: "What do you think of the [insurance] plan, John?" he asked repeatedly. McCain did not answer.

One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans. "They had taken McCain's request for a meeting and trumped it," said this source.

Congressional aides from both parties were standing in the lobby of the West Wing, unaware of the discord inside the Cabinet room, when McCain emerged alone, shook the hands of the Marines at the door and left. The aides were baffled. The plan had been for a bipartisan appearance before the media, featuring McCain, Obama and at least a firm statement in favor of intervention. Now, one of the leading men was gone.

Assuming this is an accurate portrayal of events, it may help explain some of what happened last night.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 27, 2008 4:15 PM

Let Shea Live Another Day!

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on September 27, 2008 3:26 PM

With the Mets win and Brewers loss, we are all tied up for the Wild Card going into the final day of the season.

Oliver Perez will toe the mound against Scott Olsen and the Marlins at 1:10 pm on Sunday while the Brewers send out C.C. Sabathia against the Cubs at 2:05pm EDT.

Both Perez and Sabathia will be going on three-days rest, however this is Sabathia’s third straight start on short rest.

It is all gangstas on deck tomorrow boys … LET’S GO METS!

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Originally posted by Brandon Eddy from MetsBlog.com, on September 27, 2008 3:16 PM

"It's not just boring-old notifications, privacy changes, deletes, and denormalization calculations for our queue, no. The system also makes it easy for us to write backfills that automatically parallelize, detect errors, retry, and backoff from overloaded servers. As an essential part of the move-data-to-another-cluster pattern and the omg-we’ve-been-writing-the-wrong-value-there bug fix, this is quickly becoming the most common use of our queue."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on September 27, 2008 9:36 AM

My sister subscribes to the "Urban Word of the Day" from Urban Dictionary and occasionally sends them my way. This was yesterday's, which I particularly liked:

September 26: You forgot Poland

What you say to a person when you have been one-upped by said person in an argument or debate of some sort. Pretty much just lets you try to get the last word in when you have no other retort.

Person A: "Oh man! We got jumped by like twelve guys and kicked all their asses!"

Person B: "Actually there were three; Steve McPeterson, Dave Ellis, and that guy that works the Wendy's drive-thru."

Person A: "Well, you forgot Poland."

I looked it up on the web to find out the origins of it.  This is what wikipedia says:

In the first debate of the United States Presidential election of 2004, John Kerry accused President Bush of failing to gain widespread international support for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, saying "... when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better." Bush, who had used Poland earlier in the debate as an example of the international presence in Iraq, replied by saying "Well, actually, he forgot Poland."^[2] Paraphrased as "You forgot Poland", the term became a popular catch phrase among Bush detractors....

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on September 27, 2008 8:50 AM

The Game:

Weather permitting, the Mets (88-72) continue their final regular season series of the season against the Marlins (83-76) tonight at Shea Stadium, starting at 1:25 pm.

The Lineup:

• SS Jose Reyes
• CF Carlos Beltran
• 1B Carlos Delgado
• 3B David Wright
• LF Daniel Murphy
• 2B Ramon Martinez
• RF Ryan Church
• C Ramon Castro
• P Johan Santana

The Pitchers:

LHP Johan Santana (15-7, 2.64 ERA) starts for the Mets. This is Santana’s second career start on three days rest. In his last start on three days rest on October 5, 2004, Santana earned a win, pitching seven shutout innings versus the Yankees in the ALDS. Santana is 4-0 with a 2.49 ERA  in four career starts versus the Marlins.

RHP Ricky Nolasco (15-7, 3.55 ERA) starts for the Marlins. In five games, four starts versus the Mets this season, Nolasco is 1-1 with a 3.71 ERA. Nolasco has not allowed more than three runs in each of his last 11 starts. He is 9-3 with a 3.38 ERA in road starts this season.

The Notes:

Carlos Beltran is batting .292 with a .924 OPS in his career hitting second. Beltran is 7-for-20 (.350) with 1 HR and 2 RBI in his career versus Nolasco.

David Wright is 10-for-22 (.455) with 3 HR and 7 RBI all-time versus Nolasco.

The Mets are 67-31 when they score first this season.

Hanley Ramirez is batting .167 (1-for-6) in his career versus Santana.

The Marlins are 14-10 on Saturdays this season.

How To Catch It:

Today’s game can be seen on CW11 and heard on WFAN.

The Bleachers:

For a live chat, head over to The Hot Foot Bleachers.

…enjoy, and as always, Let’s Go Mets…YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

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Originally posted by Mike Nichols from MetsBlog.com, on September 27, 2008 8:38 AM

From Serious Eats

I was saddened to open my computer this morning and read that Paul Newman died yesterday. From great movies like The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting, to his line of foods that benefits charity, his work will be missed by many. Our condolences go out to his friends, family, and fans. As a celebration of his life and art, we've got a great clip here after the jump. Who can ever forget the egg-eating scene in Cool Hand Luke? Nobody can eat 50 eggs—or can they? Related: The Passing of Newman's Own Founder, Actor Paul Newman [from Talk]

Paul Newman, as Cool Hand Luke, Eats 50 Eggs

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on September 27, 2008 6:20 AM

Prior to yesterday’s game, Johan Santana told reporters that he would be starting today’s game, on just three days rest, against the Marlins today.

Santana, as quoted by Adam Rubin in the Daily News, said:

“When you’re in a situation like this, it doesn’t really matter…You don’t think about pitches or anything.  It’s about winning.”

Jerry Manuel, on the decision to start Santana, said:

“This was his choice.  He came in and begged for tomorrow’s game…He said, ‘I’m pitching Saturday.””

Manuel later told reporters that Santana made this statement last Wednesday, just one day after his last start.

David Wright, on Johan Santana:

“I don’t know anything about pitching, but I like Johan.  I like our chances, so if there’s one guy I want to have the ball – not only on this team, but in the league – Johan is the guy…I know that expectations are going to be high on him, but him willing to do this after throwing 125 pitches and coming back on short rest it speaks volumes to the kind of teammates and kind character and kind of competitor he is.”

Manuel also acknowledged that Oliver Perez will pitch on three-days rest as well, and start on Sunday.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 27, 2008 5:47 AM

The Mets posted a Shea Stadium/Citi Field FAQ yesterday.

This entry struck me as particularly cold:

What else from the old stadium will be moved to the new?

Aside from some photos lining the hallways of the old yard, not much. As sentimental as some people might be about Shea Stadium, for Mets ownership this is very much the old making way to the new.

Really? We're making way to the new by building a stadium that resembles Ebbets Field, where the Mets never played? Citi Field is the ultimate nostalgia trip for the Mets owner, which is wonderful by the way. When I make my billions, I will tear down the stadium of whatever team I buy and build a homage to Shea Stadium (you're all invited, of course). It deeply worries me that the Mets have auctioned off everything from the retired numbers in left field to the championship pennants(!!!). Will we recognize this franchise in 2009?

Maybe we won't want to after last night's debacle...

 

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on September 27, 2008 4:33 AM

So apparently fro-yo is having some sort of renaissance or something. Or at least it had its big comeback last year and I just missed it because I was too busy being pregnant and craving ice cream and BBQ (not together).  All I know is that if I knew about Tuttimelon (we don't have Pinkberry up in San Francisco) when I was pregnant, I would have gained 100 pounds instead of 50. 

Quite by accident I've become addicted to probably the  biggest  item on their menu: the Shaved Ice. I thought I was ordering the delicious and modest treat popularized on islands -- ice and syrup and possibly (if I'm lucky) ice cream as a base. 

Me: Shaved ice, please.

Clerk: What flavors of fruit?

Me: Umm...for the syrup?

Clerk: Um...You can choose up to five fruits.

Me: For what?

Clerk: What?

Me: I'm sorry I don't understand what this thing is.

Clerk: You can have five fruits and pillows?

Me: What? I don't know what pillows are.

Clerk: (blank stare)

Me:  (looking at the fruit toppings) Ok, I don't understand but how about pineapple, mango and strawberry.

After all that, I got a dessert worthy of some Discovery Channel special on the morbidly obese and their favorite snacks. For $5.95, I got a layer of shaved ice swimming in condensed milk, covered with "pillows" of mochi, served with up to five fruits and topped with yogurt.

I kid you not, I needed to use two hands to carry it out of the store. When my friend saw it, she seemed shock and uttered a "what the hell?" that was totally appropriate. As you can see from the photograph, it's crazy big. I had to ask the person that I was with to hold the thing so his big man hands would give it the accurate scale it deserved.

But this thing is good. So good that I risk total humiliation each time I get one. The thing is, I always share it with someone. I've never eaten it by myself. And no, Penelope doesn't count -- I share it with adults. But because the parking situation is so unpleasant at one of its San Francisco locations, I always have to run in while Ben drives around the block. So, each and every time I have to order this massive dessert by myself and then bring it to the car. Worse yet is that the Tutti Melon we frequent is in the Marina and all the girls there are skinny and, well, not me. I get the glances that say "oh my god, is she going to eat that by herself" Or, "I thought my kid-size yogurt was too big!!"

The second-to-last time I was there I said two words to Ben: Never again.

Yeah, second-to-last time is the punch line. The biggest punch line of all is that one's planning to open in Noe Valley.

Originally posted by Mena from Dollarshort, on September 26, 2008 11:30 PM

saint petersburg, april 2008

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on September 26, 2008 9:05 PM

McCain's unwillingness to make eye contact with Obama through the debate seems to be getting picked up by a lot of observers. Here's an interesting exchange on the subject between Chris Matthews and the Post's Eugene Robinson ...

Here's one comment we got from TPM Reader EO ...

As a psychotherapist and someone who treats people with anger management problems, we typically try to educate people that anger is often an emotion that masks other emotions. I think it's significant that McCain didn't make much, if any, eye contact because it suggests one of two things to me; he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.

I noticed him doing the same thing in the Republican primary debates. The perception observers are likely to have is that he is unwilling to acknowledge the opponent's legitimacy and/or is contemptuous of the opponent.

And here's another note from TPM Reader TB. I guess I'm really not sure quite how to characterize it ...

I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear--look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior--low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

So McCain may have given away his status as a low-ranking monkey. I'd never even considered monkey rank.

Late Monkey Science Update: In case anyone's wondering, I looked up TPM Reader TB's page at the University he teaches at. And no doubt about it, he appears to be a genuine monkey scientist, or to be more specific a researcher on social cognition and behavior in primates. I'd link to his page. But readers remain anonymous, save for their initials, until they tell us otherwise.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 26, 2008 8:50 PM

Sorry to start your weekend off like this, but this statement's been emailed to some press from NBC Universal:

"NBC Universal is pleased that the court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction against The Weinstein Company. The overwhelming evidence demonstrated that The Weinstein Company violated NBC Universal's right of first refusal to future cycles of Project Runway. After hearing all of the evidence, the court issued an order prohibiting The Weinstein Company from taking the show or any spin-off to Lifetime."

Questions:

1. Will PR go back to Bravo, or does that mean it's just (gasp) done?

2. Does this affect Nina Garcia's job / tenure / existence at Marie Claire?

3. What about Project Runway: The Movie where they just mash all the episodes into one big marathon? Can that happen?

4. What will Heidi Klum do with all her free time?!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on September 26, 2008 4:12 PM

Michael Lewis rents a mansion in New Orleans and finds in the experience a parable about the thirst of Americans for better housing than they can afford, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the ensuing financial panic.

The real moral is that when a middle-class couple buys a house they can't afford, defaults on their mortgage, and then sits down to explain it to a reporter from the New York Times, they can be confident that he will overlook the reason for their financial distress: the peculiar willingness of Americans to risk it all for a house above their station. People who buy something they cannot afford usually hear a little voice warning them away or prodding them to feel guilty. But when the item in question is a house, all the signals in American life conspire to drown out the little voice. The tax code tells people like the Garcias that while their interest payments are now gargantuan relative to their income, they're deductible. Their friends tell them how impressed they are-and they mean it. Their family tells them that while theirs is indeed a big house, they have worked hard, and Americans who work hard deserve to own a dream house. Their kids love them for it.

(thx, kabir)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 26, 2008 2:39 PM

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 26, 2008 1:10 PM

This article was written by Alex Steffen in January 2008. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective.

Kim Stanley Robinson makes a point I made elsewhere, but much more clearly:

"It’s a failure of imagination to think that climate change is going to be an escape from jail – and it’s a failure in a couple of ways.

For one thing, modern civilization, with six billion people on the planet, lives on the tip of a gigantic complex of prosthetic devices – and all those devices have to work. The crash scenario that people think of, in this case, as an escape to freedom would actually be so damaging that it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be an adventure. It would merely be a struggle for food and security, and a permanent high risk of being robbed, beaten, or killed; your ability to feel confident about your own – and your family’s and your children’s – safety would be gone. People who fail to realize that… I’d say their imaginations haven’t fully gotten into this scenario."

The other half of this coin, of course, is that many of the things we need to do to avoid meltdown will also help us lead happier, more secure lives, both on local and national levels.

(Follow on: KSR also says, "As a result of these questions there came into being a big body of utopian design literature that’s now mostly obsolete and out of print, which had no notion that the Reagan-Thatcher counter-revolution was going to hit. Books like Progress As If Survival Mattered, Small Is Beautiful, Muddling Toward Frugality, The Integral Urban House, Design for the Real World, A Pattern Language, and so on. I had a whole shelf of those books. Their tech is now mostly obsolete, superseded by more sophisticated tech, but the ideas behind them, and the idea of appropriate technology and alternative design: that needs to come back big time." I actually think that he's really right here, that there's a tremendous untapped vein of inspiration in a lot of the 1970s thinking about sustainability, especially if the period costuming is stripped off and the tech is updated. )

(Which, going further, ties into something I've seen a lot of people musing about lately -- including Regine here on WC just today -- which is the future that was being promoted at the end of the 1970's, which was greener and fairer and far more sane than the Reagan/ Thatcher/ Kohl vision that destroyed it has turned out to be. Which raises a possibility for speculative fiction that would be a lot of fun: what if the Reagan "revolution" never happened -- what if the U.S. had taken the other road?))

The Collapse of Civilization: "It Wouldn’t Be An Adventure" is part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on October 1. For the next four weeks, we'll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Retro at 12:55 PM)

Originally posted by WorldChanging Team from WorldChanging, on September 26, 2008 12:55 PM

What if Sarah Palin were President and trying to bailout the economy? Here she is waxing ineloquent to Katie Couric on what the alternatives to the current plan before Congress might be:

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on September 26, 2008 12:44 PM

Brain trust with Theismann. (TWP file photo by John McDonnell.) Wrapping up our Joe Theismann interview posts, in advance of tomorrow's free prostate screening at FedEx Field event. This one's about Theismann's media career, and yes, that has a prostate angle too. (Scroll down.) Several times in the course of our 45-minute chat, it became clear that Theismann's career in the booth is far from over, at least if he has his way. He's still very much engaged in the art of the broadcast--watching games and paying attention to what's said and what's shown--and it would seem the hard feelings from his Monday Night Football ouster haven't quite disappeared. I never asked him about Tony Kornheiser, just about whether he still watches Monday Night Football, but then one thing led to another, and Kornheiser's name was raised, by him.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from D.C. Sports Bog, on September 26, 2008 12:18 PM

My favorite Mets player has a name that most fans and even Shea staff don't recognize right away.  "Stokes, is he new?" asked a hot dog vendor two weeks ago.  "I thought Stokes was your maiden name" remarked a fan seated behind me.  On any given night Shea Stadium is awash in Wright, Beltran, Delgado jerseys.  Even Piazza still gets some love.  But I'm "probably the only person in New York wearing a Stokes jersey," to quote Joe, who sits in our section.

I grew up thinking that baseball was the most tedious, uneventful sport.  At one point, I think my younger brother played Little League.  That's how little attention I paid to the sport.  My husband, on the other hand, has been a Mets fan since birth and some of David's earliest memories are attending Mets games.  As a kid, he made a papier-mâché Mr. Met.  A sculpture that I think will stay in the family forever, no matter how moldy it gets.  It was David who took me to my first professional baseball game and taught me how to keep score.  But I still didn't get the game.

That is, until Robb Nen.

In 2002, the Giants were in the World Series and playing against the Anaheim Angels.  During these games, David would eventually fall asleep but I would keep  the TV on for company.  I remember that I was working on a paper and by the eighth inning, I was usually ready to go to bed.  So I would sit on the floor and, if any remained, I would  watch the final moments of the game.  The game I most remember must have been Game 4 because the series was far along and the Giants won that night.  And I remember that Nen played. 

When Nen stepped up to the pitcher's mound that night and leaned forward, I knew that something special was happening.  It was in his poise, the way he just dominated that space and looked ahead with complete confidence.  I used to complain to David that Mets games were frustrating to watch because they lacked energy in the last few innings (a comment that comes back to haunt me these days).  I had never seen energy pick up the way it did when Nen walked onto the field.  I felt my heart race and for the first time, I not only watched a game to the end but also didn't want it to end.  David woke up to me cheering and jumping up and down. 

That was Nen's last season as a closing pitcher.  In his efforts to move the Giants ahead in the series, he aggravated a rotator cuff injury, underwent surgery and retired.  Recently, the owner of a card shop asked me why I was so interested in Nen.  I told him that when I first saw Nen pitch, "it all made sense."  I don't even know what I meant by that.  I guess it was just the moment when I started to pay attention.  When I started to care about the mechanics of a pitch and the different roles that ball players occupy during a game.  After that night, every baseball game felt like a unique dramatic narrative--and with me, once a literary analogy reveals itself, I'm pretty much hooked.

But for some of the sports fans I know, my interest in Nen was strange.  I wasn't a Giants fan and had no interest in the Mets.  I liked baseball-- a lot-- but lacked a team.  And for the next six years, I went to games at Shea and kept asking questions.  But I wasn't invested in the victories and losses of any team or any player.

This summer I wasn't able to attend many Mets games but I finally had the time and opportunity to go to Shea on August 9.  John Maine, one of the Mets starting pitchers, was injured and a new pitcher would be starting in his place.  It was a big deal because this guy would be making his starting debut with the Mets and if he did well, he could be good for our slagging bullpen.  It's hard not to be caught up in the excitement of a player's first outing with a team.  It's a make or break moment.  If things go very badly, you may never see that player again.  So that's why I was paying a little more attention than usual when Brian Stokes came onto the field.

He traced the dirt in front of him with his foot and threw his first pitch.  A closer's pitch.  I was hooked.

On that night, Stokes pitched about five innings and gave up some runs.  David was convinced that we would never see him again.  But I knew that Manuel wasn't going to let Stokes's 96 mph fastball out of his sights.  I was right. 

Stokes's future with the Mets may not be carved in stone but for the past two months he's been pitching solidly as a reliever.  He's even closed some games which gives me hope that one day he'll become a full-fledged closer.  But I'll be happy to see him in a solid set-up role as well.  I just wish the Mets had a little more rope to give him.  It's hard to grow into a role when every game is do or die.  But that's why Stokes's confidence and tenacity impress me all the more.  Even if the inning is not going well for him, he fights through until every player is out or until Manuel pulls him out.  And then he walks out tall.   

Being a fan of Stokes means that my favorite part of a Mets game is frustratingly short.  Once, for instance, he was brought out for just one out.  One pitch, one out.  Lightning Stokes.

Being a fan of Stokes means that I sit through Mets games with great anticipation.  It means that over the past two months I started to care not only about one player but also an entire team (which is inevitable when your favorite player sometimes doesn't even appear).  It means that yesterday when Ryan Church made that absurd run in the eighth inning, I was jumping and screaming like those crazy fans I used to observe from a distance. 

It means that when Stokes came out to deliver the last two outs of the seventh inning, I was cheering him on.  I was cheering for my team.

Originally posted by Adriana from Stingy Kids, on September 26, 2008 11:42 AM

My favorite Mets player has a name that most fans and even Shea staff don't recognize right away.  "Stokes, is he new?" asked a hot dog vendor two weeks ago.  "I thought Stokes was your maiden name" remarked a fan seated behind me.  On any given night Shea Stadium is awash in Wright, Beltran, Delgado jerseys.  Even Piazza still gets some love.  But I'm "probably the only person in New York wearing a Stokes jersey," to quote Joe, who sits in our section.

I grew up thinking that baseball was the most tedious, uneventful sport.  At one point, I think my younger brother played Little League.  That's how little attention I paid to the sport.  My husband, on the other hand, has been a Mets fan since birth and some of David's earliest memories are attending Mets games.  As a kid, he made a papier-mâché Mr. Met.  A sculpture that I think will stay in the family forever, no matter how moldy it gets.  It was David who took me to my first professional baseball game and taught me how to keep score.  But I still didn't get the game.

That is, until Robb Nen.

In 2002, the Giants were in the World Series and playing against the Anaheim Angels.  During these games, David would eventually fall asleep but I would keep  the TV on for company.  I remember that I was working on a paper and by the eighth inning, I was usually ready to go to bed.  So I would sit on the floor and, if any remained, I would  watch the final moments of the game.  The game I most remember must have been Game 4 because the series was far along and the Giants won that night.  And I remember that Nen played. 

When Nen stepped up to the pitcher's mound that night and leaned forward, I knew that something special was happening.  It was in his poise, the way he just dominated that space and looked ahead with complete confidence.  I used to complain to David that Mets games were frustrating to watch because they lacked energy in the last few innings (a comment that comes back to haunt me these days).  I had never seen energy pick up the way it did when Nen walked onto the field.  I felt my heart race and for the first time, I not only watched a game to the end but also didn't want it to end.  David woke up to me cheering and jumping up and down. 

That was Nen's last season as a closing pitcher.  In his efforts to move the Giants ahead in the series, he aggravated a rotator cuff injury, underwent surgery and retired.  Recently, the owner of a card shop asked me why I was so interested in Nen.  I told him that when I first saw Nen pitch, "it all made sense."  I don't even know what I meant by that.  I guess it was just the moment when I started to pay attention.  When I started to care about the mechanics of a pitch and the different roles that ball players occupy during a game.  After that night, every baseball game felt like a unique dramatic narrative--and with me, once a literary analogy reveals itself, I'm pretty much hooked.

But for some of the sports fans I know, my interest in Nen was strange.  I wasn't a Giants fan and had no interest in the Mets.  I liked baseball-- a lot-- but lacked a team.  And for the next six years, I went to games at Shea and kept asking questions.  But I wasn't invested in the victories and losses of any team or any player.

This summer I wasn't able to attend many Mets games but I finally had the time and opportunity to go to Shea on August 9.  John Maine, one of the Mets starting pitchers, was injured and a new pitcher would be starting in his place.  It was a big deal because this guy would be making his starting debut with the Mets and if he did well, he could be good for our slagging bullpen.  It's hard not to be caught up in the excitement of a player's first outing with a team.  It's a make or break moment.  If things go very badly, you may never see that player again.  So that's why I was paying a little more attention than usual when Brian Stokes came onto the field.

He traced the dirt in front of him with his foot and threw his first pitch.  A closer's pitch.  I was hooked.

On that night, Stokes pitched about five innings and gave up some runs.  David was convinced that we would never see him again.  But I knew that Manuel wasn't going to let Stokes's 96 mph fastball out of his sights.  I was right. 

Stokes's future with the Mets may not be carved in stone but for the past two months he's been pitching solidly as a reliever.  He's even closed some games which gives me hope that one day he'll become a full-fledged closer.  But I'll be happy to see him in a solid set-up role as well.  I just wish the Mets had a little more rope to give him.  It's hard to grow into a role when every game is do or die.  But that's why Stokes's confidence and tenacity impress me all the more.  Even if the inning is not going well for him, he fights through until every player is out or until Manuel pulls him out.  And then he walks out tall.   

Being a fan of Stokes means that my favorite part of a Mets game is frustratingly short.  Once, for instance, he was brought out for just one out.  One pitch, one out.  Lightning Stokes.

Being a fan of Stokes means that I sit through Mets games with great anticipation.  It means that over the past two months I started to care not only about one player but also an entire team (which is inevitable when your favorite player sometimes doesn't even appear).  It means that yesterday when Ryan Church made that absurd run in the eighth inning, I was jumping and screaming like those crazy fans I used to observe from a distance. 

It means that when Stokes came out to deliver the last two outs of the seventh inning, I was cheering him on.  I was cheering for my team.

Originally posted by Adriana from Stingy Kids, on September 26, 2008 11:42 AM

This Stewart/Colbert interview is hilarious. "Look at what they promised when they took over Congress. I've never heard such hardcore rhetoric. ''The era of the blank check is over! And we will send a sternly worded memorandum -- nonbinding -- to somebody at the White House. Not necessarily the inner executive circle, we certainly don't want to offend, but...'' And then they got in and were like, ''Really, you want to eavesdrop? Okay, we'll let this one go. But this is the last blank check! Unless you want another. But let me say this: The next one will not be blank, because we'll just write in the memo line. Can we write in memo? Would you be bothered by that?'' "

And now: TWO MINUTE HATE!

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on September 26, 2008 11:38 AM

Cindy McCain owns a hopped-up Nissan 240sx and is into drifting?! Did I just wake up in bizarro world?

Originally posted by mathowie from A Whole Lotta Nothing, on September 26, 2008 11:29 AM

Over at The Onion, they poke fun at the recent Mets woes with an article humorously titled, “Struggling Mets Combine to Form Carlos Voltron”.

“Facing the Cubs in the midst of a three-game losing streak, the desperate Mets sprinted out to the field Tuesday, launched themselves high into the air above Shea Stadium, and combined their bodies to form a 400-foot tall fielding robot called Carlos Voltron.”

“Meanwhile, defending a comfortable 600-0 lead in the top of ninth, the Mets decided to rest up Carlos Voltron by moving him to the outfield and replacing him with reliever Aaron Heilman, who lost the lead and eventually the game after giving up 618 runs to close the inning.”

The idea of the team forming a cohesive force, presumably led by Carlos Beltran, is especially fitting after last night. Just a little levity during these stressful, yet exciting times.

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Originally posted by Regis Courtemanche from MetsBlog.com, on September 26, 2008 10:21 AM

Madam Geneva, the lounge attached to the new British Raj-inspired restaurant Double Crown, serves jam cocktails. As in fruit spread cocktails. Though it might not be that outlandish of a concoction, it sounded like a recipe for floating globs and other generally disagreeable textures. A bartender working the night we visited, however, kindly explained the process: All drinks are made with a base of gin (or vodka), lemon, sugar and crushed ice. Preserves, homemade by said bartender, are scooped onto a teaspoon that comes resting across the rim of the glass, served on the side for self-mixing. We had the mixed berry and vanilla ($10) and orange and cardamom ($9) and globby messes these were not: The preserves added a citrusy, tangy pop to the gin, and, combined with the crushed ice, created a fruity slush at the bottom of the glass. The space takes its name from the slang term for gin in 18th century England and has a 20-odd collection with labels from India, South America and Scotland. The juniper-averse, however, will have to make do with bottled beers (including Aspal cider $15 and Lucky Lager $7), and wines by the glass. A small-plates menu includes a few of the same "Hawker style," Asian-inspired street food offered at Double Crown -- pigs in a wet blanket (lychees stuffed with sausage), pork belly and steamed duck buns. Prawns ($11) are served in a pint glass, stacked vertically. Their heads are removed, deep fried and tossed in as a garnish (be brave -- they were so good) and are served with a Sriracha and mayonnaise sauce. Both the restaurant and lounge are owned by Public proprietors and design firm AvroKo, who have created a subtley vintage aesthetic. While Double Crown is open and airy, Madam Geneva is dark and mysterious, with lace panels overlaying the walls (some with little broaches affixed), blue leather parlor couches and claw-footed chairs. Its trendy Bowery location might make weekend visits unpleasant; this might be a school-night kind of place. Until then, the madam awaits. Madam Geneva 4 Bleecker St. (enter through Double Crown at 316 Bowery) ( 212) 254-0350

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on September 26, 2008 8:57 AM

Murray Waas has a new report out on one particular aspect of the DOJ Inspector General's investigation into former Attorney General and former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales:

In reauthorizing the [warrantless] surveillance program over the objections of his own Justice Department, President Bush later claimed to have relied on notes made by Gonzales about a meeting that had taken place the day before (March 10), in which Gonzales and Vice President Cheney had met with eight congressional leaders--also known as the "Gang of Eight"--who receive briefings about covert intelligence programs. According to Gonzales's notes, the congressional leaders had said in the meeting that they wanted the surveillance program to continue despite the attorney general's refusal to certify that it was legal.

But four of the congressional leaders present at the meeting say that's not true; they never encouraged the White House to sidestep the objections of the attorney general and continue the program without his approval.

Investigators are skeptical of the notes because Gonzales did not write them until days after the meeting with the congressional leaders, and he wrote them after both Bush and Gonzales had together signed a reauthorization of the surveillance program.

Late Update: Waas also reports, in a second piece, that Gonzo has admitted to investigators that President Bush directed him to go to the then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside in that dramatic late night showdown over the warrantless wiretapping program. Gonzales has previously refused to answer congressional questions on that point in this testimonial trainwreck from July 2007:

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on September 26, 2008 8:28 AM

Dan Lyons (né Fake Steve Jobs) explains why panels at tech conferences are so pointless.

Was at the EmTech conference at MIT today and suffered through a panel led by Robert Scoble with four geeks (Facebook, Six Apart, Plaxo, Twine) talking about the future of the Web. No prepared remarks, just totally random conversation. Basically they all just spewed whatever came into their heads, at top speed, interrupting each other and oblivious to the fact that an audience was sitting there, glazing over... It was like watching five college kids with ADHD and an eight-ball of coke trying to hold a conversation.

The irony of the post is that many of the blogs in Lyons' list of "Things I Read" in the sidebar are like that panel, only in blog form.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 26, 2008 7:58 AM

John McCain will attend the debate. From his campaign:

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.

The justification: There has been "significant progress" and there is now a "framework" for all the parties to be represented at the negotiating table. Also: The campaign suspension that never actually happened is now over.

Full McCain statement after the jump.

John McCain's decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis.

In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.

Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress -- especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.

The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday where Barack Obama's priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 26, 2008 7:28 AM

Jerry Manuel, said the following, while speaking to reporters after last night’s dramatic, come-from-behind, walk-off win:

“I believe we’re ready to take off.  I really believe that.  I would be really surprised if we come out and not perform.  I don’t think our fans will let us perform any other way.  I mean, they really were pushing us tonight and that’s a good thing, that’s a good thing.”

I watched a lot of fans walk out of Shea Stadium, starting as early as the fifth inning.  There was another exodus when the team dropped to three runs behind. However, the 20–or-so thousand fans who did stay, scattered through the stadium, did do an amazing job of cheering this team on.

By the way, the boos and jeers that the mainstream media loves to obsess over all seemed to stop once the crowd was whittled down, which suggests to me that the boo-birds all bailed on their team, which should not be much of a surprise if you read some of the hop-on, hop-off style comments that appear on this site every day.

Nevertheless, what I enjoyed most about the remaining crowd last night was how vocal and excited and positive we were without the prompting of the public address system.  Lets Go Mets cheers spread from small pockets around the stadium, people were singing the Jose, Jose, Jose song, people were banging on the railings, side of the stadium and their seats, and there was a buzz before after nearly every pitch, while the public address system remained mostly quiet.

The camaraderie is so much more fun and natural when the speakers zip it and let the crowd lead the charge.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 26, 2008 7:20 AM

one of my former projects, 21-23 prospect place, will be showcased as part of this year’s OHNY weekend. the residence will be open to the public for free tours on sunday, october 5, from 10am to 3pm. you can make a reservation at ohny@coburnarchitecture.com.

we designed a new building for their adjacent vacant lot and reworked portions of the main building. the library vestibule (pictured, above) connects the original home to the new carriage house, leading to the expansive master suite. more photos here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on September 26, 2008 7:17 AM

Ok folks, there's a reservation for 4 people for lunch today at Momofuku Ko that has been sitting there since last night. Snap it up, it's yours!

Update, 10:21am: It's still there. This is insanity!

Update, 10:46am: Still there!! The financial crisis is taking its toll...no one wants to spend $160 per person on lunch today.

Update, 11:25am: 35 minutes until lunch...looks like they might have empty seats. Walk-in? (Unless this is some sort of weird software bug.)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 26, 2008 7:04 AM

A checklist for landing a 747, presumably in a emergency.

1. Get on the radio, and tell whoever's listening that you are landing a 747.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 26, 2008 6:55 AM

On Wednesday, I started making posts about my Five Favorite Moments at Shea Stadium, from games that I attended.  To see Number 5, click here.  I will post Number 3 later today, Number 2 tomorrow, and Number 1 on Sunday, which is the final regular season game.

In addition, each post will be followed by a quick video segment of me talking about the moment.

I hope you enjoy them, and feel free to share your favorite memories in each post as well.

Darryl Strawberry was made life electric when he stepped to the plate.  When he came to bat in the ‘80’s, the lines would immediately thin out, the halls would become less full and I’d drop everything, no matter how close to the cashier, and scurry to the railing to see him bat.

On July 3, 1990, I abandoned an attempt to buy a pretzel and fled through the tunnel to see Strawberry hit against Xavier Hernandez.  The ball sprung from his bat and slammed into the scoreboard, shattering an innocent light-bulb, which remained busted for more than a decade, and was only recently replaced.  To me, the busted bulb represented Strawberry’s career: so many bulbs, and too few at-bats to knock them all out.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 26, 2008 6:26 AM

Ezra is right, Politico’s editors Harris and Vandehei’s weird self-conscious “we’re ruining America” routine is really fucking strange:

Why do John Harris and Jim Vandehei keep doing this?

Media madness. Reporters complain about the lack of spontaneity in politics. Then we punish spontaneity by ensuring that any impolitic comment gets played and replayed, often simplified and distorted in each replaying—usually accompanied with disapproving analysis about a candidate’s lack of discipline and inability to stay on message.The lack of press access to both candidates this fall is frustrating. But the truth is McCain would be foolish to indulge in the kind of free-flowing, free-associating conversations that won such notice in 2000. Obama’s natural instincts are to tightly control his image and words, which works nicely in this media environment.

An unscripted campaign would be more interesting and more useful to voters, but it would require two unlikely ingredients: Candidates self-confident enough to throw out the script, and a news media that would devote as much attention to ideas as to gaffes.

Every couple of months, they come out with a new op-ed that lambastes the media’s role in cheapening our democracy and creating a substanceless, horserace-obsessed politics. Then, in the interim, they run a major political publication whose latest innovation is crowning a daily winner of the day’s news cycle. Either they should become that “news media that would devote as much attention to ideas as to gaffes” or they should admit that it’s impossible and quit their jobs in a very public protest.

Posted in media, politics   Tagged: journalism, msm, politico   

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on September 26, 2008 6:05 AM

Examiner column for September 24.

    I started teaching at the college level, spent the middle of my career both as a full-time high school teacher and part-time college teacher, and am currently winding up my career exclusively in the college classroom once again.

    Teachers at both levels always want to know: which do you like most? What’s the difference? It’s similar to your youngest asking which child you like best. The truth is, they’re all good.

    When I walk into my classroom at George Mason University, there’s no question whose direction everyone will be following for the next hour. Students are respectful, sometimes a bit too quiet.

    My high school classroom was also respectful, but it had the feel of familiarity about it: it was a room where people spent a lot of time together, like a lived-in house or dormitory. In college, students are never in any single classroom more than fifty hours a semester, so the room is a place to visit and not a place where you live.

    But with comfort comes noise. Students having a good time while they’re learning chat with those around them. High school is a social place, and sometimes sociability is louder than a teacher’s voice. I don’t miss trying to be heard over several different conversations.

    That is never true at GMU. Students might make friends during class, but then they arrange to meet later. The classroom is not where they socialize, so the learning environment and personal networking stay separate.

    Though the sociability factor may generate a high comfort level, it also generates self-consciousness bordering on paranoia in young adolescents. They spend so much time together they’re sure everyone is scoping them out and finding fault with their weight, clothing, complexion, and intelligence.

    My college students confirm what my high school students were slow to figure out: high school is NOT the best four years of your life. College offers students a learning environment that is not suffocating. Students have the time and freedom to explore their interests; in high school, students are essentially locked in a cement building seven and a half hours a day, with no possibility of escape.

    Yet teachers and administrators of younger students are benevolent dictators, locking them in to protect as much as to confine them. Parents like it when our children are home so we can keep an eye on them, too, and we don’t think of that as imprisoning our offspring.

    So that’s the analogy that explains the difference best of all: in high school, we are like parents. We know the students pretty well (but not completely) and we feel their successes and pains. We also get frustrated with our charges because we spend so much time with them.

    In college, we are colleagues rather than family. People generally are on good behavior and save their shenanigans for after class. But that absence of familial feeling means who we are matters less than the subject matter of the course.

    In college, the classroom is neither more nor less than a place to learn. It’s the appropriate evolutionary stop between the nurturing, confining classroom and the more impersonal workplace.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on September 26, 2008 6:05 AM

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, “Entering the day, the Cubs had the second-best record in the major leagues in games in which they had a lead of at least three-runs (73-4) and the Mets had the worst record in the major leagues in games in which they trailed by at least three runs (1-52).”

Jerry Manuel, on responding, said after the game:

“The one thing about this team is that it has responded to some adversity and to some tough, tough losses.  Tonight was another example of that.”

It dawned on me last night, sitting in the rain, watching thousands of Mets fans do their best to rally this team to a win, that, while it’s easy to say this team quits and has no heart, the reality is that they have fought back from all sorts of adversity this season – from an early-season stumble, drama with the former manager, being seven games out of first in June, to having two players in Johan Santana and Carlos Delgado rebounding to potentially win post-season hardware, to dropping from first place in early September to rebounding last night when it looked like the season might be over in the middle innings.

This is not to say they are the Comeback Kids, but it’s a tad unfair to just paint them as quitters – considering the above, and considering there are still three huge games yet to be played.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 26, 2008 5:45 AM

In the bottom of the eighth inning last night and the Mets down a run, Ryan Church took off from second base following a single to right field by Robinson Cancel.

Church barreled around third base, with encouragement from the crowd and the third-base coach, while running hard but sluggish on the wet grass and mud.  The ball arrived to the catcher from the Cubs right fielder in plenty of time to peg the runner by a mile, but it was received up the line, where the catcher planted his feet in anticipation of a head-on Church.

However, Church stopped his momentum, changed direction, pulled his body in and away from the catcher, sneaked around him and dove in to home plate, passing by the catcher’s mitt.  The thing is, Church missed home plate, and so laying on his stomach, with Damion Easley barking orders from the on-deck circle, Church lunged with one final movement to tag the plate in time.

Following the game, Church told reporters:

“I was a sitting duck right there.  I saw him grab the ball early and I was able to shoot out to the right a bit…I was watching [Easley] because the on-deck hitter is supposed to be out there by home plate and I was just trying to keep my footing because it was so wet out there…If I had slide in straight I would have been out by a mile.  As soon as he hit the ball I was just trying to keep my footing because the infield dirt was slushy and around third base the ground was wet.  I was just fortunate enough to keep my footing to make that move away from that first attempt.”

For more on Church’s slide-and-reach, check out Brendan Kuty’s report for SNY, and Dan Graziano’s story in the Star-Ledger.

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

Britney Spears' brand new song, "Womanizer," off her yet-to-be-released album Circus, has hit the airwaves. NYC's Z100 debuted the tune this morning.

Listen to it here.

I think it sounds Rhianna-ish. I kind of like it -- I just think it needs to grow on me. You?

Brit's album will be released on Dec. 2 -- her 27th birthday.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on September 26, 2008 4:37 AM

The Story of Muxtape:

A must-read update from muxtape’s Justin for anyone hoping to innovate in the music business, or who wonders why it’s so hard to discover good music online. Here’s an excerpt:

And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known. 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on September 25, 2008 9:12 PM

When newcomers to programming on the Mac ask me for advice about getting started with Cocoa, I usually boil it down to three steps, depending on the amount of time and money they are prepared to put into the task:

1. If you’re the slightest bit curious, buy Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster’s affordable book, Learn Objective-C on the Macintosh. It’s great that this book not only starts from the very beginning, but is available as an easy electronic download, for instant gratification.
2. If you’re convinced you’re in for the long haul, but prefer to learn at your own pace and in your spare time, pick up Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.
3. If it’s time to put the pedal to the metal, and you want to minimize the chances of failing as you learn the basics of this art, drop everything and enroll in the Objective-C and Cocoa Bootcamp class at Big Nerd Ranch.

Big Nerd Ranch is run by the very Aaron Hillegass who authored the book you picked up in step 2, and he teaches the Cocoa bootcamp class himself. The class is not cheap, but neither is it exploitatively expensive. You will learn to program for the Macintosh with a group of classmates, living and programming on a bucolic country retreat, where your meals and lodging are taken care of.

The Big Nerd Ranch concept is exciting, and I have often fantasized about attending a class there myself. I’m probably overqualified for the boot camp, though as with most life experiences, you learn something when you review the basics. The ranch offers a variety of classes in addition to the boot camp, including courses on more advanced Cocoa programming, iPhone development, and even on Django and Ruby on Rails web programming.

Right now, Aaron is busy building a bigger, better, greener, serener (funner? funnest?) Big Nerd Ranch. He’s actually bought a large plot of land and is drafting plans for several new buildings. He’s treating all of us to many glorious details on his personal blog: possible/probable. The blog frames itself as the chronicle of a man in his mid-youth, aiming to improve an already successful life by taking chances and aiming for the stars. It so happens that his stars form a constellation that idealizes and glorifies learning to program on the Mac.

When you check out the blog, be sure to read through the archives. You’ll be riveted by his stories of searching for suitable property, securing bank loans, winning and losing architects, and grappling with the underlying question of just how crazy pursing this dream might be.

Fortunately for us, Aaron seems to be guiding his own life with the words of his blog title, “possible” and “probable.” I interpret these slash/stroke separated terms optimistically, as I expect he does. If you can imagine something, if it seems vaguely possible, then with a little work it is made probable.

I find Aaron’s optimism inspiring, and his stories remind me of my own possible/probable dreams still waiting to be fulfilled. His zeal for the pursuit of happiness rests safely between recklessness and painful deliberation. He recognizes that while frightening risks need to be taken, putting in hours of hard and tedious work will greatly improve the odds of success.

We should all get to work turning our own possibilities into probabilities, because nobody else is going to do it for us. With the help of Aaron’s blog, we might find ourselves inching just a little bit closer.

Originally posted by testuser from Red Sweater Blog, on September 25, 2008 8:52 PM

It is no small irony that after years of being at odds with the right wing of his own party, John McCain is staking his campaign for the presidency on it.

During the late afternoon meeting at the White House (a meeting which was McCain's idea), McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I'm told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn't offer any specifics and didn't necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn't really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next.

Democrats were incensed. "It sounds like Sen. McCain has sided with the House Republicans who want to start with a completely different approach," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Reuters later, after being briefed on the meeting.

The McCain campaign this evening issued a statement denying he had torpedoed the negotiations, but it's not just McCain's behavior at the meeting that suggests he's sided with House conservatives.

As The Hill reports, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, presaged the day's events when he told reporters that he'd had breakfast with McCain's advisers on Wednesday morning and talked by phone with McCain Wednesday night:

"We would prefer a loan or supplying insurance," Bachus told reporters. "These are the ideas Sen. McCain tried to maximize. He feels strongly we have to design a program where taxpayers won't lose."

In fact, House conservatives did float a mortgage insurance proposal today, though it's exact outlines were apparently a mystery to Democrats and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson alike.

McCain also met during the day with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), but I'm told that Boehner is ready to sign off on the plan negotiated by Paulson and the Democrats -- he simply doesn't have control over his caucus (although other reports place Boehner as aggressively leading the charge).

This evening on Fox, McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer was surprisingly solicitous of the arguments put forward by House conservatives:

You kind of have the Administration talking to the Democrats in Congress but maybe not working as closely as they should have with the Republicans. ... I don't know why people are shocked that that's how it played out tonight. ...

The conservative Republicans have been very, very focused on taxpayer protections, and one thing that Sen. McCain has been clear on from the beginning is that that's absolutely essential. ...

So McCain's gambit to shake up the election by "suspending" his campaign and returning to Washington to hammer out a deal at a big White House meeting ends up killing at least for now the hastily negotiated bailout plan that Treasury and Congress had hammered out. Strangely, almost inexplicably -- or maybe just desperately -- McCain has thrown his lot in with the same conservatives who see him as the perfect example of what is wrong with their party. Strange days indeed.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on September 25, 2008 7:11 PM

Oh, dear me.  This little old 5 kilo needs a hot bath and some shiatsu.

Originally posted by Kevin Cuddeback from gimme! coffee, on September 25, 2008 6:42 PM

[link: ffffound.com & logicnest.com & adarena.net|thnkx Martin]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on September 25, 2008 5:29 PM

As anticipated, Muxtape was unable to maintain its original form under assault from the RIAA and slow moving legal negotiations with the labels.

The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and "marketing opportunities." I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn't so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape's financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.

Instead, the site will become more of a stripped-down MySpace for bands wanting to put their music online. Disappointing because Muxtape, as originally conceived, was obviously what everyone but the "music industry" wanted. Some of that simplistic magic will likely transfer over to the new incarnation but it won't be as cool as mix tapes for your pals. (thx, mark)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 25, 2008 4:56 PM

Shared by mathowie
It's schadenfreude yes, but I'm happy to see the guy trolling the video game industry for the past ten years disbarred.

Sockatume writes "The Florida Supreme Court has approved Judge Dava Tunis' recommendations for the permanent disbarment of John B. "Jack" Thompson, with no leave to reapply and $43,675.35 in disciplinary costs. The ruling is a step up from the enhanced disbarment that had been suggested by the prosecution, which would have forbidden him from reapplying for ten years. Thompson has 30 days to appeal the ruling before the disbarment is permanent. Thompson responds to the ruling."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Slashdot, on September 25, 2008 2:12 PM

Karen Hanrahan shares her favorite prop that she shows parents in her Healthy Choices for Children workshop: a McDonald's hamburger purchased in 1996 that still looks like it did the day it was made.

People always ask me -- what did you do to preserve it? Nothing -- it preserved itself.

(via wider angle)

Update: Looks like the post got taken down for some reason? Server getting a little melty maybe? Anyway, that hamburger was amazingly preserved. Serious Eats grabbed a pic before the site went down.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 25, 2008 2:10 PM

If two new polls are any indication, all the lying and adver-sleazements coming out of the McCain campaign could be starting to take a toll on his maverick straight-talker image.

Some advance numbers from a new New York Times poll tell the story.

Fifty-three percent say McCain is attacking the other candidate, versus only 35% who say that Obama is the attacker. Meanwhile. only 38% say McCain is explaining what he would do as president, while 56% say that about Obama.

Obama is also winning among independents on these questions: Forty-four percent of them say McCain is attacking Obama, while only 36% of them say Obama's attacking.

Separately, Steve Benen has a nice catch from the new Washington Post poll. Obama has a double digit lead on the question of which candidate is seen as "more honest and trustworthy," 47%-36%. Interestingly, this is quite a shift: The two candidates were roughly tied on this question in July and August.

The McCain campaign gambled that it could take the campaign to unprecedented heights of dishonesty, no matter what the press said about them, without it dragging him off the pedestal he's been placed on by a decade or more of glowing media coverage. Maybe not so much. We'll see.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 25, 2008 1:24 PM

According to this report, Obama advisor Robert Gibbs says he believes that John McCain will show up for the debate tomorrow night in Mississippi. But drawing on my own experience, I think that the encouragement and support of people close to McCain could be critical in giving him the kind of safe emotional space that would make it possible for him to come.

Those of you who've read the site for a long time probably remember that I long struggled with a crippling fear of air travel, one which I've now largely, but by no means entirely, overcome. And I know for me, when facing that kind of fear, it really helped having people close to me giving me the strength to overcome my fears.

And I think it can be the same thing with McCain.

My question is, who does McCain need with him today to give him the courage to head down South and debate Obama? Any thoughts? Who can be McCain's support team?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 25, 2008 1:23 PM

I’m back, sitting on the top step of the dugout, and I’m a bit more emotional than I thought I ever would be. 

Fact is, I was quite lonely as a little kid.  I didn’t have very many friends who I connected with.  Who knows why?  Divorce.  Too shy.  Whatever.  In either case, baseball was a place I could go and be confident and comfortable, even when alone, in my back yard pretending to be the shortstop for the Mets.  So, to be here now, alone, able to say goodbye, is something I will always remember and something I always be grateful for.

It’s like getting one last chance to look an old friend in the eye and say goodbye.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 25, 2008 12:49 PM

Adobe forgot to let potential customers know that there is some multi-touch functionality in at least one of its newest apps. If you have a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, you'll be able to pinch, twist, and throw things in Photoshop CS4.

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Originally posted by jeff.smykil@gmail.com (Jeff Smykil) from Infinite Loop, on September 25, 2008 12:46 PM

The Great Schlep on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on September 25, 2008 12:42 PM

Starting today, comment registration on this blog will resume. From this point forward, only registered users of washingtonpost.com will be allowed to post comments on articles. This requirement will cut down on spam and also discourage users who post the same, usually offensive, comment under a variety of different names, as well as those pretending to be another commenter. We hope you enjoy the new comments environment, and thanks for your continued enthusiasm for debate...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Originally posted by The Washington Post from The Trail, on September 25, 2008 12:34 PM

From A Hamburger Today

Photograph taken by Karen Hanrahan

The McDonald's hamburger on the right is from 2008; the one on the left is from 1996. And they both look fairly edible.

Wellness educator and nutrition consultant Karen Hanrahan has kept a McDonald's hamburger since 1996 to illustrate its nonexistent ability to decay. Aside from drying out and bit and having "the oddest smell," it apparently hasn't changed much in the past 12 years.

This isn't the first time someone kept an uneaten McDonald's hamburger for an extended period of time for the sake of science. Or in the case of the Bionic Burger Museum, multiple burgers for over 19 years. There are even instructions on how to start your own collection of old, self-preserving burgers.

Anyone else have experience with Fast Food That Just Won't Rot?

Related
The Burger Museum: Weirdest Collection Ever

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on September 25, 2008 12:30 PM

While Howard leads all of MLB in HR and RBI by a wide margin, he’s not having quite as good a year as you might think. (I know that sounds crazy.)

First, check out this list of lowest OPS+ values for a guy with 47+ HR. It’s been done 92 times, and only twice has a guy been under 130. Think about his OPS+ of 121…does that seem like a number that a guy leading all of baseball in HR and RBI should have?

A large part of it is his low batting average. Two years, he hit 3 .313 and slugged .659 with an OPS+ of 167. This year, he’s battingly only .248 and slugging .537. That’s 65 points off his batting average and 122 points off his slugging average. His extra bases are roughly the same–the difference is actually about 30 fewer singles, and the fact that he’s got more ABs this year.

His OBP is also way down from .425 to .337, thanks partly due to the low BA again, but also due to the fact that he’s walking less. He already has more PAs in 2008 than he did in 2006, but he has 27 fewer walks at the moment.

I’m not suggesting that Howard is a dud. However, it’s also true that his 2008 is not in the same league as his 2006 was, or even his 2007.

Originally posted by Andy from Stat of the Day, on September 25, 2008 12:11 PM

Ramon Martinez will be tonight’s starting second baseman.

He’ll bat seventh, after going 1 for 2 with a walk during last night’s loss to the Cubs.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 25, 2008 12:05 PM

Jon Stewart on 24-hour news networks, from this Entertainment Weekly cover story (via Mena):

On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, "I don't know!" It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, "I don't know what the fuck is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?"

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on September 25, 2008 12:05 PM

Six years ago this month, O’Reilly Media released my book Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, a big revision and rewrite of the original Learning Cocoa book that was assembled from Apple documentation. For 2002, it was a great introduction to Cocoa and I’m proud of the work I did on it. However, a lot has happened in the last six years. Project Builder gave way to Xcode. Core Data, Core Animation, and lots of other tasty APIs have come out. And more recently the Objective-C language and runtime has been undergoing some pretty decent evolution, including the addition properties, garbage collection, and more. The book is more than showing its age at this point.

I considered revising the book several times over the years, but it wasn’t to be. For more than a few years, the Mac development book market wasn’t exactly a star performer for the publisher. Recently, no doubt thanks in large part to interest in iPhone development, that seems to have changed. Earlier this year O’Reilly approached me about revising the book. This time around, I decided to pass—at least for the time being. I’ve got a whole group of fantastic photographic endeavors that is totally filling my mental bandwidth. It wouldn’t be fair to myself, the publisher, and potential readers to attempt to revise the book on a deadline with my current workload.

The good news is that there’s an incredible amount of activity in the area of providing great starts to Cocoa programmers. By no means is there a vacuum in this space. Aaron Hillegass has revised his book twice and now offers the 3rd edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. I’ve always recommended Aaron’s book in addition to my own effort and have been happy to see that Aaron has been able to revise his material over time.

Also, and this is very exciting to me, the Pragmatic Programmers are making a big entrance onto the Mac development scene. Daniel Steinberg—who I’ve collaborated on many projects throughout the years—is writing Cocoa Programming, A Quick-Start Guide for Developers. Daniel actually tried to get me to write this book a few times for the Prags, but I’ve stuck to my guns about my photography projects and instead will serve as a reviewer for his work. In addition to the book, Daniel will be joining up with Bill Dudney to offer a three day Cocoa Studio produced by the Pragmatic Studio in late October in Denver, Colorado. I’ve been a long-time fan of the way that Mike and Nicole Clark run the Pragmatic Studio and I’m sure that this will be a great three days for those that go.

I’m super happy to see this activity happening. In a way, I do wish I could be more involved in this space right now. But, knowing that there’s good things happening in this area goes a long way to alleviating any pangs of the heart that I might have. For those people that are picking up Cocoa for the first time, there are great options that exist now and which are coming. I’m looking forward to seeing how Daniel’s book evolves as he finished it up. And, truth be told, I’m more than a little tempted to fly out to Denver myself in late October to check out the new Cocoa Studio. It might sound a bit sentimental, but it kind of feels like a torch has been passed. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Originally posted by James Duncan Davidson from James Duncan Davidson, on September 25, 2008 12:00 PM

The Home-Run Apple is made from plywood.  It’s actually in a lot better shape than I was expecting.  Again, it’s also a lot taller than I imagined.  I mean, it’s at least 15 feet tall.  I tried to jump and read the brim, and I didn’t even reach the letters.  I need to start going to the gym again.

Anyway, the wood is pretty faded.  I said, ‘Mets will make the playoffs,’ and then knocked on the wood.  I don’t believe in superstitions, but I had to at least try this.  I mean, who knows what will or will not work at this point.

I was able to stand on the platform that the Apple sits on, while peaking over the top of the wall.  The Apple has a good view of the game.  It looks like a mile from the Apple to home plate.  I cannot imagine being able to hit a baseball from home all the way out here.

The back of the wall, like so much of this stadium, is just wood.  That’s it.  Again, not that I expected it to built from some high-tech, space-aged polymers, but I would not have guessed plain-old plywood.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 25, 2008 11:55 AM

From a Q&A with comedian Amy Poehler and her improv-mates in the Upright Citizens Brigade, spotted in the current issue of Time Out New York:

What’s the future of New York? What are your hopes, and what needs to happen?

Matt Besser: I want them to get rid of that law that inhibits Critical Mass. It’s a great human event -- especially in a city filled with buildings and concrete.
Amy Poehler: I wish we had those shared-bike programs.
Ian Roberts: Yeah. I’d get all those bikes. And I’d take them to my apartment.
Amy Poehler: I want to be able to teleport to other neighborhoods. I’ve been waiting for that to happen for a while.

And, when asked what the L.A. transplants miss about New York:

Matt Walsh: Walking around everywhere, the food...
Ian Roberts: In L.A., you go straight from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned office. Walking around in New York, it's refreshing to know that you're part of humanity.

Next press stop for these guys? How about Streetsblog LA.

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on September 25, 2008 11:50 AM

Update: oops, #2 actually didn’t work when I wrote this. It’s been fixed–please give comments on Unfiltered posts another try. Sorry about that.

Thank you for all your participation and feedback on the comments feature we recently implemented here at Baseball Prospectus. Your top two requests, by a large margin, have been:

1. “put the comments on the same page as the article”

2. “let me comment on Unfiltered posts”

As of this morning, we’ve implemented both those changes. At the bottom of every article, you’ll still have the word balloon comment count link–see the bottom of this post for an example–but clicking that link displays the comments attached to that article inline, rather than taking you to another page.

We’ve added a “contact us” link to the top of the comments section, and you can use that to send us any additional thoughts you might have.

As a reminder, if you haven’t set your account’s Display Name, please consider doing so. Click here for more information on Display Name.

Thanks again, and enjoy.

Originally posted by Dave Pease from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on September 25, 2008 11:16 AM

David Chang, AKA Captain Fucking Pork Bun, and his food producers are growing uneasy about the breakdown of the sustainability of the "Crazy Eddie abundance of the American agricultural industry".

The machinery that's pumped so much meat into our lives over the last half century was never built to last, and now it's breaking down big-time. Feed is more expensive. Gasoline is more expensive. Milk, rice, butter, corn -- it's all going through the roof. And for the foreseeable future, it's not coming back down.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 25, 2008 11:03 AM

David Chang, AKA Captain Fucking Pork Bun, and his food producers are growing uneasy about the breakdown of the sustainability of the "Crazy Eddie abundance of the American agricultural industry".

The machinery that's pumped so much meat into our lives over the last half century was never built to last, and now it's breaking down big-time. Feed is more expensive. Gasoline is more expensive. Milk, rice, butter, corn -- it's all going through the roof. And for the foreseeable future, it's not coming back down.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 25, 2008 11:03 AM

With the biggest gun at their heads imaginable -- an economic meltdown just five weeks before many of them are up for reelection -- members of Congress have just about agreed to the terms of the mother of all bailouts. They've also agreed to press two conditions -- limits on executive salaries, and some sort of public ownership proportional to the risks taxpayers are taking on.

But the devil is in the details. From what I've heard, the kinds of limits being discussed could easily be cosmetic, such as limits on golden parachutes or limits on net increases in direct salaries during the duration of the bailout. Public equity could also vaporize into conditional warrants, giving taxpayers (and the Treasury) the option to cash in on certain classes of stock or applying only where firms get direct government aid rather than where they fob off their bad debts on the public.

There will be some skirmishing over whether homeowners in danger of losing their homes should be given some breaks, but here too it's important to watch the details. Wall Street doesn't want any provision that allows distressed homeowners to wiggle out of their mortgage obligations, even though Wall Street is wiggling out of its own bad debts.

Congress knows the public is furious. That's why it's insisting on the above-mentioned provisions. But Congress and the Administration, and Wall Street, also know that the public -- and the media -- can easily be hoodwinked into believing that certain limits and protections have been built into the deal when, on closer inspection, they haven't. Wall Street is masterful at creating the appearances of value when there's no value there, and many of our representatives in Congress are well-versed in the art of creating the appearances of public gains when the gains are mostly private. So the media has to dig hard and look at the details of this deal.

Meanwhile, when no one was looking, American automakers are on the way to getting their own sweetheart deal from Congress -- billions, ostensibly to convert to more fuel-efficient cars. On a much smaller scale, this bailout is almost as outrageuos as Wall Street's. Detroit has known for years that it would eventually have to create fuel-efficient cars, but it kept producing SUVs and trucks because that was where the profits were. Japanese automakers in the US did the right thing, took the risk, made the investments in fuel-efficient technologies. But they're not getting bailed out.

In just a few weeks, capitalism has been turned upside down. The underlying question here, as with trickle-down tax policy, is whether any of this ultimately helps Main Street.

Originally posted by Robert Reich from Robert Reich's Blog, on September 25, 2008 10:52 AM

You all should check out this great film, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell that is opening at IFC this weekend.  It is an alumna of IFP’s Documentary Rough Cut Lab.  Arts Engine leads the lab and I was lucky enough to be this project’s mentor.

Here a blurb about the film from it’s website:

Wild Combination is director Matt Wolf’s visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur's work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family, friends, and closest collaborators—including Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg—to tell this poignant and important story.

The film is opening theatrically in New York and London on September 26th. We hope to see you at the theaters for Q&As with the filmmakers and cast from the film. Opening weekend attendance is critical to determine the length of the runs.  It is moving, beautifully shot and an all around great flick.  If you are in the New York area, you should check it out.

Cross Posted on Engine Feed

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on September 25, 2008 10:50 AM

CBS News has just posted video of a chunk of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin that will air tonight. It's indescribable. That's not meant as snark. Just try to describe the part where she explains why her experience as Alaska governor gives her foreign policy and national security cred:

COURIC: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials?

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our next door neighbors are foreign countries. they're in the state that i am the executive of. And there in Russia --

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We do -- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia -- as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go?

It's Alaska, It's right over the border. It is from Alaska, that we send those out to make sure an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Anyone know what this means? Again, that's not snark. Never mind the image of Putin rearing his head as he floats into Alaskan airspace. Is she saying that American spies who keep an eye on Russia take off from Alaska? And what does that have to do with being Governor of the state?

What is the woman talking about?

Late Update: Here's the video:

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 25, 2008 10:44 AM

This is a hilarious mashup, but it'll only make sense if you've seen this. [via Daring Fireball.]

Originally posted by Andrew Hearst from Panopticist, on September 25, 2008 10:00 AM

Views of Wikipedia are decidedly mixed in academia, though perhaps trending slowly from mostly negative to grudgingly positive. But regardless of your view of Wikipedia—or your political persuasion—you can’t help but be impressed with the activity that occurs on the site for current events. (The same holds only slightly less true for non-current events, as Roy Rosenzweig pointed out.)

It’s instructive, for instance, to follow at this moment the collaborative production on the open encyclopedia for the entry on Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick for Vice President. My best guess is that there are currently around 1,000 edits being made each day, by several hundred people. I actually started tracking this before Palin revealed the pregnancy of her teenage daughter, so the frenzy has probably increased, but here’s the schematic I came up with for the progress of the “Sarah Palin” Wikipedia article.

The graphic below shows every edit from 8am EDT on Sunday, August 31, 2008, to 8am EDT on Monday, September 1, 2008. These 24 hours (on a holiday weekend in the U.S.) produced over 500 edits, many of them quite large. The blocks show individual edits, ranging from a single word to three paragraphs. At the same time these edits were being made, scores of Wikipedians were also debating 80 distinct points for inclusion (or exclusion) from the article. They also added over a hundred footnotes pointing to print, Web, and other non-Wikipedia sources (seen at the end of the graphic, right after the “finished” article).

This entry was originally posted on Dan Cohen's website, and he has kindly agreed to let us share it.

Originally posted by dan cohen from if:book, on September 25, 2008 9:14 AM

Apple's reluctance to lift the non-disclosure agreement attached to the iPhone SDK is holding back publishing of a great resource for potential programmers. At least one publisher has now canceled plans for an SDK book because of it.

Read More...

Originally posted by ars@chrisforesman.com (Chris Foresman) from Infinite Loop, on September 25, 2008 8:32 AM

Roger Ebert recently got a question asking why he didn't review Disaster Movie.

Q. Yo dude, u missed out on "Disaster Movie," a hardcore laugh-ur-@zz-off movie! Y U not review this movie!? It was funny as #ell! Prolly the funniest movie of the summer! U never review these, wat up wit dat?
- S.J. Stanczak, Chicago

A. Hey, bro, I wuz buzier than $#i+, @d they never shoed it b4 hand. I peeped in the IMDb and saw it zoomed to #1 as the low flic of all time, wit @ lame-@zz UZer Rating of 1.3. U liked it? Wat up wit dat?

Totally pwned. He's not completely fluent, but Ebert should write all of his reviews in l33tspeak.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 25, 2008 7:22 AM

Readers have been sending in reports all morning that John McCain's attack ads are still up in swing states around the country, notwithstanding McCain's puffed-up and vainglorious claims to have suspended his campaign to go to Washington and destroy the giant meteor hurtling toward earth save the economy. We are, as I write this, working the phones to confirm just what's up. In McCain's possible defense it can take a while to get ads down off the air. But we'll be getting to the bottom of it shortly.

If you see McCain's ads up, definitely let us know.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 25, 2008 5:59 AM

… or at least given up on posting about them on this blog. But this has just got to be said…

McCain is such a fucking tool.


photo © Jill Greenberg

Originally posted by T.Whid from MTAA Reference Resource, on September 25, 2008 5:56 AM

John McCain canceled on David Letterman last night, and Dave made his displeasure felt....

Originally posted by Alan Sepinwall/The Star-Ledger from NJ.com: Ent. TV & Film - Impact: Alan Sepinwall, on September 25, 2008 5:53 AM

There are losses and then there are kicked-in-the-groin type losses like last night.

It feels like I am watching Apollo Creed getting bludgeoned to death, but I also refuse to throw in the towel just yet.

Following the game last night, David Wright, speaking to reporters, said:

“It’s a four-game season.  It all comes down to who wants it more the last four games.”

Now it is tough to argue that they don’t want it more than anything, but what I question is do they have enough left in them?  Can they pick themselves up off the mat one more time and win four in a row?

If you bleed blue and orange, then you have to believe they will.

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Originally posted by Brandon Eddy from MetsBlog.com, on September 25, 2008 5:38 AM

Jerry Manuel, speaking to reporters immediately following last night’s loss:

“We’ve got to find a way.  Got to find a way.  We’ve got to keep pushing.  We’ve got to keep pressing.  We’ve got to find a way.  To have a guy at third base, a young player like that, and not to get him in, we’ve got to do a better job.  It’s critical we do a better job.  At this juncture, this is probably our toughest defeat, no question…Tonight was a difficult loss.  When tomorrow comes, hopefully the sun will come up.  [Laughs] It might not.  You’ve got to be ready to face it.  You’ve got to be ready to endure.  If somehow we can get through this, we’ll be ready for primetime.”

This was the toughest loss of the season for me by far.  The Mets had this win, but failures in big spots by many of the team’s top hitters cost them the victory.

Good teams with World Series aspirations don’t waste those opportunities.  It makes we sick that a rookie, who joined the team midseason, shows more composure and confidence at the plate in big spots than his veterans counterparts do.

As Cerrone stated last night, if the Mets do not make the playoffs, everyone, rightly so, will point to the ninth inning of last night’s loss.

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Originally posted by Mike Nichols from MetsBlog.com, on September 25, 2008 5:13 AM

There are those designers in the world whose idea of design begins and ends with typography. I'm obviously one of them: before founding H&FJ, my graphic design portfolio included book covers with carefully worked lettering atop "illustration TK," and editorial design in which main features were ignored in favor of type-rich pages like the table of contents, where I really got to flex my muscles.

If this sounds familiar, and you’re a graphic designer in the New York area seeking full-time employment, take a look at our careers page: we’re looking for a very special typomaniac graphic designer to join us. —JH

Now hiring at Hoefler & Frere-Jones: Graphic Designer

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on September 25, 2008 4:19 AM

My favorite explanation of the financial conditions that led to the bailout, from Choire Sicha:

So like, if you loaned a bunch of people money, under the mistaken impression that Michael Jackson's back catalogue would always get more expensive, and then Michael Jackson got some weird face surgery again and no one wanted his albums any more, well then they won't get more expensive and all those loans are pretty worthless—and plus you loaned people money for mp3s who really didn't have the money to pay it back anyhow!

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on September 24, 2008 10:35 PM

Perhaps this will shine an unflattering light on my psyche. But, like many of you, I have a busy schedule, with lots of work obligations and meetings. I also end up doing a decent number of panel discussions and speeches, though I try hard to keep those to a minimum. And like everyone, sometimes I get tired or overwhelmed and I wish I could get out of this or that responsibility.

Occasionally in these moments, in a perverse kind of private entertainment, I've found myself imagining what would happen if I pawned off on someone just the ballsiest, most inane excuse for flaking on some commitment. And not something that people might buy -- nothing entertaining about that -- but just something completely off the wall and nonsensical. What would people's reaction be? Speechless, laughter, tearing me limb from limb? Would they ever speak to me again?

So, let's see, I can't moderate the panel because I've been called to Washington to give a special briefing on guerilla tactics to be used against the Taliban?

Or maybe, I want to be at the meeting, but as weird as this sounds, all the bridges and tunnels out of Manhattan have been shut for the day. Some counter-terrorism thing probably. I tried renting a helicopter but they're all booked by people at the UN.

Isn't this pretty much what John McCain tried to pull today? But actually really did it? And on a national stage? He wants to cancel the debate? And maybe also Palin's debate. Are you kidding? Why not cancel the election too? And because he has to go back to DC to solve the financial crisis? Really? The topic he knows nothing about and after he's shown up less in the senate in the last two years than anyone but Tim Johnson, the guy who had the stroke? Which of my employees is going to call from home tomorrow and say they can't come to work because of the financial crisis?

One of the advantages of running a presidential campaign is that roughly half the country is deeply committed to believing or at least saying that virtually anything you do or say makes sense. And so it is here. But, look, if you were living in the real world, if you were some hotshot young executive at a Fortune 500 company trying to rise in the ranks, and you pulled some whacked crap like this, it would probably get you blackballed permanently. People would think you were either deeply unreliable or maybe just had a screw loose. And yet here he is -- is he kidding? He can't debate Barack Obama because he's got to go to Washington and save the economy? It's like the biggest 'dog at my homework' in history.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 9:05 PM

Wow, he even lied to Letterman.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 8:45 PM

Earlier today I was chatting over IM with my friend Anil, and in reply to a story he told, I wrote "I hate meeces to pieceeeees."  His response was to ask, sincerely, why I hate mice because he knows me as an animal lover.

me: "i was quoting Mr. Jinks"
Anil: "i don't know who that is"

Anyone who knows Anil "seen it." Dash knows it's really hard to stump him, especially when it comes to pop culture references. 

The quote is from Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late 50's/early 60's.  Mr. Jinks is a cartoon cat whose incredibly entertaining voice sounds as if he's just polished off his fourth martini.  His nemeses are Pixie (blue bow tie) and Dixie (red vest and Southern drawl).

YouTube has a bunch of episodes of the cartoon, but of course I couldn't easily find one with the famous "I hate meeces to pieces" catchphrase.  But here's a great episode that'll give you the gist of their personalities:

Things I love in this episode:

• Old school cartoon sound effects are the greatest.
• "Ahem"
• "Must be somethin' you et."
• Those mice have swank furniture, and they read in their downtime.  Classy.
• "Where's your sense of nonsense, Jinksy?"

Originally posted by Krissy from art is the new religion, on September 24, 2008 4:27 PM

"A few moments ago, President Bush called Senator Obama and asked him to attend a meeting in Washington tomorrow, which he agreed to do. Senator Obama has been working all week with leaders in Congress, Secretary Paulsen, and Chairman Bernanke to improve this proposal, and he has said that he will continue to work in a bipartisan spirit and do whatever is necessary to come up with a final solution. He strongly believes the debate should go forward on Friday so that the American people can hear from their next President about how he will lead America forward at this defining moment for our country," said Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 4:26 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on September 24, 2008 4:17 PM

Those plucky Mars rovers are still going. Their planned roving time was three months but now more than four years in, NASA is sending Opportunity off on a two-year trek to visit a large crater.

The mission team estimates Opportunity may be able to travel about 100m per day. But even at that pace, the journey could take two years. The rover will stop to study rocks on the way, and in winter months it cannot move because there is not enough sunlight to provide sufficient power for driving.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 24, 2008 4:09 PM

People have been asking me to comment about Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account being hacked. I've already written about the security problems with "secret questions" back in 2005:

The point of all these questions is the same: a backup password. If you forget your password, the secret question can verify your identity so you can choose another password or have the site e-mail your current password to you. It's a great idea from a customer service perspective -- a user is less likely to forget his first pet's name than some random password -- but terrible for security. The answer to the secret question is much easier to guess than a good password, and the information is much more public. (I'll bet the name of my family's first pet is in some database somewhere.) And even worse, everybody seems to use the same series of secret questions.

The result is the normal security protocol (passwords) falls back to a much less secure protocol (secret questions). And the security of the entire system suffers.

Originally posted by schneier from Schneier on Security, on September 24, 2008 2:01 PM

Rostarr kicks of the new gallery space Oh Wow (the latest project from A-Ron) in Miami, with his 'Wreckless Abandon' show. Always looking tuff.

Originally posted by Tyler Askew [New York] from M a blog / Tyler Askew, on September 24, 2008 1:52 PM

During an interview with WFAN today, Jerry Manuel said he will not use Johan Santana on short rest to start Saturday’s game.  However, it is not impossible that he could turn to Santana in relief.

Instead, he will likely turn to Nelson Figueroa, Brandon Kinight or Jonathan Niese for Saturday’s start.

To listen to Manuel’s entire interview, go to WFAN.com.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 24, 2008 1:20 PM

At a press conference just now, Barack Obama rejected John McCain's demand for a suspension of the debate.

"I believe we should continue to have the debate," he just said. "I believe it makes sense for us to present ourselves to the American people."

"Obviously if it turns out that we need to be in Washington, we've both got big planes, we've painted our slogan on the side of them," Obama also said. "They can get us from Washington to Mississippi pretty quickly." The debate is set to take place in Mississippi.

Obama also said that he was blindsided by McCain's public call for a debates suspension. After describing their conversation about a possible suspension, Obama said: "I thought that this was something that he was mulling over. Apparently this was something that he was more decisive about in his own mind."

Obama described their conversation as follows: "I proposed putting out the joint statement. He concurred with that. he then also said, 'I would like us to look at suspending the campaign and pushing the debates off.' I said, 'let's put out the joint statement first, and then get our campaigns to discuss this.'" Obama said he later saw McCain announcing his plans on television.

One more time: If this version of events is true, McCain's public call for a suspension was anything but apolitical. If McCain had truly intended to keep this apolitical, he would have asked Obama to jointly suspend the debates, made his own full intentions clear, and waited for Obama's private and definitive answer before going public.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 24, 2008 1:01 PM

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet: This is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on September 24, 2008 12:56 PM

Ok, Michael Lewis *is* writing a book about the current financial situation. Sort of. It's called Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity.

When it comes to markets, the first deadly sin is greed. Michael Lewis is our jungle guide through five of the most violent and costly upheavals in recent financial history: the crash of '87, the Russian default (and the subsequent collapse of Long-Term Capital Management), the Asian currency crisis of 1999, the Internet bubble, and the current sub-prime mortgage disaster.

It's out in December so I imagine that it won't include the current Lehman/AIG/Merrill/bailout kerfuffle, but that's what "with new material" paperbacks are for. (thx, paul)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 24, 2008 12:42 PM

Let's state outright a few obvious points. Bringing the presidential candidates and their press entourages back to Capitol Hill won't speed or improve the process of coming up with a good bailout deal. It will politicize it. That's so transparently obvious that it barely requires stating. And of course that is the point.

By going public with his 'suspension' announcement as a breaking news statement McCain intended to make any agreement between the candidate impossible. Contrast that with Obama's campaign, which apparently tried to get both campaigns to agree on a common set of principles privately before going public. There's no logical reason there can't be a presidential debate while a bailout plan is being negotiated.

Finally, does anyone think that McCain would have come up with this gambit if his polls were where they were two weeks ago instead of where they are today? Of course, not. This isn't a reaction to the national financial crisis but to the McCain polling crisis.

The McCain supporters who are cheering this aren't doing so because they think it's the right thing to do but because they hope it's ingenious politics.

If anyone can think of any reason why these points are not incontestably accurate, I would be obliged if you could let me know.

He's desperate and reckless. This is what it appears to be: political stunt dressed up as vainglorious self-sacrifice. In other words, typical John McCain.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 12:37 PM

For glamour, as Gundle defines it, is neither beauty nor elegance, but rather an unsettling, un­holy blend of “class and sleaze” that defies elitist notions of decorum and good taste.

- From Caroline Weber's review of Glamour: A History by Stephen Grundle in this week's NY Times Book Review

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on September 24, 2008 12:16 PM

This weekend was the first time I decided to trek above 14th Street to visit David's Bagels on 1st Avenue near 19th Street in Manhattan, and my first encounter with a flat bagel, or "flagel." I was a regular at the David's Bagel location on 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th Street (sadly, it closed at the end of August), but had never seen flat bagels offered there. Curious, I had to learn more about this crunchier species of bagel. Like, how does a flagel get so flat? First it helps to know a little bit about bagel preparation. Bagel dough is mixed and kneaded, then shaped into a bagel. The bagels are then proofed for at least 12 hours before boiling for a few minutes, and finally finished in the oven. It's this process that produces a bagel's (or flagel's) shiny, crispy exterior and tender interior. A phone call to David's Bagels confirmed my hunch—a flagel is a bagel that's flattened after it's been boiled and before it goes into the oven. According to Village Voice food critic Robert Seitsema, the flagel was born in Brooklyn at Tasty Bagels in the early nineties amidst the low-carb diet craze. I suspect that more than one flagel creation story may exist, as with the multiple origins of the everything bagel, but we'll stick with Tasty Bagels' version for now. And to be clear, you are not necessarily eating less bagel when you eat a flagel. We weighed two bagels from David's, a flagel and a regular bagel—both were 5.6 ounces. Bagel or flagel, which do you prefer? Any flagel sightings outside of New York? We confirmed that flagels can be found in Delray Beach, Florida at Way Beyond Bagels (map). Any others where you live?

David's Bagels

331 1st Avenue, New York NY (b/n 19th and 20th Streets; map) 212-780-2308‎

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Posts and Comments by Alaina Browne, on September 24, 2008 12:00 PM

Filed under: Software, Education, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK, iPod touch

Back in July, we reported on an iPhone programming course being developed and offered by Stanford University. The course is in full swing this fall, with a reported 80 students signed up. Stanford has also started a project that is beginning to bear fruit in the form of iPhone and iPod touch apps -- the Stanford iApps Project.

Five student-developed apps are now being tested as part of the Stanford iApps Project. Two of the apps are targeted at Stanford students and provide management of course registration and bills, while the other three apps are aimed at a much larger audience including the general public and alumni.

These other apps give access to a searchable Stanford University map (see screenshot), schedules and scores for the University's sports teams, and listings in the StanfordWho online directory.

While future iApps may be the result of the iPhone development course, these apps were developed by TerriblyClever Design. This may sound like an established Silicon Valley development firm, but it's actually a startup created by Kayvon Beykpour, a Stanford computer science undergrad. Once the Stanford apps are out of beta testing, they'll be available in the App Store.

Thanks to Ian for the tip!

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Originally posted by Steven Sande from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on September 24, 2008 11:30 AM

From Serious Eats

Editor's note: Please say hello to one of our newest all-star interns, Allison. She is already on fire, photographing and blogging. We are so happy to have her—especially when she picks up ice cream en route to work from the Bent Spoon in Princeton, New Jersey! Thanks again for that chocolate Earl Grey flavor, Allison!

Name: Allison Hemler
Location: Jersey City, New Jersey
Occupation: Caffeine supplier, cookbook cataloguer, intern at Serious Eats, and future library science student.
URL: notenoughspoons.wordpress.com

Favorite comfort food? Though it's cliche, my mom's homemade marinara sauce. There are times I don't even need to eat it, just existing in a room with the smell of canned tomatoes and Italian seasoning permeating the air is enough. Outside of the home, a baguette from Antique Bakery in Hoboken, toasted very dark, covered in butter, with grana padano, the poor man's Parmesan.

Guilty pleasures? Caramel corn, pommes frites with rosemary mayo, peanut butter M&Ms.

Describe your perfect meal. Perfection is when I cook a meal with someone, and we know exactly how we want the completed meal to taste. No one's yelling to chop the onions smaller or to use less salt. A restaurant meal cannot usually be perfect to me, because I haven't experienced the process of bringing it to my plate. I want to know exactly how it got there, which is usually impossible, even if I'm making a meal myself. All seriousness aside, and just about what my last meal on earth would be: buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup, fresh strawberries, and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream (has to have vanilla bean specks!).

What food won't you eat? These days I'll try anything once, except for liver and onions—and though I hate to admit it, I won't eat clams or mussels because of horrible past experiences.

What would you like to try but haven't yet? I'd love to try just about everything I haven't had yet. I've never been adventurous with meat, so probably anything I didn't have growing up (all kinds of meat/poultry outside of beef, chicken, turkey, and veal). I'm behind the times and only recently ate duck--which was so unbelievably fantastic, it has spiked my interest in eating animals again.

Favorite food person? Alton Brown. Good Eats used to be the only show I'd watch on the Food Network, and I expected every show to be as entertaining and as catering to my nerdy side. Now everything that he represents is exactly what I look for in a potential mate. Thanks, Alton, for inspiring my food life as well as my love life.

When did you first realize you were a serious eater? My second year of college I realized how bored I was by the bland flavor of ramen and rice—and figured instead of spending tons of money going out drinking with my friends, I'd use that money towards the International foods section at Wegmans and see how many unpronounceable items I could keep in my pantry.

What do your family and friends think of your food obsessions? They laugh, make fun of me for being an ex-vegan/vegetarian, and tell me stories of when I would refuse to eat chicken broth and meatballs. Now they are occasionally disgusted when I tell them I just ate rabbit, and consumed hamburgers three days in a row.

Favorite food sites or blogs? 101 Cookbooks has influenced my cooking style, and I've always been overwhelmed by the photography. The food librarian at Cooked Books has my dream job.

Everyone has that one person they call when they need a restaurant recommendation. Who do you call? My mom's best friend grew up in Brooklyn, and always knows exactly where to go. (Her husband also works at Williams-Sonoma, so you know where I go for Christmas presents.) Information gets filtered through my mom, who sometimes gets restaurant names wrong. I can't blame her.

And what's the best recommendation they've ever given you? We've been to some of the tastiest Italian restaurants on the Upper West Side in New York thanks to her—but it was a recent trip to Bar Pitti that did it for me. I must've burned so many calories from laughing with the servers and the specials were out-of-control good and fresh.

What is your favorite meal of the day (eg., lunch, dinner), and what's
your go-to spot for that meal and what do you usually order? Dessert, by far. I'm usually on my feet whenever I eat dessert, and swear by the goat cheese cheesecake at the Dessert Truck The best sit-down, have with a huge cup of coffee dessert is the M&P Ice Cream Sundae for Two (Vanilla and Chocolate Gelato, Homemade Toffee, Belgian Chocolate Syrup, Whipped Cream) at Marco & Pepe in Jersey City.

Do you ever cook? What's the best dish you make? I cook every day, usually for myself, with plenty of leftovers. I make mean roasted potatoes, unbelievably creamy tomato paella, but bake even more frequently—I modify cookie recipes to suit whatever I have in my pantry. And I swear by my Silpats.

Originally posted by The Serious Eats Team from Serious Eats, on September 24, 2008 11:15 AM

Over the next five days, I will be making posts about my Five Favorite Moments at Shea Stadium, from games that I attended.  In addition, each post will be followed by a quick video segment of me talking about the moment.

I hope you enjoy them, and feel free to share your favorite memories in each post as well.

My Fifth Favorite Moment at Shea Stadium was not a game, actually.  Instead, it is of waiting in line outside of Shea, freezing cold, in the dark, shivering in a Mets jersey, hoping to get playoff tickets during September in 1999.

This was the first time in my adult life that the Mets had a chance to make it to the post-season, so, on behalf of my friends, I took off from work, drove down to Shea, and waited on line.

The majority of my family and friends are Yankees fans, all of whom had been riding sky-high during the 1990s.  And so, to be at Shea, on my own, in line for playoff tickets, but surrounded by fellow, die-hard, passionate, proud Mets fans, was an exhilarating and inspiring feeling.  I was able to talk Mets baseball with people, hang out and reminisce, which is something I never really had a chance to do – at least prior to MetsBlog.com.

Having the opportunity to see all of those people, all on the same page, together, having fun, outside of the stadium where no game was about to be played, was a very special moment for me.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 24, 2008 11:00 AM

This is an absolutely horrible rumor we hope not to be true. At left, we have Bella, in her Lehman Brothers directory photo. She's the guard dog at 745, loved by all for many years, but even more so after she attempted to bite Richard Fuld as he was leaving the building last week. Heartbreakingly, the newly formed Barclehs is allegedly not choosing to keep her on staff. We're going to go down there later in the week to try and talk some sense into the Brits, but we're expecting the worse, as they are not dog people. If that doesn't work, there has to be someone out there who'll take her in. Stevie would, but with the snipers and Tonton Macoutes, he's all set on security. Crab hands?

Update: A Times Square neighbor adds:

The LEH dog has been a source of amusement for many of the area high rise dwellers. The LEH building has a glass enclosure at its top which we look down upon from here. This enclosure is a few stories tall, has some equipment in the middle, but is otherwise a pretty cool open space way up high. A few times a day, there is a big black dog that is let out there. The dog runs around for a bit in its unusual glass penthouse and then goes back inside. A few months ago we had a summer associate look into the mystery of the dog, and reported back to us from his contact at LEH that it was most likely the LEH guard dog. The strange sight of a dog running around in a glass enclosed rooftop was always a welcome break from work and will be sorely missed.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Dealbreaker, on September 24, 2008 10:41 AM

CBS News has just released an advance excerpt of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin, to air tonight, and in it, Palin appears to say that we may be headed for another Great Depression if Congress doesn't pass a bailout package:

COURIC: If this doesn't pass, do you think there's a risk of another Great Depression?

PALIN: Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on. Not necessarily this as it's been proposed has to pass or we're gonna find ourselves in another Great Depression. But there has got to be action taken, bipartisan effort -- Congress not pointing fingers at this point at -- at one another but -- finding the solution to this -- taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.

Palin hedges a bit here. But even so, she's saying that whatever the bailout package ends up being, not passing it risks leading to another Great Depression. That would seem to make it a bit tougher for McCain to vote against it.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 24, 2008 10:21 AM

Regular readers of this space know your host is something of a burger fan. So it is no surprise that I enjoy Shake Shack in the backyard of my office by the Flatiron building.

My wife, jealous for the past year at my proximity to the Shackburger, has had shpilkes for months in anticipation of the Upper West Side Shake Shack on 77th and Columbus. The New York Sun ran a thorough update on the new location today, including this nugget:

When the decision was made to open another Shake Shack, the location of the outpost wasn't chosen from a particular comparison of neighborhoods. "Randy Garutti, who is our managing partner, committed himself fully to Shake Shack about a year and a half ago," Mr. Meyer said. "Randy happens to live two blocks away from this site...."

Originally posted by David Wertheimer from Ideapad, on September 24, 2008 10:02 AM

Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia

Over the spring and summer, as Dia formulated what to do to preserve Spiral Jetty, it looked back to what it had done with other earthworks in its care, notably Walter De Maria's Lightning Field. For decades -- practically since the creation of the work -- Dia has pursued a 'buffer' strategy by which it bought up ranchland (or conservation easements) around Lightning Field. [Photo of aerial view of Rozel Point.]

Informed by that experience, in March Dia officials approached the state of Utah with a similar plan in mind. "The first step that we asked that the state to take was that it conduct a viewshed analysis on the actual area," Dia deputy director Laura Raicovich told me. "They're working on that, and we should have the results of that literally any moment. Once we have that in hand, we can do an analysis on our part of both the viewshed impact and possible geophysical impact on the Jetty from oil drilling. This proposed [Pearl Montana] test-drilling sites are only, in all likelihood, the first of other attempts. It's not just about defeating this set of proposals, but dealing with the future."

Several potential Dia allies think it's an idea with potential. Barbara Pahl, the mountains/plains director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation says that NTHP has worked with industry to donate leases to conservation groups. In 2002 the Anschutz Corporation donated some Montana drilling leases to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, effectively saving a canyon important to American Indians.

I asked Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake, if she thought creating a buffer around the Jetty, perhaps by Dia controlling oil leases, was an effective approach.

"Yes, it could create a precedent of sorts, if indeed [the state allows] that precedent to be created at all," de Freitas said. "It's a great idea. Those are the kinds of leveraging measures that can put the conservation community's playing cards in the game. If the state really is looking for some sort of economic livelihood, and for the sake of protecting something that is really for the greater good, then why wouldn't they take a smaller value in return for the lease potential. You've got a player, you've got an interested party that can pay and isn't that great because it's really a win-win." [Photo of Great Salt Lake Mining Co. evaporation ponds in Clyman Bay. GSLM has proposed doubling the size of these ponds. The expansion would be roughly north and east of the existing ponds.]

But would the approach go far enough toward preserving the Jetty? Buying up leases would address one issue -- drilling, rigs and potential oil leaks or spills -- but it doesn't seem to address other Great Salt Lake issues that could potentially impact the Jetty, such as the GSL's mercury level or the impact evaporation ponds could have on the ecology of Clyman Bay.

"I think that's absolutely right," de Freitas said. "The interesting kind of conundrum here for Dia, as I see it, is the integration of the ecosystem into the preservation plan for Spiral Jetty."

Tomorrow: How the Pearl Montana proposal and how it might impact Spiral Jetty changed everything in the Great Salt Lake, and what that means for the future.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on September 24, 2008 10:01 AM

When NASA's last scheduled Space Shuttle mission lands in June of 2010, the United States will not have the capability to get astronauts into space again until the scheduled launch of the new Orion spacecraft in 2015. Over those five years, the U.S. manned space program will be relying heavily on Russia and its Baikonur Cosmodrome facility in Kazakhstan. Baikonur is an entire Kazakh city, rented and administered by Russia. The Cosmodrome was founded in 1955, making it one of the oldest space launch facilites still in operation. Here are collected some photographs of manned and unmanned launches from Baikonur over the past several years. (26 photos total)

The Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft and its booster rocket, transported by rail to the launch pad to be raised to a vertical launch position at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on October 16, 2003, in preparation for liftoff October 18 to carry C. Michael Foale, Expedition 8 commander and NASA science officer; Alexander Kaleri, Soyuz Commander and flight engineer; and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain to the International Space Station. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on September 24, 2008 9:37 AM

Right this very second, Lydia Hearst is in Paris. Not because she's early for Saturday's shows, but because she's the star of the next Hermes lookbook.

This is just another gig in the UESider's burgeoning modeling career - she's posed for Escada, Nars, myriad editorials/covers, and she's even walked a few runways that weren't Heatherette.

Plus, a zillionaire publishing heiress is probably the best method of targeting-the-audience we've seen since Cory Kennedy smirked for Urban Decay.

Maybe they'll even name a coin purse or something after her.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on September 24, 2008 9:05 AM

Post-the Slow Food bash, TIME magazine published an article from Bryan Walsh: “Can Slow Food Feed the World?” In it, he repeated the now outdated claim that organic farming can’t feed the world. I wrote a response and much to my surprise (because they didn’t contact me), the mag printed it! Here’s what they published (and below what I sent them):

The Case for Slow Food

Thanks for your coverage of the Slow Food Movement [Sept. 15]. It is misleading, though, to claim that industrialized food “is the only way to economically feed a global population.” There is nothing economical about a system contributing a big chunk of our greenhouse-gas emissions. The drivers of global deforestation are large-scale agribusiness–not Sunshine heirloom-tomato farmers from Sonoma.

Anna Lappe, Brooklyn, NY

What I sent:

Dear Editor,

Thanks for your coverage of the 50,000-person strong Slow Food Nation pow-wow in San Francisco (“Can Slow Food Feed the World?” September 4, 2008), but let’s be clear: with all of the evidence about the environmental and human consequences of industrial farming, it is dangerously misleading to claim that industrialized food “is the only way to economically feed a global population nearing 7 billion.” There is nothing “economical” about a food system that is contributing to one-third of the devastating – and did I mention costly? – greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis. Nor is there anything “economical” about the polluted waterways and impacted lives from the chemical contamination of the billions of pounds of active ingredient pesticides used every year in the United States and abroad.

Furthermore, Walsh takes another disingenuous jab at organic farming by claiming that the “Slow Food initiative might lead to turning more forests into farmland.” The drivers behind deforestation are large-scale agribusiness pushing into wetlands in Indonesia and rainforests in the Amazon, not Sunshine heirloom tomato farmers from Sonoma.

Anna Lappé
Take a Bite out of Climate Change
Brooklyn, NY
www.takeabite.cc

Originally posted by admin from Take a Bite out of Climate Change, on September 24, 2008 9:02 AM

I didn't realize this, but Suzanne Vega is known as the "the mother of the MP3", because Karl-Heinz Brandenberg -- one of the audio engineers who developed the compression method -- used Vega's song "Tom's Diner" as the reference track as he worked. "Tom's Diner" is purely a capella and has minimal reverb, so Brandenberg thought it was the perfect gold standard: If his MP3 algorithm could compress the song without destroying its lovely timbre, he'd knew he'd have succeeded. As a result, he listened to "Tom's Diner" thousands and thousands of times as he tweaked. The first compressions had "monstrous" distortions, but he kept at it until it was -- to his ears -- perfect. Perfect to his ears -- but not, apparently, to Suzanne Vega's. Vega just published a wonderful essay on the New York Times' web site where she describes visiting Brandenberg's lab in 2001. As she writes: The day I visited -- “The Mother of the MP3 comes to the home of the MP3!” said the woman in charge of press (the slightly weird implication being that I would be meeting the various “fathers” of the MP3) -- we had a press conference at which they played me the original version of “Tom’s Diner,” then the various distortions of the MP3 as it had been, which sounded monstrous and weird. Then, finally, the “clean” version of “Tom’s Diner.” The panel beamed at me. “See?” one man said. “Now the MP3 recreates it perfectly. Exactly the same!” “Actually, to my ears it sounds like there is a little more high end in the MP3 version? The MP3 doesn’t sound as warm as the original, maybe a tiny bit of bottom end is lost?” I suggested. The man looked shocked. “No, Miss Vega, it is exactly the same.” “Everybody knows that an MP3 compresses the sound and therefore loses some of the warmth,” I persisted. “That’s why some people collect vinyl…” I suddenly caught myself, realizing who I was speaking to in front of a roomful of German media. Heh. Vega points out that although she is herself pretty computer illiterate, her life has some remarkable intersection points with high-tech development. For example, her mother was a computer scientist who used to drag a seriously old-school modem -- "the size of a small refrigerator" -- home so she could log into the Hunter College library from her kitchen. Then, in 1990, DNA -- a two-man producer team -- produced one of the first commercially successful folk-music remixes, by setting "Tom's Diner" to an R&B dance track. There's an even cooler scientific coincidence that Vega doesn't note. "Tom's Diner" is based on the real-life Tom's Diner, which Vega used to eat at in the 80s; it sits at 112th and Broadway in Manhattan and is famous, as Vega explains, for being the exterior shot of the diner in Seinfeld. But it's also downstairs from a huge NASA lab -- the Goddard Institute for Space Studies! It's where NASA produces some of its most authoritative climate-change simulations; in fact, it's the headquarters of James Hansen, the NASA scientist famous for predicting global warming twenty years ago. (That photo of Vega above is courtesy possan's Creative Commons photostream on Flickr!)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from collision detection, on September 24, 2008 8:14 AM

In today's New York Times, Jim Dwyer poses a question that some city transit advocates have to this point discussed only in hushed tones: "Is it really such a great idea to be digging subway tunnels in Manhattan?"

Given the logistical difficulties and escalated costs of boring underground, Dwyer points to an alternative (link added).

Only now are city and authority officials beginning serious exploration of using the surface of the city, rather than its underside, for mass transit.

One idea is to dedicate portions of big streets and avenues to protected bus lanes, physically separated from other traffic. Riders would pay their fares before they boarded. An experiment to do that in the Bronx has made a big cut in travel time, said Joan Byron, director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Such systems are called bus rapid transit, and the cost to build them is $1 million to $2 million per mile, Ms. Byron says, compared with $1 billion per mile for the Second Avenue subway.

“If you just took the cost overruns for one year on any of the megarail projects, that would pay for a handsome bus rapid transit network,” she said.

As Streetsblog readers know, the Pratt Center, headed by current Brooklyn City Council candidate Brad Lander, has advocated a BRT build-out for some time. After the jump, an excerpt from the Center's testimony [PDF] before the Ravitch Commission.

We should consider putting the Second Avenue Subway on hold to implement and evaluate the success of the First/Second Avenue BRT route, which will be running the length of Manhattan by the end of next year, and could be simply connected to a Brooklyn route of the Williamsburg Bridge a year or two later. Let’s make this work -- with a genuinely separated lane, off-board fare payment, bulbs and stations that make for rapid boarding, signal-light timing, and inter-borough connections -- and see how much of the need we can satisfy at a fraction of the cost.

While it is, as the Pratt folks acknowledge, "anathema" to suggest abandoning projects like the Second Avenue subway, from a livable streets perspective a citywide BRT system as they envision it would be a true game-changer. BRT (or light rail for that matter) re-allocates street space away from private motor vehicles in favor of public transit and, with proper design, pedestrians and cyclists. While there's no denying its merits as a people-mover, a Second Avenue subway essentially maintains the street-level status quo, and at a much higher cost.

With the city already on board with Select Bus Service, and with the MTA cutting capital projects, struggling to maintain existing infrastructure, and pondering cuts in service, is it time to consider shifting capital resources toward a true BRT network?

Image: Las Vegas MAX system via Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on September 24, 2008 8:03 AM

The crazy finish to the 1908 baseball season, which was decided by an obscure rule, Christy Mathewson's dead arm, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown's pitching, and Fred Merkle's decision not to run all the way to second base. Things got ugly.

"From the stands there was a steady roar of abuse," Brown said later. "I never heard anybody or any set of men called as many foul names as the Giant fans called us that day." Foul names might have been the least of their worries. The New York Journal reported that Cubs catcher Johnny Kling, chasing a pop foul, had to dodge "two beer bottles, a drinking glass and a derby hat."

The box score of the first game and a bunch of other juicy details are available in the original 1908 NY Times article.

Censurable stupidity on the part of player Merkle in yesterday's game at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Chicago placed the New York team's chances of winning the pennant in jeopardy. His unusual conduct in the final inning of great game perhaps deprived New York of a victory that would have been unquestionable had he not comitted a breach in baseball play that resulted in Umpire O'Day declaring the game a tie.

It's also interesting to look at the statistics for that season. Merkle is listed as the league's youngest player, and Honus Wagner won nearly every single batting category, the Brooklyn Superbas (no, really!) topped the league with only 28 homers (for the entire team), and Mathewson won a whopping 37 games. Here's that NY Times article again:

Up to the climatic ninth it was the toss of a coin who would win. For here is our best-beloved Mathewson pitching as only champions pitch, striking out the power and the glory of the Cubs, numbering among his slain Schulte in the first, Pfeister in the third, Steinfeldt in the fourth, Pfeister in the fifth, Haydon in the eighth, and Evers and Schulte in the ninth -- these last in one-two order. Proper pitching, and for this and other things we embrace him.

With such headings as "The Fatal Third Inning", the 1908 Times story about the second game is worth a look as well.

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 24, 2008 7:43 AM

Today on WFAN, Mets beat reporter Ed Coleman said he expects John Maine to be activated today.

Maine has told reporters that he wants to pitch from the bullpen and help this team out however he can.

To listen to all of Coleman’s report, including comments on David Wright, Johan Santana and the weekend weather, go to WFAN.com.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 24, 2008 7:43 AM

Last night, David Wright had two hits, including a game-tying single to left field in the fifth inning.

…it was an inspiring at bat, since, unlike in previous weeks, he shortened his swing, and muscled the ball through, instead of swinging for a five-run homer from his heels…

Following the game, Wright said:

“I’ve had my problems with runners in scoring position, but I’m glad I could come through…It’s a big at-bat for my confidence, and for the team.”

In his first few seasons, Wright was viewed as being the inexperienced, wide-eyed, innocent rookie, trying to find his way, while exceeding expectations on route to becoming the guy we hoped would be the team’s captain and face of the franchise.

However, he is no longer inexperienced.  He is no longer wide-eyed, instead he is focused and serious.  Thanks to last September, he is no longer innocent.  He is no longer unproven, in fact he is putting up MVP statistics for the third-straight season.  In short, in the view of many fans, it is time he become the captain, it is time he become the guy who sees this team through the darkness, to better days and to a championship.

Instead, though, whether accurate or not, Wright is getting a reputation among some of his team’s fans for being the ‘Alex Rodriguez of the Mets,’ i.e., a fat, cosmetic stat line, while he is nowhere to be found in the big game.

The thing is, he’s hitting .325 in September.

Yes, he is hitting .247 with two outs and runners in scoring position, and is batting just .214 in the ninth inning, but he’s also batting .310 when the game is tied and is batting .315 when the game is within one run.

Wright is also batting .288 this season in 73 at bats against the Phillies, and .371 against the Marlins.

I believe there are clutch situations, but it is virtually impossible to define clutch in any one statistic.

That said, it is impossible to ignore the language being directed towards Wright, regardless of his stats.

To me, when facts are ignored for the sake of emotion, it suggests that people are pulling from an existing narrative they believe is in place.  For Wright, his perceived narrative may be a player stuck between that wide-eyed, innocent rookie, and the MVP captain his fans expect him to already be – regardless of whether he is or isn’t.

Last night, however, is what I and other fans like to see.  I mean no disrespect to Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado or Ryan Church, but I sense a different level of excitement and confidence from fans when Wright and Reyes are leading this team.  We want them to be ‘The Guys,’ and I hope last night was the turning point towards realizing their leadership.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 24, 2008 7:16 AM

The three Godfather films have been restored, remastered, retouched, unscratched, and cleaned for release on Blu-ray and DVD.

By all accounts, the original negatives of the first two films were so torn up and dirty that they could no longer be run through standard film laboratory printing equipment, and so the only option became a digital, rather than a photochemical, restoration.

The final product, which the studio is calling "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration," combines bits and pieces of film recovered from innumerable sources, scanned at high resolution and then retouched frame by frame to remove dirt and scratches. The color was brought back to its original values by comparing it with first-generation release prints and by extensive consultation with Gordon Willis, who shot all three films, and Allen Daviau, a cinematographer ("E.T.") who is also a leading historian of photographic technology.

The article goes on to say that the Blu-ray version is like a "pristine 35-millimeter print projected in perfect focus" in your living room. Must get Blu-ray player. Amazon has the Blu-ray version for a whopping 50% off the retail price...it's almost the same price as the DVD version.

Update: The author of the Times piece has two before-and-after stills from the first film on his blog. Wow.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 24, 2008 6:45 AM

A paginated display is one of the top optimization scenarios we see in the real world. Search results pages, leaderboards, and most-popular lists are good examples. You know the design pattern: display 20 results in some most-relevant order. Show a "next" and "previous" link. And usually, show how many items are in the whole list and how many pages of results there are.

Rendering such a display can consume more resources than the entire rest of the site!

As an example, I'm looking at slow log analysis results (with our microslow patches, set to log all queries) for one client; the slow log contains 6300 seconds' worth of queries, and the two main queries for the paginated display consumed 2850 and 380 seconds, respectively.

Why is it so expensive? I typically see queries like this:

PLAIN TEXT

SQL:

1. SELECT .... FROM ... ORDER BY .... LIMIT X, 20

If the ORDER BY can't use an index (commonly the case), it uses a filesort. Suppose there are a million rows that meet any WHERE conditions. That means a million rows are retrieved, stored, filesorted, then most of them are discarded and only 20 retrieved. If the user clicks the "next" button the same process happens again, only a different 20 are retrieved. And to show the list of pages and the total count, you either a) use SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS (see our post on this) or b) execute a separate SELECT to count the rows.

There are ways to optimize so you don't have to do quite so much offsetting and limiting. I wrote about this on O'Reilly's website in an article on optimizing ranked data. But frankly it's not that easy to do in the real world; you can usually optimize for one access method to the data at some significant cost in complexity and maintenance (which might be worth it) but not for many different ways of accessing the same data, which is more typical in websites we work on.

Beyond indexing, re-organizing data, or query optimizations, there are two big things you can do. One is caching aggressively to prevent these queries from running. The other is to rethink the paradigm. Just because everyone lays out such pages in the same way doesn't mean you need to. Think about how you use such pages. Do you really go clicking directly to the Nth page of results, or the last page? "Hmm, it found 13928 results. Let me look at the least relevant search results for my query." Generally not -- you usually look at the most helpful stuff, which is supposed to be first in the list.

With that in mind, here are four suggestions for optimizing paginated displays that can give significantly better performance.

1. On the first query, fetch and cache all the results. Now it's easy to know how many results there are, and fetching subsequent pages is no extra work for the database. In this model, you get to keep your "found X rows, showing page N of M" display that many people cherish.
2. Don't show all results. Not even Google lets you see the millionth result. You get to see N results and after that, you're done. Limit the results to 100 or 500 or something. Remember, the further you go into the list, the more rows you are scanning and discarding with that LIMIT. This technique works great in conjunction with the first one. If you want to show 500 results, maybe you can fetch 501 and if the 501st row exists, display "more than 500 results found."
3. Don't show the total count or the intermediate links to other pages. Show only the "next" link. (If people want to see the "previous" results, they can use their browser's back button.) You can do this by fetching one more result than you want to display -- for example, fetch 21 rows and display only 20. If there's a 21st row, render the "next" link; if not, you're at the end of the list. This way you don't have to calculate how many results there are, and if caching is difficult then this is a simple way to avoid some of the costs.
4. Estimate how many results there are. Again, Google does this and nobody complains. Use EXPLAIN and look at the "rows" column -- that's a fine estimate for some scenarios. (This tip doesn't work in as many scenarios as others, but it's still acceptable in many.)

These suggestions can take a lot of work off the database server without impacting the user's experience at all.

---

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Originally posted by Baron Schwartz from MySQL Performance Blog, on September 24, 2008 6:34 AM

Joe Biden is set to jump back into one of his major roles as Obama's Veep candidate -- front man for attacking McCain on foreign policy -- by giving a speech in Ohio today designed to frame the national security discussion in advance of Friday's Obama-McCain debate on that topic.

According to the prepared remarks, Biden will unleash a slashing attack on McCain, painting him as reckless, hot-headed, out of touch with basic foreign policy realities, and hell bent on deepening the hole Bush has gotten America into:

[T]ime and again, on the most critical national security issues of our time, John McCain's judgment was wrong. Right after the terrorists attacked us on 9-11, John responded by urging that we consider attacking countries other than Afghanistan, including Iraq, Iran and Syria. In the run up to the war in Iraq, John insisted that we would be greeted as liberators... that we didn't need a lot of troops... that victory was imminent.

Then, he said he wasn't worried about Afghanistan... that we would "muddle through"... and he declared Afghanistan to be "a remarkable success. In John's judgment, there is nothing to talk about with Tehran. And he has one idea for dealing with Russia: kick it out of the Group of Eight nations."

[...]

John McCain continues to insist, against all the evidence and all the facts, that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism... and not the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 reside and are regrouping."

"John is more than wrong -- he is dangerously wrong. On a question so basic, so fundamental, so critical to our nation's security, we can't afford a Commander-in Chief so divorced from reality and from America's most basic national interests."

More prepared excerpts after the jump.

"Later this week, Barack Obama and John McCain will come together to debate a president's most important responsibility: how to keep Americans safe and America secure. It will be their first presidential debate - but in many ways it's a debate we've been having as a nation for the past eight years. And the outcome of that debate has already been decided. Now, just as most Americans believe we are on the wrong track at home, so too have they come to the conclusion that we've been heading in the wrong direction abroad."

"Our country is less secure and more isolated than it has been at any time in recent history. This administration has dug America into a very deep hole around the world at a time our leadership is needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century."A central question for this election is which candidate will keep digging that hole...and which candidate will dig us out of that hole - indeed which candidate has the judgment and the vision to renew the promise of America in the world. It won't surprise you who I believe that candidate is: Barack Obama. But it is equally clear who that candidate is not: John McCain."

"... the policies he would pursue as president would be wrong for America - nowhere more so than with our security and standing in the world."

"This week, John talked about the judgment required to be Commander in Chief. He's right: nothing is more important than judgment. But time and again, on the most critical national security issues of our time, John McCain's judgment was wrong. Right after the terrorists attacked us on 9-11, John responded by urging that we consider attacking countries other than Afghanistan, including Iraq, Iran and Syria. In the run up to the war in Iraq, John insisted that we would be greeted as liberators... that we didn't need a lot of troops... that victory was imminent. Then, he said he wasn't worried about Afghanistan... that we would "muddle through"... and he declared Afghanistan to be "a remarkable success. In John's judgment, there is nothing to talk about with Tehran. And he has one idea for dealing with Russia: kick it out of the Group of Eight nations."

"In John's judgment, it is not the federal government's responsibility to protect us here at home. He voted again and again against fully funding cops and firefighters... against interoperable communications so that our first responders can talk to each other... against screening more cargo on planes and ships... against better security for our tunnels, trains, ports and chemical plants. It is John's judgment that six years into the war in Iraq, we should keep spending $10 billion a month... indefinitely... at a time Iraq is running an $80 billion surplus."

"And John McCain continues to insist, against all the evidence and all the facts, that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism... and not the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 reside and are regrouping."

"John is more than wrong -- he is dangerously wrong. On a question so basic, so fundamental, so critical to our nation's security, we can't afford a Commander-in Chief so divorced from reality and from America's most basic national interests."

"Time and again, Barack Obama has demonstrated the judgment we need in our next president... and the vision to see over the horizon."

"Seven years ago, Barack Obama opposed one of the most disastrous decisions in the history of American foreign policy: the diversion of our military might, our resources and focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. He was profoundly right. Now, he is right again: Barack Obama will end the war in Iraq responsibly. He will be as careful getting out as George Bush and John McCain were careless getting in. He knows we should not keep spending $10 billion a month indefinitely while the Iraqis are running a $79 billion surplus - which is why he will start to shift responsibility to the Iraqis...bring our combat brigades home over a period of 16 months... lead a diplomatic surge with the world's great powers and Iraq's neighbors to press for a political power sharing agreement... and keep a residual force in Iraq to destroy any remaining terrorists, train Iraqis and protect our personnel."

"Barack Obama understands what John McCain does not: the next President must be more than the Commander-in-Chief for Iraq. He must be Commander-in-Chief for America's security around the world."

"Mark my words: if, God forbid, there is another major attack on America, it will not come from Iraq. It will almost certainly come from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border - where the Bush/McCain approach let down our guard and let our enemies off the hook."

And unlike John McCain - who opposed Barack Obama's call to take out the high-level terrorist targets in Pakistan and called it "bombing our ally" - we will not tolerate a terrorist sanctuary in Pakistan. If Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

"Barack Obama has been clear: no country poses a greater security challenge to the United States, Israel and our allies than Iran. Under the policies George Bush has pursued and John McCain would continue, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march. Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon; its ally, Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel. Beyond bluster, what would John McCain actually do about these dangers? He doesn't say."

"The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on isolation and tension is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary? It's amazing how little faith John McCain has in himself and in America."

"So ask yourself: based on the judgments they have made and the policies they have proposed, which candidate is more likely as president to end the war in Iraq responsibly... to focus America's full might on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan... to unite our allies in dealing effectively with Iran and Russia...to renew the promise of America in the world? The answer is clear."

"There's a short list of the forces shaping the 21st Century. No one country can control these forces, but more than any other country, we have an ability to affect them - if we use the totality of our strength. That means maintaining the finest fighting force in the world - not pushing it to the breaking point... rebuilding our alliances, partnerships and international institutions - not disparaging them... strengthening our diplomacy -- not disdaining it... and using our economic might, not putting it in jeopardy."

"Barack Obama understands that strength and wisdom go hand in hand... that the power of our example is as important and the example of our power... and that its only leadership when others join us in the struggle for freedom, security, prosperity, and progress. Barack Obama will keep our citizens safe. He will keep our country secure. And he will answer the yearning, at home and around the world, for an American foreign policy that is once again as good and strong as the American people."

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on September 24, 2008 5:51 AM

Virginia remains very close, with a new Mason-Dixon poll giving McCain a 47%-44% lead. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 5:44 AM

* via BuzzFeed.

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on September 24, 2008 5:35 AM

New York-based Vindigo, a mobile content company with a history that dates back to the first Web boom, is being shut down by its owner, Japan's For-Side. Sources familiar with the company tell us more than 30 people are being laid off.

Vindigo was founded in 1999 and was originally supposed to supply city guides for Palm Pilots. It survived the bursting of the first bubble, albeit in severely diminished form, and in 2004 was acquired by For-Side, which was making a foray into mobile content in the U.S. and the U.K. Some of that history is hinted at in the company's corporate bio, but for the best info, we'd suggest visiting Rafat Ali's PaidContent and MocoNews, which have spent a lot of time on the subject. At one point Vindigo also included ringtone company Zingy, but that was shuttered last year, leaving it with a handful of revenue-generating products, namely Vindigo City Guides and MapQuest Mobile.

It's unclear why Vindigo's owners shut it down rather than sell it, but people familiar with the situation offer up one theory: For-Side was supposedly asking for a preposterous price for the company -- $10 million -- and was insisting that prospective buyers write a non-refundable check for $200,000 just to look at the books.

Anyone at the company (or formerly at the company) want to offer any additional insight? Pkafka AT alleyinsider DOT com or use or anonymous tip box.

Originally posted by Peter Kafka from Silicon Alley Insider, on September 24, 2008 5:29 AM

So the latest is that we find that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis's firm was on the Freddie Mac payroll until last month when the government took over Freddie and forced it to stop paying money to lobbyists and insiders like Rick Davis. Now, Davis is part owner of Davis Manafort, the firm in question. But the McCain campaign is insisting that Davis hasn't drawn any compensation from the firm since 2006. So, the question is, is that true?

McCain campaign house blogger Michael Goldfarb says this is demonstrably false. And it may well be false. But the only evidence seems to be Davis's and the campaign's claims. I suspect that what they're saying may be true. But at this point with Davis and the campaign caught in so many different lies, do they really have any credibility to make such claims absent actual evidence? I mean, just yesterday Davis was saying he hadn't had any contact with the mortgage giants since the front group he ran for them shut down in 2005. And now we learn that the following year he asked them to keep sending more checks, apparently in return for no services rendered -- a point, you should note, that Goldfarb appears unable to deny.

Second, if I'm an owner of a company, I don't have to draw compensation today to reap benefits from the company's current success and profits.

The best statement I've read so far on this tangled web is just out from Public Action Campaign Fund ...

"John McCain's campaign manager and Freddie Mac essentially had what amounts to a secret half a million dollar lay-a-way plan. For almost three years and as late as last month, Freddie Mac made secret, monthly payments of $15,000 to Rick Davis's firm, apparently in exchange for providing special access to a future McCain White House. If McCain knew about this, his presidential campaign should be in serious trouble. If he didn't know about it, he ought to fire Rick Davis immediately," said David Donnelly, Director of Campaign Money Watch.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 24, 2008 5:21 AM

• House Spending Bill Would End Offshore Drilling Ban (NYT)
• Parts of Southeast U.S. Gripped by Gas Shortages in Wake of Hurricanes (NBC)
  
• In NYC, Exorbitant Tunneling Costs Make BRT and Light Rail More Attractive (NYT)
• Sadik-Khan: "Highly Likely" Summer Streets Will Return, Expand to Other Boros (News)
• Major Car-Free Event Coming to Miami (Transit Miami)
  
• System for Real-Time Subway Arrival Info Five Years Behind Schedule (News)
• Will Google Transit Boost Ridership? (Sun, City Room, NY1, Newsday)
  
• MTA to Investigate Troubling Bus Fuel Contract (NYT)
• Astoria to Get One of DOT's New Bike Shelters (Queens Gazette)
• Should the S.I. Ferry Stay Free? (Gothamist)
  
• Woman Self-Immolates in Extreme Road Rage Incident (London Times)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on September 24, 2008 4:59 AM

valentine, rose, bloody, red.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on September 24, 2008 3:30 AM

McArthur Universal Corrective Map of the World

On Sunday September 14, i had the great pleasure to host a panel on Cartography of Protest and Social Changes with 3 artists and activists i admire a lot: Brooke Singer, John Emerson and Lize Mogel. I usually avoid writing about the events i'm so closely involved in, either because i don't have the opportunity to take notes or because there's some video of it about to broadcast the ridiculousness of my accent on the world wide web.

It all started a few months ago when i found about, read and fell in love with a book: An Atlas of Radical Cartography. An Atlas is in fact a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration.

When Christina Ray, the director of Conflux, asked me if i'd like to host a panel i said i'd like to moderate one inspired by An Atlas. Lize Mogel is one of the editors of the book (together with Alexis Bhagat ), Brooke Singer and John Emerson contributed to the volume with maps. Just like the book, the panel was an attempt to demonstrate that maps have the potential to bring about social changes. I am not going to write down everything that was say, i'll just share with you tiny bits from the presentations:

Lize's presentation focused on the maps of An Atlas, you can find information about them online but her intro contained some fascinating facts. Here's just one of them:

One of the world's most famous maps can be seen on the flag of the United Nations.

The first version was drawn in 1946 by someone from the US department and had North America at the center of the emblem. The design was changed after some complains from other countries. But one question remained: how do you design a map of the world that has to be fair and display equality between the nations? There is always something on the top, something in the middle (and thus the center of the attention), even being on the left side is not innocent as our eyes are used to read from left to right, the right is also meaningful as advertisers have discovered that the eyes always seem to fall on that side of an image. The solution adopted represents an azimuthal equidistant projection centered on the North Pole. But that area which one would believe is blank and neutral is in fact a space for debate: the area is owned by Denmark, Canada, Russia, Norway and the US and it's unclear how it should be divided up exactly.

Pedro Lasch, Guías de Ruta / Route Guides, 2003/2006,

An Atlas of Radical Cartography exhibition opens on September 23 at the Global Education Center, UNC campus. Upcoming venues for the exhibition include New Jersey (October), New York City, Utrecht (2009), etc.

John Emerson has a very impressive portfolio and a blog i'd recommend anyone to subscribe to. He often collaborates with grass-root, independent, non-profit associations dealing with human rights, from California Coalition for Women Prisoners, to the Office of The Tibetan Government in Exile, or Injection Drug Use, Syringe Exchange Programs and AIDS in California. His belief is that maps can be useful tools that visualize power and are able to create social change, influence opinions and alter relationships between powers. By making abstraction visible, maps help us navigate through complex concepts.

Trade and Control of Gold in Northeastern DRC

One of the projects he highlighted are the compelling and revealing maps of Gold Trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo he created for the Human Rights Watch report The Curse of Gold. The gold trade is fueling conflicts and atrocities for the last 20 years in northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The maps makes clearer the relationship between gold concessions, paramilitary groups in the country and gold companies from all over the world.

The art crowd will probably have heard about a project he developed together with Trevor Paglen.

CIA Rendition Flights 2001-2006, Trevor Paglen & John Emerson on Wiltshire, LA

Paglen's project 'CIA Rendition Flights 2001-2006' explores the practice of extraordinary rendition. Emerson designed the map that visualizes the movements of aircraft owned or operated by known CIA front companies in order to reveal the relationships that have been forged between the United States and other countries in the name of the 'war on terror.'

Back in 2006, Paglen and Emerson installed a huge billboard displaying the map of the rendition flights on 6150 Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles. The billboard, part of the The Clockshop Billboard Series. The reaction of the drivers passing by was not an unanimous feeling of revolt in front of the CIA activities, some felt proud and satisfied to see that the government was doing a good job.

Detail from the NYC Guide to War Profiteers

Another great project Emerson discussed is the NYC Guide to War Profiteers. First published in March 2003, the map located precisely government and military agencies, weapon makers, corporations, media benefiting from the war, etc. The map was available at progressive bookstores around town, and was distributed at organizing meetings for various protest events. It also listed a series of like-minded websites. You can find a scan of the hard copy online.

Brooke Singer discussed briefly her contribution to An Atlas: the Map of U.S. Oil Fix as well as her fantastic project Superfund365, a website that chronicles 365 of the worst Superfund sites where Americans live at risk of exposure to toxins.

Site entrance of Fried Industries manufacturing plant

In her introduction about map, Singer reminded the audience of a few relevant facts:

- mapping is more about representation than truthfulness,
- maps are often made by scientists and as such, are perceived as objectives. Artists don't have the pretense to be objective, they do not assume that in the world of map making there is only objectivity going on.

Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion World Map-unfolded, 1946

She showed also two thought-provoking maps that illustrate this idea of maps as representation: McArthur Universal Corrective Map of the World, designed in the '70s by an Australian man who was upset by the idea that he came from the "bottom of the world". The second one is Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map, the first world projection to show the continents on a flat surface without visible distortion. The map highlights the fact that the earth is essentially one big island over one ocean.

Originally posted by Regine from we make money not art, on September 23, 2008 10:24 PM

The Mets are expected to officially announce later this week the schedule of events for Sunday’s farewell celebration to Shea Stadium.

They better hurry up, though.  I know lots and lots of fans are frustrated as they are trying to make plans for that day.

From what I can gather, a) the major part of the celebration will occur after the game, and b) expect to see Mike Piazza, Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Robin Ventura, Edgardo Alfonzo, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, and Jerry Koosman, as well as nearly 40 other former players.

I have reason to believe that both Wally Backman and Dwight Gooden will be there as well, though I’ll believe it when I see it.

Lastly, I do not expect this to be as over-the-top or self-serving as the Yankee Stadium goodbye – thankfully.  Instead, I think it will be more simple.

I have tickets and will be there with my dad, and I am far more excited and emotional at this point than I ever thought I would be.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 23, 2008 3:39 PM

Google has added transit directions to Google Maps. Finally.

We've just added comprehensive transit info for the entire New York metro region, encompassing subway, commuter rail, bus and ferry services from the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA), the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit and the City of New York.

One feature I'd like: a quick at-a-glance comparison of the three travel methods (walking, subway/train, driving) to see which is going to take less time.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on September 23, 2008 2:45 PM

If Sarah Palin has to be treated with kid gloves to this extent how feeble must she be?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 23, 2008 1:57 PM

I wanted to take a moment to announce that I've joined the board of directors for Kickstarter, a brand-new startup based out of Brooklyn and Chicago.

Kickstarter aims to let creative people of all kinds — journalists, artists, musicians, game developers, entrepreneurs, bloggers — raise money for their projects by connecting directly with fans, who receive exclusive access and rewards in exchange for their patronage. More than just a fundraising app, Kickstarter's a publishing platform where project creators can communicate with the people that are supporting them. (Think Jill Sobule, A Swarm of Angels, or Sean Tevis.)

I was introduced to founders Charles Adler, Perry Chen, and Yancey Strickler by Caterina Fake back in June, and sealed the deal after a trip to NYC to meet the team. They're a great group of guys with a strong vision, and I feel lucky to be involved.

Ultimately, everybody should be able to support themselves doing what they love using the web, and I think Kickstarter will be a great way to get there. Expect to hear more on Waxy.org as launch day gets closer.

To help them on their way, they're currently looking for a CTO to join the founding team. I've been helping guide some of the technology decisions and building the development team, but we're looking for a passionate and talented person to devote themselves to the project full-time.

If you're interested, drop me an email or IM and I'll introduce you!

 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on September 23, 2008 1:37 PM

Remembering Clay Felker

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Radar Online Features, on September 23, 2008 12:59 PM

But will it work? Here's Paulson's and Bernanke's logic, made explicit at the Senate hearing today: There's only a certain amount of bad debt on Wall Street's books, left over from the wild and woolly days of lax mortgage lending. Once removed from the Streets’ books, credit will flow again. And once credit flows again, even Main Street can breath a sigh of relief.

P&B failed to mention that bad debts are growing even among people recently considered good credit risks. At end of August, 6.6 percent of mortgages were at least 30 days past due. That’s up from 5.8 percent at end of June. We’re also seeing a growing amount of credit card and auto payments past due.

The culprit isn’t just those sub-prime loans. With jobs and wages are dropping across America, many people who had been able to pay their bills no longer can.

It’s no coincidence that states where mortgage delinquencies are highest are also states with the highest rates of job losses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official rate of unemployment in California last month was 7.7 percent. That’s up from 5.5 percent a year ago. In Florida, unemployment has climbed to 6.5 percent, from 4.1 percent a year ago. No surprise that bad debts are mounting fastest in California and Florida – and elsewhere around the country where jobs are evaporating fastest.

Note that these are just the official rates. Some 600,000 fewer jobs are listed on the nation’s payrolls than were there last year. Millions more Americans are too discouraged even to look for work. And as employers squeeze their payrolls, even people with jobs are putting in fewer hours.

Bailing out Wall Street’s bad debts when millions more Americans can’t pay their bills is like bailing out a rowboat springing more leaks while the ocean is rising. Many of the average taxpayers being asked to take on Wall Street’s bad loans are the same people whose incomes are dropping, which means they’re struggling to pay their debts and potentially creating even more bad loans.

Congress should drive the hardest deal it can with Wall Street. But Congress also needs to pay direct attention to Main Street. It should extend unemployment insurance, freeze mortgage rates, and pass a stimulus package that generates more jobs.

Bottom line: Unless Americans on Main Street have more money in their pockets, Wall Street’s bad debts will continue to rise -- which means the Bailout of All Bailouts grows even larger, which means taxpayers take on even more risk and cost.

Originally posted by Robert Reich from Robert Reich's Blog, on September 23, 2008 12:49 PM

From Serious Eats

"Many towns in the South have an active hot dog culture." —Ed Levine, referring to Martha's hot dog list. (Incidentally, I love this response to Ed's quote.)

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on September 23, 2008 12:00 PM

Why did Bush ruin the country?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 23, 2008 11:27 AM

We hope Shea Stadium still has a few more glorious days ahead of her, no matter what the Doomsday clock says.

The debate over the date of Shea's most glorious day will go on forever. But for Loge13 Oracle Ron Hunt, there is no doubt when that day occurred. Here are his recollections:

Tomorrow, 9/24, is (in my humble opinion)the most famous day in Shea / Mets history (I voted it #1), along with some very special personal highlights.

When  the Cards Joe Torre grounded into the game-ending double play in 1969, it ended all those years of futility, the Mets finally won something, the Eastern Division title, the first year it was in existence. What a great game starting with the first inning homers from Donn Clendenon (who hit another later in the game) and the Glider Ed Charles. Rookie Gary Gentry never looked back, 6 - 0. It was special and would have been even if they hadn't beaten the Braves and then the Orioles to win it all. It was a shock to the system even though the Mets had moved into first two weeks earlier. Who would have thunk it?

It was Fan Appreciation Day, (somewhere I still have the Mets keychain they gave out), I was there with my Dad, caught my first ball (off Tommie Agee), got to go on the field, grabbed some grass and I appeared in the Daily News on the field. Quite a memory for a thirteen year old.

Awesome. If there was only day you could be at Shea, that may have been it. And tomorrow we will celebrate in Loge13.

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on September 23, 2008 11:10 AM

watch until the 15 second mark; inspired by the HEMA ad?  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on September 23, 2008 10:43 AM

When the New York Post ran a story last week about the opposition of Williamsburg's Hasidic community to bike lanes that pass through their neighborhood, the main beef was supposedly about the "immodest" dress of female cyclists. But just like similar uproars in years past, the underlying objections may have less to do with bare shoulders than with the mere presence of bikes in the street.

Here's Simon Weiser, a familiar source in these stories, as quoted in the Jerusalem Post:

"The issue with modesty, it's a problem, but we live in New York, you know what I mean?" said Simon Weiser, a community board member who represents the Hasidim.

"My concern is that there are three bike lanes right next to each other and so many children, so many schools, in a very small area. Everyone understands and knows a bike lane is a nuisance."

While the Jerusalem Post's headline writers stuck with the irresistible "hipsters versus Hasids" angle, commenter Zvi suggests that the bike lanes are entirely consistent with the teachings of the Talmud, which says that "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Photo: Brian Branch Price/New York Post

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on September 23, 2008 10:27 AM

Filed under: Software, Graphic Design

As Robert reported earlier this month, Adobe officially announced Creative Suite 4 via a streaming webcast earlier this morning. Adobe CS4, which is scheduled to ship sometime in October, is being touted as "Adobe's biggest software release to date."

While I was watching the webcast for our sister site, Download Squad, what struck me was the focus on performance improvements and cross-product integration. I've been dabbling with some of the CS4 betas since the beginning of the summer, and I agree that the Macromedia products are now much more tightly integrated (at least on the Fireworks and Dreamweaver side, I haven't used the Flash CS4 beta) with the rest of the Adobe suite.

On the performance side, the GPU acceleration rumors for Photoshop CS4 that Mat mentioned back in May are a reality. What was really striking, to me, was that despite the all the hub-bub about the lack of 64-bit support for the Mac version of Photoshop CS4, the demonstrations for the webcast were all performed on a Mac (I'm assuming it was a Mac Pro, it was attached to an external monitor on stage and also displayed on stage/screen). Showing off some of advantages of GPU acceleration, the representative from Adobe worked on a 2 GB 400 megapixel file, showing how easy it was to zoom in and out, and roate the image without any lag or slowdown.

So, 32-bit or not, Mac design shops that have powrful systems should benefit tremendously from the speed improvements to Photoshop.

The pricing for some of the Adobe CS4 bundle suites has increased nominally both for upgrades and new purchases. Web Premium CS3 was $1599 US, whereas Web Premium CS4 will be $1699 US. Design and Production Premium prices remain the same ($1799 US for Design Premium, $1699 for Production Premium), but the price of Design Standard is now $1399 US, up $200 from Design Standard CS3. Upgrade prices on suites appear to be about the same as CS3, although Web Premium is $100 more than it was 18 months ago.

For anyone who purchased Design Premium CS3 before May of 2008, you will be happy to know that Fireworks is now included in this suite (it was included in suites sold after May of 2008 or if you paid the $160 to upgrade to Acrobat 9). Fireworks never should have been omitted from Design Premium in the first place, so this is a nice addition.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be shipping sometime in October. One note for PPC Mac users -- Adobe After Effects CS4 will only support Intel systems. Premeire Pro CS4, like CS3, is also Intel-only.

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Originally posted by Christina Warren from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on September 23, 2008 10:00 AM

This morning a number of public officials, including Governor David Paterson, joined Google co-founder Sergey Brin in announcing his company's new city transit mapping tool.

The service covers MTA subway and bus lines, along with PATH and New Jersey Transit routes. New Yorkers (including yours truly) who have been frustrated in the past by Google Maps' assumption that all users were looking for driving directions will be pleased to see that it now offers walking directions as well, eliminating glitches caused by one way streets.

Google isn't the first to offer transit mapping here (see HopStop and onNYTurf). But as City Room notes, few entities can rival its name recognition and economic clout, which should make it possible for the company to upgrade and innovate more quickly. The MTA has endorsed the tool with a link from the agency's web site, and Google's ubiquitousness should make the service popular with tourists.

Google Maps already feature transit routes in other cities in the US and beyond. Apparently the scope of the New York system presented a challenge to company programmers.

As for functionality, the transit tool worked seamlessly with Google Maps on my desktop. I could not access the function on my iPhone, though that could be because I don't update my software every 20 minutes. Let us know how you think the service stacks up.

After the jump is a comprehensive list of features, courtesy of the MTA.

In-depth information about a destination:

• subway, train or bus stops serving the destination
• next scheduled departures from the station or stop
• search of nearby businesses, restaurants, attractions, and amenities (e.g. “delicatessens near City Hall Station”)

Unique, user-friendly features:

• 360-degree street-level views of the destination with Google Maps Street View, which can be rotated by the user with their computer mouse
• “My Location” feature triangulates the user’s approximate cell-phone position on Google Maps for mobile and indicates distance from the destination
• Still photo entries for popular destinations
• Icons for Wikipedia entries for places of interest at stations
• Trip planning also accessible via many portable devices

Helpful links:

• Ability to instantly share a trip plan with friends via email
• A link on the Google Transit page will take visitors back to www.mta.info to access additional MTA information each time MTA data is shown on Google Maps

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on September 23, 2008 9:19 AM

Jenny, I am training for a marathon in November. The Marathon starts early (8:00 am) in the morning like most marathons. I am not a morning person and struggle to run in the early morning. I do most...

ASK COACH JENNY! Coach Jenny Hadfield is the co-author of the best selling Marathoning for Mortals and the newly released Running for Mortals. She is a nationally recognized speaker, writer and co-owner of Chicago Endurance Sports, Chicago?s largest multi-sport training company.

Originally posted by jenny hadfield from Ask Coach Jenny: Everything you wanted to know about running but were afraid to ask., on September 23, 2008 8:55 AM

I had no idea about this one.

Q: This symbol incorporates the semaphore signs for the letters N and D, for nuclear disarmament.

A: The peace symbol

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on September 23, 2008 8:42 AM

George Saunders, in "My Gal", from last week's New Yorker:

Where was I? Ah, yes: I hate Élites. Which is why, whenever I am having brain surgery, or eye surgery, which is sometimes necessary due to all my non-blinking, I always hire some random Regular guy, with shaking hands if possible, who is also a drunk, scared of the sight of blood, and harbors a secret dislike for me.

Originally posted by Benjamin Trott from Stupidfool.org, on September 23, 2008 8:09 AM

Broadway Boulevard takes center stage in a USA Today story on New York City's recent pedestrian improvements. Those who questioned whether people would sit in plazas near passing traffic have their answer:

Bianca Assim-Kon, 30, was initially skeptical about the plazas. "I saw them doing this, and my co-worker and I (said) all the tourists are going to sit there and we're going to laugh at them because they're going to get hit" by cars, says Assim-Kon, who works as a production assistant in a building across the street from one of the plazas. "And now here I am, sitting."

Reading a "chick-lit" novel on her lunch break, she says she can eke calm out of the surrounding cacophony. "I'm a New Yorker," Assim-Kon says. "You learn to focus."

Understandable as those initial doubts may have been, anyone familiar with the work of Project for Public Spaces and William H. Whyte could have predicted that, yes, New Yorkers will even venture across a bike lane for a decent place to sit.

Bonus photo and quote from Whyte after the jump.

"I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look."

Photos: Brad Aaron

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on September 23, 2008 8:04 AM

Historical landmark New York Central Railroad 69th Street Transfer Bridge, with Trump Towers looming in the background.

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on September 23, 2008 7:37 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Dealbreaker, on September 23, 2008 7:31 AM

Because I’ve made a fuss about making your own stock, how easy it is, how you should never use the phony canned stuff, I figured rather than trying to convince people how easy it is, I should encourage everyone who likes to cook, to make it more difficult and time consuming, and therefore more satisfying and enriching.  Perfect your stock: clarify it.

                                                                           photo by Donna T. Ruhlman

From The Elements of cooking:

Consommé: Technically, consommé is a clear soup or broth, and a “consommé double” is one that has been clarified with egg whites and fortified with additional meat and aromats.  Generally, though, consommé refers only to a stock that has been clarified.  The word has an appealing double meaning: it can mean finished or completed (a finished stock), but it can also mean consummate or perfect, and so we can think of consommé as stock brought to the ultimate state of clarity and flavor, stock perfected. It should be crystal clear, clear as a distilled liquid.  Any clear stock (stock that hasn’t been made cloudy from too-vigorous cooking) can be clarified using the consommé method: a clarification, ideally including mirepoix, aromats and lean ground meat in addition to egg whites, are combined with stock in a pot and brought up to heat as the pot is stirred continuously (to prevent egg white from sticking to the bottom of the pan) until the raft forms.  The soup is simmered gently for about an hour then carefully ladled through a coffee filter into a clean pot or container.  The soup can usually be cooled and reheated without losing its clarity.  Garnishes range from diced custard to julienned vegetables to grains and pastas and even Parmigiano-Reggiano (see Escoffier which lists nearly 150 consommé variations), though care must be taken to prevent the garnish from clouding the crystal clear broth.  Consommé can also be served cold (often as gelled consommé).

The following is for the above simple chicken consomme, with basic garnish:

Chicken Consomme

•    4 egg whites, lightly whipped
•    4 ounces mirepoix (2 ounces onion, 1 ounce each carrot and celery, chopped)
•   12 ounces chicken, preferably boneless, skinless thigh with fat removed, ground in a  grinder or a food processor (or ask your butcher to do it for you).
•    48 ounces delicious chicken stock
•    Optional, but recommended: chopped plum tomato, thyme, parsley, peppercorns (cracked or roughly chopped), bay leaf.

For the garnish:
•    1 1/2 tablespoon carrot, brunoise
•    1 1/2 tablespoon celery, julienned
•    4 shiitake mushrooms, julienneed
•    1 tablespoon shallot, finely minced

Blanche the carrot and celery together in boiling water for twenty seconds, then strain under cold running water until thoroughly chilled.

For the consommé, combine all the ingredients in a tall narrow pot, preferably taller than it is wide (too wide a pot spreads out the clarification and allows too much reduction during cooking). Stir the ingredients to distribute the egg white.  Place the pot over high heat and stir with a flat-edged wood spoon, dragging it along the bottom to prevent egg white from sticking and scorching.  As the liquid gets hot, the protein will begin to coagulate and rise to the top.  Continue to stir gently to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom.  As the liquid reaches a simmer, the solid ingredients will come together in a mass, referred to as the raft.  As this is forming stop stirring and allow it to come together.  Lower the heat before it boils, letting it get hot enough just to simmer over the raft and sink down.  You should be able to see how clear the stock is at this point.  Continue to simmer like this for 45 minutes to an hour.  Don’t let it boil or the raft may disintegrate.  After it’s cooked, ladle the consommé through a strainer lined with a coffee filter.  Your liquid should be perfectly clear.  Taste.  Add salt if necessary. Serve immediately in warm serving bowls, into which you’ve divided your carrot-celery-shallot-mushroom garnish, or chill the consommé in the refrigerator and cover with plastic wrap until you’re ready to reheat and serve.  If there are spots of oil on the surface, drag a paper towel over the surface to lift them out.

Serves 8 4-ounce portions

Originally posted by michael ruhlman from ruhlman.com, on September 23, 2008 7:17 AM

Today I'm happy to report we've taken a giant step in bringing public transit information to Google Maps. We've just added comprehensive transit info for the entire New York metro region, encompassing subway, commuter rail, bus and ferry services from the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA), the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit and the City of New York. That means this information is now at the fingertips of the more than 20 million people who live in and around New York (not to mention the millions of people who visit the region every year). The MTA is the largest transportation agency in the U.S., serving one in every three users of mass transit in the country.

Transit is a vital part of the infrastructure that makes cities run efficiently, and can help mitigate congestion, environmental concerns, and increasing energy costs. But until recently, access to that information has been more difficult than it needs to be. Even very prominent train and subway stations were often omitted entirely from maps in many cases. And as for bus lines, well, forget about it! This lead us to the fundamental goal of the Google Transit project: make public transit information as easy to find as any other geographic information.

We can only achieve this goal if we work closely with transit agencies around the globe to bring accurate and comprehensive transit information to everyone. Our role in this partnership is to bring all of this information together and make it easy to search and browse in interfaces that are simple, consistent and readily available.

Thinking about the magnitude of today's launch, I can't help but think about how far we've come towards reaching our goal. It's been nearly two years to the day since I posted about the expansion of the Google Transit trip planner (we added five more cities to our initial single-city launch in Portland, Oregon). And in that post I included some statistics about how many people lived in a city covered by our product. At the time, our coverage was 6 U.S. cities. Now we cover more than 170 cities and countries across the globe, including about 70 cities in North America and 81 in China, plus cities in Europe and Australia and national coverage of Japan, Switzerland and Austria. And the number of people served annually by agencies was at about 6 million. Now it's hard to count precisely, but the number is at least at several hundred million (wow!).

I would like to personally thank everyone at the agencies for their incredible level of enthusiasm for and commitment to the best interests of their riders.

And to the riders: have fun! I hope you like the product as much as I do, and that it helps you get out and explore the world. To learn more about transit info in New York, head to maps.google.com/nyc.

Posted by Chris Harrelson, Tech Lead & Creator of Google Transit

Originally posted by A Googler from The Official Google Blog, on September 23, 2008 6:32 AM

Uncle Owen! (thx Steve) 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from stream of me, on September 23, 2008 5:49 AM

Subscribe.

Originally posted by Joe from Joe. My. God., on September 23, 2008 5:15 AM

Filed under: Multimedia, Video, Odds and ends

In one of those improbable stories that sounds like a Hollywood script, a Burbank, CA elementary school teacher won an Emmy Award for his first attempt at filmmaking.

Larry Newman (photo at right), a band director at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Burbank, won the award for a film called "Children's Music Workshop: 2007 All Schools Honor Orchestra," in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Children/Youth and Music Programming.

Newman had no previous filmmaking experience, and said that he "just purchased a high-definition camera and went to the Apple store for weekly lessons on Final Cut Pro." The film focused on the annual concert at UCLA of 130 students who are enrolled in Newman's Children's Music Workshop program, and particularly on nine students in the Burbank Unified School District.

Our congratulations to Mr. Newman for his Emmy, and to that unknown Apple employee who provided the Final Cut Pro lessons.

Thanks to Scott for the tip!

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Originally posted by Steven Sande from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on September 23, 2008 5:00 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on September 23, 2008 3:57 AM

Join NTEN and nonprofit technology community and help us build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.

 Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by yatta to project:npovideo project:npovideo/resources - More about this bookmark

Originally posted by yatta from Delicious/yatta, on September 23, 2008 3:27 AM

In Fairfax County, about half of the homes for sale are bank-owned properties... Fairfax County, of course, is one of the wealthiest (and stable) counties in the United States. Here...

Originally posted by Talk Wordy to Me from Blogs.com: Economics Posts, on September 23, 2008 2:28 AM

sometimes,

nothing can save a collection of words

from reading like bad poetry.

Filed under:
Tags: balderdash

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on September 23, 2008 12:47 AM

Hamster Emporium: “So you crashed in objc_msgSend(). Now what?” (Via Lucas Newman.)

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on September 22, 2008 7:15 PM

The more he sees of it, the more Krugman likes Dodd's plan.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 22, 2008 7:08 PM

We had brunch with our neighbors last weekend, and we chose a place with no lines and kid-friendly on 24th street, Sunshine Cafe. M brought lots of artsy stuff to keep the kids busy. Tesla wore her Hello Kitty backpack. I love watching Fia and T together. A lot of times they seem to do their own thing, but they do love being together.
Jeremy plays a lot with Tesla, and I got to catch T's face when they were playing a game where he made faces, and she copied.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Kokochi, on September 22, 2008 5:47 PM

Wil Shipley: “I have to be clear: it simply will not stand for Apple to prevent applications on the iPhone from competing with Apple’s own applications.”

Agreed.

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on September 22, 2008 5:17 PM

Riddle for you:

What’s larger than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria and, when divided by 186,000, more than four times higher than the median U.S. household income in 2006?

The $39 billion in bonuses Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley doled out in 2007.

Congratulations on a job well done, folks. You’ve really gone above and beyond the call of duty here.

“To many people, it will be shocking and questionable,” Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search, told Bloomberg last year. “People in New York in the world of investment banking will understand it. It’s critical that pay is still there or you’re going to lose really good people.”

Of course. God forbid Wall Street’s five largest banks lose any really good people. Who’d be left to manage the government’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets?

Something to think about during this period of “rapid and profound change” on Wall Street.

Originally posted by John Paczkowski from All Things Digital, on September 22, 2008 4:45 PM

Call me a proponent of free markets, but I think Apple needs to have a clearly-documented policy for approving submissions to the iPhone App Store, and it should be:

• Publish all software submitted to Apple, as long as the software isn't actively harmful to users, illegal, and does not violate Apple's agreements with cell phone vendors.

• Period.

--

The iPhone app store is, at heart, incredible. Every software developer's dream store looks a lot like this:

• 100% of the devices that can run my software have a link directly to this store.
  
• And only this store.
  
• And the user can't remove the link to this store from the device.
  
• There's no other way to buy software, so users are never confused as to whether they should go to some website or physical store or the online store to find software for their devices.
  
• Users never wonder if there's some other, better software out there - if it's not on the store, it doesn't exist.
  
• Users can buy with a click.
  
• Software is instantly installed and enabled for users.
  
• "Good enough" copy-protection is handled invisibly for all developers.
  
• Apple hosts the software makes the pretty, professional website.
  
• Credit card transactions are handled automatically.
  
• Apple's percentage is MUCH lower than traditional distribution.
  
• The store actually pays out the money it owes you, unlike the vast majority of physical distributors.
  
• There's already a market of something around ten million users for iPhone apps.
  
• The market is increasing by the day.

That's a LOT of plusses. A LOT. And it's working. Developers are reporting making thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars every MONTH and the store is only a couple months old.

Some of this is likely because of the novelty of the device and the store itself — there's a mini-gold rush effect happening, and already I suspect that if you weren't one of the guys to get rich selling a flashlight app or sudoku, well, you probably shouldn't start writing one now.

So, yay Apple, and yay developers who are rolling in fat, filthy lucre. (I'm not bitter that I didn't get in on that first round. No, no.)

As with any pioneering effort that succeeds (c.f. Twitter's constant whale-fails when it took off), Apple is encountering problems it never anticipated, and having to make up solutions on-the-fly.

Which is fine, and good, except, well... maybe we developers need to give Apple a loving nudge, so the problems are solved in a conscious way that helps everyone, instead of being solved ad-hoc and turning into policies which punish us all.

--

Problem: Most Software is Crap

There's a LOT of crap out there for the iPhone. A LOT. And a bunch of neat apps. How does the the user tell them apart? Should Apple's model be like Nintendo, where Apple only allows software through that meets their rigorous standards for being fun and cool and stable? It sounds nice, except (a) it requires a ton of effort on Apple's part, and Apple's success or failure is determined entirely by the tastes of the people doing the vetting, and (b) it stifles innovation. (Look at the number of titles available for the Nintendo Wii, which has been out for years, vs. the number for the iPhone, whose SDK has been available for months.)

The other problem with Apple vetting apps for quality is that Apple gets blamed if crappy apps slip through the process. Once you appoint yourself censor, you've taken responsibility. If an App Store app crashes, it'll be blamed on Apple. If an App Store app has a bug, it'll be blamed on Apple. If an... well, you see where I'm going.

--

Recently Apple decided to go ice-skating on the slippery slope of censorship by removing the "I am Rich" application from its store. Briefly: some prankster priced an app at $999 that did nothing but show some text and a picture, congratulating the purchaser for being rich and stupid. Apple pulled the app after a few days, citing "not enough functionality" or some such.

Now, this application did point real problems in the system, but not in the app. The problems are in the App Store, and they are: it's not really clear how to get refunds, and it's a little TOO easy to click on something that says "$999" without realizing that, seriously, this is a grand you're blowing.

Let's solve the real problems so that we don't need to censor apps, and so that developers don't need to guess if their apps are "functional" enough to pass muster with whichever App Store censor they happen to get:

• Apple needs to have a clearly posted refund policy that applies across-the-board. They may already have a policy, but, honestly, I've bought 15 or so apps and I've never seen it, and I'm going to say that if users don't see the policy, you might as well not have it.

I'd suggest something like, "You can get a full refund any time in the first two weeks of ownership of any app." This would solve many problems: if the app turns out to be buggy, or have limited functionality, or insult your mom, or whatever... well, it's not Apple's problem any more. They refund your money and everyone's happy.

• For apps over some threshold ($30? $100?), Apple needs to add a click to the purchase process. Something like, "Note: this is A HUNDRED REAL LIVE SMACKERS, here, so MAKE SURE you really want this, OK?"

--

After that first rejection, there have been two more reports of rejections. I can't verify them myself, of course, but I also have no reason to doubt the reports. One of these applications had 'podcasting' as part of its functionality, and one had fetching mail from Google as part of its functionality.

Both were censored because of a new criterion Apple has invented, which is "duplicates existing functionality." Let me make my position on this perfectly clear: it in unethical and antithetical to the whole IDEA of an App Store for Apple to be censoring applications based on criteria they have never given to developers, and only told developers after the developers put in all the work of writing an app.

Even TV network censors produce a "standards and practices" document, so writers can tell if they are pushing the envelope. Apple's censors have acted capriciously and against the interests of all of its developers, its customers, and itself.

This situation is worsened because it's obvious that Apple is only worried about applications duplicating the functionality of Apple's iPhone applications — there are twenty "sudoku" apps and a dozen "flashlights" and a bunch of pokers and, heck, there's more than one racing game.

But it was only when a developer added functionality that Apple considered sacrosanct to Apple itself that she was censored. Apple wasn't worried about customer confusion, Apple was worried about getting some competition.

I have to be clear: it simply will not stand for Apple to prevent applications on the iPhone from competing with Apple's own applications. Besides chasing away all decent developers, besides hurting their customers by stifling competition and innovation, besides it simply being evil, it will, shortly, be illegal. This kind of behavior is illegal when you hit a certain point in market saturation for your product; Microsoft was slapped for it constantly in the late '80s. If the iPhone is the success Apple thinks it will be, they will find themselves the target of a huge class-action lawsuit.

--

I can see how the iPhone App Store could be some short-sighted Apple marketing dude's dream: "Hey, we can nip all competing applications in the bud and completely own any market we choose! Imagine how well Final Cut Pro would do without Premiere! Imagine iPhoto without Lightroom! We own it all, baby!"

Those of us who actually write software know that, in fact, killing your competition is a sword that's not just double-edged, but in fact has a blade as its handle, as well. Without competition there is no innovation. Apple needs competing apps. As they add features or speed or UI innovations, Apple can copy them and make Apple's apps better.

Competition is how nature has made strong organisms since literally the beginning of time. You simply won't get stronger if you don't have adversity. It is demonstrated in any system you can think of, from virus resistance in operating systems to the relative strength of the huns versus the northern Chinese.

There's a simple proof of why competing apps should exist: (1) If customers use the third-party app, it clearly provides some functionality Apple's version does not, and customers benefit and the platform is stronger. (2) If customer do not use the third-party app, that app withers and dies and nobody is hurt.

But, ignoring how Premiere actually helps Final Cut, let's imagine a world in which Apple DID censor Premiere and Lightroom for "duplication [Apple's] existing functionality." What do you think Adobe would do with Photoshop? Flash? InDesign?

If you voted, "Make those suckers Windows-only," give yourself a gold star. Now think about how not having those applications would have affected where the Mac market is today. (Remember the lag in selling Intel machines until Adobe made Photoshop "Universal?" Imagine if it didn't run at all.)

Now imagine the next revolutionary application for phones, and what platform it's going to be on if Apple doesn't cut this crap out. (Hint: rhymes with "manbloid.")

--

"What about all the crap-ware? Aren't decent applications getting buried be all the stuff that's just being dumped out there in hopes of a few pity clicks?"

This is actually surprisingly easy to solve. Eventually, there are going to be tens and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Just simply paging randomly through applications to find one is already far too onerous to be practical.

The App Store needs to think of itself as two different parts - it already implements these parts, but the people who run the store need to understand that these two parts are fundamentally separate:

• Part one is a giant warehouse, where every piece of software that is not actively harmful is kept in case someone wants to buy it (remember, users can always get a refund). This warehouse can be searched with titles and keywords or an item can be directly linked.

• Part two is like a traditional storefront, with limited real estate, so only the best or coolest applications are highlighted. It's a recommendation engine, that highlights popular, highly-rated, or innovative applications.

Everyone can get into the warehouse. Only the select few can get into the storefront.

Customers win because they can choose whatever software they like, regardless of whether Apple "approves" of their choice or not. Apple wins because developers aren't alienated and don't all go develop for Android, and so Apple has the device where all the innovation is happening. And developers win because the obviously cool apps will be featured by Apple and get tons of his, but even if their app isn't "blessed" by Apple, if it's a neat enough idea it'll become popular on its own, through word-of-mouth.

--

It's a huge mistake for Apple to appoint themselves arbitrator of what's cool, or to even appear to do so. It's an equally huge mistake for Apple to decide that all innovation must come from Apple.

Let's list a handful of cool Apple apps: Safari. iTunes. Preview. Mail. iSync.

Did Apple invent the ideas or protocols behind any of these? Nope. Did Apple write the first implementations? Nope. Did Apple even write the original code they are using for their versions? Nope. (They licensed them all from third parties, except for Mail.)

When the next cool app comes out, and the next one after that, is it going to be on the iPhone, or on Android? It's really Apple's call.

Originally posted by Wil Shipley from Call Me Fishmeal., on September 22, 2008 3:26 PM

This article was written by Mara Hvistendahl in August 2007. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective.

In 2005, green architect William McDonough and British engineering firm Arup separately announced plans to build ambitious eco-cities housing up to 500,000 inhabitants on the mainland. For a few months following these announcements, coverage was enthusiastic (we have written about these cities a number of times, with earlier articles here and here). Much of this coverage was deserved. Designers are, after all, devising solutions to what promises to be one of the largest rural-to-urban migrations in history.

But in recent months, journalists have begun to look at how these cities are shaping up. After publishing a glowing article on McDonough's designs for sustainable Chinese cities in 2005, Newsweek ran an article this May that reads like a retraction. Its assessment of Huangbaiyu, the model village in McDonough's program and the first in a series of seven planned eco-cities, is bleak:

The project appears to be a mess. Construction of the 400 houses is way behind schedule. The 42 that have been built still have no heat, electricity or running water. Walls are already cracking and moisture seeps through the ceilings. According to people who've worked on the project, many of the houses don't adhere to the original specifications—meaning they could never achieve the energy savings they were meant to achieve. The biomass gasification facility meant to burn animal, human and agricultural waste, doesn't work. Not surprisingly, no one in the village has volunteered to move into the new community.

Last month, Popular Science published a feature that casts similar doubts on the prospects for China's eco-cities.

I saw Peter Head speak at April's Holcim Forum, a gathering of sustainability-minded architects and engineers, in Shanghai. During his presentation, he showed a video that had been produced by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation, the developer responsible for Dongtan, the city Arup designed for an island outside of Shanghai. The city presented in the video suggested the myriad gated communities that surround Shanghai: gaudy and dramatic, with very little of the restraint and economy that most would associate with sustainable design.

That is precisely the problem in China. People in developed countries have had a few decades to try out and reject excess. It isn't just an awareness of environmental degradation that pushes us to go green; it's a knowledge, gleaned from firsthand experience, that conventional living generates a level of waste that makes us uncomfortable. In urban China, however, bigger is still better. Most middle-class Chinese are still preoccupied with finding ways to display their wealth, not minimize its impact on the world.

Such attitudes -- which are understandable, if not admirable -- are behind the problems now surfacing in the transformation of urban China. To accomplish their goals, Western designers working in China might partner with local government officials, as McDonough has done. But such officials might be more concerned with project success than with enforcing land rights or securing public participation -- also critical to creating healthy, enduring communities. On the other hand, another solution is to trust eco-city properties to the market, as Arup has done with Dongtan. Visitors to that project, which is now taking shape, decribe large single-family homes and suburban-style planning. Wired's feature on Dongtan suggests that SIIC and Arup differed on what they wanted out of Dongtan early on:

Part of the problem was that SIIC wasn't sure yet what it wanted. Its people talked about Dongtan as an eco-city, but they also talked about it as a quaint green suburb or as Shanghai's Hamptons, a place for the city's wealthy to flee for the weekend. They seemed to have good intentions but little direction.

The BBC alludes to similar problems in its recent article on Dongtan.

But the stream of Chinese eco-cities won't stop. Last month, New York architect Kevin Kennon announced a green community for the resort island of Hainan. We should expect -- and hope -- to see more in years to come. Why? For people interested in seeing China go green (and, given its share of global emissions, we all should be), there isn't any other option. The alternative to massive eco-cities is not slow, organic development but massive conventional cities, with all their attendant ills. Urbanization is simply occurring too rapidly in China to allow for anything else. The hope for China now is that is that its designers -- Western architects and local politicians alike -- will learn from their mistakes.

Image: Dongtan Marsh. Credit: flickr/laughterwyn

China Eco-Cities Update is part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on October 1. For the next four weeks, we'll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Worldchanging Retro at 2:05 PM)

Originally posted by WorldChanging Team from WorldChanging, on September 22, 2008 2:05 PM

Senator Bernie Sanders:

For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.

In just one week.

Via µ Slabs.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on September 22, 2008 12:24 PM

When Sam Javanrouh moved from Tehran, Iran to Toronto, Canada in 1999, he left behind many friends and family members. He wanted to stay in touch and let people know about his new life in Toronto - but he wanted to show them what it was like, not tell them.

Sam purchased a digital camera and began to carry it with him everywhere, documenting his new city one photograph at a time. He captured idyllic street scenes, the glowing nighttime cityscape, and clouds that looked as if they were painted on canvas. Every few days, he attached a few photos to an email and sent it to friends and family. The system worked, but not perfectly - not all email systems accepted large photos, and he felt uncomfortable “pushing” photos at people.

Then, in 2003, Sam discovered Movable Type. “It was the best blog software out there,” he says. “It allowed me to customize my design so that I could display large images with very few words, which is exactly what I wanted.”
 
Sam named his blog Daily Dose of Imagery, with the implied goal of posting one photograph every day. Though he had a full-time job as a creative director, he felt that the project would motivate him to explore his fascination with digital photography. He is entirely self-taught as a photographer; his early interest in the visual arts was spurred by his father, a cinematographer.

“Daily Dose of Imagery is a very personal project,” he says. “I post different types of images and all kinds of subject matter - I do have a definable style, but I love to experiment and try new things.”

Personal though it was, Sam’s project didn’t stay under the radar for long - with his uncanny eye for composition and the vivid sense of place in his photographs, people soon began to take notice. In a matter of months, mega-sites from BoingBoing to Forbes began linking to Daily Dose of Imagery. Since then, the site has garnered a staggering number of awards, from Best Canadian Photoblog to Photobloggies’ Best Photoblog of the Year. The site averages 50,000 unique visitors per day, sometimes double and triple that on days when one of his photos gets linked from a top site. Movable Type’s robust architecture handles traffic spikes with ease, so the site never goes down.

Over the years, the blog has brought a number of wonderful connections and opportunities into Sam’s life. When he posted a photo titled Jumping Girl taken at star architect Daniel Libeskind’s new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, the architect’s office rang, asking Sam to take photos of the museum for the firm. “Libeskind is one of my heroes,” he says. “It was really exciting.”

When he compared one of his photos to a world within the game Myst, the legendary creator of the game contacted him, and the two exchanged emails. “I never had any idea that this kind of thing would happen when I started my blog,” Sam says today.

Yet another satisfying serendipity has been the way that Daily Dose of Imagery has inspired people to visit Toronto. “I get emails from all over the world,” Sam says. “Japan, Brazil, you name it - they tell me that they had no idea what Toronto looked like, and now they’re visiting based on my blog.” He chuckles. “I tell them ‘If you don’t like Toronto,’ don’t blame me.’”

Today, Sam maintains his full-time job as a creative director, while still posting to Daily Dose of Imagery every single day and fielding requests for licensing and photography assignments. “I haven’t missed posting a day since I began,” he says. He continues to experiment with different techniques, including dramatic composite shots, time-lapse shots of a single scene, and a recent project where he compiled hundreds of still shots into a video.

“Movable Type has never let me down,” Sam reports. “Because the Movable Type architecture is so open, it allows me to do whatever I want, from videos to Flash. I love being able to try out new things and share them.”
 

Originally posted by Jennifer Jeffrey from Movable Type, on September 22, 2008 10:23 AM

Republicans have decided that their argument on the credit crisis will be to argue that Democrats created the crisis by forcing banks to give too many loans to black people and other minorities.

And here's a similar argument written by Kevin Hassett for Bloomberg. In case you don't remember, he's the genius who wrote Dow 36,000 just before the tech bubble burst.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 22, 2008 9:48 AM

One of the most frequent questions I get when I talk to people who are unfamiliar with social media on the web is, "Who writes all these blogs or Wikipedia? Who has the time?"

The answer, at least in this case, is me.

People who are skeptical about the web never seem to believe that we have a lot of time we could spend writing or collaborating on something original on the web. But they do understand the idea that people might be passionate and excited to write about topics they're passionate about.

So when I remembered a topic that's been an interest of mine for quite a while, I saw an opportunity to create a new Wikipedia page based on wanting to promote the work of someone whom I admire and respect, who inexplicably lacks a Wikipedia profile.

I wrote a simple page about Alan Leeds, whose role as a behind-the-scenes force in the popularization, promotion, and success of funk music truly can't be overstated. I admire his acumen, his taste, and the thoughfulness of his work over the years. But, as is the nature of people who work in music but aren't performers, his achievements thus far don't get enough attention outside of the respect for his work within the industry. I wouldn't argue a Wikipedia page is going to help improve that recognition, but it can help by being a useful resource for those of us who might want to make the case in the future. I have no doubt that I'm missing some of the subtle nuances that Wikipedia's moderators prefer (mostly because I don't really want to learn that much of the details of editing wikis), but the substance of the article is largely correct.

To my mind, that's a perfect motivation for the creation of a resource that people can use as a reference. Better yet, I am fairly confident I can draw the attention of friends and aquaintances who might have much more expertise about Mr. Leeds, and hopefully inspire them to point out resources or information that can improve the quality of the new page.

So, here's the brand new Wikipedia page about Alan Leeds. If you think you've got something to add, revise the article, pass along any relevant source materials, or add your voice in the comments. And if you're unfamiliar with his work, check it out — there's almost nobody else in the music business who's been so right, so many times, about the past, present and future of the funk.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on September 22, 2008 9:39 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on September 22, 2008 9:06 AM

Michael Lewis looks on the bright side of the current financial crisis and finds five positive aspects.

Our willingness to believe that we can hire some expert to tell us how to outperform markets is a big problem, with big consequences. It underpins Wall Street's brokerage operations, for instance, and leads to a lot more people giving out financial advice than should be giving out financial advice. Thanks to the current panic many Americans have learned that the experts who advise them what to do with their savings are, at best, fools.

God I hope he writes a book about all this someday, sort of a Liar's Poker 2. He can call it Fool's Roulette or something.

(link)

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

The Mets have officially announced that their Triple-A affiliate will move from New Orleans to Buffalo, NY, and be called the Bisons.

Bob Rich Jr., President and owner of the Bisons, said in a press conference today:

“We, as an organization and as part of the Western New York baseball community, could not be happier today as we forge this new partnership with the New York Mets.  The Mets are one of the most highly recognizable franchises in all of sports and have a well-established tradition of winning and excellence, which makes them a perfect fit for the Buffalo Bisons.”

This means one thing, road trip to upstate New York next summer to see the Binghamton Mets, the Bisons and, most importantly, the Southern Tier Brewery.

JG, are you with me?

ShareThis

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 22, 2008 8:02 AM

After the fantastic success of Wikipedia Takes Manhattan, Wikipedia, The Open Planning Project, Free Culture @ Columbia, Free Culture @ NYU and Creative Commons have all teamed up to organize another free culture photo scavenger hunt hunt for this Saturday, September 27th!

This time we’ve really stepped up the awards. The grand prize for the team with the most photos is now a dinner with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and CC board member, at the fantastic Pure Food & Wine restaurant in downtown Manhattan.

The photos will go directly into Wikimedia Commons and the Livable Streets Streetswiki and all photos will be released under our Attribution-ShareAlike license to allow for easy remixing and reuse in any future projects.

The day starts at 1pm and ends with a party after sunset. Register now and we’ll see you on Saturday!

Originally posted by Fred Benenson from Creative Commons » CC News, on September 22, 2008 7:44 AM

Politico.com: 85 staff members, 3 million unique readers per month.

Talkingpointsmemo.com: 12 staff members, 2.5 milliion unique readers per month.

Just sayin’.

Posted in media, politics, tech   Tagged: metrics, new media, nyt, politico, tpm   

Originally posted by agolis from andrew golis, on September 22, 2008 7:26 AM

As Streetsblog staff and Flickr pool contributors were filing photos on Friday, the Streetfilms crew -- Clarence Eckerson, Jr., Chris Read and Robin Urban Smith -- fanned out across the boroughs to catch the Park(ing) Day action on video. Says Clarence:

This year my travels took me to four of the five boros: biked 43 miles, filmed 22 spots, spent 11 hours outdoors and had one bike crash - while I was walking my bike through Times Square. Go figure!

While there was much fun to be had, Park(ing) Day again demonstrated the value of streets as public spaces. And some spots, as shown in the video, were designed with specific community goals in mind. The "Green for Breathing Park" in the South Bronx was dedicated to the campaign to demolish the Sheridan Expressway, and the "Safer Skillman Corner" in Woodside, Queens demonstrated how the removal of a parking space could make a dangerous street safer.

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on September 22, 2008 6:39 AM

How far off were the Yankees from having a representative from 1923 in attendance for tonight’s ceremony? The answer is 20 years too late.  At the time of his passing in 1988, Whitey Witt was the last member of the ‘23 Yankees to pass away. Here is the complete list. (De year is year of death)

  Cnt Player            **DeYr** Year Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+—-+—————–+——–+—-+—+—+–+—+—+—+—+—+–+–+–+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+–+—–+—–+—–+—–+———+
    1 Whitey Witt         1988   1923  27 NYY AL 146 685 596 113 187 18 10  6  56  67   0  42   3  19   0   0   2  7  .314  .386  .408  .794 *8
    2 Oscar Roettger      1986   1923  23 NYY AL   5   2   2   0   0  0  0  0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0  0  .000  .000  .000  .000 /*1
    3 George Pipgras      1986   1923  23 NYY AL   8  10   9   0   0  0  0  0   0   1   0   4   0   0   0   0   0  0  .000  .100  .000  .100 /*1
    4 Waite Hoyt          1984   1923  23 NYY AL  37  93  84   7  16  0  1  0   4   3   0  15   0   6   0   0   0  0  .190  .218  .214  .432 *1
    5 Elmer Smith         1984   1923  30 NYY AL  70 208 183  30  56  6  2  7  35  21   0  21   0   4   0   0   3  1  .306  .377  .475  .852 *9
    6 Joe Dugan           1982   1923  26 NYY AL 146 684 644 111 182 30  7  7  67  25   0  41   2  13   0   0   4  2  .283  .311  .384  .695 *5
    7 Bob Shawkey         1980   1923  32 NYY AL  36 102  99   8  20  1  1  0  10   0   0  15   0   3   0   0   0  0  .202  .202  .232  .434 *1
    8 Hinkey Haines       1979   1923  24 NYY AL  28  30  25   9   4  2  0  0   3   4   0   5   0   1   0   0   3  1  .160  .276  .240  .516 /897
    9 Mike Gazella        1978   1923  27 NYY AL   8  15  13   2   1  0  0  0   1   2   0   3   0   0   0   0   0  0  .077  .200  .077  .277 /*645
   10 Bob Meusel          1977   1923  26 NYY AL 132 503 460  59 144 29 10  9  91  31   0  52   2  10   0   0  13 15  .313  .359  .478  .837 *79
   11 Joe Bush            1974   1923  30 NYY AL  38 116 113  12  31  5  3  2  19   3   0   8   0   0   0   0   0  0  .274  .293  .425  .718 *1
   12 Carl Mays           1971   1923  31 NYY AL  23  31  27   2   4  0  1  1   3   3   0   4   0   1   0   0   0  0  .148  .233  .333  .566 *1
   13 Benny Bengough      1968   1923  24 NYY AL  19  58  53   1   7  2  0  0   3   4   0   2   0   1   0   0   0  0  .132  .193  .170  .363 *2
   14 Sam Jones           1966   1923  30 NYY AL  39  98  85  13  19  3  0  0   6  10   0  28   0   3   0   0   0  0  .224  .305  .259  .564 *1
   15 Wally Pipp          1965   1923  30 NYY AL 144 634 569  79 173 19  8  6 108  36   0  28   6  23   0   0   6 13  .304  .352  .397  .749 *3
   16 Mike McNally        1965   1923  29 NYY AL  30  44  38   5   8  0  0  0   1   3   0   4   0   3   0   0   2  0  .211  .268  .211  .479 6/54
   17 Wally Schang        1965   1923  33 NYY AL  84 315 272  39  75  8  2  2  29  27   0  17   9   7   0   0   5  2  .276  .360  .342  .702 *2
   18 Fred Hofmann        1964   1923  29 NYY AL  72 263 238  24  69 10  4  3  26  18   0  27   4   3   0   0   2  1  .290  .350  .403  .753 *2
   19 Aaron Ward          1961   1923  26 NYY AL 152 640 567  79 161 26 11 10  82  56   0  65   3  14   0   0   8  8  .284  .351  .422  .773 *4
   20 Everett Scott       1960   1923  30 NYY AL 152 568 533  48 131 16  4  6  60  13   0  19   2  20   0   0   1  3  .246  .266  .325  .591 *6
   21 Ernie Johnson       1952   1923  35 NYY AL  19  40  38   6  17  1  1  1   8   1   0   1   0   1   0   0   0  0  .447  .462  .605 1.067 *6/5
   22 Babe Ruth           1948   1923  28 NYY AL 152 699 522 151 205 45 13 41 131 170   0  93   4   3   0   0  17 21  .393  .545  .764 1.309 97/83
   23 Herb Pennock        1948   1923  29 NYY AL  35 100  83  11  16  3  0  0   7   9   0   8   0   8   0   0   0  0  .193  .272  .229  .501 *1
   24 Harvey Hendrick     1941   1923  25 NYY AL  37  69  66   9  18  3  1  3  12   2   0   8   0   1   0   0   3  0  .273  .294  .485  .779 7/8
   25 Lou Gehrig          1941   1923  20 NYY AL  13  29  26   6  11  4  1  1   9   2   0   5   0   1   0   0   0  0  .423  .464  .769 1.233 /*3

Originally posted by Raphy from Stat of the Day, on September 21, 2008 7:13 PM

The era of the standalone investment bank comes to an end as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley elect to become bank holding companies.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on September 21, 2008 6:56 PM

[This is our own La BellaDonna -- doesn't this look JUST like the picture for International Wear A Dress Week (IWADW)? She was being Dolley Madison, btw.]

So, I'm pretty sure that the penalty for single-handedly declaring International Wear A Dress Week (oh, the hubris) was that I was roundly and soundly smacked down by an enormous toppling pile of work, to the point where, one morning, I had to actually stand still and think: "Did I just take a shower, or not?" (Luckily, my hair was still damp, so I was able to answer that question. When the question is "Did I brush my teeth?" I just go ahead and brush them again, but it seems wasteful to re-shower.)

Although I did not post ONE SINGLE TIME during IWAD week, I did wear dresses every day, except for Friday, when I wore a skirt. (I was finally at home on Friday.) I am willing to submit signed affidavits, or I could tell you that I don't even remember the last time I wore a bifurcated garment that wasn't intended for sleep. (Ah: I wear dresses all day, but prefer to sleep in pajamas. There's a contradiction for you.)

The dresses in the Flickr stream (135 at last count!!!) are FANTASTIC. Check out this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and oooh, don't forget this one ... heck, you might as well go and check them all out!

In other sewing news, I bought three different colors of denim (orange, teal, and black) and am going to make some hard-wearing dresses out of them, I hope. (I spent some time sewing today but got frustrated and decided that I should stop before inadvertently driving the seam ripper through soft tissue.)

I am traveling again this week, and, as penance for not posting during IWADW I will commit to taking a terrible hotel-room-mirror photo of my outfit every day. (Look, this is me programming a reminder into my phone!) Be afraid, be very afraid.

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on September 21, 2008 6:25 PM

The New York Times reports this evening that "foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the [Wall Street bailout] plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks."

The Times further reports that two of the biggest foreign banks in need of such relief are Barclays and UBS. In fact, my understanding is that UBS is more on the line here than any other foreign bank.

Let's add this up.

John McCain's top economics advisor, who is widely believed to be his choice for Treasury Secretary, should he win in November, is former Sen. Phil Gramm. (Indeed, just last night his spokesman refused to say Gramm wouldn't be McCain's choice for Treasury Secretary.)

Gramm is both vice chairman of UBS's US division and a lobbyist for UBS.

If UBS successfully lobbied over the weekend to get in on the bailout, what was Gramm's role in the lobbying?

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 21, 2008 4:48 PM

If you'd like to see how OpenStreetMap has grown over the years, check out Geofabrik's gallery of animated maps, which show OSM's progress in a few locations. Via OpenGeoData....

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on September 21, 2008 3:57 PM

I'm continuing my months-long meditation on city cartography with a jump into OpenStreetMap, the "editable map of the whole world ... being built largely from scratch ... released with an open content license."

A few weeks back, I released Cascadenik, an application of cascading stylesheets to the Mapnik rendering library. The rationale for writing it in the first place was to replace the base map we're using for Oakland Crimespotting. I love the look of Microsoft's VEarth cartography, but it's missing data crucial to an understanding of urban crime: parks, schools, businesses, and transit. OpenStreetMap is the only free-as-in-speech way to create a beautiful, useful, and complete city map that can incorporate such ground truths. The NavTeqs and Teleatlases of the world where the online mapping services get their data are primarily interested in and funded by navigation, so it's not going to be in their interest to go neighborhood-deep to track locations of playgrounds or liquor licenses.

It's going to take a substantial outlay of cognitive surplus to get all this information into the map, but I've started by working on the visual appearance to get a feel for OSM's data:

(In-progress stylesheets can be found bundled with Cascadenik in mapnik-utils)

There are more than a few social decisions encoded in those styles:

• I'm trying to foreground modes of public transportation, especially rail. BART plays such a huge role in the Bay Area, and an understanding of where stations lie in relation to homes and businesses is crucial to understanding the local streetscape. For an historical view of this, check out my old flea market mapping experiment, and pay attention to the difference in appearance between the 1912 map, made to show rail coverage, and the 1936 map, made by Shell Oil to hide it.
• Taking a cue from the 1936 map and VEarth's road rendering, there's a much sharper distinction between major and minor roads, with minor roads dropping back to form a spidery matrix of connectivity between major roads and transit stops. This seems to help with the legibility of parks and other features at zoomed-out views, showing how they anchor neighborhoods and provide textural variety. It also makes room for labels on schools & parks that would otherwise be crowded out by street names.
• A lot of excess detail is being intentionally omitted. Parking lots and ATMs exist in the standard OpenStreetMap tileset, but I'm leaving those out here because I don't feel that they're helpful. I'm also omitting underground rail, it's just not relevant to surface use.
• The color of freeways is red, a fairly standard decision seen on most U.S. maps. Major roads are all fairly pale, with small variations in color around yellow and orange to make them visible but less overpowering than the blues and reds used by OpenStreetMap's own tiles.

Working with Potlatch, the Flash-based OSM editor, has been interesting. Although it does the job exceedingly well, I'd welcome an editing interface derived more from KidPix and SimCity than AutoCAD or ArcGIS. My dream is a UI that dispenses with tagging in favor of tools like "road", "school", "park", or "bulldozer".

The new tiles are being updated from fresh OSM data on an almost-daily basis, and hosting on S3 means you can hit it pretty much all you want for your nine-county Bay Area mapping needs.

Now, to get all these schools included.

Comments (1)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on September 21, 2008 3:11 PM

Angelo DiNardo wrote an iPhone app called MailWranger. It’s a WebKit wrapper for Gmail’s iPhone web interface, with support for multiple Gmail accounts. He submitted the app to Apple on July 17; six weeks later, he got this response from Apple, rejecting it from the App Store:

Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion.

This is depressing. One other iPhone developer told me about a week ago (in the wake of the Podcaster saga) that he was told by a friend at Apple not to bother working on an iPhone email client — that alternatives to MobileMail wouldn’t make it into the App Store.

MailWrangler presents a significantly different (but still iPhone-specific) interface than does MobileMail. And while you can use MobileSafari to access to Gmail’s iPhone web UI (which is the UI MailWrangler presents), using MobileSafari requires you to log out and log back in manually for each separate Gmail account you wish to check. MailWrangler sounds like a terrific app for people who use multiple Gmail accounts and prefer the iPhone web UI over MobileMail.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on September 21, 2008 2:39 PM

Quick Post

Damn, I love this design element. Here's his full write-up on the Pentagram blog.

http://www.spd.org/2008/09/for-a-page-branding-device--es.php

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on September 21, 2008 12:14 PM

Final Registration

What a hectic couple of weeks. Well, time to forget all your worries, sit back and enjoy some type and lettering. The winner of the Designing Books competition is mentioned at the close of today’s article. Thanks to all those who have sent in links and suggestions.

The other week I mentioned  Typoretum. I mention them again because they have some lovely new printers’ flowers letterpress cards:

It’s been a while since any mention of tattoos on this site, so here are a few photos put together by cmdshiftdesign.com

I’m a sucker for black type on yellow:

Gerard Unger’s Swift—one of my all-time favourite typefaces—made of rose petals. More great work from the brilliantly talented Gemma O’Brien:

A couple of great Czech covers:

This second cover was designed by brilliant Czech graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar (1932)

You can learn a little more about Sutnar here and here.

Paul Prass:

Thanks, Vivien.

Paperclips with a type twist:

Via How / OhJoy.

Lovely 2009 calendar from Egg Press

They also make a letterpress calendar. Thanks design*sponge.

New work from Pentagram for Khaleej Times:

I just can’t get excited about newspaper design. Would love to see someone completely rethink the newspaper.

Moss Lettering. Whatever next! Love it:

Nice interview with Peter Crnokrak on AisleOne:

New type

New from TypeTrust is FaceBuster. I love it. This is no shy slab serif. Great for big headlines and adding a  little—a lot of—punch.

Used to set today’s masthead too. Facebuster, designed by Silas Dilworth.

Typotheque has just released an incredible set of 21 fonts or font layers. As all the fonts share the same metrics, the fonts can be overlaid one on another, with an almost infinite number of permutations. Not easy to explain exactly how it works, so head on over to Typotheque for an explanation and video demonstration.

You can even try for yourself with the History Remixer. Why not make a masthead for the next Sunday Type. And while on the subject of Typotheque, be sure to check out Dot Dot Dot 16 by Stuart Bailey.

Three new faces from OurType: Alto, a versatile sanserif superfamily designed by Thomas Thiemich,

Lirico, a contemporary text family designed by Hendrik Weber:

And my personal favourite, Meran, a sans designed by Maurice Göldner, described as a ‘contemporary rotunda’. The Meran family consists of six weights (roman & italic) and three widths, normal, semi condensed and condensed.

Helvetica paper:

Like these repeating patterns from Yasmine at A Print a Day.

And on a lighter note

A capital FI lig is rarely a good idea:

Thanks Alec.

Sunday links

Arial narrow gets fixed
Kern the planet
Wordsandeggs—great new blog
Marks Unknown
Newly designed iKern web site
We are build dot com
Adobe, Web fonts and EOT
The Franklin Fountain
Italian Typography Design—Flickr group
Typography of the Web: Verdana, Geneva, and Tahoma
An interview with Nick Shinn
MyFonts—rising stars
DSType now at FontShop
Veer—Show and Tell

Designing Books winner

In my review of the wonderful Designing Books: practice and theory, I offered a free copy to a randomly selected commentator. And the winner is… Lorraine Reinsch. Thanks to everyone who contributed. I’d like to offer more books and more prizes, but as my pockets are far from bottomless, if you’d like to contribute, then I’ll use your contribution to buy more prizes. If you’re feeling generous, then visit the About page and find the ugly yellow PayPal Donate button (must change that). Every dollar helps.

Coming soon

That article on ten great sans serif / serif combos, more book reviews, interviews, the third quarter instalment of 15 Great Examples of Web Typography, and lots, lots more—so stay tuned. Have a great, great week.

FF Netto, new from FontFont.

Originally posted by johno from i love typography, the typography and fonts blog, on September 21, 2008 11:25 AM

Should a computer science degree require learning C?:

Bijan:

In recent years, I’ve heard more and more people suggest that learning C should not be a requirement to get a CS degree. I know people my age or older may shudder at that thought.

Todd’s response:

Often people ask me, “what is the best computer programming language to learn?” and my response is always, “…dont bother learning ‘a’ language, learn to program…”

Very good point. But people think learning C is important because it’s a fundamentally different type of language than nearly anything else in the modern computing world — it’s much lower-level than everything else in widespread use today, and we tend to progress further away from it into higher-level abstractions as time goes on.

Part of Marc’s response nails it:

A software engineer that has first hand understanding of the vagaries of pointers, type casting, memory management (and fragmentation), and even OS internals (whatever the OS) will be better able to appropriately research and choose from PHP, perl, ROR, or even Ada. C (or some other suitably “dangerous” language) can facilitate learning these.

Learning C doesn’t just teach you syntax or a particular library. It teaches the fundamentals on which nearly all other languages are built. It’s as close as you can get to what the hardware actually does and still remain productive. You learn what has to happen behind the scenes to make the abstractions work in higher-level languages.

Not everyone needs to know what happens beneath their dynamic programming languages, of course. But for serious work, it helps. It’s like the difference between knowing how to drive a car and knowing how a car works. It helps to know, for example, how a clutch works instead of just knowing “press down to stop and let up to go.”

In the context of a CS degree, this shouldn’t be relevant. You generally only officially “learn” one language in a good CS department: whatever they teach the intro courses in. (These days, it’s Java, which I think is a horrible choice, but it’s not really that important.) In the mid-level courses, you’re generally left to figure languages out on your own as implied requirements to labs and assignments that use them. And in upper-level classes and large projects, the language is usually seen as an irrelevant structure or communication mechanism to express the requirements of your assignments (algorithm design, concepts in use, etc.).

The concepts are all the same in nearly all languages: it’s just a matter of learning that particular language’s mechanics, syntax, and library once you know what the various concepts are in general. So when you want to learn a new language or need to make a decision about which to use in a new project, it’s as easy as figuring out, “Oh, this is a dynamically-typed, interpreted language with some really nice threading primitives, closures, wide-character strings, and first-class functions, but it slows down on its duck-type checking, it stores every array as a hash, and it null-terminates strings instead of storing the length separately.”

But without ever learning C, you won’t know what some of these concepts are, or why some implementations are better than others in different contexts. Your code will be doing all sorts of things behind the scenes that you don’t understand (or even know about), so you won’t know where to start when you need to find out why a string-processing loop is slow, or why foreign characters keep getting cut in half by your substring function, or why your floating-point math keeps resulting in things like 0.1 + 0.1 = 0.20000000298.

You can get along just fine without knowing C and its concepts. But your skills and knowledge reach an entirely new level when you fully understand what the computer is really doing.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on September 21, 2008 10:23 AM

At the meeting between Sarah Palin and Henry Kissinger.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 21, 2008 10:12 AM

Robert Reich on the bailout: no blank check!

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on September 21, 2008 10:00 AM

“Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that’s OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.”

- Editorials & Opinion | Barack Obama for president | Seattle Times Newspaper

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Tim Murtaugh’s Excuse for a Blog, on September 21, 2008 9:46 AM

What If It's an Electoral-Vote Tie?:

Written in 2000 in anticipation of a very close race, this is an unintentionally sad look back on that election full of disheartening quotes.

It’s not likely that a candidate will win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote. […] Unquestionably, the electoral vote winner would be President, but he’d lack a mandate and face a crisis of legitimacy.

And:

If Bush-Cheney or Gore-Lieberman won the race but, say, were caught in some scandal, the electors could vote for someone not on the ballot. President John McCain? Vice President Bill Bradley? The media would love that infinitesimal possibility.

(thanks for the link, Dan)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on September 21, 2008 9:35 AM

The frame has been set, the dye cast. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, presumably representing the Bush administration but indirectly representing Wall Street, and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, want a blank check from Congress for $700 billion or possibly a trillion dollars or more to take bad debt off Wall Street’s balance sheets. Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for (at least in the first instance) so few.

Put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress, including our two presidential candidates. The Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair have told you this is necessary to save the economy. If you don’t agree, you risk a meltdown of the entire global financial system. Your own constituents’ savings could go down with it. An election is six weeks away. Besides, in the last two days of trading, since rumors spread that the Treasury and the Fed were planning something of this sort, stock prices revived.

Now – quick -- what do you do? You have no choice but to say yes.

But you might also set some conditions on Wall Street.

The public doesn’t like a blank check. They think this whole bailout idea is nuts. They see fat cats on Wall Street who have raked in zillions for years, now extorting in effect $2,000 to $5,000 from every American family to make up for their own nonfeasance, malfeasance, greed, and just plain stupidity. Wall Street’s request for a blank check comes at the same time most of the public is worried about their jobs and declining wages, and having enough money to pay for gas and food and health insurance, meet their car payments and mortgage payments, and save for their retirement and childrens’ college education. And so the public is asking: Why should Wall Street get bailed out by me when I’m getting screwed?

So if you are a member of Congress, you just might be in a position to demand from Wall Street certain conditions in return for the blank check.

My five nominees:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street’s outsized political power – especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

Wall Streeters may not like these conditions. Well, you should tell them that the public doesn’t like the idea of bailing out Wall Street. So if Wall Street doesn’t accept these conditions, it doesn’t get the blank check.

Originally posted by Robert Reich from Robert Reich's Blog, on September 21, 2008 9:15 AM

Peggle Mastery Screen
Originally uploaded by david.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on September 21, 2008 9:05 AM

david posted a photo:

Adriana says: "This screen looks how Mike Monteiro feels."

Originally posted by david from Uploads from david, on September 21, 2008 9:02 AM

via Americablog:

Sunday, September 21, 2008                                       
 McCain cuts new ads as he opens Saturday Night LIve [watch video]
Joe Sudbay (DC)  ·  9/21/2008 10:03:00 AM ET

                  

With some help from Al Franken:

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on September 21, 2008 9:00 AM